Steaming cracks

Well, that didn’t go as well as I’d hoped.

The steaming jig was ready, the drying form was ready. all the shopping and other stuff was done yesterday, so this morning I finished planing up the two candidates for uprights so they matched perfectly in size, rigged up a wide compression strap from three narrower ones (thanks addresspal for losing my order for a wider one) and then into the plastic tubing one went, and in went the tube from the wallpaper stripper and away we went.

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It got steaming pretty quickly, but it was a rather chilly breezy day today (down around 10 degrees or so air temperature at this point) which was depressing the temperature a bit every time the wind breathed wrong.

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Some insulation was needed, so the airing cupboard got raided for towels.… Read the rest

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Platforming

On with the crib, after a few days of sourcing wood and shed hardware…

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You wouldn’t think Kendo and carpentry had much in common, but then you try rip cuts with a ryoba…

That’s the last walnut board to be planed and ripped for the frame for a little while might be one or two more to do yet, but I want to get some components made up and get moving on it. So I’m starting with the most independent part of the design, the platform for the mattress.

Measured off three walnut cross pieces, the two walnut long pieces, I need to think about whether there should be more ash cross pieces (I’m leaning heavily towards yes), and there’s another pair of cross pieces to go under the platform to secure it to the frame, but they can wait for now.… Read the rest

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MOAR WOOD!

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Yeah, it was that time again.
What happened was that I put one of the ash boards I’d bought last time and had intended for use in panels on the cot… into the wrong pile of boards for crosscutting when I got home (you have to do the first rough crosscut on the day you bring them home if you only have a tiny 8’x6′ shed to store them in. 16′ boards just won’t fit in there 😀 )
End result, I now get more of one project than I thought I would, but I needed more ash for the panel. Oh well. Off to Quinns again 😀

And if you’re buying one board, you might as well get a few so I picked up some more poplar and some beautiful sapele when I was there (16″ wide boards!… Read the rest

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