Week 2.

This week seems to have passed by in a whirl of activity, and yet I don't seem to have much to show for it. Its been a busy week with everyone just getting on with their own projects, and not much in the way of bench exercises.

My jig and test leg

Pretty little maids all in a row

Its taken me the greater part of the week to cut, shape and sand the legs on my new dresser - I always find I start off really slow, worried that I might make a mistake, but by the end of the first one I'm just a wee bit bored with the task, so I power through the next few taking as many shortcuts as possible. Funnily enough, it doesn't seem to have made much difference on the end result (other than speeding up the process mightily)!

I started off making a little homemade jig and a test leg out of pine, and painstakingly shaping the thing by hand using a spokeshave. It took 6 hours, and the finish was rough and ready. I then moved on and ditched the jig, deciding instead to shape them on the bobbin sanders and sanding them smooth using the orbital sander. There was a moment of madness in the middle when I decided that I would only sand it by hand so that I wouldn't compromise the shape I had spent all this time creating (accurate to a tenth of a milimeter), but that would have probably taken me a month to do and quite frankly, life's too short!

Saucy.

Too many other hours have been spent just cutting and planing wood down to size, getting pieces ready for assembly. I do however have one more thing to show for this week, a little block which I made to hold a rack of spices in. Its not particularly exciting (or if I was completely honest, particularly well made either, with a bit of a rough and ready finish), but it works. Ish.