Apparently it's time for some actual woodworking.
I've been meaning to get round to making a new bed for some time, which has had the visible benefit that several smaller, easier projects have been started and finished before I even sketched out a design.
We do already have a bed, which takes some of the urgency away. It's an unlovely thing in varnished pine, from the 1980s. It works, but it doesn't look very good next to the 1890s ash wardrobe, 1900s sweet chestnut chest of drawers, and home made ash bookcase.
I've decided on a design, which is fairly simple, but should show off some decent wood a bit. It's based on a design by Derek Cohen, who I expect will be familiar to most of you. As far as I can see there's no detailed account of the build available online - just one photo in the section of his website headed "A few images of past furniture builds". I'm sure he won't mind me linking to his photo of it:
His is king size, in jarrah. This one will be a standard double, as determined by our mattress and the space available. It certainly won't be in jarrah. I just like the unfussy construction, with the slight curve on the cross rail, the capping rail with its chamfers underneath and the tapered feet.
I plan to re-use some parts of the existing bed - the pine side rails can become the supports for the slats, which will also be retained - but the visible head and foot assemblies will go.
In the past, I've had a pleasant experience buying timber at the Wentwood Timber Centre, near Chepstow, in South Wales and less than an hour's drive from Bristol. They buy and convert native species from the immediate area only. This policy is designed to help sustainable forestry, but in the current times it has the rather nice side effect that their costs (and therefore their reasonable selling prices) are not affected by the international timber market. Their prices have not doubled or trebled in the last few years - they have stayed the same.
Much of their market is to bulk users, for fencing and flooring, but they also sell boards for woodworkers, planed one side, sorted by thickness and marked with the price. A recent well-timetabled short break in Wales found us calling in at Wentwood on the way back.
I was slightly disappointed that the space for hardwood boards seems to have shrunk a bit since my last visit. It's now in a single large shed, which is much easier to get in and out of than the previous set-up, in a suite of old Forestry Commission offices.
The obvious problem is that there aren't very many boards there. I would have liked to get sweet chestnut, but they had very little, so I went for ash instead and I think I bought most of the 32mm thick ash that they had; anyone visiting after me would need to wait until they had re-stocked. And some of what I bought was probably the last boards after the good ones had been sold. However, I thought I had found enough and it just about fitted into the car and onto the roof rack.
One of the boards - for the legs - was sawn at 75mm thick and about 11" wide and 9 foot long. I couldn't have put it on the roof even if I had been able to lift it up there, so I had to take the uncomfortable decision about where to cut it into two more manageable lengths to get it home. At least there is absolutely no rush or pressure; you can take as long as you like to scribble over your cutting list and try to work out which boards will yield which components.
Here's what I bought:
I didn't buy the rather magnificent piece of cedar of Lebanon that they are leaning on, but someone with a trailer or a van could have done by now and made something rather nice out of it. Here's a clearer photo:
About 4' x 7' and 3" thick; £290 inc VAT. They had two like that.
Anyhow, after a pleasant drive and some more heaving and handling, here's my stash, piled up in the utility room while I think about it some more.
I can certainly confirm that if anyone else has been mostly making tiny things from titchy bits of wood you can pick up in one hand, swapping to something like this is a whole different experience. That won't be news to those of you who casually build roofs and floors and bike sheds and boats and so on, but it feels very different to me!
Since getting the wood home, I have gone over the cutting list in a bit more detail, looking more carefully at avoiding any knots and splits etc, and I think I will probably need to go and buy a bit more wood. Maybe that's my excuse to visit Yandles for the first time.
Meanwhile, I have made a bit of a start on getting the legs out of the thick board.
I must stress that although I shall write up the whole project in my usual level of detail, I really have very little experience of working with big lumps of tree like this and find it quite difficult to know which parts to use and which to discard. So if you spot me doing something wrong, please don't hesitate to say so; I won't take offence.
Because I don't have room at the ends of my bench, cutting to length gets done on a Workmate. First, I trimmed off the rather large split at the end:
I then needed to trim off the triangle with the bark on. I did most of the long rip cuts on my very basic tablesaw, working right at the limit of what it can handle, but I wanted a straight edge to work to. There's no spare depth of cut, so I couldn't mount the ash on a bit of straight plywood or something, so I made the first cut by hand.
It took about fifteen minutes in all, some of which was messing about taking photos or adjusting the clamps. I wasn't rushing and it didn't make me feel exhausted. About the same effort as a brisk walk around the block.
To support the offcut when working on my own, and knowing that it would be fairly heavy, I clamped it in place when I got near the end. This worked nicely. Is this something everyone does but nobody mentions?
With a straightish edge to work to, I did the next two cuts on the tablesaw, but forgot to set up any carefully posed photos; I'll put that right next time, as there will be quite a lot more work getting a kit of parts out of these lumps of wood, before I can do any fancy joints and stuff.
I've not got any particular deadline for finishing this job and I know there will be some interruptions when there will be no visible progress, but I shall update this thread as soon as there is any more action to see.
Meanwhile, feel free to chip in with any thoughts about working with ash or making beds - there don't seem to be that many bed building threads but some of you must have done this before. I did make a double bed back in the 1980s, but that was all from prepared, salvaged timber and the design was derived from the materials I had. I no longer have the bed or any pictures - you'll just have to believe me - but I can remember so little about it that this feels like starting afresh anyway.
