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!
looks like you need a board stretcher! ;-)
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