Friday, March 16, 2012

My first woodworking power tool

The little router bit (to shave off corners into curves) cost a third
of the price of the router itself!

Wednesday, March 14, 2012

Does it all fit together?

While waiting for the router to be freed up, I thought I'd see if the
seat slats fit on the supporting pieces.

Very pleased to see everything fits together for the most part,
despite any roundings of figures between the imperial an metric
conversions.

A few of the seat slats suffered from my careless/inexperienced
handlin of the router (to curve the sharp corners).

One I can live with. It might even become one of those little things
to remind myself, and more important, others, of my first foray into
woodworking.

But another was so badly gouged I decided to redo with the spare back
slat that I was no longer using. Carrying all that extra wood came in
handy after all!!

This evening I completed all the cutting and shaping required to
complete the chair. I managed to get my hands on the router and worked
on half of the back slats. Unfortunately there are still too many to
do.

Seriously thinking of buying a router on the weekend so I can get all
the pieces routed and start to assemble! That way I can hopefully
start on my second chair next week.

Let's see what happens...

Complicated shape

My final complex shape to cut out - the supporting structure for the
seat slats to sit on. Haven't used a protractor since high school
math!! It all came flooding back. So, there is a reason for all that
math at school after all!

My first "cheat"

I've decided not to taper the back slats. It was just going to be far
too complicated and take too long to do. So I'm removing one of the
panels and simply fan the slats out. Should work, although it won't
look as good. Bit of a bummer but I have to accept some compromises...

Next stage, cut the tops of the back slats in a fan shape and it'll
slowly look like a proper adirondack / cape cod / muskoka chair.

Slowly taking form

Almost all the pieces cut and ready for "routing" the edges. It's
becoming to feel more tangible now. That serves me right for using an
imperial guide... It just made the process all that much harder...

Quite possibly the most dangerous piece of kit in the shop

Definitely not a good idea to have the usual glass of wine with dinner
before operating this beast...

Preparing to cut some tricky rounded shape on the jigsaw

A small pile of wood all cut and ready to go

Getting ready for action at Mt Roskill woodworking shop.