Plane old Padauk

There's been a bit of an African invasion in my workshop this week. First of all is the African Blackwood that found its way into a nice little hand plane. I made this plane to take with me places like the lumber yard and the weight of the ABW has really turned it into something special. A real nice little plane that has me thinking about how I can incorporate the ABW into some more hand planes.

The other part of the invasion is this big hunk of Padauk. I'm planning on turning it into a deskand hopefully it should be ready for the show I'm planning for the end of October.

A Show! With Cake!!!

I've been talking about doing a little show for a while now and I finally got around to booking a space and setting a date. It's going to be on Friday October 23rd, in the evening sometime. Details still need to be sorted out, but I'll be sharing the space with a friend of mine, Peter, who's a painter. It should be an interesting show and at the very least there will be some cake!

Walnut Table Done (mostly)

...and finally, a fully built, legs on, right-side up table:

Now I just need to put on a couple more coats of oil, take the legs off, move it, and put the legs back on! Simple.

Walnut Side Table

I finished this walnut side table a couple months ago, but never got a chance to take a good picture. I just sanded it and wiped on some oil so I thought I'd better pull out my camera. Amazing curl and colours in this piece...just wonderful wood.

Levitating Table

Okay Matt, enough with all the pictures of your Spiers smoother...

...and a new shot of the table with the legs magically attached:

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:

Even More Walnut Table

I worked on putting in some butterfly joints today and they came out really well. I got to use my "punisher" mallet which was a lot of fun too!

I still need to track down a router plane to help smooth the bottom of my mortises and rabbets, overall I was quite happy with the way the curly maple butterflies turned out.

And here's the wide shot: