Cubby shelf

Here's a couple pics of a small wall mounted shelf I made as a gift for a buddy. thought he might find a use for it at his fly tying bench. Catalpa (that dan may recognise) & black walnut.

Stool #2

Here's some pics of a slat stool that I managed to build amoungst the summer distractions.

Stool #1

Here's a link to photographs of the stool. First pictures taken with my ghetto knock-down photo studio.


http://www.flickr.com/photos/62883546@N05/sets/72157627117020409/

Stool WIP

Some in progress pics of the stool I've been working on. standing over a slot mortiser for hours can be a back killer, so I've found sitting down next to the arm gives good visibility, control & comfort. notice the dust collection rigged up; zero chips on the floor & the top pipe kept the mortise clean which resulted in nice crisp mortise walls.

parts on the bench; arbutus bookmatched seat & rift sawn walnut for the rest. Lots of hand cutting & fitting of the double bridal joints, especially the mitered ones, perfect exercise to get the hand tools swinging again.

Rifting & Re-sawing

Working on a simple stool design to get back into things & hopefully learn something about chair making. Here's some arbutus resawing & Walnut chunks getting rift sawn. Once again, nice figure in the arbutus. Rough cut the walnut with a small chainsaw, but once it was milled 4 square cleaned the ends up on the radial arm; 3" thick, single pass, didn't skip a beat, clean cut, incredible machine. Rifting the walnut gives beautiful straight grain on all 4 sides, but tragically does result in lots of waste.

Also some re-sawing of a piece of catalpa with a buddy, this first real test for the Crescent, came off the bandsaw so clean it left us shaking our heads.

Yes, machines are running well & settling in, hand tools are in need of some love.

The Studio

Here's a slideshow tour of the '2010 - year of the studio' upgrades: outdoor workspace; bench room; shop doors; insulation walls/cieling/doors; permanent heating, machine upgrades, central dust collection.


http://www.flickr.com/photos/62883546@N05/sets/72157626601376705/detail/

Inauguration

First slab (Elm) on the cresent bandsaw, after a quick raid of the compound stash. nice to huck a slab onto a saw that doesn't buckle under the weight. could have been slicing up a piece of 1/4" ply, the cresent doesn't know any different. Wish I was making a piece of furniture, but just milling up some pony wall caps/shelves for the new benchroom. getting there, passed framing inspection, waiting on insulation inspection, then I can close her up, wall sheathing, light fixtures etc. Never underestimate the amount of time making/installing weatherstrips & caulking/sealing any gaps. but worth it, she's feeling 4-season tight. When I fart in the shop, i can feel the compression in my ears. Also had a bit of a moment when i finally got rid of that uninsulated piece of shit garage door. I had grown to truly hate it over the years. Talk about a win, win situation; posted it for free on cragslist & some guy came by with his kids, they dismantled it & carted it away on his trailer (that would have been a half day of cursing & a dump run death for something that still had some life in it).

If budget over-runs aren't looking too ugly, it's time to order in the permanent heat source, gas fired radiant would seem the best option, I think. That's the pile of light fixtures sitting under a pretty cool vintage 14" radial arm saw (picked up from the same place as the bandsaw). Going to try get it up & running. Also time to get rid of my old faithful 10" RA, & will have to decide if i keep this big guy. Debatable whether a shop needs a RA, but I do find them convenient, & they give you that living on the edge buzz.