Less Milling! But More Other Stuff!

Tuesday's milling did not happen, despite it being one of the most beautiful days of the year so far. I confirmed on Monday that the crew would be at the beach to set up a couple logs for my buddy and I, but Monday night my buddy bows out as he has a bad flu, then Tuesday morning I check with the crew and they were called away, so no milling Tuesday. But they will be there on Thursday.

So Wednesday night my buddy is still sick, Thursday morning I wake up and the rain is hammering down. I call and confirm that the crew is there to set up a log or two for me, so I load up the van, stop at the coffee shop and head for the beach. By this point the rain has stopped and restarted again, but as I get within a kilometer from the beach my cell rings, it's the crew and saying they blew a hydraulic hose on the loader, so no logs can be set up. What a week! Anyways, I drop by to say hello anyways, and notice that there is at least a half dozen more cherry logs there. So there will be some good milling ahead, if the milling horsehoes ever get their act together again! That will bring this "season's" cherry to about 20 logs, a record for any species for me!

On my other projects, I have definitely violated one of my personal cardinal rules, which is to only work on one project at a time. Too many times I have found myself making tiny progress on multiple projects, seemingly never finishing any of them.

I continue to make tiny progress on the Continental 6" jointer. The knobs for adjusting the height of the infeed and outfeed tables were giving me fits recently. I wound up drilling them and using roll pins to secure them to their shafts. next will be getting the tables level, then I will install the gibs and knives. My enthusiasm for this project has diminished quite a bit, this turned out to be such a coarse machine, I doubt that I will ever use it.

Also rough cut the yellow cedar for the lamp project. I resawed all the pieces to be rift sawn, that way all four sides show nice straight grain lines. I cut a few  pieces of alder as well, I'll be using those to start with for practice. I'm letting the wood settle for a while, then I will dimension it once all the movement is done. I am really looking forward to using some of this beautiful old growth material. It is so aromatic in the shop, and the growth rings are incredibly tight, more than 30 per inch. It is a privilige to have such wood.

And I have not given up entirely on my daughter's desk, although it is kind of off again, on again. I did paint it with black milk paint a while ago, and redid a couple pieces that were not right originally. Once I get a topcoat of shellac on I hope to glue it up, and I have a nice slab for the top, I think it is rosewood.

And I am anticipating the arrival of my new Oneida cyclone dust collector in a few weeks.  I would have prefered a Clearvue, but the Oneida is a 3 HP motor and the Clearvue's are 5 HP and so noisey. My power is quite restricted in my basement shop and I can only provide enough current for a 3 HP motor. So there you are. I have started to make some changes in my shop to accomodate the new system, starting with moving my clamp rack to make room for an old-school manual starter. Love the retro look of this!

And I took all the Manitoba Maple / box elder pieces out of the furnace room the other day as they had dried very nicely there. I think I will sell or trade these small pieces, as I have plenty of this type of wood already.

And of course all the various slabs I have cut over the past few weeks are starting to accumulate against the garage. I really need to get them stacked up properly.

The big bandsaw's mobile base should be done next week. I am having a local machine/welding shop make it up based on a design I saw online. I am really looking forward to getting this big old beast up and running!

More Milling . . .

This time it was plum, only the second plum log I have ever milled, and maple.

Milling

Also contimued to rough out yellow cedar stock for the lamp, and made some progress on restoring the old Continental 6" jointer.

I am having a heavy duty mobile base welded up for the big bandsaw I have had in storage since forever. I am planning to put it in my garage. I am so sick of the rinky-dink mechanism used to tilt the table on my current 16" bandsaw, I am looking forward to the 'new' old saw with its very slick wheel that adjusts the angle effortlessly!

More Cherry Milling

There seems to be a consistency to my life these days, lots of milling time at the beach! Not a bad thing at all, I guess I have milled up 11 cherry logs so far this season, there are still some more in the pile to get to.

Also started on a new project, a Japanese style lamp out of yellow cedar. Not sure how far I will get before the new dust collector arrives and turns everythign into chaos though. Have done some of the roughing out of the stock, just letting it settle for a bit now.

More Milling

Did some more milling this week and last week.

Also ordered a new dust collector for the basement shop, got back to the restoration of the Continental 6" jointer, put another load in the kiln, and ran a couple slabs of arbutus through the planer. Seems like I have been busy!

Milling More Cherry

Had a chance to mill up a couple small cherry logs with some friends the other day. This seems to be 'the year of cherry', the city is cutting down tons of old cherry trees these days. I know that a lot of the city's older cherry trees are diseased, so I guess that is why.

Cherry Milling

2012?? Yoo hoo, Where are you???

Well. So much for THAT year!

After finishing the Japanese tool box my plan was to do some machine restoration. I started on a Continental made in Montreal jointer, but for whatever reason I could not get my machine restoration mojo back, so I wound up back in the shop working on a couple of long neglected projects.

