Sunday, September 23, 2012

momentum


 My crazy, hectic schedule has left little time for the shop
but I manage, nonetheless, to find a few moments here and there


I've discovered that my new travisher makes a great scrub plane for curved surfaces
with it I can hog away material at a phenomenal rate 


this walnut splinters and tears out so fast when paring
I have to be very careful as these joints will be highly visible


tenons; not so much
but it is exciting to split the pencil line on such a small piece!


I'll keep the crest rail solid till after glue-up then finish cutting the hole when there's less chance for failure



and just for giggles, I put together this little video to hone (start learning) the process of video shooting and editing with my new GoPro HD
enjoy:)


Saturday, September 8, 2012

harvest


oh bless you holy band saw
oh slicer of endless curves
wherefore would I be without you

morticing; you've seen this before

I'd still be sawing those friggin legs
that's where I'd be

cutting tennons; you've seen this too

in addition to all the cuts for the legs I forgot entirely about the crests
and the back slats

ok, so this is new

so much resawing
and none of it straight


instead I am creating the crest rails
each one has to be fitted to its individual chair
every blurb in the geometry amplifies by the time it reaches this point
so I had to devise a way to measure and translate each chair at critical points


a metal ruler slipped through the mortices makes a great curved straight edge
and a platform to begin all the measurements
because the tennons are in plane with the slats I could also fine tune the mortices with a chisel and rasp


with this many compound angles and gentle curves and abrupt directional changes
I don't even know how you would lay this out from a drawing alone
there are steps that can only occur in the midst of the process


transferring those observations onto a curved rail  presents yet another challenge


when that tennon slides home and the opposite falls into place and the legs are slowly drawn into their sockets and there's no weird popping or creaking
all those hours of layout become gold


all that's left is to join the back slats to both the seats and the crests


and just in time; Peter Galbert's hand made travisher has arrived
this little gem is exquisite!
I took a couple quick passes on the first seat
wanting to add some interest to what was previously rather blah
and I really like the major change to the saddling