Easing Into 2016

Well I got one more of my planes dialed in. Still one last one to go for 2015 - I guess it is easy to get distracted here at the Slow Woodworker!

Still no milling to report. No logs showing up at the log dump. Talked to my contact at the city and he has no idea what is up.

No progress to report on the bentwood box either, other than to note that the crooked knife I have is apparently the wrong size. Later in 2016 for that project I guess.

Meanwhile I cut up several of my thicker cherry slabs to make pieces for the base of the cherry table I want to do.

Thanks to my Mini-Max bandsaw (one of the few modern tools I own) after not too much time the slabs looked like this.

In fact I had to cut up three slabs to get this many pieces, and I have one more slab for 'just in case'. Those cherry slabs have a lot of cracks coming in from the edges so there is a lot of waste. Good thing I know someone with a BBQ smoker who loves cherry wood scraps!

I want to make the base look something like this example that I found on the internet a few years ago. I have it filed under 'Clark', so thank you Mr or Ms Clark for the idea.

You can see the longest piece of the base is the one lying on the ground. It's almost as long as the top. Unfortunately my longest piece of thick cherry I want to use for the base is not long enough for the slabs I will be using for the top. What to do? Yes, that's right! Use a blind stubbed, housed, rabbetted, oblique scarf joint to join two pieces together to make a longer piece, how did you know that?

So I did a test using a couple pieces of slightly smaller cherry I had. Of course it did not go so well, it was too gappy, but at least I know what I did wrong so I should be good for the real one.

Anyway the start of the year seemed like a good time to head down a random rathole on another project. Finger jointed boxes it is! I was cruising the woodgears.ca site and admiring the crazy nice box joint fixture he made up and thought it would be a fun project. Then I realized I have a Hammond Glider sliding tablesaw that I have converted to Imperial units so I can precisely dial in increments of 1/256" or less than .004". Phht, who needs a box joint fixture when you have a tablesaw like that! And I have lots of small pieces of scrap that are perfect for small boxes.

I made up several small boxes, still working on getting the proportions to look good though. And as bonus I found this piece of scarp that looked like a fish skeleton on my table at one point!