>The robe’s continue.
> So onto the walk in wardrobes… here are the floor to nearly the ceiling doors in dry fit. The Oak is really clean, and very mild to plane by hand.
Got the cornice moulded, there is some nice ray pattern on the face side.
The little chunky doors glued up.
I then made a start on the face frames for the taller doors, these are having a bead all round which needs to be mitred on the rail and stile intersection. Here I am using a 2″ Ashley Iles chisel to knock the corner off ready to meet the stile.
Close up of the finished joint.
Then onto the stile, I cut the bead off by hand as there are only four.
Cut the waste off.
Then mitre with chisel.
Brings me to the finished joint.
The face frame is then duly glued up on my flat and level bench.
Close up of the finished joint.
Onto the hinges, I’m using a jig for the router to follow.
After routing.
Clean the corner waste out using my Ashley Iles corner chisel.
All the hinge mortices cut, quick try for a fit.
Tall doors glued up and final light sand.
Onto the face frames for the wall cabinets, dominoed out to start.
From both sides.
All lined up with sacrificial block.
Morter cutter into the router, this is pretty much how Jonnyd(from woodworkuk) does it, except I thought I would gang mine together.
Using a guide cramp I just run them through, next time I won’t cut them to length first but keep them long so there is more for the router to run on.
Which bring’s me to here, ready to fit to the cabinets tomorrow.
Thanks for looking.
>Oak robes
>Started on the fielded panels this morning, I profile these on my spindle moulder using an upright jig and a 12 degree cutter. here’s the set up of the jig..
And the result, a nice traditional fielded panel.
Here’s Luke my apprentice, always a blaze of activity.
The doors need a moulded detail on the rails and stiles, so the door is held in place with folding wedges. Then the detail is routed on, I have got one of those non-slip mats for this procedure, but it always moves when you get dust on it…so its been binned.
I decided on a stopped chamfer, to carry on with the cottage theme. Its a detail I haven’t as yet seen on mass produced furniture, and I really like it.
Which brings me to here, a dry fitted door. There’s still a lot of cleaning up to do before they are glued up, so I will get them done tomorrow.
This is the detail to the reverse of the door.
Quick view out of my workshop, the geese are particularly aggressive this time of the year, and can generally be seen either fighting or mating. In fact they had just been fighting, and making a heck of a noise, which is why I was looking out my doors.
Thats it for today, I need to get the doors completely finished tomorrow, ready for hanging. Thanks for looking.
>Oak Wardrobes
>Got a bit of progress on these today starting with the doors, I’ve done all the mortices, and tenons. Then I tried all the joints for a dry fit, and for nice grain matching. I have to say that the Oak boards Boddys sent me are superb, with a really prominent medullary ray fleck pattern on 90% of the boards. I think Oak has to be one of my all time favourite timbers to work with, it planes well, joinery is crisp, and it looks stunning when a finish is applied.
These are the boards I’ve selected for the door panels, you can’t see from this picture, but these boards are lush, with no interlocking grain, and a heavy ray fleck pattern.
So after a bit of machining the figure can be seen quite clearly. The T and A that you can just make out in pencil is for when I shoot the edges on the jointer. Towards the fence and away, no matter how square you think your fence is, chances are you are 0.25 of a degree out(ish), and this method cancels out your accumulative error.
These panels are now all glued up, ready to be cut to size for the next step.
Which is a hand planed finish, the clients wanted a cottage feel to their bedroom, so I suggested having all the timber hand planed, and when done you will feel the slight camber from my plane blade when you run your fingers across the panels, much nicer than a sanded surface.
That’s as far as I got today, should have all the doors glued up tomorrow, and I hope to make a start on the face frames. Thanks for looking.
>Bits and pieces kind of day
>I have made a start on the oak wardrobes and cabinets today, I cut all of the sheet materials with my track-saw. I’m using Maxcut v2 on my laptop to help with maximizing sheet materials, this is a free download, you just need to re-register every 30 days. First impressions are it’s really easy to use.
I then assembled the wall cabinets. I didn’t take pic’s of this as it’s very boring, but here are the finished units.
