Consumerism

You may have guessed that I loath consumerism. As a person that "does" things for himself, from homemade butter, bread, veggies, building most of my furniture, I usually abhor marketers and peddlers attempting to sucker people in.


However when a certain beloved tool manufacturer puts up a free shipping deal around tax return season (coincidence? methinks not), who could look upon their shopping cart and not buy the plane one has been wanting-for since it's release? Certainly not this guy. I caved and set myself up.

I plan to give customer service a call to thank them, and inquire about acquiring a second fence, so that I can swap fences rather than applied wooden fences. That seems potentially easier, though maybe wood fences with threaded inserts and machine screws would work as well.
On happy accidents... I found that with a heavier cut one can produce spills with the Veritas Skew Rabbet (Veritas Moving Fillister). I don't think they are as tight as a dedicated spill plane, but I'll be able to get a feel for them before I build one.

Table and Stick Chair Progress

Here's some more on the two projects that will inhabit my kitchen in the near future. First up the chair seat.


Lines drawn in a grid on the surface help me to visualize the compound curves of the seat. I do this with all sorts of shapes to illustrate form to my students too. Try it, it's surprising how much more informative a surface becomes with simple lines on it.


This photo shows the centerline particularly well, and with it, the basic contour of the seat. I've done most of the scraping, but there is still sanding to do. After a coat of primer, I'm sure to find high spots that I've missed and I'll need to do some more carving and sanding.

Here is one of the legs, primed and painted with the undercoat. I couldn't wait to see how the paint showed up. Right now I'm laboring through the morti, 8 2" deep 4" long and 1/2" wide holes are big, I'm just using a huge mortising chisel, instead of boring and paring.

Welsh Stick Chair-Drilling

If you're not familiar with Peter Galbert, or his blog Chair Notes, I suggest you check it out. Since about a year ago when I started compiling project photos for Windsor/stick chairs I've been following him, and today it paid off in a big way. This post, has a great explanation of sightlines and computing the resultant angles based on orthographic views. I'd also much rather do some geometry than bust out the trig.


I'm shooting from the hip here, doing something like what Krenov called composing. Working this way is really nice, compared to a very regimented project working by eye and your sense of relationships. It's like sketching with a solid piece of wood.

Hole Digging

This post has nothing to do with digging, holes, dirt or any of that. It's more of a phrase that sums up my relationship with my project list. I finally started working on a pair of Welsh stick chairs, a form I've always wanted to build.

Half of my morning was spent going through several different photos of seat shapes and drafting out one that looked good. The sight lines are my best guess so far based on examples I've seen. I still have to come up with the final angles along those lines though. The blank is a glue up from 8/4 poplar. The board I bought was a bit too narrow, I wound up having to glue a 2x2 turning blank and a piece of 4/4 to get the seat depth needed. This may wind up looking like dog meat, but it should do well as practice.

A shot of the seat with all the sight lines. I'm sorely tempted to buy the LV tapered reamer, though I'll have to build a tapered tenon cutter as the small diameter for the leg joint will be 7/8".


One shovelful of dirt did make it's way into the hole though. Yesterday, amid other work I managed a few more coats of shellac and the fitting of the leaf supports. I'm so happy with this project, it came out great. If you don't recall, this was a project I started in November at the Philadelphia Furniture Workshop.