I've been meaning to get round to making a new bed for some time, which has had the visible benefit that several smaller, easier projects have been started and finished before I even sketched out a design.
We do already have a bed, which takes some of the urgency away. It's an unlovely thing in varnished pine, from the 1980s. It works, but it doesn't look very good next to the 1890s ash wardrobe, 1900s sweet chestnut chest of drawers, and home made ash bookcase.
I've decided on a design, which is fairly simple, but should show off some decent wood a bit. It's based on a design by Derek Cohen, who I expect will be familiar to most of you. As far as I can see there's no detailed account of the build available online - just one photo in the section of his website headed "A few images of past furniture builds". I'm sure he won't mind me linking to his photo of it:
His is king size, in jarrah. This one will be a standard double, as determined by our mattress and the space available. It certainly won't be in jarrah. I just like the unfussy construction, with the slight curve on the cross rail, the capping rail with its chamfers underneath and the tapered feet.
I plan to re-use some parts of the existing bed - the pine side rails can become the supports for the slats, which will also be retained - but the visible head and foot assemblies will go.
In the past, I've had a pleasant experience buying timber at the Wentwood Timber Centre, near Chepstow, in South Wales and less than an hour's drive from Bristol. They buy and convert native species from the immediate area only. This policy is designed to help sustainable forestry, but in the current times it has the rather nice side effect that their costs (and therefore their reasonable selling prices) are not affected by the international timber market. Their prices have not doubled or trebled in the last few years - they have stayed the same.
Much of their market is to bulk users, for fencing and flooring, but they also sell boards for woodworkers, planed one side, sorted by thickness and marked with the price. A recent well-timetabled short break in Wales found us calling in at Wentwood on the way back.
I was slightly disappointed that the space for hardwood boards seems to have shrunk a bit since my last visit. It's now in a single large shed, which is much easier to get in and out of than the previous set-up, in a suite of old Forestry Commission offices.
The obvious problem is that there aren't very many boards there. I would have liked to get sweet chestnut, but they had very little, so I went for ash instead and I think I bought most of the 32mm thick ash that they had; anyone visiting after me would need to wait until they had re-stocked. And some of what I bought was probably the last boards after the good ones had been sold. However, I thought I had found enough and it just about fitted into the car and onto the roof rack.
One of the boards - for the legs - was sawn at 75mm thick and about 11" wide and 9 foot long. I couldn't have put it on the roof even if I had been able to lift it up there, so I had to take the uncomfortable decision about where to cut it into two more manageable lengths to get it home. At least there is absolutely no rush or pressure; you can take as long as you like to scribble over your cutting list and try to work out which boards will yield which components.
Here's what I bought:
I didn't buy the rather magnificent piece of cedar of Lebanon that they are leaning on, but someone with a trailer or a van could have done by now and made something rather nice out of it. Here's a clearer photo:
About 4' x 7' and 3" thick; £290 inc VAT. They had two like that.
Anyhow, after a pleasant drive and some more heaving and handling, here's my stash, piled up in the utility room while I think about it some more.
I can certainly confirm that if anyone else has been mostly making tiny things from titchy bits of wood you can pick up in one hand, swapping to something like this is a whole different experience. That won't be news to those of you who casually build roofs and floors and bike sheds and boats and so on, but it feels very different to me!
Since getting the wood home, I have gone over the cutting list in a bit more detail, looking more carefully at avoiding any knots and splits etc, and I think I will probably need to go and buy a bit more wood. Maybe that's my excuse to visit Yandles for the first time.
Meanwhile, I have made a bit of a start on getting the legs out of the thick board.
I must stress that although I shall write up the whole project in my usual level of detail, I really have very little experience of working with big lumps of tree like this and find it quite difficult to know which parts to use and which to discard. So if you spot me doing something wrong, please don't hesitate to say so; I won't take offence.
Because I don't have room at the ends of my bench, cutting to length gets done on a Workmate. First, I trimmed off the rather large split at the end:
I then needed to trim off the triangle with the bark on. I did most of the long rip cuts on my very basic tablesaw, working right at the limit of what it can handle, but I wanted a straight edge to work to. There's no spare depth of cut, so I couldn't mount the ash on a bit of straight plywood or something, so I made the first cut by hand.
It took about fifteen minutes in all, some of which was messing about taking photos or adjusting the clamps. I wasn't rushing and it didn't make me feel exhausted. About the same effort as a brisk walk around the block.
To support the offcut when working on my own, and knowing that it would be fairly heavy, I clamped it in place when I got near the end. This worked nicely. Is this something everyone does but nobody mentions?
With a straightish edge to work to, I did the next two cuts on the tablesaw, but forgot to set up any carefully posed photos; I'll put that right next time, as there will be quite a lot more work getting a kit of parts out of these lumps of wood, before I can do any fancy joints and stuff.
I've not got any particular deadline for finishing this job and I know there will be some interruptions when there will be no visible progress, but I shall update this thread as soon as there is any more action to see.
Meanwhile, feel free to chip in with any thoughts about working with ash or making beds - there don't seem to be that many bed building threads but some of you must have done this before. I did make a double bed back in the 1980s, but that was all from prepared, salvaged timber and the design was derived from the materials I had. I no longer have the bed or any pictures - you'll just have to believe me - but I can remember so little about it that this feels like starting afresh anyway.
