Bringing the Ship Around to the Next Cabinet

Well I got one of the two motors finished. My local motor shop has been more than generous to me, in addition to throwing in the spray can of special paint for the windings last time, this time they pulled the motor's bearings and supplied new ones to me, all at no charge! They are definitely on my Christmas card list this year. This motor I blinged up with gold paint to lend it a touch-o-class. It'll look great on the bandsaw I want to restore, someday . . .

CGE 1 HP Motor Before

 After

Also went out and did another day of chainsaw milling at the beach. It was a beautiful late fall day with snowcapped mountains, crisp air, freighters from around the world in the harbour, and downtown Vancouver all in the background. I had a terrible day of milling however, the saws were naughty and I spent way more time fooling around with setups than with actual cutting. I wound up with 5 short slabs of very nice elm for my 3 1/2-ish hours of work. There's one more elm left there, then I hope I don't get any more elm for a long while!

I have been sidetracked from my woody activities in a major fashion, my dad gave me 2000+ old slides of his from the 50's to the 70's and asked me to scan them into my computer. I have started, it takes a huge amount of time, but it is kind of fun to see all the old family photos, many of them before my time.

In other news, I have made some planning progress on the cabinet. I did up some sketches, reviewed some other curved front cabinets, refreshed myself on laminating for the curved door, etc etc. Regretfully, I will not be able to use the oak I had previously selected. The pieces are just too narrow and will not yield the width I want. This was definitely a disappointment, as the air dried oak was a real joy to work with the plane.

However, I do have some mildly spalted maple with some nice suble colouration in it. I just ran it through the kiln a month or so ago. Because of the colours in it, it will be a tougher to use than the somewhat bland riftsawn oak though. But it will give me eight inches of width, more than I need.  Soon the oak will be a distant memory.