Revisited

I had built this coffee table about a year ago, and it was neat to see it again.

It's sort of nice to see your work still vibrantly existing in the universe. It was a special piece of wood and a nice thing to see it still looking great.

Mitred

The Globe fall sale wrapped up this afternoon and was a great success. Thanks to everyone who came by and checked out my work, and an extra thanks to those who picked up one of my pieces!

Before the show I finished up one of the few remaining planes that was missing from my arsenal...a mitre plane!

A mitre plane is usually used with a shooting board and makes the job of squaring up your boards a whole lot easier! The body lacks the sexy curves of a smoother, but the blockiness lets it be used on its side. This one is made from ipe and quartersawn maple, and I think that ipe is a wood I'll use again in my planes.

I've rounded over the edges to make it a good fit in my right hand and so far it has worked extremely well. I also used a new wedge design that is a trade secret right now. I applied some of that knowledge I gained from my engineering days and I think I've come up with a simple, but great approach. Somebody probably already beat me to it, but I'll claim it as my own for now.

Right now it's sharing a Hock blade with my high-angle smoother and like my other Hock blades it works great. High carbon O1 blades from Hock have lived up to their reputation and I'd recommend them to anybody.

High Angle Smoother and a Little Bit of Music

I've been holding onto a Hock blade that I bought a couple weeks ago and I finally got it into a plane. This is a high angle smoother, bedded at about 58º, and is used for cleaning up those really nasty grains you find around knots and places with a lot of figure.

The sole of the plane is jatoba, with a quartered maple centre, and ziricote sides. I had never worked with ziricote before and to say it's a strange wood would be an understatement. It's got the most amazing grain that seems to weave in and out and it just turns into a cloud of dust when you cut it with a saw.

This plane didn't come out quite right the first few times...but after sticking to it I'm quite happy with the final results.

I also just finished up a music stand. It features some great birsdeye and curly maple that you have to see to believe.

The angle adjustment gave me a little problem, but in the end I figured out that I needed to add some felt in there to make it work right. Building things you've never built before is a neat challenge...a good way to stretch your brain and make some mistakes.

The height adjustment was also a bit of a head scratcher, but in the end it came out great, both visually and functionally.

Maple

I'm always amazed by maple. For one tree to grow with such variation just sort of blows my mind. Here is some curly and birdseye maple that I'm using in a music stand, it should turn out great (as long as I sharpen my planes)...

...and a better picture of a walnut bench I've been working on. This piece was the centre slab from the tree and was basically cracked all the way down the slab. I put the crack back together and got to include some butterfly joints to boot.

Like a well oiled...

...walnut table! Well, it's not quite well oiled yet, there's only one coat on, but you really get a great sense of the walnut contrast to the sapwood and the curly maple butterflies. Here's half oil, half no oil:

...and the full monty:

..and a close up of one of the butterflies:

Better Bench Pictures

Slab Bench

I'm just about finished this little hallway bench. It features a nice slab of maple and has a drawer that pulls out in the front. I've learned quite a bit about drawers while reading up to build this one. They're quite the complicated thing to build for something that seems so simple. A couple coats of oil and this bench will be out the door. A nice quick project.

Crotch of a Tree

I finally got around to using one of the crotch pieces of a maple tree my friend had cut down. I've got three more pieces from the same crotch that I'm going to try to turn into a bench and a cabinet.

I also just finished up a clothes rack. Walnut is a great wood that I'm going to try to do more with in the future. It's kind of funny how nice a simple, straight, square piece of wood can look.