Another Lockdown in Paradise

Off to the workshop to see what we have: 

Two sheets of birch plywood

An old (very solid) chipboard fire door recovered from a friend's office alterations 

Some leftover decking

My Dad's old vice

How about a mobile sanding and sharpening bench with the vice attached:

Still some leftover plywood, so how about some mobile wood storage:

Now, what else do we have to make with...

The Cabinet of Doom

 I bought a partly wrecked oak china cabinet off TradeMe for $40 nearly a year ago.  Various previous repairs had only partly succeded in keeping the cabinet as useful piece of furniture.  It had a broken door frame, cracked glass, loose backboard, broken drawer sides, odd drawer pulls, jamming drawers and it was limping on three legs.  Perfect.  Could it be rescued?

Broken screws were removed using my vintage Dormer screw extractors.

New oak floating tenons were morticed into the broken door frame to give it strength.

Not much of the door frame left here:

The broken leg was cleaned up ready for a new mounting plate.

After repairs, it was fully stripped down to remove the remains of the old shellac.

After some frustrations with the leadlight glass doors, new period-correct handles were sourced and hidden rare earth magnets were glued in place to keep the doors closed. It was given two coats of Danish oil.

Was it 'worth' the effort?  Probably not.  Was it satisfying to save from the bonfire?  Yes!

Vintage Tesla charging station spotted in Cardrona

 

Recent Projects

 How quickly time flies, even in the midst of a never-ending pandemic.  The workshop has not been idle though.  A couple of herb boxes were knocked together from some budget redwood garden sleepers, which were ripped and planed smooth.

The corners were rounder over and they were finished with some leftover decking oil.

My wife bought a print from a New Zealand artist.  A picture frame was made from an old totara post.

My sister was looking for a serving tray.  Could I make one?  A length of interesting looking rimu came out of the wood store.

It was ripped down the middle, book matched into four boards and then fitted with a finger jointed frame / handles.

Continuing on the finger jointed theme, a spice box was made from some leftover American white oak.  It included a lightweight frame for a 3mm floating base. 

The base was stained and the box finished in Danish oil.

And finally three chairs were repaired and then re-upholstered by my lovely wife and sister in law.

That was it for the second half of 2020.  So far 2021 has been very busy with work (the paid variety) but another restoration project is coming to completion, plus some exciting developments in the workshop - a new shed, and a whole new building material: metal!

How do you like them Onions?

 On the way back from a recent trip to Waitomo for some abseiling fun we stopped off at the Classic Museum in Hamilton.  On display were examples of the car and motorcycle maker Alldays & Onions, I brand I'd never heard of before (not that I know much about vintage cars).

John Onions family started his business in 1650(!) and William Allday started in 1720 but it wasn't until 1889 that the Alldays & Onions Pneumatic Engineering Co was formed, making bicycles, then cars and motorcycles until the 1920's.

By Charles01 - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7343560

It's a shame they are not still around - imagine being able to say your car company has its roots in Stuart era England before the Great Fire of London!

Gather Round the Wireless

 My brother-in-law gave us two mid-century radios from a house clearance a while back.  After evicting the borer from the cabinets, the innards were passed on to my Dad to resurrect.  The first cabinet had been painted with what looks like brown house paint.

After stripping it back it appeared that the fluted mouldings and inner frame were originally black, so they were masked off and spray painted.

The main woodwork was then given a few coats of shellac to match what would have been the original finish, the inside was liberally coated with black paint to discourage the borer from coming back home and a new speaker cloth was fitted.

My Dad worked his magic with the old valves and components, and made up a new Bluetooth receiver and power supply which I then mounted next to the old equipment.

Finished and up and running, the sound is not quite up to today's standards but is good for a bit of background sound in the living room.

Offcuts and Offcut Offcuts

 The plank used to make the lazy Susan was 40mm thick and was split in two to make the 20mm platter.  After resawing, jointing, thicknessing and sanding the other 'half' was 10mm thick - just right for the back of a cookbook stand for the kitchen.

The base and shelf came from another piece of the recycled Jarrah I've used previously.  The back was made from grain matches pieces of the 10mm Rimu board, with a gentle curve across the top.  The pieces were screwed together to allow for some wood movement.

The whole thing got a couple of coats of Danish oil and some beeswax.

The leftovers from the back of the coobook stand were then used to make some coasters.

All and all, a well used plank of wood!

 

Misty morning

 

View from bed.

Around we go again

 Lockdown Number 2.  Off to the wood stack to see what there is - some nice figured rimu (Dacrydium cupressinum).  Perfect for a lazy Susan, finished with a couple of coats of Danish Oil:

The 500mm diameter disc is made from six boards grain matched and edge jointed together.  The grain reflects light differently in each direction, producing a nice effect when the lazy Susan is rotated.

Pretty Weighty Jetty but not Muddy or Wet(ty)

 A pond needs a jetty, but who wants to stand around in muddy water to build it?  So it was off to the workshop to frame it up undercover.

Some 'scope creep' resulted in it being wide enough for two people to sit comfortably next to each other and long enough to give a true 'over water' experience.  As a result, just the timber frame turned out to be quite heavy, so I made some jockey wheels and used a hand truck to move it out of the workshop.

With the help of a couple of friends, it was manoeuvred down to the pond and onto the piles.

Then it was just a simple job to nail down the decking, relocating the workshop compressor to make life easy.

The winter rain still needs to do its thing to fill the pond back up but eventually the water will overflow down the standpipe next to the jetty.  Finished with a cleat for the dinghy, it will make a great place to contemplate the next project...