03 February 2009

Resistance is Futile

At last I've started to make a reasonably sized project after all the smaller ones of the last couple of months. This time it's a coffee table in English Cherry inset with an octagonal, highly polished fossil top, in keeping with the stuff in SWIMBO's display cabinet. I'd previously bought a good board from Yandles before Christmas, cut it into rough sizes and then planed each piece oversize using the p/t. These were then left under a bench 'in stick' to further condition for a couple of months... amazing that a really good board of material can be reduced to a few sticks of timber in such a short space of time!
So Sunday was spent in just skimming the pieces with the LV LA jack and reducing each down to an exact size. I also had to glue up a couple of pieces to form a wide cross rail in the middle of each end frame. These will eventually be inlaid with a burr material of some sort, but the problem is I haven't got any at the moment, so it looks like another trip to Yandles is on the cards and I dare say that I'll come away with considerably more than just one lump of wood. They've got so much droolworthy timber and tools my right hand starts to twitch towards the wallet just thinking about it.
On an entirely different note, one of the lads who came to the WinterBash in Dec let me have a few boards of 18mm WBP ply and mdf, free and gratis. This is going to be earmarked later on for some veneered units for the lounge. I've already got a large quantity of decent English Oak (air dried) that's destined for the bandsaw as veneers. There's no point in veneering stuff in the AirPress at the moment 'cos it's so bloody cold in the 'shop the glue don't go off! I couldn't really let Simon give me the material to me for nothing as it seems a bit mercenary, so I let him have the Pau Rosa screwdriver with which he seemed mightily chuffed. SWIMBO also came out for a run on Saturday to collect the timber and we took over a box of fresh cream sticky buns to have with coffee...Simon had also made some waffles which were delicious, so at the end of the day and all things considered, t'were a good result all round.

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