This one's for you Hamish.

Earlier this week, I experienced a weird tingly sensation in my finger and when I inspected it, I realised that I had manage to sand the tip of my finger nail off. Whilst I can be quite blase about this now (its the least of the many nicks and dinks I've managed to inflict on myself!), if someone had told me 5 years ago, I would one day sand the tip of finger nails off I suspect I would never have believed them. I guess it just shows you what a funny twisted journey life sometimes takes you on.

Now there's a lot of ways that one can injure oneself in the workshop, some more seriously than others, and if you think about it, a workshop can double up as a torture chamber, enabling you to inflict major pain on your arch nemesis (not that I spend any time thinking about this at all). Even setting aside the risk of dismemberment on any one of the more lethal machines (think table saw, cross-cut saw, band saw or router), the possibilities are endless. You could stab yourself with a chisel, scalpel or paring knife, cut yourself with a handheld saw, flatten your fingers with a mallet, graze yourself with the sander, or even stab yourself with pieces of wood (I have managed to do this one on numerous occasions in a variety of different ways and have a rather spectacular bruise on one boob to show for it). If I had to pick though, I think death by broken veneer press would probably do the most damage. How? By producing the most irritating and high-pitched whining noise imaginable (worse than finger nails on a chalkboard). As everyone is required to make a veneered piece this term, the blasted thing has been on pretty much constantly and I had reached the stage where I was just about ready to stab myself in the ear to block out the noise. Thankfully, however, the thing got repaired!

This week's rant over - here's what I have to show for this week:

1. We finished our French polishing and have some shiny boards to show for it.
2. I've played about with some bendy ply and veneer and now have the drawer fronts for my dresser ready to go.
3. I've made a mess of several bits of my dresser having to cut and re-cut pieces as result of my incompetence. Nonetheless, and despite my best efforts to the contrary, some basic bits of the carcase are coming together.

So shiny you can see your reflection in it!

A former and some bendy ply = serpentine drawer front

Building a dresser one small piece at a time

Finishing.

 

Polish mops housed in a funky new home

This week (and next) is all about the polish. How to finish off your pieces of hand made furniture beautifully so that they are all shiny and bling. It sounds easy, but it isn't. Its also a lot harder work than one would expect. I started off the week feeling like a 5 year old in art class, playing around with water colours and different stains, all of which was much fun. Then we moved on to the sticky stuff, French polish, which gets everywhere no matter how hard you try. The process essentially involves slapping on several layers of the sticky stuff (using a home made polish mouse, Sir Mighty Mouse to you), sanding it down and repeating until you get a matt finish over the piece. All very counterintuitive, but it works (eventually, if your little arms don't fall off in the process).

Stacks of sycamore all planed and ready to go

A home for your bling

Work on my new dresser is progressing a pace (just a relatively slow one). After a couple of weeks of hard graft planing and cutting, I've finally got most of my pieces of wood cut-up, and it won't be long until the fun starts and I get to glue bits together! In the meantime, there's more sanding and cutting down to be done. To distract myself from the mundane, I decided to put together the jewellery tree that was meant to be the piece de resistance on my new dresser. This is probably the most fun thing I've made in my time here and am pretty chuffed with the end result. I might just make me up one to keep in my spare time!

One of the best thing about the course is how much we all seem to learn from the other students on the course. Because everyone is making a different project, we get to see all kinds of weird and wonderful pieces take shape and absorb the different ideas everyone seems to have to solve the problems they are encountering. Today's fun tip was from Colin, who has made a very simple and effective template/mould to house the router whilst he does the complicated cut-outs needed for his table legs, together with some clever ideas for clamping the piece in place whilst working on it. Neat.

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.

A New Year.

Happy New Year! In my three week sojourn back in the big smoke, the question that people asked me the most surprisingly wasn't "What's the best plane to buy?" or "What's your favourite wood to use?" or even "What did you enjoy making the most?", it was about the people and one of the things I love the most about the course so far has definitely been the people, who are awesome. Just this once, I will therefore bow to peer pressure and impart some burning truths about the Scots which I am sure you are dying to know:

1. They are very friendly. I have often had to curtail strong urges to shout "Stranger! Danger!" when accosted by randoms for a chat on the street.
2. They are mean. And by mean I mean careful with their money. Cue Ewan wandering round the workshop trying get people to 'test' his hidden coin compartment by depositing coins into it. I have yet to see any of them get said coins back.
3. They are hairy. I haven't actually investigated this truth in any great detail, but I have been told this on great authority (ie a Scotsman who claimed they are as hairy as they are mean). All I can say is there is a proliferation of beards (and moustaches) in the workshop, and even a sideburn or two (although to be fair, this has been contributed by the Mexican).
4. They love their whisky. In fact any type of alcohol, as long as it is cheap (see point 2) and available in copious quantities. The fact that we are students merely compounds this.
5. They like their cabbages. To be honest this one puzzles me, but I have learnt from experience that if you send a Scotsman a picture of a field of cabbages you often get a squeal of delight in return. Put a cabbage in his bed and you've made a friend for life.

