24 June
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In Finishing, Locker, Woodworking
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Time to complete the locker. The door got resawn down from 1″ to about 3/8″ thick using the bowsaw and the large ryoba when I got too annoyed at banging the bowsaw off the wall on every stroke, and resawing remains the most boring annoying thing ever, but you while you can thickness plane 3/4″ off a 1″ board with a scrub plane, it’s a pain in the fundament to do so. Roll on bigger bandsaw. Once the door was then planed down and fitted, which was mainly just faffing about planing until the edges of the doors matched the doorframe, it was time forRead More →

17 June
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In Finishing, Japanese Toolbox, Woodworking
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We had to run off to a graduation on Friday, but when we got back I spent a rather rushed half-hour in the shed. Thing about that sort of thing is that it gets… messy… So first things first on Saturday, clean up a bit… Right. Next, trim up the other end cap, and set the locking wedge position and glue it in place… And yes, that is the finish starting to go on the box and the key; and I have jumped the gun there a bit and I pay for it later. The finish by the way, is half danish oil and halfRead More →

13 June
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In Finishing, Japanese Toolbox, Locker, Woodworking
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So I was a bit sneaky this morning and went to the shed for ten minutes before heading off to work. I’d prepped the part for the end cap on the toolbox last night but because I’d clamped up the base I couldn’t glue it on without risking either it or the base shifting when clamping. So this morning I went out, took off the clamps from the base, made sure I had clean gluing surfaces and glued up the end cap and clamped it. And of course, as you’re in a hurry, everything gets irksome and fiddly. Why on earth did it choose thisRead More →

12 June
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In Finishing, Japanese Toolbox, Locker, Woodworking
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So the camera battery complained about being empty on Sunday and it got a few hours in the charger, but then come Monday, it said it was flat again. Hmmm. A replacement knockoff has been ebay’d. However, the fabrication of the handles and the glueup got missed. It wasn’t that hard, cut a piece of beech to width so it fits in the end of the box, then make a 1cm deep cross cut in the middle of the piece and chisel out a curve in it, then give up because the piece is too small to work on with the vices I have (IRead More →

10 June
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In Finishing, Japanese Toolbox, Locker, Woodworking
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So first things first, take the clamps off and see if the hide glue cured… Not too bad, lots of squeezeout in places but I can deal with that. Well, bugger. I thought I had that better aligned than that and there’s no real way to fix it now. Feck. Clean up the squeezeout and smooth the surfaces. Mostly the #04 with a few pieces done by card scraper. Not too bad. Broke the sharp edges as well. Couldn’t get all the edges with the #04 though, so various other tools made an appearance. And then leveled the legs so it didn’t rock. I don’tRead More →

09 June
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In Japanese Toolbox, Locker, Tools, Woodworking
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A few hours in the shed today that felt productive (it’s a false positive; it was just that a few end stages happened at the same time). Started off with the final fettling of the carcass for the locker and then smoothed all the interior surfaces and rounded the corners I won’t be able to readily reach after glueup. 20 minutes with #04 and card scraper and we’re ready to glue up. Prepped an mdf surface to assemble on… Final dry run… Okay, looks good, knock it apart and start the glue-up. Mise en place is as important in woodworking as it is in theRead More →

07 June
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In Locker, Woodworking
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So the repair job from yesterday went reasonably well. There’s a lot of excess CA to clean up, that took a few minutes for the face side, and a bit longer for inside the rebate itself. Lots of chisel work, some scraping, and dug out the Record 311 with the nose off and the 077 to fettle things and clean up the rabbet to get a square inside corner. Then cut the rabbet on the other side wall, which took far less time and had no drama to it, then cut the rebate in the top piece and then test fitted it and realised myRead More →

06 June
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In Locker, Woodworking
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So, another housing joint to chop… Giving the new chisel mallet a workout. So far, it’s working very well. Chopped the housing joints as per yesterday (had to take a pause to take the #08 to the edges in the vice, I’d missed a small bow in the edge so I wanted to correct that before marking out for the new joint). All grand. Did a test assembly and everything fitted and was square. Excellent. Then thought about the back and decided to rebate it in, but with a stopped rebate (the client 😀 doesn’t want the back to extend all the way to theRead More →

05 June
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In Locker, Tools, Woodworking
With 3 Comments

So with the bandsaw down, my plans for the box are on hold and I moved back to the locker. I started off by planing the roughcut pieces I was going to use to get them flat and smooth, then I cut the dovetails for the main carcass, and of course, that means sharpening time 😀 And marking up time… And sawing time… No, I didn’t do all the sawing with the fretsaw, I just used that to get the bulk of the waste out. Then it was chopping and paring time. Incidentally, that chisel mallet is a nice find from lidl. I’d say IRead More →

05 June
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In Humour, New Toys!, Science Fiction
With 1 Comment

So if you know science fiction web comics, you probably know Schlock Mercenary. It’s been going since June 2000 and so far they’ve racked up over 6800 comic strips, which have been released over the years in (so far) 13 books, and because I was earning the square root of feck all back then I never did keep up with the books, but of late I’ve had a little bit more cash to play with so last October when they were doing a kickstarter for their latest book Random Access Memorabilia I thought I’d fix that. And today, a few months late (but these thingsRead More →