• Hi all and welcome to TheWoodHaven2 brought into the 21st Century, kicking and screaming! We all have Alasdair to thank for the vast bulk of the heavy lifting to get us here, no more so than me because he's taken away a huge burden of responsibility from my shoulders and brought us to this new shiny home, with all your previous content (hopefully) still intact! Please peruse and feed back. There is still plenty to do, like changing the colour scheme, adding the banner graphic, tweaking the odd setting here and there so I have added a new thread in the 'Technical Issues, Bugs and Feature Requests' forum for you to add any issues you find, any missing settings or just anything you'd like to see added/removed from the feature set that Xenforo offers. We will get to everything over the coming weeks so please be patient, but add anything at all to the thread I mention above and we promise to get to them over the next few days/weeks/months. In the meantime, please enjoy!

Post a photo of the last thing you made...

boygreen said:
Hi - I am considering making one of these but wondered how to do it in a way that could be fine tuned. Your idea looks to have value. How much have you used your jig, and has it been robust and durable? Thanks for sharing.
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All of the construction can be fine tuned as shown. The cross rails on top are also adjustable as they're bolted in place with domed headed nuts and large washers with a certain amount of 'slack' in the bolt holes. I made it a few years ago and the jig gets used regularly, thus far it hasn't fallen apart yet!:ROFLMAO: - Rob
 
A jewellery box commission that has just been despatched.

American Black Walnut body and burr lid. Lacewood escutcheon and tray splines. Finished with Peacock Oil and Alfie Shine Hard Wax (my favourite finish). SmartLock and SmartHinge so no ugly square knuckles. Pig Suede lining.

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Annoyingly there is a bit of dried wax on the front of the tray in the photographs - I thought I did another photograph after removing it but it seems not!
 
Woodbloke said:
All of the construction can be fine tuned as shown. The cross rails on top are also adjustable as they're bolted in place with domed headed nuts and large washers with a certain amount of 'slack' in the bolt holes. I made it a few years ago and the jig gets used regularly, thus far it hasn't fallen apart yet!:ROFLMAO: - Rob
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Thanks for your response, I will give it a try in the near future.
Will keep you posted.
Cheers.
 
Blackswanwood said:
A jewellery box commission that has just been despatched.

American Black Walnut body and burr lid. Lacewood escutcheon and tray splines. Finished with Peacock Oil and Alfie Shine Hard Wax (my favourite finish). SmartLock and SmartHinge so no ugly square knuckles. Pig Suede lining.

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Annoyingly there is a bit of dried wax on the front of the tray in the photographs - I thought I did another photograph after removing it but it seems not!
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Really impressive!
 
Blackswanwood said:
A jewellery box commission that has just been despatched.

American Black Walnut body and burr lid. Lacewood escutcheon and tray splines. Finished with Peacock Oil and Alfie Shine Hard Wax (my favourite finish). SmartLock and SmartHinge so no ugly square knuckles. Pig Suede lining.

View attachment 38684

View attachment 38687View attachment 38691View attachment 38692View attachment 38694

Annoyingly there is a bit of dried wax on the front of the tray in the photographs - I thought I did another photograph after removing it but it seems not!
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That's a seriously good looking box!
 
Having spent quite a while improving my home-made lathe, I thought it would be good to give it a test run to prove I hadn't done anything wrong. It turned out I had, but only in that I hadn't tightened up the pair of nuts that set the preload on the bearings, so it turned smoothly for a while and then started to wobble a little 🤦‍♂️. Easily sorted.

Anyway with it running nicely, I started by a quick play (with no particular purpose) with a couple of bits of walnut:

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The one at the back was turned with a spindle gouge; the one at the front with two skew chisels. I found it really pleasing that all the bowl making practice last year had obviously paid off: I found it much much easier to turn those spindles than other similar things I tried before.

