Rya having the giggles...

While a good part of my time out here has been spent at school I still always look forward to Sundays and time spent with Mylene and Rya.  Mylene captured some footage of our giggles at bath time tonight.  This was the first prolonged giggle session that she's had (at least with Daddy)!

Watch her in action!

Beginnings of Wabi Sabi Cabinet

This year Robert decided to do things a little differently than in the past.  After discussing it with JK over the summer he decided that instead of just doing random exercises we would build a little poplar cabinet, and in the process, learn  most of what we will need for our first project.  It has been referred to as our Wabi-Sabi cabinet, meaning, "beauty in imperfections" in Japanese.

The piece of wood we began with was roughly 13" wide, 18" long and 3" thick.  We began by flattening one face before re-sawing it into thinner "slices".  The first piece became our door as you can see in the first picture.

The door is coopered, and will be concave when viewed from the front.  On order to do this we began by cutting our piece into staves and the edge jointing them at an angle to produce the beginning of our curve.  This was done with my jointer plane, which produces perfectly straight edges to glue together.

After some shaping using the coopering plane, the door begins to take shape.  It is tapered slightly from the thicker hinge side across to the other side.  It gives the door a more delicate feel than if the doors thickness was consistent across.

We used negative templates of our pieces in order to select the grain graphics that we wanted for each piece.

The carcass of our cabinet is all joined with dowels.  We started with a simple doweling jig in order to line up our holes.

The pieces went together like magic. Still lots to do though before we glue it up.

Much more to come this week as we have to make hinges, shape our pieces, fit our door, put in our partition, make our drawer and then glue it all together....eventually.

Planes and other tools

I've finished all of my planes and they have been working great.   Each one has it's own purpose and when perfectly set-up are a lot of fun to use.

This first one here is a polishing plane made from Mesquite, with an African Blackwood cross pin.

This one is a coopering plane.  It has a curved bottom for hollowing out inside curves on doors and such.  It is made from Jatoba with a Maple cross pin.

This is my jointer plane.  It's made from Maple with a Kwila pin and an applied sole of Kempas.

Last but certainly not least, the first plane we made, our smoother, from Jatoba with a Kwila cross pin.

 

In between other things sometimes we have a little extra time so make things like my plane adjustment hammer from Ebony and a marking knife from Maple.

 

This is a mallet that I'm working on for our Secret Santa.  I know it's early but better to do it now than when I'm trying to get my first piece done!