So what has the first week of Term 2 brought? 
Well, the emphasis this week has been (and for the rest of the term will be) on veneer work, and we've been trying our hand at little bits of marquetry in preparation for our main projects. Its painstaking work, requiring a steady hand and attention to detail as you often have to carve out little finicky shapes with a scalpel on super thin strips of veneer, all the whole praying that it won't split! Whilst quite time consuming, I'm actually enjoying this even more than solid wood work. There's something about the nature of the task which I guess appeals to the geek in me, allowing my inate OCD tendencies to rise to the top. I guess I'm also a bit more confident now that I know my way around the workshop and the tools, which means I can relax a bit more and just enjoy myself. Although it sometimes feels like I haven't learnt very much over the last 10 weeks, this week when I came to re-cutting one of the shelves on Stumpy (the 2mm gap was just bugging me!) I managed to do it in 15 minutes flat and get it right in the first go! Astounding when you think that it took me 3 hours the last time around! Wa hey to progress!

Making a scalloped fan inlay

A random marquetry panel

Parquetry panel

Scalloped fan shape marquetry finished piece. Exciting as you get to burn the veneer in sand

An almost finished scale model of my new project

In project world, this week has been about preparing and finishing our designs, life size drawings, scale models and cutting sheets etc. Whilst we're all moving at lightning pace compared to last term, I haven't managed to get as much done as I would have liked and will have to carry on with this next week as well.

If you squint hard you can make out my full sized drawing

Happy holidays.

Finally. All done.

The end of term 1 has mysteriously crept up on us, going simultaneously fast and slow like a weird Twilight Zone time warp and I'm glad to be going home for the holidays. There's an overall sense of relief that I managed to finish my project in time, mixed with a dash of pride, although it all feels slightly anti-climatic really.

Reflecting on the last 10 weeks, I'm surprised at how much woodworking is not only a physical exercise but also quite a cerebral one. To be really good at it, one needs an active imagination and the ability to innovate. Whether its thinking up a jig to make the final piece more accurate or to save time, or puzzling out how to get a particular piece to fit when the wood just isn't behaving itself (shouting "that just won't do Stumpy" doesn't quite achieve the same effect). I have found that I am scarcely able to clamp up without the blessing of one of the tutors, whilst the others on the course seem have to entered into problem solving mode a little more readily. Perhaps its a lack of imagination, or the fact my brain seems only to work in straight lines, exacerbated by a lack of confidence, but I'm hoping that next term I will be able to do most (if not all) of my thinking on my own.

Anyways, I hope you've had a lovely 2012, here's to a merry and restful Christmas. See you all in the new year.
Ta

Stumpy.

Stumpy on a dry run.

Against all odds, I managed to glue up my project this week. Stumpy, as it is now known, started life a couple of inches shorter then he was meant to be and also a lot fatter. I've been unable to make it any skinnier, but at least on the final run I've made it a wee bit taller (although the graft in the middle is sadly a little obvious).

This week has been a comedy of errors in a lot of ways, highlighting the worst of my incompetence (including fitting shelves without checking that they are at right angles, sanding a bit off the cabinet door by mistake, gluing the back panel on to the cabinet without having fitted and measured the front door, etc etc etc).

Stumpy (post-op). Shame it can't also go on a diet.  

I am amazed at what I've managed to achieve in the space of 9 weeks, but I also know that I really wouldn't have been able to get this far without the help of Sandy and Graham, our tutors. They've helped me tremendously on the particularly tricky bits, like scary saw cuts (the potentially cut your finger off kind) and drilling hinges in at weird angles. There's a part of me that's a bit disappointed that I can't say that I've done this completely on my own, but I'm more relieved than anything else that I've just about got there in the end.   Some concessions have been made on the design aspect, as a lack of time and materials has meant that I couldn't quite accommodate everything that I set out to do. Perhaps I will feel better about it by the end of next week when all the inconsistencies have been sanded down and the gaps filled in, but at the moment, if I was truly honest with myself I'd have to say that I have mixed feelings about Stumpy.

The butcher, the baker and the candlestick maker.

All things considered, I am really looking forward to the Christmas break, and not just because I have an excuse wear fat pants and jim jams for a week solid. 

Ps: How terrible would it be if I tried to fob off the candlestick we made during bench skills this week as a Christmas present to someone? I am after all a poor student. 

Cold.

Eight weeks and this is all I've got to show for it folks.

The first of the snow has hit Scotland, and whilst its been very pretty, it hasn't been particularly warm, resulting in yours truly catching a spectacular cold. The workshop has been a frantic hive of activity in the last week, with everyone desperately trying to get their projects over the line before term ends in two weeks. The sight of me snivelling and hacking my way through the workshop has probably done nothing for the atmosphere, and I do feel quite sorry for my fellow course mates for having to put up with it all week! If I wasn't so worried that I might not finish on time, I would have spent the week in bed (and felt all the better for it), so its certainly made for a taxing week. One difficult week now over though and the base of the cabinet is now pretty much done (minor details like doors and back notwithstanding).

Look at the pretty patterns made by a shoulder plane.

The last two weeks of planing, gluing and sanding have resulted in the final curve needed for the top of the cabinet being finished this week - I probably would have gotten it done much quicker if it hadn't been for (a) the lack of wood and (b) my fear of the router. In an effort to avoid the blasted thing, the last curve was made entirely on the disc and bobbing sanders (even though I knew it probably wouldn't all fit), joined together with some more herculean sanding and with Graham's and Sandy's magic touch (I take no credit, but then again I have been sick). As much as I hate that blasted router and the amount of sanding I had to do in making the other curves, it was several times worse with this new method as none of these things were like the others or even consistent in the same block.  If I had to do it all over again, I wouldn't!