More Adirondacs

My good friend Rob was keen to build a couple of deck chairs, so we have spent a very enjoyable half dozen weekday evenings building another four examples of Norm's classic (blogged previously here).

And here are the finished products.  Two in pressure treated pine by Rob (to be painted) and two in Vitex (Vitex cofassus) as a wedding gift for my sister.

More Offcuts

Some leftover short offcuts of 190x45 American oak from the wood trim on the house (window sills) presented another good opportunity for maximum timber utilisation.  

This simple knife block was a good afternoon project.  Slots were cut on the table saw and then the three pieces (about 210mm long each) were glued together.

The hardest part was drilling the round hole for the knife steel.  Using various bits and extensions in the drill press, I eventually managed to drill all the way to the bottom, but not without the hole wandering approx 5mm from its vertical alignment - not terrible I guess, but I would like to come up with a better technique for future attempts.

The photo below also shows another problem - the pieces of 190x45 were slightly cupped.  They were too wide for my 6" jointer, and my cheap lunchbox thicknesser takes a nasty snipe out of the first 50mm, which would be unacceptable for such short pieces.

Rather than try to hand flatten them, I concluded that all that was necessary was some modern cross linked poly vinyl acetate adhesive and a good bit of clamp pressure, and voila!

 Oh well, I've learnt my lesson then.