Drawers and Pulls

 Sycamore is non judgemental as to how you approach it.  It seems you can plane in any direction you want and it won't tear out.  Cuts clean, doesn't splinter.  Takes a polish if you want.

Beautiful as can be.

Since it planed so nicely I thought I would work the whole piece only with the Japanese planes.  Ended up sanding it, only because the planed surface wasn't exactly what I was looking for.

Onto the drawers.  Dovetailed them on the WoodRat.  I've been taking on the mantle of exalting the benefits of the WoodRat for decades now and finally realizing it will never catch on with people.  It's just too different for 99.5% of woodworkers out there.  

Did a precut on the table saw to hog out some of the material first so the dovetail bit didn't have to work too hard.  The WoodRat uses much thinner bits than other jigs out there.  They're high speed steel and you can cut much more elegant dovetails with them.  Carbide bits are brutish clods compared to high speed steel.

Right outta the WoodRat.  Perfect.

Stack of ten drawer parts.  The front of the drawer is a half lap blind dovetail.  They take a bit of chisel work.

Drawers glued up and seeing how they look in the carcass.

Back to the WoodRat to cut the slots for the pulls.

I called up my brother for a phone visit, he lives on the east coast.  Architect and a licensed contractor.

I was telling him I needed a ball peen hammer for the copper pulls I was making.  He had taken all of Dad's tools when our parents died, said he would look through the boxes.  Sent a photo the next day that he had found it but it had a split handle.

No problem, send it out.

It arrived, I fixed the handle with one of these wire clamp tools, Clamptite.

Cut a bunch of stock, hammered it with the ball peen on the leather covered piece of steel, drilled and buffed them out.

Right before applying the finish.

Right after applying the finish.  I did a single coat of Rubio Monocoat.

Like I say.  Beautiful as can be.

And how it goes, decided the copper needed some funk put on it.  That will be in the next post.

Foot Fetish

 Way too much time, work and detail went into the feet of this thing.  Way too much. The only way you're going to see much of them would be getting on your knees and putting your face to the floor.

I was straightening up a stack of vertical leaning crap in the courtyard and pulled out a piece of Lacewood I bought maybe ten years ago because the lumber yard had it on sale.  Might as well use it finally, what am I saving it for other than these feet?  Made 8 feet, two were spent on exploratory sculpting to decide on the finish design. 

Nothing glued yet here.

Eventually they all had splines in the miters and pieces of plywood inset into the top and bottom.

Glued them up using rope as a clamp for the miters and with an F clamp for the ply top and bottom

Final six feet to be carved.

Roughed out the general shape on the bandsaw.

And then onto the Japanese rasps.  They give such a nice finish, no sanding was necessary.

Then went for something less refined to provide a negative space metaphor wise.

Face sanding dust

Brushed on some shellac and lightly sanded between coats

And shellac before sanding.  The feet are fairly glossy, the rest of the cabinet will not be.  Also not pictured are the leather feet pads I put on the bottoms.  I trust you know the photo below is of an upside down foot.

Not sure if this is a bonus pic.

Early sunrise light bouncing off the back doors back into the front of the studio.

Over the river and through the woods

 Took the journey out to just east of Marshall, California to select a couple of pieces of wood for the next object to make.

 

For future readers, California had some record setting rains for the past couple weeks, my journey to see Sensei Shively, the wood guy was on one of the sunny days between downpours.  Hence the title of this post.  Water everywhere and downed trees.

I had emailed ahead to talk about the object I'm making so there were three piles of different woods for me to look over by the time I got there.

Some Black Acacia, Bay Laurel and California Sycamore.  All local, it's like tree to workshop to finished piece all from a hundred mile radius.

I chose the Sycamore.  Will be exciting, I've never worked with Sycamore before.  Will be like a new lover, finding out things, discovering how to approach and finesse and coax.  Give and get.

I can only resaw to a little over 16" (410mm) and rather than battling that initial hurdle, I had Shively's guy resaw one piece down for me.

Bringing the one piece down to the smallest of the bandsaws.

Mike is the man who ran the saw for the last wood I got from here.  He cut that in 2011 so he's been doing this for awhile here at Arborica.

I was a bit surprised to see Mike using a ruler to measure.  He said the machine was built in Poland (I think) and is in Metric and still prefers Imperial.

Since we're down to one small city car at this point, the wood must be delivered.  Coming tomorrow.

Bonus Pic!

Forgot to add this in the last post below.  A real live photo set!!!

Akira!

 

 

 MakerUnknown says don't do it, it's off brand, it's not who I am.  That's Art World stuff, not maker stuff.

But I say,  MakerUnknown, your personal philosophy on life allows for inconsistencies within that philosophy.  Sun will come up tomorrow just as always.

I'm titling the chair.  Putting a title on it and a price tag just like an artist does!

MU says, Ok, but if you do, we gotta make it performative art to title it.  We have to snub at the whole idea.  That'll put it back on brand.

Akira!

$999, 999. 99

Wood, leather, glue, ceramic finish, foam, linen thread, beeswax, spit and blood.

One pic here and then I'm sending you to somewhere else to see other photos.  More Here.

And He Saw that it was Just OK.

 Slowly starting the leather on the chairs.  Well, maybe just one chair.  The second one I'm somewhat ambivalent about finishing it up.  Still not sure about it.  Definitely there's been some lapses of technical quality of the work.  I guess that's ok.  It is what it is.

A barely ok photo of the side view.

The back stiffening piece.

With one coat of finish.

Yeah, so I put the finish on both of the chairs.  This is a new to me formula.  A ceramic very low sheen finish out of Japan.  Very easy to apply and I really how it looks.  Subtle, understated.

The only place in the U.S. of A. to buy it is here. Hassui Ceramic.

This is the Hassui on the arms of the first chair.

Leather.

Bonus pics

Did a roadtrip for Thanksgiving.  I took exactly four photos of the whole trip.

Autumn colors in Oregon.

 Caught in the Act