Peg boards, table and benches

Today I finished the peg boards for the stable. Since the project had gone smoothly so far, I decided that it would be a fine idea to test a moulding plane.
I have never worked with moulding planes before, but I have a few old ones lying about.

The choice fell on a pretty simple beading profile. During the entire process I became painfully aware that I had not paid any attention whatsoever as the the grain direction of the boards with respect to the moulding plane. The moulding plane is not symmetrical, so I couldn't stand the board on an edge and plane with the grain.. The result left quite somewhat to be desired in terms of finish. I reground the blade a couple of times to get an even shaving, and in the end the plane behaved OK. Maybe one day I'll try it out on a piece of wood with the correct grain orientation.
For my comfort I kept on reminding myself that it is for the stable, and it can look a little rustic. I also sanded the beading lightly after finishing, so the result is OK. Actually it is more than OK. I am impressed at the impact a simple moulding had got on a board. Previously I would have just chamfered the edges - and that would only be in case I wanted to make the piece extra nice. But the beading makes it look a lot more finished and refined.
Sadly I was unable to hang the boards up on the wall, since I didn't have any 6" screws left. I'll have to go to town tomorrow and buy some. The reason for the very long screw is that the inner wall of the stable is covered with 3" of insulating bricks that are very soft. So in order for the boards to be secured decently, I have to drill through all that and into the real bricks.

A friend of mine is active in the World of model aircraft. The local club which he is a member of has just rebuilt their club house. They asked me if I could make some rustic looking tables and benches? I have been thinking about a design for those for a long time.
I prefer tables like that to be collapsible. That makes them easier to move and to store in case they need the meeting room for something else.
Benches on the other hand should be as sturdy as possible without being clumsy.
Since the club has offered me to pay for the stuff, I had to figure out what the cost was going to be. So as an experiment I decided to try to work as effectively as I could, and not be overly attentive to hidden details that wouldn't matter regarding strength or function.
I was very surprised to find out that I could knock together a good looking sturdy table in 6 hours and 20 minutes. Off course it helps greatly that The only finish is a quick run over with a random orbit sander and grit 80.
The most difficult thing is that when you can't square up stock due to requests from the "customer", you have to work without a lot of the normal possibilities of measuring that you usually have.

For the benches I turned to the Shaker bench that I have made before. Only this time it too had to be made out of unprocessed stock.
The bench took a lot longer to build than I anticipated. I guess it is due to the fact that there are a lot more joints to be made, and all of them has to be made  more or less by hand. Working as fast as I could, the bench took me a little more than 4 hours. I can't remember the exact time, and I am too lazy to go to the workshop to check it out.

A crappy picture of the two peg boards

The table and the first bench

A sliding dovetail is holding the table top.

The legs are inserted into mortises in the stretcher

Shaker bench, the roof and an aircraft fighter

As described in a previous post, I have been trying to make a Shaker inspired bench for a friend of the family who helped train our pony to enter a trailer.
Since the roofing project has moved into the tiling phase, it has left me with a little spare time e.g. for projects like this.

The bench is inspired from a book by John G Shea describing a meeting house bench which as far as I remember is from the Hancock Shakers.
It will be used outside on a riding court, so I decided that I would try to avoid metal in the building.
The lower parts of the legs have been added to give stability on a soft ground to avoid it tipping over. In addition to this, it can serve as a help for smaller children to mount their horses. So it is important that it is a stable bench.

The lower legs are mortised and drawbored. The top of the legs are also mortised into the top. These have received some wedges to secure them.
The braces are what first caught my eye on the bench. They add greatly to the stability. I can't remember the correct English term for how they are mounted. So I hope the pictures will give an idea if anyone would want to build something similar.
I even added the Roman numerals below the seat as my sign of a well finished project.

The bricklayers have started to lay the tiles on the roof, and the progress is steady. This means that my role has been greatly reduced compared to when the carpenters were active with the sub roof. I have stacked the tiles on the roof so they could lay them, and generally tried to help wherever I could.
Today they had to tile around a Velux window, so they didn't need very many tiles. Therefore I was able to finish the bench instead. Actually it was a lot more pleasant compared to carrying tiles.

Tonight Asger (7) asked if we could make some more soldering.
He felt he was ready for the next logical step after a ship.. An aircraft fighter!
So in honour of Snakey and other people related to fighter aircrafts I have added the pictures of the finished plane.
Luckily for me, Asger didn't have any specific model in mind, so I cut out some wings, a tail and a cockpit and found a nose cone. I believe I have seen a plane once with a tail like this, but I don't know the make or model of it?

The finished bench.

The legs mortised into the seat showing the wedges.

The leg braces "dovetailed" into the seat.

2013 (a productive year so far)

The mortises of the lower part of a leg.

The easy side of the house is halfway now.

Asgers aircraft fighter flying East.

An flying back West.

Sawing with the mule saw

50% of the future hide glue does not always want to enter the trailer. A friend of my wife spent a couple of hours one Sunday afternoon, trying to persuade it to go in. This friend also has got hide glue in the rough and a small riding court. My wife asked if I could make bench for her to place at her riding court as an appreciation of her time spent with the pony.

I have settled for a shaker like design which I have always wanted to try anyway.

This also presented an opportunity to try and use the mule saw for something useful. The top of the bench will be made out of a single board of larch (what a surprise), and the rest of the bench will also be made out of larch. This is actually a good choice since the bench will be positioned outside permanently.

I have been testing the mule saw the last week, and it is working better and better. I can still improve on my sharpening of the blade, but all in all it is working as it should. I made some nice boards out of elm that were 16" wide. At that width and the current shape of the teeth of the blade, I need to go really slow. The lowest speed is about 4" per minute, so the saw is not fast at all. But on the other hand, the boards look very nice after sawing, and I don't have to make a living out of it. So being slow is OK.

The mule saw in action on a trunk of larch.