The Shed - Woodwork

Customising your plane blade

24 January 2024

In my previous article on sharpening a plane (“Sharpen up your plane blades,” The Shed magazine, Feb/Mar 2010 – also on this website) we worked on how to consistently produce a sharp, straight edge on our plane irons. Now that we have that skill in place it’s appropriate to look at how modifying that straight edge can allow us to achieve a range of differing results in our woodworking.
It is important to understand that what drives the modification of our cutting edges is what we want to achieve with them. Therefore after describing the shape of the plane blade, I’ve outlined four major tasks that we can achieve with the particular shapes our planes. Each requires progressive development of the edge “shape” so I recommend re-reading of the earlier article to get you on the starting blocks for this one.

Locking in efficiency and innovation

22 January 2024

In the world of furniture manufacturing, every detail matters. A new product revolutionising cabinet and furniture construction is the Peanut Connector. Available from Jacks, these unassuming yet highly effective furniture connectors are set to become an essential tool in the arsenal of modern cabinetmakers. Peanut connectors offer a host of advantages that speed up and simplify the assembly process, reduce material costs, improve the overall quality of cabinetry, and deliver a more contemporary slim-line look. Let’s explore these connectors and the numerous benefits they bring to the table.

Fun in the sun

7 December 2023

When I made my first tambour door a couple of years ago, what immediately struck me was not the functionality of the door itself (although it is not without its aesthetics or merits), but that it would potentially make a really comfortable deck chair.
This project is the realisation of that idea. Using a long tamboured top as the basis for a piece of furniture, I decided to make: a tambour sun lounge.
I expect most people would be familiar with the classic roll-top writing desks, popular in the 19th century and a progression from the solid-topped Bureau du Roi, or “Secrétaire à cylindre de Louis XV” from 1769. The tambour form particularly suits itself to the ogee curves and it is that aesthetic that inspired the form of this sun lounge.

Going glamping

23 November 2023

What do you do if you want a caravan but drive a Mini? You make one to fit. That’s just what Michael Wolfe of New Plymouth did – turning out a real dinky little teardrop-shaped caravan that matches his 2004 Cooper S and has all the mod cons for a decent holiday.
Michael saw pictures of little campers on the net and decided that was what he wanted – a cross between a caravan and a tent.
“I got some ideas from little caravans online and decided to go a bit more high-tech,” he says.
He built it to have the same lines, wheels and colour as his car and it looks just the part.
“I never really planned it in detail. I sketched it out originally and a lot of the construction I worked out as I went along.”

Video of the wooden fairground organ built by David Dilks

6 November 2023

The 320-pipe fairground organ that David made from scratch is visually and acoustically impressive. The array of beautifully crafted pipes, different shapes and sizes, the accordion-playing monkey, and the drums make quite the show. It’s hard to resist jiggling — but then David and wife Joy, both ballroom dancers, kick up their heels and show their form. Music is a big part of their life.

Replacing floorboards

12 September 2023

Lift the carpet or lino in an old villa to prepare the floor for polishing and you are bound to reveal the gaps or rotten bits in the floorboards.
So how to get them up and insert a tongue-and-groove board into an existing layout? First, work out where the joists are. If you’re lucky, the piece you want to remove will begin and end on a joist, or at least one end will. If not, find the joist nearest to the point you want to cut, usually by tapping the floor.
Often you will see the old nail holes, a good guide to where the centre of the joist might be. Next, scribe a line across the board you want to cut. I use a Tajima knife.

The perfect desk job

17 August 2023

The desk that is the subject of this article was made for one of my grandsons and is made in a similar style to a bed I made for him several years ago (see the article in The Shed, issue 43, June/July 2012). Like the bed it is made out of beech and finished with Danish oil.
While I have been able to undertake almost all of the processes in my hobby- styled workshop, I want to stress that this desk could be made at home with just a few hand tools. For example, you could ask the timber yard to dress the timber for you; all cutting could be done with a handsaw or a coping saw for the curves; the mortises and tenons could all be done by hand. The process would take longer but you would certainly enhance your skills.
The design process is always interesting for me and, with some initial design concepts in my head, I sit at the drawing board and draw out to scale two or three 2D versions of what I think the final product will look like.

