A great bit of kit

I am lucky in the workshop to have access to a Plano clamp system. It is such a good method for the glue up of panels.

I often use it when making drawers.  I take a plank of timber, joint one side, then shove it through the thicknesser to flatten the other side.  Then I rip sections off a few mm thicker than the desired drawer side thickness (say 11mm for an 8mm finished side).

Then using the Plano clamp, I butt joint the pieces together to get the required width.  As the clamps really do keep the joint flush, it is only a simple task when the glue is dry to flatten and thickness to the required dimensions.

In this picture, I am jointing the timber I used when making a couple of jewellery chest of drawers.

Plano clamp being used to glue pieces of ash
to form drawer sides.

And here is a little montage of pictures taken in the workshop of the completed jewellery chest of drawers. The ash I glued up in the Plano clamps was used to make the drawer boxes.

A pair of jewellery chest of drawers.

You can see more pictures of this chest of drawers (not taken in the workshop) in the gallery page of my handmade boxes website.

I suppose a chest of drawers like these could make the ideal Mothers Day present for a mum who has a large collection of jewellery.........



For more information please visit either my bespoke fine furniture website, or my handmade jewellery boxes website.

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Dark in the afternoons

I don't like these winter evenings. I don't even think it is really winter yet. I am never sure the exact months that make up the seasons. Are the solstices and equinoxes in the mid part of the season? That doesn't seem correct to me......

....is summer May-June-July or is it as I always believed June-July-August?  And the Christmas carol 'In the deep mid winter', are they implying the mid winter is around Christmas or the winter solstice? I always assumed winter was December-January-February.

Have the seasons slipped? Is it to do with the earths orbit or global warming? Is too much forest area being cut down to make way for dairy farming? The tress are the lungs of the planet and soak up carbon dioxide. Cut too many down and the planet can't breath.

And now in this country we might loose 90% of our ash trees.  Damn!  I like English ash. It is a great wood. I have made lots of pieces from it.

I just finished a big hall mirror where the frame is from ash. It is to go with the olive ash and ash sideboard I will be taking to the Handmade in Britain show this week in Chelsea Old Town Hall.

I also made a small jewellery chest of drawers. Something that sits on top of a dressing table. It is from olive ash and walnut. Here are some pictures of it.

Olive ash and walnut jewellery cabinet

Drawers have divider compartments

The jewellery gives the piece a sense of scale

Four of the drawers have dividers in them, the size of the divider compartment getting large in each drawer down, while the fifth drawer is just empty for large objects.

It will look good at the show sitting on the sideboard.

Please check my website if you want to find out more about my furniture, follow me on my Facebook pages, or see what I am talking about on Twitter.

Chalara is coming

With my next show coming up in less that three weeks time, I have been busy in the workshop making items for my stand.

I normally have furniture 'ready to go', but at the moment most of my work is currently in galleries around the country.  So I had to make some more.

Anyway, the big items are done.....I still have a mirror to make, and that is being a bit of a pain.  I went to the local glass cutter down from the workshop of get a mirror cut and a 15mm bevel put all the way round the edge. The machine they use for doing the bevel was broken, but the person would be coming to fix it the following week.  That was over five weeks ago. Whenever I go in, it has been fixed and broken again and they are still waiting for the repair to be done. I was getting very pee'd off with all this, and when I went in the beginning of last week to see 'progress', I did get a bit stroppy. But I had right to? Customer service???  Anyway for some mad reason, I also wanted some glass shelves cut and toughened for the display cabinet I had made. My displeasure could be seen, so the price I was given for the mirror and shelves was very very good.  I have the shelves now, but still waiting for the mirror. The machine should be fixed today. I will find out when I go back tomorrow.

Something I have been making is a small chest of drawers that will be used to hold jewellery. I do have picture of it, and these are on my furniture Facebook pages. The pictures I have posted there don't give a clue as to what I am making, nor do I say. It is something for my Facebook followers to guess, but coming from my blog you know.

