CURRENT PROJECTS

This section contains details of what I'm up to at the moment.

As well as knocking up signs left right and centre I like to dip my toe into the world of cabinet making. The current project I have underway is a set of bedroom furniture for a (very patient) colleague I work with. I'm making them all out of Ash and have completed the drawers and virtually done the bedside cabinet. Next job is the wardrobe and finally will be the dresser.

Click on the pictures to see enlargements; they are big pictures and may take a while to download, but they need to be big so you can appreciate the quality.......(sad but true)

 

This is my aim.....
I designed all the furniture first on a CAD program. This helps as I can give people scale drawings of how pieces will look when finished. It also helps me calculate how much wood is needed.
and this is what it all started with....£580 of Ash, approx. one full Ford Escort's worth (yes all this fitted in my car when I collected it from the woodyard). It is shown here laid out so I can grade it... i.e. decide which boards go where in the finished pieces. This is necessary so I can pick the best figured pieces for tops or drawer fronts etc.
My lovely garage.....ah
Here the top and one side of the drawers are being clamped. Where I run out of long clamps I use lengths of 3"x2" softwood with wedges. Cheap but effective.
How to join wood together using wood and wedges
The finished boards after the glue had dried. You can see the remaining Ash stacked in the background. You can also see my favorite red screw driver .... a £27 Snap-On driver bought years ago that I love (but not in the want to swap bodily fluids way of course).
Can you see my screw driver...
The first piece rolls of the production line. I was dead chuffed with it. I finished it with Briwax and elbow grease. One day I'll progress to the Leigh Dovetail jig so I can alter those pin sizes, but for the time being I'll have to put up with fixed pin and tail widths on the dovetails. Anyway the bedside cabinet nears completion so I'll post some pics of that when it's done.
I didn't want to sell thisthis ist the best viewobserve the figuring of the grain on the toplook at them dovetails, hours of painstaking chieseling or ten minutes with a router? who knows? (I do)
....and here it is