Working out how to do it

One of the great things about making furniture and boxes, is coming up with an idea and then having to work out how to put that idea into practice - problem solving.

I recently made a cabinet that has two doors, and when these are open, it reveals a drawer. I needed to make a handle for this drawer which had to be flush with the drawer front.

There still needed to be a way to grab hold of the handle to open the drawer, so my idea was to take some wood and hollow it somehow to allow purchase  for your fingers.

The shape of the handle I wanted was like the key stone in a stone arch - a 'V' shape with a flat bottom. To hollow it out, I would use a Router and something called a finger-pull cutter. The problem was how to hold the wood while the Router is spinning the cutter at over 20,000 RPM.

 

So how was it done? With lots of screws and various pieces of MDF cut to different shapes and sizes.


In this first picture, the handle black can be seen surrounded by various pieces of MDF. The handle is not screwed down, it is just held in place. The two upper pieces of MDF stop the handle from moving up and down, while also providing a guide for the hollowing process with the Router.

Fig 1 - The handle blank held down.

 

The first part of the hollowing process is to remove most of the wood with a straight sided router cutter. Finger-pull cutters are small and not really designed for removing too much waste wood, only really the 'pull' detail. As I had to remove a fair amount of wood, I made a number of passes with the straight sided cutter, getting a little deeper each time.


Fig 2 - Waste wood has been removed with a straight sided cutter.

 

The actual finger-pull shape, shown in the picture below, is done with a single pass of the router cutter.

Fig 3 - A close-up showing the finger-pull detail.

The handle is finished. All that is required is some sanding to remove the machining marks.

Fig 4 - The completed handle.

 

This final picture shows the handle fitted to the front of the drawer.

Fig 5 - The completed handle fitted to the drawer front.

Five pictures don't really convey how much time it took to make the handle, both thinking time and making time, but it was probably about 5 hours in total.



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

Follow me on Facebook or read my tweets on Twitter.
 

I forgot the pictures

In the dark and distant past, when dinosaurs ruled the Earth........

.....okay, not that long ago but in the summer last year, I did a blog post on the making of a chest of drawers. Remember?  Probably not.

Well, I forgot to post the pictures of the completed piece. So here they are.

Notice how the drawer fronts curve alternate left and right.

The drawers are made from maple, and use dovetails in
their construction.

The drawer fronts have fumed oak on their edges - it helps to
show the curve on the drawer fronts and adds a visual detail
to the finished piece.

Next time I promise I will post the pictures sooner.




To see more of my furniture, have a look at my website and the pictures in the gallery section.

Follow me on Facebook or read my tweets on Twitter.

Follow the winding path.

There is nothing like making something extra tricky for yourself.

For example, take a hall table.  Better still, take a hall table I made. Better even still, take a hall table that I made from oak.

Now I wanted to make the table top more interesting than just a slab of wood. Don't get me wrong, a slab of wood can look very good, nice grain, nice timber, nice edge detail. But that wasn't what I was looking for.

I read something a while back about making a chopping board with solid wooden inlays. The result looked good, and the technique could be extended to other items. I gave the method a go and made myself a chopping board.  It worked out fine, and I already had in the back of my mind something to make on a larger scale...a hall console table.

I wanted the table itself to be simple with clean lines, but adding the inlays to the top would really add an eye catching detail.

"So what does the technique involve?", I hear you say.

Well before I spill the beans, let us first discuss inlays.

Most inlays are made by cutting a small groove in a surface, normally a couple of mm deep (if inlaying a veneer string, the groove could be only 0.6mm deep) and then sticking in the item to be inlayed. So the inlay is only just in the top surface.

What is different about the technique I used on this table, is that the inlay goes right through the table top.  So when viewed from the ends, the inlay can be seen 'wrapping' round the ends and continuing onto the under surface.

How is it done? Roughly like this. First of all, make your table top. Sand it nice and flat.  Cut it in half and stick it back together with the first inlay. When dry, flush that inlay back.  Cut the table top in half again and glue back together with the next inlay. When dry, flush back. Repeat until complete.

This table top has three inlays, so including the initial making of the top, that makes a total of four glue-ups for the top.  Oh, and did I say that because the inlays follow a curved path, when you stick the top back together, it slips and slides around like a bar of soap?

And did I say the inlays I used are different widths? 

And did I also say that making a table top is much harder than a chopping board because it is so much larger?

See, tricky. 

Anyway, enough words. On with the pictures.

It looks small, but it really is a full size table!

The three drawers have a hidden finger pull detail on the bottom edge. Saves having handles sticking out and getting caught on things as you walk by.

Here you can see how the inlays go completely through the table top. 

Overhead shot of the table showing the inlays - the 'Winding Paths'.

I like the effect you get doing this technique.  I have loads of other ideas in mind too.............


To see more of my furniture, have a look at my website and the pictures in the gallery section.

Follow me on Facebook or read my tweets on Twitter.

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.

Living in my 'fridge

I do other things than make furniture.

I like to make things, I always have done.  I used to be a computer programmer. That is making things, but something most people can't see - only use.

