Stochastic Geometry

Right, Saturday morning so on with steambending the second upright.

Mise en place all done. Now, on with the polythene tube…

And now put the compression strap in place, clamp it at one end and get the “start bend here” line matched up with the initial straight part of the jig.

I’ve just clamped the end block here temporarily, I’ll remove those before steaming and reclamp them before bending (I want the excess water to be able to drain out of the tube readily, and it can’t do that when the end is pinched by the clamps).

The idea here is to prevent that end block from twisting out and away from the piece because if it does, the compression strap won’t be in compression and the outside of the piece will splinter.… Read the rest

So while waiting for the steambent walnut to dry, I got on with the mattress platform. First up, ripping out laths for the remaining crossmembers and prepping them.

Is it me or is stock prep the most common hand tool job of all?

I had an end piece of ash about two feet long that wasn’t going to be doing much else, so I chose that for the crosspieces. I wanted to get four out of it, a bit thinner than the walnut crossmembers for the visual look, but not too much thinner.

Then, once I had them ripped out, I had to thickness them down by a quarter inch or so. Four of them. In other words, I turned a 2″x1″x2′ length of ash completely into shavings. Even with Sid, it sucked.… Read the rest