Building a Hall Table - Part 2

Commenced last post and progressing quickly.
Here is the piece of the slab that I have chosen for the top.

It has a natural edge for much of one side, and I propose to make this the leading edge, with the other long edge against the wall.

It will be held in place by buttons - these have been sawn from a scrap piece of camphor laurel, and will allow the table-top to move seasonally with wet and dry weather.

The finished and assembled table frame.  The legs are tapered on the insides and straight on their two outside faces.  This adds a look of some elegance - to my eye anyway :) .

Sanding through all grades of grit from 100 to 400 before a series finishing coats is applied.

Happy shavings to all.

Where Have You Been? Watcha Bin Doin' ..........

Holy macaroons Batman, doesn't the time fly when you are busy.
A short potted history for between my last post and this one -

• house painting - outside
• grandkids
• renovations and repairs to the main bedroom and walk in robe
• house painting - inside
• travel
• grandkids 
• house painting - outside
• re-building with my son, his garage
• travel
• grandkids
• house painting - outside
• uke
• singing
• travel
• Hastings Woodworkers Guild

Where was I up to with those projects....................
The ukulele hasn't moved from its last known location and condition - still on the "to get finished" list.

I have begun a hall table for our Guild exhibition in a month and will document it here.

Building a Hall Table - Part 1

My good friend Terry gave me a couple of slabs of camphor laurel that he no longer needed, and I decided that one of them would contain enough timber for a hall table.
I laid it out and cut it before I thought to take a picture.
Here is what's left of the slab - not very impressive is it?

Here is a hint of its lovely colour:

Here's what it dresses like to reveal the multi coloured grain

I cut out the legs and the side rails and glued them in using mortice and tenon joints:

Here's a close up of the joint showing the completed side rail tenon in its mortice as well as the mortice for the front rail:

Here are all four legs with both side rails glued in place:

The front and back rails will have a strengthening cross piece let into housings.  Here I am cutting them with a tenon saw before chiseling out the waste.

Here is the completed cross member sitting in its housing as a trial fit:

Finally with all pieces ready here is a trial fit of front and back rails before glue up:

After glue up I'll work on the table-top.
Happy shavings to all
Tom

Making A Boat Paddle Tenor Ukulele - Part 6 - Sides + Front and Back

Okey-dokey, some time in the shed at last and getting back on track.

Sides
The moulded sides are well and truly dried and are holding their shape quite nicely.
The cutaway section is in two parts and needs some re-inforcing gussets to prevent chipping and to strengthen the joins.  I have chosen a couple of pieces of African blackwood, both for strength and because it matches both the fretboard and the headstock.

These two gussets will be glued in place before the linings are added to the inside.

Here is a view from the inside.

This end block will become the corner of the block that houses the neck.  It will be made from cedar for lightness and strength.
I'll cut a block from this piece of Australian cedar and I will also shape the mortice in it before gluing.  This so much easier to do while the cedar piece is long - it is also safer when using a router.

Gluing Up the Front and Back

The front and the back are made from book-matched thin (2mm) pieces of mango.
Before gluing, each piece has to have its glue-edge perfectly straight.  I do this with a plane on a shooting board.

This timber is not mango, but black wattle - but you get the idea.

The edge-trued pieces are glued together and held in place under tension by nothing more than masking tape.

A flat surface is placed on top to keep the drying skins from warping and this is held down with a small weight.

The finished results are shown with the mango skins dried and flat.

The skin on the left will be the front and that on the right will be the back.

 This skin is most highly figured of the two, and will look best on the back where it will be able to show off its lovely grain to advantage.
The other will have a sound hole cut into it as well as a bridge glued on top.

Finally I have cut some strips from what was left of the mango used for cutting the sides.  These strips will be used for bracing and strengthening pieces on the backs of the front and back skins.

Next time I'll work on the neck.

A Damaged Plane Blade - Bringing It Back to Life

I received in the mail a much abused Turner handplane blade from Dylan's newly acquired number 5 jack.
See the comments from this post
Turner Hand Planes

Here it is as he received it:

The blade is near full and shows signs that it has been sharpened in the past.

