Dovetailed box for a Mafell ZSE 330K

 Last time I was home, I bought a Mafell ZSE 330K. It was for sale in the northern part of Germany, just about an hour or so south of the border, so I was lucky since most of the machines I find for sale in Germany are situated in the southern part of the country.

It came with a transport cart for use on the job site, but I wanted to make a box where it could be stored and also where I could keep any tools needed for the regular use of the machine.

I happened to have some thin larch boards that I had milled once, and there was just enough to make the sides of the box. They were planed int he thickness planer and ripped before gluing them into some panels.

The panels were trimmed to size on the table saw, and I marked up for some dovetails. Since it was going to be a tool box, I opted for regular through dovetails. With pins on the end boards where I would mount some chest lifts.

I gang cut the tails, and after some uneventful chiseling, I could mark the pins. Some more chiseling and the sides were assembled. 
I hadn't really planned on what to use for a bottom, but I didn't want the box to be heavier than needed since the Mafell itself is no light weight machine. I had a piece of 15 mm plywood, and I planed a rabbet along all sides of it so the bottom would fit inside the sides and still have a flat part to be glued to the underside of the sides. This also allowed me to nail from the sides as well as straight from the bottom to give a strong joint.

Fitting out the box was an incredible enjoyable and relaxing part of the project. I was in no hurry, and I tried to not fuss too much over ultra fine finishing details. 
The fence for the saw is kept in the bottom, around it, there were room for the tools needed to adjust and service the saw. I included 3 spanners, a screwdriver and chain saw file. There is also a room for the riving knife and the chain + saw bar. I drew a line around each part and wrote what should go where. 

When the interior was fitted, I mounted a set of chest lifts. To give a bit more for the screws to bite into, I glued a small piece of plywood to the inside where each lift was going to be.

The lid was made from an old glued panel from an old solid kitchen cabinet door (or something like that). It was a panel that I had kept on the loft of the barn for purposes like this. 
To keep the lid from scooting around, I added some strips on the underside, that works as dust seals as well as helping to keep the lid in place. I didn't mount any hinges or any locking devices. The idea is that you can just lift of the entire lid and gain access to the saw and tools. I was afraid that if I had hinged the lid, I would have to add straps or similar to prevent it from falling over and ripping the hinge screws out. And all that would just make it more difficult to reach inside the box.
I was happy to see, that when everything was in place, there was still room for a 5 L jug of chain saw bar oil. So the box contains all that I need to use the saw at any job sites.

Box complete with lid.

Box without contents.

Bar along upper wall, tools & parts in place.

Saw body in place.

Company name without the log on the side.

 

Windows for the leather workshop

 Two years ago, I started rebuilding our old greenhouse into what will eventually become the new leather workshop. 
We haven't used the greenhouse for a couple of years, and it had started to look kind of shabby. By rebuilding it, I could make something that looked nice, and I would end up with a dedicated workshop for my leather sewing and horse blanket repair tasks. It will give me a place to put my leather sewing machines, and thus free up some space in the regular workshop. And frankly sewing machines are better kept in places that are not filled with sawdust.

Back when I built the greenhouse, I overbuilt the rafters (and pretty much everything else), but that meant that it was just a matter of removing the glass from the roof, and install laths and clay tiles. The tiles are those old ones from our house that I still had some left of.

The windows that I am making at the moment will replace the original ones in the brick wall. Originally the house was built as a retirement home in 1948. It was converted to a machinery shed sometime in the late 50'ies or early 60'ies. I incorporated the northern wall in the greenhouse, and now in the leather workshop.

I am making the windows as a mixture of traditional and modern. The traditional part is that I am dovetailing the corners, and the modern part is that I install the glass using wooden strips and modern sealer tape instead of glaziers putty. 

When I make large dovetails, I use the (for Denmark) traditional rule of 1:6 slope in softwood. That gives a visually pleasing dovetail that works well even in 2" thick material. If I had used the 14 degree version, the dovetails look weird due to the thickness of the wood.

The first window is roughly 48" x 40", the second window is 48" x 64". 
64" is difficult for me to make dovetails on the ends of. So I had to make a small step up, just to get me a bit higher up, but still sawing in a weird position isn't super easy. 
Anyway, it ended up looking pretty good, and it is for a window that will be installed, so the next person to see the outside of the frame will be the one who removes it sometime in the future, and I doubt that it will be me :-)

Traditionally the reveal around a window frame was filled with regular mortar like what you would use for laying bricks. In order to maintain tradition in that point, I also made a V groove all around the frame. This is so the mortar will have something extra to adhere to, and also to prevent a draft of cold air to seep by if the window frame shrinks in very dry winters.

The small window completed.

Dovetails and the V groove is visible

The big window. (The piece of Fermacell drywall will be removed)

First side of the dovetails, I leave the ends so they will support the wood, when I chop from the other side.

From the other side, I remove the wood like this.

Less than ideal working conditions. Small step up in front of the workbench.

The basic frame for the big window is glued up. (I dislike large glue ups..)

Barnsley hayrake table for my sister in law

 Mettes sister turned 50 this year, and her husband asked me some time ago if I could make a table for her birthday. 

They have recently bought a summer house and wanted a slab table of sorts. 

I showed him some pictures of the tabletop I made a couple of years ago, and some pictures of the Barnsley hayrake tables that I have made. and he confirmed that it was something along those lines that he would like to give her. 

We settled on a family price, and I got the joy of being able to make a complete table this time. Not just the tabletop. 

