• 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!

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  1. Dr.Al

    Picture Frames

    My other half's birthday is coming up in a few weeks. She's a keen artist and I thought I'd have a go at making something for her birthday. I'm fairly sure she doesn't check this forum so it should be safe to post this! The idea for this was shamelessly plagiarised from inspired by this GR...
  2. Dr.Al

    Making Liquid Hide Glue

    Introduction (jump straight to recipe) I recently did some investigation into Old Glues and how well they stick. In that context, I mean old in the sense of "bought a long time ago and probably past its shelf life" rather than old-fashioned. For me, the ideal general-purpose glue: Is strong...
  3. Dr.Al

    Clear Coloured Finish Recommendations

    I generally use Mike's Magic Mix for almost everything with the only exceptions being Mineral Oil for food-related stuff (e.g. tea caddies) & Chestnut Hard Wax Oil if I'm in a rush (4 hours between coats). I'm currently making something quite small out of Sycamore & for this project I'd like to...
  4. Dr.Al

    Un Rabot de Menuisier

    Today we popped into a Brocante (antiques shop) in Brittany & I got tempted to part with €15 for a souvenir. I don't think it's anything particularly special & I doubt I'll end up using it that much, but sometimes we must allow temptation to get the better of us! It needs a bit of TLC...
  5. Dr.Al

    Joint Practice

    I've been doing some practising of joinery. I've got to the point I'm relatively comfortable with dovetails (through, half-lap or tapered sliding), lap joints, M&T joints & housings, but bridles are one that I think of as being particularly irksome. I'm sure it's partly down to the huge angled...
  6. Dr.Al

    Favourite / Least Favourite Native & Imported Woods

    I've been preparing a plank of my current least favourite native wood & have been reminding myself why it takes that crown. That got me thinking about different woods & piqued my curiosity, so... Question: If you had to pick one native wood & one imported wood to use for everything, which would...
  7. Dr.Al

    Old Glue - an experiment

    I'm going to be taking my travel tool chest for a little jaunt in the fairly near future and I've started thinking about which sort of glue to take with me. Most of the glue I have is rather old and I thought it would be quite interesting try to compare their efficacy. I've seen quite a few...
  8. Dr.Al

    A groovy little two-day project

    I've just finished this simple project but I thought I'd post it in three instalments just to spread it out a bit. About five years ago, I made a set of grooving planes based on an idea from Matthew Kenney in a book on woodworking with hand tools. I use the four planes fairly often as they're...
  9. Dr.Al

    Rain

    There's water falling from the sky! Does anyone know what this strange phenomenon is? Should I be worried? 🤣
  10. Dr.Al

    Mark

    No, not you @TrimTheKing, why do you always think it's about you? 😜 I've decided to make some marking knives. I only need one of them (arguably I don't need any of them!) but making a few means I've got more room for mistakes and if all goes well I can also give one to my other half to use for...
  11. Dr.Al

    Domi-not

    For those who aren't aware, Festool's main Domino patent expired a month or so ago. That probably means that there will be lots of Domino clones on the market in the near future (Kreg have announced one already). At the moment, the idea of a Domino machine doesn't really appeal to me: I'd...
  12. Dr.Al

    Global Temper

    I've had this Global kitchen knife for about 30 years, although my other half uses it far more than me as I generally prefer something bigger. After using it this evening, she put it down (quite gently she assures me 🥸 ) on the kitchen work surface and this happened: That's the sort of thing...
  13. Dr.Al

    Miserden Sculpture Trail

    We had a very pleasant afternoon out wandering around the Miserden gardens and looking at all the sculptures. A few of my favourites (mostly by Graham Hawkins, who's works I've posted here before): This one (called "Flat Out") was made with the engine from an old chainsaw that I gave him...
  14. Dr.Al

    Mumbles

    It's quite amazing what a mobile phone camera can do these days. With my phone held in my right hand, I managed to get this shot of a (captive-bred, obviously) Indian Eagle Owl just about to land on my left hand: (the owl's called "Mumbles" in case you were wondering about the thread title)...
  15. Dr.Al

    A small project with a difficult joint

    Although I've started the bedside table project, I haven't got very far with it yet. The legs have been planed on two sides and are sitting "in stick" (with some weights on top to try to keep them flat) and I'd like to leave them like that for a little while before finishing planing. It's far...
  16. Dr.Al

    Terminology - Two countries, separated by a common language

    A thread on another platform got me thinking a little about differing terminology and I thought it might be interesting to collate a bit of a look-up table of differing terminology. What follows is off the top of my head and I'm sure I've missed a few and probably got some wrong so I'd welcome...
  17. Dr.Al

    Breast Drill Renovation

    Last weekend I was in Lyme Regis. No visit to that part of the world is complete without a trip to the second-hand tool store that forms part of Dolphin Antiques in Beer. I was relatively restrained (by my standards). I came away with a slightly shabby breast drill and a few countersink bits...
  18. Dr.Al

    Bedside Table

    I think I've chosen my next project: it's time to make a new bedside table. For most of the 20 years I've lived in this house, I had a pine three-drawer chest that I inherited from my parents and used as a bedside table. It was quite deep and didn't leave much of a gap between the corner of...
  19. Dr.Al

    Ornate Portuguese Bench Plane

    Seen at the Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology in Lisbon (which is mostly an excellent museum showing the insides of an old power station, along with a load of weird and not-very-nice modern art, but which also had a carpentry exhibit.
  20. Dr.Al

    Like the ocean under the moon

    This is a project I've wanted to have a go at for a while. I think there's a fairly high chance it'll end up going through several iterations as I discover all the design problems but I think the journey will be interesting nevertheless. I'm going to make myself a bench plane. I don't really...
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