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More stock prep

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?

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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

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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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