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Still have ten…

So after weeks of not getting to the shed at all because of work and feeling pretty guilty for that, I finally got out there for a few hours today. The next step in the project is the sliding dovetails – the main desk surface shelf has been cut to the right angle, the sides are both shaped, the top shelf and middle shelf are both ready to have the angles cut but I want to get the sliding dovetail for the desk surface done first. And since I’ve been away and am now rusty, out with a bit of beech scrap to try to cut sliding dovetails in for practice.

On go the layout lines, out comes a scrap to run the router along to cut out the female part of the dovetail, I hog out the main part of the waste with a straight cutter and then cut the dovetail edges with the dovetail cutter I bought for this (it’s my only good router bit) I cut the female part out and then checked the board that I hadn’t yet cut the male part of the dovetail into and the whole board went into the female part leaving a gap.… Read the rest

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Don’t talk to me about foam

Yet another diversion from the desk (where I’ve done almost all of the basic shaping and am ready to start cutting the sliding dovetail part which is the complicated bit).

This is a floor mat:

They’re cheap, they’re foam, they go together like a jigsaw, and they’re being sold everywhere (including the local car parts and doo-dads shop halfords near us) for very little money. And they’re EVA (Ethylene Vinyl Acetate) foam and are the base material used by cosplayers for a lot of costumes and props (that’s the grown-up’s word for “toy”):

Yes, that’s a 9 foot tall hulkbuster Iron Man costume made entirely out of foam. And yes, halloween is approaching and yes, junior wants a costume, so I thought it might be fun to at least make a part of it.… Read the rest

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Modelling

So I was really just at a low energy setting this weekend, and it was one of the first rains of the coming winter and even just looking at the shed was making me tired, but I have been wondering about something with the design of Calum’s shelves/desk thingy, which is whether or not to put a backing board behind/between the top two shelves. It’d stop stuff falling off the back of those shelves, give a larger contact area with the wall, and stiffen up the whole carcass; but it’d change the look of the unit quite a bit and the joinery might get complex unless I cheated and used a router to carve out a rabbit for the panel.

So, what do you do when you’re too tired to go to the shed and still want to see what it looks like?… Read the rest

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