This arrived today, and was duly used on all the solid lipping’s. It worked really well, once I’d set it up, and made the job much faster.
For most of the first hour of the day I spent fixing my roof-rack, after hitting a pothole it looked like this…
Now I might of overloaded it..who can say. This is some Keruing that I’m planing and sanding for a clients bathroom floor.
Timber should arrive tomorrow, so I will have some more progress.
Thanks for looking.
>Workshop, a few improvements(well to me).
>Whilst most think that having a very old barn for a cabinet shop is very right and proper, romantic perhaps. Maybe when clients come to visit they feel that their cabinets are made in a nostalgic location, that harkens back to the good old days. The reality is very different, when I decided to start this business a few years ago I had the space of a large single garage….I yearned for more. So my father gave me what I wanted, little did I know then of the true cost of conversion, or buying machinery. Maybe with hindsight I should of spent my money on renting a modern workshop with the amenity’s that come with such a space. But hindsight is a wonderful thing, and I have what I have.
A new roof was the first part, duly followed with a new floor for the machine room, then electrics. My money soon got gobbled up quicker than I thought, so I called a halt to more improvements till such time as I could afford more. Now I don’t have the money for what I would really like to do, I must make the best of what I have, and I am very grateful for what space I do have. The machine room is OK, but could benefit from being insulated, and that’s about it really…oh and about another 500 sq-ft. I have been looking at my assembly area the most, the first area that needed improvement was my assembly bench which measures 5′x2′, and just isn’t big enough for anything of size. I took to laying a sheet of mdf over this, but this kept bending, and you can’t make decent work if what you are building it on isn’t level. So I decided to make a new one with storage underneath…..
I now have level platform to work from, thank’s to the heavy duty lifting levellers.
As you can see my floor is…shall we just say out of level(read like a hill) by approximately 6″ over the width.
But on with the assembly table, I have put a good extension lead on one end, and have moved all my planes to this end for the time being.
Now I’m not going to pretend that this is by any stretch of the imagination finished, where the festool is for example, will be a bank of drawers at some point. In the right-hand space will be where they are eventually, on pull-out trays
On the backside of the table is where I decided to put all the tools I no longer use as much, and part of my grandfathers tools. As you can see there are quite a few…
As much as I would like to have all of these on display, and use occasionally. Wall space is a premium, with future plans for shelving/cabinets.
Now back onto the hill floor issue, as I said it runs out about 6″, and not only that there are large holes that are again about 6 inch’s deep. I had filled these with hardcore/broken tiles from the roof, but over time it was sinking and getting kicked about, it also made sweeping up a nightmare. Well I finally got round to filling these holes this week, why I didn’t before is beyond me, I really do question my brain sometimes!!!
I have also re-organised my most used tools to be in front of me, where they are easy to reach. I would love a large tool cabinet for these at some point.
I have had to be quite ruthless in this area, because this is going to soon make way for some shelving/cabinets.
So overall this is now much improved, at least to me. I’m starting to forget the money I’ve spent, and enjoy the space I have.
Now with the large chest out from under my bench I could put my festool CTL 36 in a better place out of the way. I thought I would also display some of my grandfathers wooden planes, for without him I wouldn’t of started on this journey.
There will be more improvements soon, but I need to get back to making for a while, first is some oak fitted wardrobes, which I will document here. Thanks for looking, and have a great weekend guys.
>Painted Bookcase
>It’s been a while since I updated this Blog, I’ve been on a site for the last few weeks fitting floors, skirting’s, and general carpentry work. I have also been doing a few jobs around the workshop, a new setting out bench, and filling the holes in the concrete(one sprained ankle too many). I will post a few pic’s of the “improvements” next time. I had to make a MDF bookcase last week, I didn’t do a wip as time was tight, but here it is finished…
It’s almost identical to one I made before Christmas, The client saw that one on my website and wanted the same, but to cover the fusebox and still be accessible.
I have some nice fitted oak wardrobes mid week next week so I will update with that every day.
| Mark Rhodes, Thwaite Hill Farm, Middle Hill Road, Aldborough, Norfolk, NR11 7NU Telephone: 01263 761809 Mobile: 07765 861219 |  |