Wednesday Project and Petit Point Update

I haven't had much time for working on my Wednesday project for quite a while and are way behind my three friends, but this weekend I finally had some time to work on the tombstone doors for the upper case. One of my friends made a cutter from an old drill bit for the tombstone edges of the door panel, I am rather pleased with how it turned out. The cutter makes the top edges rounded, so I had to make the top corners square by hand, the door on the right still needs to done, hopefully you can see the difference. All the moldings on the door frame pieces were cut with  first a straight cutter and then a heart shaped cutter on the drill press. The trickiest part is making the slot in the door frame pieces where the panel fits in and mitering the small molding on the inside. The top rail is sticking out a bit, I think I will cut it flush once the door has been glued together, at the moment it is still all loose.

Showing the back of the door on the left, if you open the photo in a new tab you should be able to see it all a bit bigger.

The door lying in the case frame. You can read older posts about this project here.

Most days I make sure to take some time for doing a bit of petit point, I find it very relaxing, the deer is almost finished.

Have a great week.

Elga

Lots of Updates

Real life has been quite hectic these last few weeks, but I finally have a few things to show you.

First of all I bought this lovely antique chest of drawers and shelves for my workroom, I am really enjoying my new room and working in there. The shelves are typical of antique country furniture from the Cape Province in South Africa and made from indigenous Yellowwood.

This is the table that I taught at our Johannesburg club two weeks ago. It is a Sheraton style tilt-top table.

The original table that I copied is in the Metropolitan museum in New York, the table is made from Mopane wood and to give you an idea of size the top is 47mm by 33mm (1 7/8" by 1 5/16") big.

This table was the first piece of furniture that I made at our club when I joined in January of last year and the first time ever that I made cabriole legs. I never had time in class to do the molding for the table edge and I wasn't too sure how I wanted it to look either, so this week I took out my new cutters that I bought in NY and played a bit, I am quite pleased with the final result.

And then, I am still busy making Chippendale chairs, when I came back from Castine I found a big order from England for a set of six chairs that will grace a dining room in my inbox. With another six chairs still outstanding as well, I had to re-think about how I made the first few, as there was quite a few steps that caused me troubles first time round. The first thing that I did was to build two jigs for hollowing out the back splats, last time round I did it with a homemade attachment to my Dremel, although the results were fine, I just didn't enjoy the process at all.. My cutter isn't deep enough to do it in one cut, here you can see the front face of the splat being shaped only half way down, after this I lower the cutter a bit until I have gone the whole depth, something that I didn't think of doing first time round and the reason that I didn't build a jig then. This time round the brain cells worked a bit better ;-)

And here are six back splats with all the shaping done and all the holes have been sawed out by hand with a jewelers saw, all six the crest rails has also been shaped, when making sets of chairs it is important to do all the steps together while the machines are set up, you just never get the set-ups exactly the same again.

I refined the gluing jig as most of the joints are at an angle making accurate gluing difficult and last time round I had to unglue some joints and do them over as they slightly moved out of square.. I first cut out a raised piece to fit in between the back legs and glued pieces of wood on top of the insert to correctly position the back seat rail and stretcher. While I wait for glue to dry I always do some of the next steps, in this case shaping the back of the legs at the top where it is supposed to be nice and round, the left upper leg on the glued back on the left already has this done.

Showing the jig from the side.

Enjoy what is left of the week and hope you all have a fantastic weekend.
Elga

My new workroom and unexpected SNOW in my garden

The birdie has flown the nest and mom took over the bedroom for a workroom.

The room seen from the door, the orange paint will be covered with white eventually, it was my daughter's choice of color a few years ago :-)

I can just turn around on the swivel chair (sorry Karin C, I would have loved an old wooden one, but they are expensive and scarce here) and reach everything behind me, there are still space for more storage containers on the bookshelf. The radio.... because I can't work without music.

Close-up of the desk surface and that is not my new lathe, it is coming soon!

The desk from the other side, I am teaching my first workshop this Saturday at our local club, we will be making a tilt-top table and I am working hard to get the prototype finished, more about that later this week.

I want to replace the old radio cupboard with a chest of drawers for convenient storage, my house has all these funny angled walls, hence the weird shape of the work surface that still needs to be edged where my hubby cut it for me. Hmm, I should also consider adding a wall cupboard here sometime for more storage place. 

And then earlier today it snowed for a few minutes in my garden, I have lived in this area for 38 years and this is the first snow I have ever seen here.

This is the part of the garden that I can see from my workroom, until today our winter has been very mild.

Roses and snow, what a combination, it is actually time to prune the roses before spring arrives in a month.

Have a great week

Elga