Guardrail

Finally got round to installing the glass guardrail for the bedroom shutter.

A Few Quick Snaps of the Installation

In the fray of tearing the place apart I didn't take before photos. but it was nasty.

There was a pane of lethal non-safety glass in this interior window, which I striped out and carefully and precariously removed with suction cups. Suction cups are the business. Thankfully the four ugly, near useless box store shutters are gone. Still need to fabricate a railing.

That's a 4' by 10' skylight. That's a lot of light. It made sense for the sliding shutter to frame the skylight.

Finishing up the Wall

After assembly the wall panels and sliding shutters receive some flush trimming.

Shooting these 1 7/8" thick rails on these massive panels was a bit of a wrestling match, but do-able. only just.

What the f.... Looks like a micro remnant of a staple or something buried on this one rail. did not see that. Gave my Lie Nielson jack a thorough rogering. of course this means it also went through my machines.

Perhaps you can make out the offending piece of debris.

All panels finally through soap finishing, ready for install. After Glue-ups begin, these things quickly become an overall logistical back breaker. The laminated panels are 3/4" thick. These suckers were surprisingly heavy. Absolute deadweights.

Hardware

There's a lot of in's and a lot of out's to building a wall.

Let's Wrap it Up

Flushing the ends of the panels small enough to fit on the slider. Longer ones received hand plane treatment.

Like a stack of plywood. Except ash. Waiting for flattening & face treatment, performed by my beat up piece of crap dewalt palm sander. Where's that Mirka when you need it?

The dark side of the benchroom. I hate violating my benchroom like this again. I've been doing way to much messy work inside the shop instead of my outdoor workspace, way too much. But we've had a hard winter this year, just too tempting to work inside the warm shop.

Surfaces, surfaces, surfaces. Treating the frames with the big guns.

Modified Robertsons screws to fit into the 1/4" grooves of the frames. These will pin the floating panels on centre and allow for even seasonal movement of the panels.

The female notch to capture the screw.

Feeling Groovy

Milling the frame grooves for the panel tongues.

Ribbons of squeeze out. Almost too much glue, but enough to confirm a joint hasn't been starved.

Building a Wall

Had a sudden urge to build a wall, to keep out fascist pigs. It's a four panel millwork affair, including two sliding panels. A gargantuan amount of Ash was lined up for milling. First I flicked the switch on the RA saw. Then the jointer and planer got some exercise, after some bandsaw break-out.

Speed Stripe Shutters

I enjoy the routine of rolling out of bed & swinging open the shutters to greet the morning & make my Pacific Northwest rain forecast (showers/light/torrential). They have a nice door-swing weight to them, mainly because the western maple frames are 1 3/4" thick with the goal of handling door dimensions as an exercise. The hinges that I knocked up run surprisingly well. I put a Tupla finger slot in the door frame instead of a pull for opening & closing; clean, comfortable, simple. I might make latches at some point. I hit the Western Maple frames with 1000 grit after hand planing & then beeswax; super silky, beautiful wood.

I'm really digging these things, although they don't feature any complex/extraordinary woodworking. I think it's because this is what customising the loft is all about. Reading about designer Eero Aarnio recently '...furthering the notion that home life and design are fully integrated into a sort of laboratory for living.' I like the experimental nature of these things. I'll continue exploring in the bunkhaus laboratory.

Shelter & Shutters

Like the Stones said - 'gimme shelter'. Here's the plan for the metalwork shop/carport; one giant bunkhaus awning. I've started some planning work; finding where the underground services are, gas, hydro etc, sourcing materials & contacting engineers. I plan to use Krinner ground screws for the foundation on the left wall (the foundation wall on the right already exists), these things are awesome http://http//www1.schraubfundamente.de/schraubfundamente.html and reclaimed 6X4's (that I salvaged last summer) for the framing. Hoping to save some weight lifting & use aluminium Ibeam for the roof trusses & aluminium square tube purlins, depending on what the engineers say, and if I can source 30 foot lengths of Ibeam from a mill. Corrogated galvanised steel roofing with a polycarbonate panel for light. I'd like to fabricate some kind of torsion kneebrace system using turnbuckles, that should make her hurricane-proof. Once the drawings are finalised I'll need to mosey on down to the district office to see if there's an outside chance they'll issue this dusty cowboy a building permit.

In-progress pics of the window shutters. A few swift, sweet passes of the jack to square & flush the ends of the panels. Love the Jack. I milled the planks for the panels from one of the many above mentioned rift sawn 6X4's doug fir 10 footers in the backyard, and a little walnut (partly a design feature, more about getting to my width). Cutting kerfs for the tenon wedges, always good to take a deep breath before cutting through a precious tenon. and shooting the door rails flush with the stiles with the jack & a makeshift shooting board. Yes, love the Jack. The massive wedged double tenons glued up like I'd welded the frame together, we'll see how they hold up. Still need to clean up & wax up, & make some hinges.

The Jack

A cool print from Brabant "the days last lesson"; makes trying to build a table that's bigger than your shop look like a walk in the park. I like it. Hand planing the western Maple door frames; what a pleasure planing something that actually fits on the bench.

The pleasure was heightened with the newly acquired Lie-Nielson No.62 low angle jack. what a sweet plane! Doing all that hand planing on the walnut gave me a chance to do some soul searching. While wooden planes are a beautiful thing, I've decided to reserve them for things like coopering or compass planes for now. Working in a garage has it's challenges, one being that I need to re-flatten the sole of wooden planes regularly, which opens the mouth. What i like about the bevel-up planes is you can easily change the angle of cut, depending on the angle of the micro bevel. With a bevel down wooden plane, you have to go make another plane with a different bed angle. I'm now using a honing guide & stop block jig to get repeatable micro bevels, and I also have a spare blade prepped with a steep angle for those difficult situations. The mouth on the bevel up planes is also adjustable, so it can be tightened up for fine shavings & less tear-out. I actually thought this plane was going to be on the first truck back to Lie-Nielson, it had a taper on the sole, so the leading edge of the iron was not parallel with the mouth. But I managed to lap it true in the end, & it seems to be running well. It's really like using a big block plane, very similar feel, I like it, I like it a lot.

I'm also really liking the Western Maple. One of my new favourites. It didn't machine that well, but it came to the party with hand planing & responds well to a good burnishing with the plane shavings. Nice to find a good local wood that's not too expensive (~$6/board foot). Hopefully Dan & I can harvest more soon.

Milling & Mortises

While the walnut rested after it's initial milling, I got to spend time at my bench, cutting & fitting the mortise & tenon joints for the doors. They're through mortises & with wedged tenons, doubled up for even more strength. This meant deep mortises 3 1/4". Cut with an end-mill & sliding table on the drill press. Time to pull the trigger on a slot mortising machine. With the tenons being so long, I roughed them out on the bandsaw first, then used the new 184 delta tenon jog to dial them in (really like the rapid fire macro adjust, & micro-adjust to creep up on it, nice jig), then did the final fitting with handtools. A card scraper works well to dial in the radius on the tenons, after initial shaping with a chisel or file.

Here's the Walnut all milled up to final thickness. moving these 8/4, 10 footers between machines takes some time. Setting up co-planer in-feed & out-feed work support stands becomes a Zen art form. How about a support stand with rack & pinion adjustment, & how about some levelling feet. I see Lee Valley has stands that look pretty good. These planks are tense. beautiful grain, but seriously tense. Dealing with such long lengths must be partly to blame, but maybe also because it's kiln dried, so probably drier on the inside than outside. But they just want to bow like madmen after a pass, and resawing really pissed them off.