Kneedeep in shavings and carrying on

Bandsaw BoxesDesk ShelfFloor shelf
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Wall CupboardWoodworking

So, I’ll start with the end of something. Made as a gift for a friend of Claire’s:

Walnut offcut from the cot, some brass and pewter hardware and felt and viola, a small necklace box. Or key box I suppose. Didn’t come out too badly.

Then it was time to start pushing.

The problem with making a lot of rough-cut component parts is that then you have to turn them into planed non-rough component parts. At least it’s just poplar. And I did stop for forty minutes or so at the start to take the irons from my #04, #04½, #05 and #05½ planes to the diamond plates. It would have been less time, but I discovered the #05’s iron was skewed quite badly (one side was almost 2mm longer than the other).… Read the rest

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Starting again…

Wall CupboardWoodworking

I figure, with six projects sitting in component form in the staging area of the shed, best get to work making even more components for a seventh project. Because Reasons.

Anyway, the first video I ever saw by Richard Maguire was about building a small wall cupboard (in a sort-of, kind-of, if-you-squint shaker style probably best described as “`English colloquial” 😀 ):


I’ve wanted to build this for a while. But I don’t have the ten feet of pre-planed three-quarter inch thick pine his plans call for. What I do have is a pair of boards of inch-and-a-quarter rough-sawn poplar, mostly free from green stains…

That should work. And sod feeling bad about doing the rough-cuts with a power circular saw. Do you see room in there for me to swing a full-size handsaw?… Read the rest

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Madelines

Food

Well, this post has sat around as a draft for two years now, so maybe I should finish it…

Anyway. Madelines. Small crunchy-on-the-outside citrusy sponge cakes that are brilliant with a cup of tea in the morning. Yes, crunchy. If you’ve had them and they were soft, they weren’t fresh. They go soft as they go off.

Also, you need a special pan. Yes, you do. You can pour the batter into anything but it won’t be a madeline, the same way it’s a stew instead of a tagine unless it’s made in a tagine or a casserole has to be made in a cassarole or a … you get the idea. It’s one of those named-for-the-dish cooking vessels. For madelines they look like this:

Sorry, no, google I said “madeline pan“…

And you’ll want to have a piping bag.… Read the rest

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