Firewood sawhorse

19 July 2023

I created this little project because I needed to cut firewood easily without someone to assist in holding the wood. Although not my own invention, it is an interpretation of pictures gleaned from the web and adapted to materials that you can buy easily in New Zealand timber yards. The whole project cost me $25 and took about an hour and a half to make. In anybody’s book that is value for money and time well spent.
It is essentially four crosses of timber braced to form a cradle for cutting your firewood.

Chips and dip, anyone?

22 June 2023

I have used a piece of swamp kauri from Kaitaia for this project. The wood may well be 45,000 years old although pieces of swamp kauri have been carbon dated from 1000 to 50-60,000 years old from different parts of northern New Zealand. The time-scale of this wood is mind-boggling. How do we get this wood? You keep your ear to ground for news about logs and stumps that emerge, then we have to get off our backsides and do something about it. Swamp kauri, and occasionally other timber dug from old swamps have not rotted because they are preserved in anaerobic conditions. Kauri is the most common “swamp” wood because it is the slowest wood to deteriorate when above the ground before the land area became swamp.
For woodturners, kauri is a soft wood. Puriri, pohutukawa, black maire are hard woods, although botanists use the terms “hardwood” and “softwood” in a way that is related to the type of tree and not the hardness of the wood.

Out of the box

3 May 2023

The modern incarnation of the chest is the blanket box which sometimes doubles as a seat so it needs to be strong enough to support weight as well. This project is no more than a box with a lid and base. Dowels are the primary jointing method throughout and the top and base use a floating panel within a frame. There is also a small sliding drawer which is also dowelled together.

Create a coffee table

1 September 2022

Making an item of furniture does not have to be the daunting task it can seem. If you look closely at commercial pieces, you’ll notice that they share common concepts, and they are simple concepts at that. I’m not suggesting you suddenly choose to give away purchasing furniture and make all your own but making one or two items can become real statement pieces. Perhaps a hall table, or in this case, a small coffee table.
For this project, instead of choosing a basic option of joining a few narrow boards side-by-side to create a solid top, I chose to try a technique I haven’t used before – using wedges of timber to create a radial effect. For your top, you certainly do not have to go this far, and you can choose to have a solid top (these can even be purchased pre-made), or even a solid slab (with or without a natural edge)

Spinning wheel

20 July 2022

While we are rather spoilt these days for ready sources of energy, it was once a matter of harvesting what was available in the local environment. More often than not, what was available was a stream or river, and so the workshop was built on the riverbank and the harvesting was achieved by a water wheel.
I’ve always been rather taken by the concept of water wheels (and other mechanical devices that harvest energy from nature), and have been intending to make a small one of my own, even if it was just to be a garden ornamental feature.

Build a grandfather clock case

29 June 2022

I had always wanted to build a grandfather clock case and was given the incentive when a client gave me the a modern clock mechanism and a photocopy of a reproduction of an English Tall Case clock to follow. I had to increase the plan dimensions to fit the mechanism, ash wood was chosen and I ended up with 23 metres of approximately 200 x 25mm rough-sawn at an average length of 2.4 metres costing just under $300.
This is not the ideal style of clock case for anything other than an antique clock mechanism. In modern clock mechanisms, the pendulum swing (which should always be tested) needs a straight-waisted trunk style of clock. However, this project has been done to the requirements.

How to steam bend wood

5 May 2022

This project to make a stool was developed as a way of introducing students to a number of basic
wood-bending and shaping techniques, whilst also giving experience in several useful applications of the router.
The stool consists of two legs in the form of continuous steam-bent hoops or arches, which are housed into matching radiused slots at either end of a curved seat. The legs are stiffened by the addition of smaller arches that fit between them and the centre underside of the seat. For the purposes of this article, I am going to focus on the steam-bending aspect involving the legs as that is the technique that woodworkers seem the most reluctant to try.

Making your own campervan

7 April 2022

Converting an ordinary van into a campervan is a project I have been talking about for some time.
As a retired technical teacher, I felt I had the necessary skills, and when a 2005 Kia Pregio van in excellent condition became available I decided to take the plunge.
The van is a 2.7 litre diesel, manual, with 26,000 km on the clock and a cargo space of 2.8 metres x 1.65 metres. My plan was to fit the space with two beds, one on each side. They can be expanded to a full-width bed using the foam backs of the seats supported on shortboards between the sides of the seats.

Woodwork