While I was lathing, I thought I'd turn a few bowls to convince myself I hadn't forgotten how to do it. Again it all went very smoothly:

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The biggest one is Brown Oak, the middle one Sycamore and the small one Lignum Vitae (turned out of a bowling ball that had a great big chunk taken out of it so I didn't think it would be much use for anything else). All finished with hard wax oil.

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The lathe isn't looking quite as neat and tidy any more :)

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Very nice Al. I am not sure about lathing as a verb though but having checked it does exist.:).

Nice box again Robert are these kite shaped scutcheons becoming a trade mark?
 
Goodness me, Robert......That's work I couldn't even begin to contemplate.

I had to look up "madrona". I've never heard of it.
 
A quick one.

At work, management bought 3 Ajax lathes. I believe Ajax were a very good brand a few decades ago - these days, if it was my money I'd steer well clear.

Anyway, the compound scales that came with the machine are printed, so after about 3 months all the markings rubbed off and I was asked to make some more.

I'm quite pleased with the results.
 

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I made this JK style wall cabinet with a convex door in 2022 from a few bits of London Plane:

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....but I've never liked it much or the timber (soft and 'woolly'). In particular the drawers didn't fit very well (apparently Google AI says it's really hard to fit small drawers as opposed to bigger ones), so I re-made the drawers with Holly fronts, Swiss Pear sides and ABW pulls:

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The drawers fit a little better than the original ones, but sadly there's not much in it😢. It's been re-polished with Odie's Oil and wax with a view to selling some time in the near future - Rob
 
Well that shows what Ai knows lol. In what way do they still not fit to your exacting standard?
Haven’t come across Swiss Pear, looks like a nice tight grained timber. Presumably you don’t have to go to Switzerland for it?
Ian
 
Cabinetman said:
Well that shows what Ai knows lol. In what way do they still not fit to your exacting standard?
Haven’t come across Swiss Pear, looks like a nice tight grained timber. Presumably you don’t have to go to Switzerland for it?
Ian
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Apparently Swiss Pear does in fact come from Switzerland but has been steamed to a uniform pinky colour; if you can get used to the colour, it's a timber that works almost any way you like and it refuses to tear out. I love the stuff as it's harder than Oak as well as being very, very close grained.

Part of the problem of drawer fitting with this little cabinet was that the original drawer spaces had a slight bit of 'toe in' ie, narrower at the back than the front, whereas ideally it ought to be the other way round (according to St.David of Charlesworth). I tried to correct the deficiency with some sandpaper stuck to a bit of ply and did in part succeed, but not completely. When the drawer openings are 'toe out' it's then easy enough to get that elusive fit, but with 'toe in' you ain't got much of a chance.

I've got round the issue of a narrow back in the past by fitting the back panel in last. That means that you can work from the rear of the job to open it up so that the drawer doesn't bind as it goes in. Once the drawers are fitted correctly the back panel is then fitted. Unfortunately with this little cabinet I forgot (doh!) the correct proceedure - Rob
 
I use Swiss Pear veneer as a laminate on the inside of my instrument rims. Even as a veneer it's nice to work with; even texture and reluctant to split like other veneers.
 
Another bowl, which started out as a blank I picked up at a meeting of the Gloucestershire Association of Woodturners a few weeks it ago. After turning the square blank round and pouring some superglue into a faint crack, it looked like this:

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then after a while it looked like this:

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Note the lack of any tenon or pocket - I decided to try preparing the base in its entirety (give or take some very light skims later) before hot-melt gluing on the sacrificial bit...

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...which got a tenon turned on the end.

My plan had been to use this as a test piece for an alternative way of holding it for tenon-removal (in the form of a friction fit with tailstock support holding it against a soft pad) but having seen how lovely the wood looked after turning the bowl, I wimped out and used the Cole jaws.

I'll try the friction hold on another practice piece soon as I've got a big (280 mm diameter, 75 mm thick) Ash bowl blank I want to turn into a fruit bowl and given that it only just fits on the lathe, it'll be far too big to be able to use the Cole jaws. Practising on something smaller seems a sensible approach before risking the big blank.

