Box and New Lathe

Progress on the Japanese box has been, by my standards anyway, stellar.

The two new pieces of Monterey cypress for the bottom are trimmed and dimensioned close to final size. I am letting them sit a few days again just to work out any last tension before I take them to final thickness and glue them up. So far I have not cut these pieces too short!

The caps which go over the end pieces and handles are ready. These will be fastened by floating tenons that are fox wedged into the ends and handles, and wedged into the cap itself. The mortices will be 1/4" thick, but they need to be cut into the tops of the ends and handle which are only 1/2" thick and not visible with the cap in place. Seems like a ton of room, but there is a lot to lose here if not done right. So I have measured about 17 times, even cut a spare cap and drilled some holes in it to verify my alignment. If this project never gets mentioned again you will know why!

 Cap top, test cap centre, end bottom

Meanwhile, I somehow decided it would be a good idea to buy a metal lathe. So I picked up this rare (or more correctly, obscure) Standard Modern 9" Utilathe which was made in Canada maybe in the 50's, I am not sure on the date. Similar to a South Bend but a bit nicer machine. Obviously the first order of business will be some cleanup. Then I need to learn how to use it so I can make up missing round pieces on the tools I restore!

Japanese Box, Jointer, The Big Bandsaw Brothers

Well we are still plagued with back problems here at the Slow Woodworker offices. I have however made a bit of progress on a Japanese style toolbox that I am working on with a study group at The Carpentry Way. It's made of quilted catalpa (who knew that such a thing even existed!) with a Monterey cypress bottom. Both of which I milled up myself.

The handles are of black limba and the top will be elm. I know it sounds chaotic, but the black limba and the catalpa are a similar colour, and the bottom can't be seen with the lid on, so I am confident it will be fine.

After I rough cut everything I let it all settle, then trimmed it closer to finished dimensions and started making mortices. I even baked the cypress in the oven for a couple hours at 180 degrees or so as I have had trouble with sap bleeding in the past with this wood.

 Things were moving along nicely until I ran into an unanticipated violation of the "measure twice cut once" rule. As you can see, I cut the bottom piece too short! Needless to say it was not a happy discovery.

Anyways, I resawed another couple boards up and will let them settle for a while before working any further with them.

Meanwhile I found an old 6" jointer, made by Continental of Montreal. With my Continental bandsaw and my other 6" Continental jointer I may well have the largest collection of Continental equipment in the world! Don't think I have the largest collection of jointers in the world though, but I am up to six-ish! Unfortunately the previous owner had painted this one orange, but at least it came with the guard which my other one was missing.

Speaking of the other Continental jointer, I decided to tear that one down and rebuild it after I discovered that the outfeed table was out of parallel by about 20 thou. The teardown is complete, near bearings have arrived, I am having the main pieces media blasted as we speak. Not sure how I am going to resolve the parallelism problem, I am hoping a shim will do it, otherwise I may have to get the ways machined. Clearly a more expensive proposition than the jointer is worth!

Progress on the big Wadkin and White bandsaws has been slow. I am unable to do any work on them while my back is still "out". I did order and receive a set of Wright guides for the Wadkin, a blade for the White (that I hope will fit the Wadkin too!), a return spring for the Wadkin, and a VFD for each so they can be run off single phase. A friend suggested I cut a hole in the ceiling of my garage to fit one of these saws in. I am seriously considering doing that!

Well another excuse to not get much woodworking done. The Slow Woodworker put his back out last week and it is taking forever to heal. Ironically I was moving some big maple slabs around in the garage when I did it, so at least you can say I was injured in the line of duty!

The rate it is healing at it's going to be a while before I can do any sort of lifting or moving. The good news is that I can take short periods standing at the bench, so I have made some progress on the box project.

More Milling

Well Pete was in town so it was time to hit the chainsaws. There has been extremely slim pickings at the woodlot this year, so we had to make do with some pretty ordinary looking logs. Jaime showed up too, so it was a regular chainsaw geekfest!

Pete and Jamie tore into some pretty gnarly and rotted box elder, but came away with a whole bunch of gorgeous bowl blanks for turners.

I worked on a log that I initially thought was Monterey cypress, but as soon as I cut into it became apparent that in fact it was Port Orford cedar. For some reason the growth rings on it are quite tight, very unusual for a city tree. A few too many knots for my liking, but a couple of good sized tight straight sections.

The other log was Deodar cedar, it was a bit rustic with knots and pretty wide sapwood, but there are some nice sections too. Deodar grows so fast here that the growth rings are huge, the main attraction for me with this wood is the smell. Smells like mangoes and peaches and tropical fruit - kind of like a Chardonnay grown in a warm climate!

Big Saw II

Well I managed to pick up another big saw, this time it's a 30" Wadkin. Made in England, probably in the 30s also. Note sure what I will do with it either, but it seemed too good to pass up. I think if I take the cover off the top wheel it'll fit in my garage, of course I'll also need to use the shortest blade possible on it too!

Big Saw

Picked up this a bandsaw this week. It's missing its guides, but I think I can get 16" of resaw out of it. It's a 28" saw with a 3 HP 3 phase direct drive motor on it. Made in Scotland in the 1920s. It's in nice shape, it needs a magnetic starter and some guides.

Unfortunately it is too tall for my shop, so I arranged to store it in a warehouse for now.

Meanwhile, a recent burst of activity in the shop has lead me to good progress on the desk for my daughter. All it needs is some finish and glue up. Oh, and a top.

I have also started on a Japanese inspired tool box, using some of my own catalpa, elm, and Monterey cypress. Cupping was a problem after resawing the catalpa and the cypress, fortunately I left the boards thick enough that after it settled for a  few days I was able to joint  the cup out without too much problem.

I've also found in the past the the Monterey cypress (and Port Orford cedar too) tends to bleed sap, so to prevent that I put my piece in the oven for a couple hours at 175 degrees F to try and set it. No sign of any new sap since then.

Good Day at the Office

Went down to the beach yesterday and milled up a piece of Manitoba maple, AKA box elder. It was badly rotten on one end but I still managed to get four decent slabs and a bunch of smaller pieces. They were nice because they had great brilliant colour and weren't too cracky, which this wood often is.

I closed the deal to rent my neighbour's garage for a year, so that will provide some relief on the storage front.