First, it was the desk for my daughter. I guess it is only 2 years late now. I had previously built the body of the desk out of poplar and decided it was too ugly for words, and abandoned it. At some point I picked up some milk paint thinking I could hide the poplar, and so I finally did the deed. Two coats of black milk paint sure hid the poplar! The next step will be a couple coats of a clear coat, then some wax.

The top will be an east Indian rosewood slab. Probably put in a butterfly key to control the crack at the top. Various parts of the table as well as the slab I will use for the top are here:

And a small panel to cover up an attic access panel in our house. The panel is made out of catalpa with a poplar frame. Since I was in milk paint mode and the frame needed to be black to match the rest of the bathroom, it seemed the obvious thing to do was to milk paint it. It was nice to be able to use up a spare piece of catalpa that Ryan had cut for me on his very excellent bandsaw a couple years ago.

And the same piece after a coat of Tried and True:

And I have a load of arbutus in the kiln, should be ready shortly. Speaking of that, I had some guy email me last week looking for a piece of arbutus for his father in law who lives in France. Nice guy, he told me "you are all over the internet". I laughed and gave him a small piece, hopefully I'll get a similar chunk of olive or something in return.

Also cut up a bunch of Manitoba maple AKA box elder. I chainsawed it into chunks, then used my bandsaw to cut it into something resembling 1" thick pieces. Some I put in the kiln with the arbutus, some I put in my furnace room as shown here. If anyone is interested in some let me know.

And in the good news department I have extended my lease on the neighbour's garage for another year, and the new owner has agreed to have a roofer replace the leaky roof on it! So I will be snug as a bug in a rug until the end of Jan 2014!

Moving Along Nicely

Didn't seem much businer than usual recently, but I sure seemed to have got a lot done.

I finally got the Japanese toolbox completed! Well, at least as far as I am going to take it, I could build a tray to go inside it, but for now I will leave it, which means it will probably never get done.

The last step after applying the finish was to pin the battens to the lid, just to be sure they don't loosen over time, even though they are dovetailed in place as well. I used ebony for these last two pins, it was a pleasure to work with.

Wedges ready to go!

The box looks great from 10 feet, but close inspection reveals a number of workmanship issues on the through mortices which are disappointing for me. I got better at these mortices as I went along, but I should have done some practice ones first to get the technique right.

It turned out to be a more complex project than I had anticipated, I did learn a bunch of new things while doing it, and it was great to make something out of the wood that I had milled and dried myself. So I am definitely glad that I did it. I can see myself using the wedged through mortice technique in other projects. Special thanks to Chris at the carpentryway.com for all his great help, this was a project that he designed and set up and a number of us built it under his tutelage at our own pace via his online study group.

Looking ahead, I think I will turn my attention to a couple of machine restorations, and to making some improvements to my shop and dust collection. I have a really old 6" made in Canada jointer that I took apart and repainted a while ago, so it is time for it to go back together. And a 15" made in Canada bandsaw that needs not too much work to get it running again. And the big 30" made in Scotland bandsaw that I really want to rebuild!!

 Continental 6" Jointer Painted and Ready for Reassembly

Continental 15" Bandsaw

White 30" Bandsaw

The neighbour's garage lease is coming up at the end of January, so I need to start thinking about that again. Hopefully the owners will go for another year or two. I will find out shortly I guess.

I took some of my wood down to a local senior's workshop to give to them. I was disappointed that they did not really want much. Their shop was stuffed full of little scraps of wood, long skinny cutoffs and other junk that should be thrown out.  Then they would have room for all the great slabs I was going to give them!

Emptied the kiln out of the previous load of cherry, horse chestnut, elm, maple and lesser amounts of other stuff. It was all pretty awesome except the horse chestnut which did not dry fast enough during the initial air drying and wound up full of moldy streaks. Most of it I will throw out, it's a pretty pale and bland wood anyways, but still a waste. The cherry are beautiful but short pieces that are from the top of a truck that had flowering cherry stalks grafted onto it. I gave several to a friend who is a turner, I think he can get 18" platters out of a couple of them!

 Cherry

Loaded the kiln up with my last old growth yellow cedar. Five gorgeous 2 1/2" thick slabs 8' long and about 12" - 16" or so wide, plus some smaller chunks. After this batch, I have one more to do and I will have kilned all my wood which has been air dried two years.

Here is the cedar as I was milling it up a couple years ago.

And, I went milling at the beach the other day. Cherry and maple. The maple was FULL of nails, no kidding there must have been a dozen in this log. I have some major chain work ahead of me to repair all that.

The cherry was wonderful though, I got 5 planks 3 inches thick, 2 feet wide and about 5 feet long. Had some crazy burl inside it, not too much mineral staining.

And to boot it was a gorgeous day!