debor054

Part 1 Part 2 Ok ... next comes the leg bracing for our stools. Each stool will have a lap jointed brace across each pair of opposing legs (I'll call it a 'side brace') and a longer single brace that runs down the center that is lap jointed into the side braces. Make sense?.... Hmn... maybe better explained in pictures. First, the lap joint sockets need to be marked in the legs. After marking out using the knife and being careful to get the complimentary 10 degree splay angle in the correct direction, I pared the cut lines with a chisel, before making three cuts per socket to help allow the waste to be easily removed with a chisel. Two stools with four legs each, times three cuts per leg equals twenty four cuts to be made just for half a lap joint. What seems like an easy process seems to take me a lot longer than I think it will. It's easy to kill a few hours and not achieve an awful lot of progress... Using the vice to hold the stock flush with my marking lines, I use...

The continuing saga... Part 1 This is the hardest part of this project, at least in my opinion - Cutting the legs accurately to produce a ten degree splay to the legs. The first thing was to group the eight legs into two lots of four for each stool matching the grain of each set and deciding which would be the visible outward face of each leg, hiding knots and other nasties on the inner faces. Setting my bevel gauge to 100 degrees to give me my 10 degree splay angle (90 + 10 = 100), I began marking out the legs. unfortunately, I got so engrossed with concentration I didn't take any pictures to fully describe the process.  In addition, I didn't think to limit my marking with the knife as I squared the lines around the legs, resulting in unnecessary marks on the show side of the legs - doh! I will plane and sand them away before assembly. Luckily I noticed the error of my ways before starting the second set of legs and limited my marking to only those lines to be cut. With the m...

I am finally motivated enough to get myself back in front of the bench and actually build something - about freaking time! As you (regular readers) may well know, one of my 2012 resolutions  was to ' sell some of the things I make '. Well this has been achieved by selling my Rustic Stool  and has given me incentive to make a few more to sell. Mainly, to recoup some of the money I have tied up in timber . The session began by discovering my bench top was no longer flat, maybe due to the arrival of Spring and the warm weather we have been having lately or my bench repairs  I did a short while ago? Either way, before anything else could happen it was time to warm up with my trusty no#6 foreplane and a straight edge. Once the top was vaguely flat, I also remembered I had yet to re-drill the dog holes to make the bench usable. A few minutes later I was ready to finally begin work ... no I wasn't. As I haven't been doing much wood work lately, I knew things would need...

Richard Proenneke  Using only hand tools to build his life in the Alaskan Wilderness. I just had to share this video, it's got everything from log cabin building, to furniture making and even some spoon carving - and all with only very basic hand tools. Amazing!... Two other films about this remarkable man are also available to view.