On a different note, you may have seen on the news the stories about the threat to the ash trees in the country from a fungal attack.  There is an app on both Android and iOS that can be used to identify and report any ash trees that you find are infected. You can get the app from your OS store, and can find out more information from their website.

Please check my website if you want to find out more about my furniture, follow me on my Facebook pages, or see what I am talking about on Twitter.

It reminds me.

The other day I was machining up some ash, and some of it had a grain pattern that looks a bit like olive wood. That is the reason some ash is called olive ash.

Now olive tree live a long time. They grow slow. They produce olives.  A couple of months ago I was on holiday in the northern part of Mallorca, and they have loads of olive trees there (as well as loads of orange trees).

The trees there looked very old. Big gnarly trunks. Thick branches.  Ancient trees. But also there were loads of trees that have had major tree surgery performed, just like in the UK when pollarding and coppicing managed the woodlands.

Have a look at this picture of one of the olive trees that has been pruned.

That is some serious cutting.  Now olive trees grow slowly, and those trees don't have many branches left. How long will it take before the tree will produce fruit again?  I dunno, but it could be years.  So if you grew olives for a living, it could be possible that a tree like this wouldn't produce olives in your lifetime. But don't quote me on this.  I am no expert.

I assume that all the tress go through pruning cycles. I guess it helps keep the tree living and producing strong new wood.  I guess that is why the olive tress look gnarly.

This begs a question. Do olive trees live this long because man has learnt how to increase their lifespan and usefulness through pruning?  Dunno.

I have not used any olive wood when making furniture, but I have used olive ash.  Here is a sideboard that is made from olive ash.

To see more of my furniture or find out more about me, then please visit my website.

A couple of pints please

I came in on Monday morning and checked the kiln to see how much water had come out of the wood over the weekend. I was really surprised, as there was half a bucket, which was about a couple of pints.

I checked the moisture content of the wood, and it has dropped down to about 11%. This is a good enough level to allow me to start to machine the wood up closer to its final thickness, and then putting it back in the kiln to dry out a bit more.

The long and short of it is, that by Wednesday I was ready to take the wood to the final dimension and actually start to make the table!

For the last few days I have been doing the joints in the table that actually hold it all together. As there are thirty-six components in the table (excluding the pieces that make up there drawers, and that is another thirty-two), I guess you can see why I am still doing them today!

A delivery of wood

I had a delivery of Ash turn up today. It is for a Hall table and a matching wall mirror.

It was sent to me from the merchant who is just outside Bristol. The lorry that delivered it was big enough to move a couple of households. The wood itself was all packed up safe on a pallet.

Unfortunately, the lorry driver dumped the wood off in front of the building before I could get down to him. Sadly where he put the wood was the other side of the building to where the lift is. Guess who had to move it all round the building to the lift…..

Being English timber, the wood normally arrives waney-edged with the bark left on. I could feel that the wood was still a bit damp, as it is air-dried timber. Wet wood is no good for making furniture, so I need to dry it out a bit. Here is my plan of attack.

The first stage is work out the best way to get the components from the wood – keep wastage low, get the best grain pattern etc. I know all the dimensions of the components, so it just means looking at all the wood and making a judgement call.

Next stage is to rip off any bit of bark, sap etc, as there is no point in keeping them on the wood. There is a big bag of firewood in the workshop now up for grabs!

As the wood is still damp, about 14% moisture content, and needs ideally to be at about 10%, the final stage of my plan is to put the wood in our kiln for a couple of days. Now this isn’t the sort of kiln most people think of – the sort used by potters for firing pots. This kiln is rather less violent and doesn’t require loads of heat! Basically the kiln we use for drying wood is a big box made from chipboard. Inside the box you place the wood to be dried. Here is the clever bit. Also in the box is a dehumidifier. Nothing special, just like the ones that can be purchased at local DIY superstores.

Once the kiln is sealed up, the dehumidifier will suck all the moisture out of the air, which causes moisture in the wood to replace that lost in the air. Hence the wood gets dry.

I will leave it running over the weekend and check on Monday to see how much moisture the wood has lost.