One thing I like to make is bread.  Why?  I like to know what is in it. All I put in my bread is flour, water, salt and some kind of yeast. No bread improvers. No chemicals and additives that get 'destroyed' during the baking so they are not listed in the ingredients. Just flour, water, salt and some kind of yeast.

My yeast, or rather sourdough leaven lives in my 'fridge. It isn't that old. I only started it on 29th December 2011.  I remember its birthday. All the leaven is really is a living culture of yeast. People have these cultures that are many many years old. And I am talking 30, 40, 50 years old.

When I make sourdough, I use this leaven instead of dried yeast.  It takes a bit more work, but not that much more, but the bread does really taste good.

To start the process going, a couple of days before I want to bake (normally baking day is Saturday), I take the leaven out of the 'fridge and let it warm up for a few hours. This is what it looks like:

The leaven lives in a clip lid box in the 'fridge

Bit scary, isn't it?  Don't worry it is fine. It has a fermentation/sour/beer smell. This is normal, and is what adds flavour to the bread. I can't just use the leaven as is, it needs to be fed a couple of times to get it nice and active. It eats flour and water. So I mix up a 2:3 flour/water mix and feed it. Probably a couple of times over a 24 hour period.

Once the leaven is nice and active, I can start to make the sourdough. The first stage is to make something called a sponge. Basically it is a flour and water mix to which a ladle full of leaven is added. This sponge is then left ferment overnight, while the leaven can go back in the 'fridge till next time.

This is the sponge after an overnight ferment.

The 'sponge' after fermenting overnight

It has a very light and bubbly texture and smells very beer like. Reminds me of being a kid (probably about 12 years old) and when I got into home beer making. Now that is another story.....

Anyway. Back to the bread.  I take the sponge and then mix it with the rest of the flour and some salt. I may sometimes add a tablespoon of oil. Sometimes I don't. I then shove all this in my mixer and give it a right good ten mins of kneading. Yes, I know I could do it by hand. But I don't as I have a nice mixer, so I use that.

A KitchenAid mixer. What a gadget!

After the kneading process, I end up with a firm dough that is not wet or sticky.

The mixed dough hanging on the mixer dough hook

Now I have to play the game of letting the dough rest for an hour or so, and then shaping it into a tight ball. I will do this four or five times. During this time, the yeast will convert the flour proteins into gluten, and by making the dough into a tight ball, the gluten strands are being pulled and stretched. This has the effect of giving the dough strength and helps keep the dough in shape.

A shaped ball of dough

After this repetitive ball making process, the dough can then be shaped into the final shape for baking. It can be a stubby cylinder, a ball, turned into rolls or even a baguette. Toppings can be added, for example oats, poppy seeds, sunflower seeds or just a dusting of flour. Then once again the dough is left for an hour or so for final proving.

Then madness. It all happens so quick. Slash the top of the bread to release some of that tension built by the gluten, spray with water to help form the crust, transfer the bread onto a hot pizza stone, put in an oven set to the highest temperature possible and pour a good slosh of boiling water into a tray placed at the bottom of the oven. Close the oven door. Stand back, relax and enjoy the smell of the bread cooking.

After ten mins, the oven can be turned down a bit and the bread baked for another 30 - 40 mins, until the crust is firm, has a nice colour and the bread sounds hollow when tapped.

The finished bread.

And there is the final bread. The one on the left is the sourdough, while the one on the right is made with dried yeast. Both use the same amount of wholemeal flour, same amount of water and the same amount of salt. Both went in the oven at the same time and were cooked for the same amount of time. But for some reason, the sourdough always comes out with a much darker crust.

Both taste great though.

Next time, back to woodwork!

Making of a jewellery cabinet

Remember I was talking in my last post about a project I was making, then came along the cold weather and put a halt to it.....

...let me pick it up from when it got warmer and I had finished the little jewellery boxes.

So this cabinet is based on an existing piece of mine - the drinks cabinet I made last year. The couple I am making the jewellery cabinet for saw the drinks cabinet on my stand in a show. They wondered if I could make another, but this one with drawers. Of course I can.

Building the carcass followed the technique of I used for the drinks cabinet (read  my blog from early last year to find out how).

This cabinet has drawers, and drawers always mean loads and loads of bits of wood. Twelve drawers with two sides, a front and two backs (yes, too backs). Add a few spares and you have a right good pile of wood!

Normally when I am making a piece of furniture that has drawers, machining the wood up for them is one of the first tasks I do.  Wood for drawers needs to be dry and stable. By machining the wood as early as possible, allows it to dry and move. Then it can be machined down to final dimensions when you are ready to make the drawers. Doing this gives a fighting chance of getting good stable components.

So I wave a magic wand....and 'hey presto!', here is a set of drawers.

The drawers 'hang' in the cabinet on runners that are fixed to the sides of the cabinet. A slot is made in the drawer side that fits snug to the runner.

As this cabinet will be used to store jewellery, nine of the twelve drawers will have drop-in lattice dividers in which the jewellery will be stored. The dividers are sized depending what will be stored in the drawers. So small dividers for rings, larger one for larger items! You get the idea.

I will tell you about the dividers in the next blog post.

For more information about me and my furniture, please visit my website.