Anyway, waffle over, here's what the Spalted Beech one looks like after its first coat of hard wax oil:

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Side view to show the profile:

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This bowl worked my home-made lathe a little hard - the spalting is very soft and hence the bowl was quite ill-balanced when running on the lathe (even after turning). This is the disadvantage of having a box section lathe rather than a big lump of cast iron: at high speeds the lathe (and bench!) would vibrate quite a bit. It wasn't too much of a problem though: I just had to keep the speed below 1000 rpm (and I stopped a couple of times to flood some more superglue into the softer area as it seemed to need it to prevent tear-out).
 
AndyP said:
Can you fill the box sections with something heavy to help with stability.
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Possibly, but not very easily and not while still allowing me to adjust the steel plates that are attached to the box section. There's a row of holes, visible in the following old photo, that allow access to the screws that hold the steel plates in place. To fill the box section, I'd have to plug all those holes and that would remove the adjustability of the plates.

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This is the first time I've ever had any major vibration issues with the lathe and even then it was fine up to nearly 1000 rpm, so I'm not too concerned about it.

AndyP said:
Spalted beech is gorgeous isn't it?
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Yes, and I'm pleased to have succeeded with this one. I turned a spalted beech bowl as part of the big batch I made last year but I made a mess of it and it ended up in the firewood pile.
 
Two wooden carts for use in my medieval group using the wheels I made in December. They come apart and pack flat. I’ve already sold one for $600 and the other one has folks asking about it. They also want plans, which I’m drawing up, but most people won’t take on proper spoked wheels so I doubt many of the plans will actually get used.
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Looks wonderfully Medieval Kirk, very rustic indeed! Probably needs a bath in mud to complete the Medievalisation though lol.
Just had a thought, how about leather strapping around the top corner posts?
 
Cabinetman said:
Looks wonderfully Medieval Kirk, very rustic indeed! Probably needs a bath in mud to complete the Medievalisation though lol.
Just had a thought, how about leather strapping around the top corner posts?
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The corner posts have pins so that the end pieces will fix to the side pieces and not flex. These are slightly tapered vertical dowels that drop into holes in the side corners.
 
Fifty years ago, a long departed girl friend gave me for my birthday a first edition of the late Freddy Forsyth's little novela, 'The Shepherd' now made into a short film with John Travolta as the phantom Mosquito pilot. I had some decent quality thick, bright red, paper so I firstly made a dust jacket for the little book:

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...and then made a slip cover for it:

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Making a slip cover for a hardback book sounds easy peasy, but it's not, it's bloody 'ard. There are loads of quite good videos on UToob but I eventually decided to follow the instructions from DAS Bookbinding. There aren't many tools needed except for a very sharp craft knife with snap off blades, a cutting mat and steel rules. I used 2.5mm thick acid free backing board from my favourite picture framer in Salisbury and some off cuts of the thick Ferrari red paper for the top, bottom and spine of the slip cover. The diamond pattern paper on the faces is an offcut of Japanese hand printed Washi paper from Shepherds in London, very close to Victoria Station. It's one of SWIMBO's most favourite shops in Londres with all sorts of beautiful, hand printed Japanese and Italian (to name two) papers as well as all the kit and equipment needed for bookbinding.

Freddy Forsyth's little novella is actually a ghost story (based on his time as a pilot in the RAF) and should be read every Christmas Eve along with 'A Christmas Carol', best accompanied by a couple of wee tinctures of the finest malt - Rob
 
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Coincidence... sorting through the back storage area for some stain (light oak) I *thought* I had - but turns out I didn't! - I came across a plastic bag. Many moons ago (in my early teens) I had an interest in making model planes and boats and bought a few sets of plans for them. One of the plans was for the Mosquito 👍... must be over 60 years ago. Never did get to build any of them 😕
 
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