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.

Door #2

Estas Muy Fuerte? - Door#2 - in progress

The incas must have been smiling down on me. I was sure this was going to be the part of the movie where it ends in defeat & I drag a whole bunch of twisted expensive metal to the recyling yard. Stunned that it went together without a fight, & that it actually doesn't seem to want a spring loaded castor on the bottom (a canadian company Darcor make the sweetest machined gate spring loaded castors should it need one). Without any cursing, except for the forehead slapping colossal screwup of welding the top rail in back to front. It's been a long time since my last stupid screwup, so I guess I was just due.

1 week design time, 1 week fabrication time. Got myself psyched up last saturday morning & sat down at my welding table. I rose from my table on sunday night, in some kind of red-eyed inca trance, with most of the sub-assemblies scattered around the new fabrication facility. most ridiculous thing I've ever cobbled up. 7'X7'X4" (thick because I wanted as much insulation as a wall). folds 180. The idea was to keep the structural internal (with the exception of that one flatbar sticking out due to the aforementioned colossal screwup), & the lines as clean as possible. Combination of cold & hot rolled steel. lucked out on the hot rolled, clean & blue.

Not out of the woods yet, lots more weight to add, needs spray foam insulation, cladding on inside & also buffing up, finishing etc, but looking like it may fly (not seeing any sag yet). not the greatest pics, but snapped a few off during the inaugural test drive. A door this size called for the mother of all piano hinges. I mean the mother of all piano hinges.

Beach Time

There's nothing like a day at the beach to forget about your never-ending shop construction project. Great day out with Dan, his big rig & more Elm than we knew what to do with.