Sadly someone has abused the cutting edge over its life, so that it now looks like this:

One corner is missing and there is a chunky chip out of the edge near the other corner.  The bevel has become rounded chipped and jagged.

 It is easier to see the damage up close .........

The back shows that a previous owner tried to flatten as part of the sharpening process, but that is such a while back that rust has started to appear.

First step will be to square off the blade by grinding back the old bevel to remove all the chips and jagged points - leaving the blade straight from one corner to the other.
Bench grinder to the rescue.

Care must be taken to keep the edge cool so that the steel doesn't "burn" and lose its temper.

The edge, ground square from corner to corner.  Grinding a new bevel comes next.  Most handplane blades like this one use a bevel of 30 degrees so that's what I will use.

Once the new bevel is ground, it needs honing to remove the coarse grinding marks and to begin to form the cutting edge.

This bevel is well formed but there is a dag of wired edge on the left corner that will hone off on the oilstones as a secondary bevel appears.
This will be honed at 35 degrees along the front edge of the bevel.

I'll use coarse, then fine oilstones, and then finally a hard white arkansas stone for polishing.
This is so similar to the chisel sharpening that I showed back in April 2012 that I will use an image from there:

Just think of this chisel as the Turner plane blade OK.
Sadly, I packaged the blade up and posted it off before getting a shot of the finished bevelled and sharpened edge - rats!

When it arrives  it will go back in Dylan's number 5 Turner plane just like this one:

Happy shavings to all.

Xmouse and New Yers - And Lots of Driving

OK - last post for 2013.
Our children are spread over the width and breadth of this wonderful country, and unlike last Xmouse we are not all able to be together for the celebrations of love and family.
Red dots indicate where our kids are situated:

Soo, this year we are on the road.
A trip to Brisbane to be with our daughter will also include a detour to visit my brother, and time spent with my sister on the outskirts of the city.

For overseas folks - you non-Oz residents - here is a size comparison to show distances compared to the USA and Europe:

The trip to Brisbane is like driving from Eugene Oregon to Oakland California in distance.........

..

..............or from Paris to Nice, or Istanbul to Kosovska Mitrovica, Kosovo ..............

Family time - nothing better.

A few images from the trip:

Brisbane by day..............

....... and by night

............ and from my brother's verandah ................ not in Brisbane  - can you tell .......  :)

...... and so to New Year's Resolutions ..........
................... to finish the ukulele ...hahaha.
 That will re-commence with the first post of the New Year.
Happy 2014 everyone .......... may the fresh year bring you peace, and as much joy as you can handle.

Making A Boat Paddle Tenor Ukulele - Part 5 - Catching Up

Oh my, where has all this time disappeared to?
So much to do around here and the ukulele build has been on the back-burner.
Our home is a large log cabin construction with a fully painted exterior.  The LOML, in her spring cleaning mode, started an outside spruce-up that turned into a full exterior house clean. A huge job!

We last painted the exterior in 1996-97..............
You can see what's coming...............  Now that it is clean let's re-paint, she said.  OK, I replied.  I really love painting .............. hahaha

 (this male king parrot landed on my painting trestle)

Soooooo ........... guess what has occupied my leisure hours of late - we have been painting, and painting and painting ...............

Oh, there was also the rehearsals for the concert by the Tele Point Ukes and Singers.......................

.............and the concert itself..................

trips to Young.................

.............. and Sydney - and my son's engagement to wonderful Edwina .............

........the party ..............

........... gardening .........

................. lots of gardening .........

...... babysitting ............... lots of babysitting ............

............ end of year parties and wrap-up dinners, as well as.........
..........school concerts .................

(......everybody was Kung-Fu fighting ......................)

.................. and woodwork........... well, bits and pieces.
I have found some time to cut and shape the gusset blocks for the ukulele body as well as lay out the fretboard and make a start on the neck.
I'll get back to that in my next post.

Soooooo ........ we are back up to speed.
 Every blessing to you and yours for this season of Xmouse.
May you find some peace...... and in doing so, add a little more joy to the world.