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Sidecar Cot / Woodworking — No Comments
24
Jan 17

One thing after another

Just before xmas, I snapped a piece off a rear molar (the tooth was long dead – long story – so there wasn’t any immediate pain), and because of work and stuff, haven’t had time to get it looked at, but then it started on the stabbing pain thing on friday so it was dentist time. Turns out the tooth’s dead but now has an abscess. Yay. So it’s codine and antibiotics for a while, which usually wipes me out. Spent most of the weekend zonked, and not much progress has been made. But there’s been some; the rear side’s slats are now done:

Handy workout for the new shooting board too…

Left a bit of excess at the end of the top crossrail both to have some extra strength in the end pieces and to let me thing of a more decorative way to handle the end grain there.

So, crib progress…

To-Do List (now in new order):

  • Fit top crossrail to back support and steambent uprights.
  • Cut mortice for back support.
  • Cut back support to length and cut tenon on bottom end.
  • Cut back slats to length and cut tenons.
  • Cut mortices for back slats.
  • Measure off side slats (because they’re going into a curve, this is going to be fiddly) and cut tenons.
  • Cut mortices for side slats.
  • Cut grooves for top panel in long stretchers.
  • Joint drawer runners into the bottom end crosspieces.
  • Thickness the boards for the drawer.
  • Cut the drawer front to size.
  • Cut the drawer back and sides to size.
  • Cut dovetails for drawer.
  • Groove drawer with #43 for plywood base.
  • Assemble drawer.
  • Drill for drawboring on the M&T joints that I’ll be drawboring (the long rail to upright ones and probably the back support and top crossbar joints).
  • Make drawbore pegs.
  • Finish plane all parts.
  • Finish walnut pieces with a few coats of shellac.
  • Paint drawer with milk paint.
  • Assemble and glue-up and drawboring of everything.
  • Finish entire assembly with several coats of Osmo wood wax.
  • Close door of shed, lock it, walk away and never do another project with a deadline ever again.

I’m hoping to get a few more of those crossed off before the weekend, like the grooves, and the drawer runner joinery and start finish planing the panels; I want daylight for the side slats, so that might need to wait for the weekend, and I might wind up starting on the drawer before then. But it’s really getting closer now…

Also, got a late xmas gift – a friend is into woodturning in a big way (Hi Tom!), and Claire got him to make me a pen from purpleheart…

Lovely looking piece, the photo doesn’t do the purpleheart justice.

General / Shed / Sidecar Cot / Woodworking — 3 Comments
13
Jan 17

Testing

Last few days have mainly been testing; both in the “new toys and new ideas” sense and in the “three days off from food poisoning and losing ten pounds in the process” sense. Happily, I only have photos from the former.

I did get some work done on the cot before the enforced break set in, the biggest and trickiest of the mortise and tenon joints is now all fettled and the slats have been picked out and I’m working on the spacing for them. But apart from that, it’s been small stuff only.

I was wondering about the exposed end grain bits there will be in the cot and then I saw this approach by Brian Halcombe :

It’s downright pretty. I wondered if I could do that so I sharpened my smallest gouge and dug into a scrap bit of walnut:

Well, the idea works at least. I need a bit more practice, and maybe a slightly narrower gouge (and it needs to be a lot sharper than mine was, I just stropped it, but it needs to go back to the stones properly), but that might be a runner.

Then the new toy arrived…

For anyone who’s not seen one before, it’s a dovetail guide. There’s a magnet inside to hold the saw against the guide so your angles are correct, some low-friction pads over that so the saw can slide freely, and a bit of sandpaper to help keep the guide in place against the wood:

It’s pretty simple to use:

I had a bit of a play when it first arrived, just cutting saw kerfs to see how it handled, and then tried giving it a go for an actual joint. It works as advertised, but there is a point the instructions don’t warn you about, namely, be careful where you put it down on the bench…

…or else you get a ball of magnetised sharp edges and points to deal with 😀

Apart from that, it makes the process much easier.

I made life a bit difficult for myself here though, because the pieces of wood I was using weren’t wide enough for three tails given the size of chisels I have; I wound up cleaning out the waste with the tip of the marking knife in the end because my smallest chisel was over twice the width of the gap between pins. And between that and general fumbling, there were gaps all over the final joint:

But for a first attempt at dovetails, it’s not too bad. Besides, I was having trouble feeling my fingers, it was a bit chilly in the shed:

Eeek. No glue-ups possible at that temperature…

 

Sidecar Cot — No Comments
28
Dec 16

In the shed, nobody can hear you scream

So, job one, get the end crossbars in place. Time to chop some mortices with damn near no margin for error at all…

The new mortices for the end panel are within a millimeter of the other mortices for the side panels. In one case, there’s an actual small breakthrough.

But it held and that’s one down. Then on to chopping mortices in the steambent upright, which is equally stressful because if you stuff it up, it’s a lot of repair work.

Awkward to chop too. There was a bit of spokeshave work before this, I figured do that before cutting holes in the thing…

The holdfasts really do make this a lot easier.

Then assembly and fettling…

Ah, feck. Can you see the problem?

Yeah, I’m going to have to rethink how the crossbar at the top attaches here. Poop. The earlier idea of the tenons being on the crossbar and going in from the side probably won’t work. Tenons on the uprights and mortices in the crossbar I suppose.

Then get on with the panel as I can do that now. Squared up the end grain, then marked off the right width, ripped off about 2cm of material to get to final planed width. Took out a rebate with the #778:

And then flip the board over and push it in from the edge a bit and use the jack to plane a small bevel on the panel. Then it’s fitting and fettling and…

Not bad so far. That’s the three side panels done now, leaving only the top panel to be set in place, I’ll wait to get the crossbar idea sorted first, then I’ll rip that panel to width, do the rebates and bevel, and use either the #44 or the #43 to cut a groove for it, bearing in mind that the bars getting that groove already have one groove on the bottom for the side panels and will have mortices for the slats as well. It’ll all be grand when it’s all glued up, but during construction it’s going to be a bit fragile…

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