I wanted to blog about it during the build, but given that it was a birthday gift I couldn't out of fear that the surprise was blown. 

All the wood comes from the blood beech that I milled a couple of years ago, save for the pegs that I used for the drawbores that are made of ash, and the butterflies that are made of elm. 

I had forgotten how much work there is in flattening a massive slab using hand planes, and at one point I considered if I should try to make a flattening jig for a router. But I decided that it wasn't worth the while for just one slab.  

A thing I remembered from last time was that it was important to make the breadboard ends before putting too much energy into the flattening. Simply to keep the split parts of the crotch in place. So that is where I started. 
As soon as the breadboard ends were in place, a regular workout using a jointer plane with a scrub blade in it was the next task. I switched a little with a regular jointer and going either diagonally or traversing the grain. 
The slab had twisted a bit during drying, so one small area in the top end of the crotch kept being about 1/4" lower than the rest of the surface. I decided that it would be a waste of time, wood and energy to remove that much wood from the rest of the slab, just to get everything flat. After all it was an area about half the size of my palm, and I felt that it gave a bit of character to the table. 

I made a bunch of butterflies in progressively larger sizes out of elm, just to give a bit of contrast to the beech. The butterflies serve both to stabilize the split crotch area and to fill up the void so you don't accidentally push a dinner plate through the large hole. 

Once the butterflies were glued in place, they were dressed down to the surface of the tabletop, and I sanded starting with grit 40 on a belt sander and ending with grit 240 on a random orbit sander.

The undercarriage for the table was interesting to make due to the tabletop not being rectangular. I decided that it would look the best if the legs were sort of the same distance from the edges of the table. To avoid any hiccups, I made some full size drawings of each end, so I had something to work from. 
I mounted the two traverse pieces with a tenon through the center, and the traverse piece itself set into the top of the leg (I am a bit uncertain what the technical name of that type of joint is).

After chopping in MMXXV in the lower stretcher, the table got a couple of coats of a wipe on finish (linseed oil, spar varnish and turpentine) And it was moved inside the house to be ready for pick up (and to make a bit of space int he shop again).

As always a challenging and satisfying project. The biggest issues were that he top was heavy and unwieldy, and that it takes up a lot of space during the build. 

I clocked my hours, and all in all there is 60 hours of work in the table.

Stuff our company makes

2 years ago, Gustav and I started a small company called Hest & Hus ApS.

Our primary plan was to buy and renovate a small house that is to be rented out. We are nearing the completion of the renovation, and it has been a thorough round with new electric wiring, new plumbing, insulation, new floors, new kitchen etc. 

But in addition to the house renovation, I have been able to actually make money in my workshop! 

The biggest customer group we have is horse people, and since a lot of the stuff associated with horses is quite expensive, it is worth to repair. 
In the shop I have 2 leather sewing machines. A Singer patcher and a Singer class 7 (saddlemakers sewing machine). The patcher is used for repairing stable rugs (horse blankets), and other small articles such as girths etc. Once in a while something will be made out of such heavy fabric or heavy leather that I use the Singer class 7 for the repair job. 

Repairing things appeals a lot to me, and there is a need for people who can do repairs on horse rugs at a reasonable price and within a reasonable time. It isn't the most exciting thing to do, but it is honest work and it generates a pretty steady income.

Once in a while I also get some jobs repairing saddles. It is mostly the girth straps that need to be replaced, and that on the other hand is a task that I find really interesting and challenging. It is almost completely handwork to do these repairs. On the odd occasion, I can use the class 7 to stitch something at the bottom of a saddle flap, but mostly hand sewing is needed.

We make something called "event inventory" (directly translated from the Danish stævneinventar). It is stuff that you can bring with you to a horse event and use it for holding your equipment like saddles, saddle blankets, headstalls and halters etc. 
We also make these things for tack rooms, where the customers decide on the size they want. Those things are all made out of pine that is stained and varnished. The saddle blanket holders and the headstall holders are made with leather straps that are used to fix the items to the front of a horses box in an event stable. 

Saddle blanket holders in the workshop.

Headstall holders and saddle blanket holders in an eventing stable.

Close up of a headstall holder.

Headstall holder. The wooden hooks are made with splines for strength.

Headstall holder with 4 hooks.

Headstall holder with 3 hooks (plus a curious horse)

Saddle holder for 3 saddles for a tack room.

Bit holder for a tack room

I bought an engraving machine to make name tags.

Logo on the bit plate.

Stitching horse completed

 After completing the much too large and complicated glue up, I made a jig so I could mark out the legs in the correct length so the seat height would be 24" instead of 30 something. 

I turned a foot operated lever out of some sycamore that was left over from an earlier chair building extravaganza, and though the plans suggest a plain square piece of wood, I thought that it would look nice with a turned lever. 

Last time on board, I had made some hardware just in case that I would find the time to build this very project, Making the hardware itself was not a big deal. I think that realistic I used maybe one and a half hours in total on making a set consisting of a toothed part, a catch to engage the toothed part and finally a U shaped piece to hold the end of the lever.

I used a chisel and a spokeshave to chamfer all the legs and stretchers, and finally it was sanded to grit 180. Before applying a finish, I stamped my Newf & Gambrel logo onto the underside of the seat, and chiselled MMXXI which felt nice to be able to do after not having made anything for so long.

The instructions suggest that you give the stitching horse a coat of shellac, so that's what I did. Actually I gave it two coats. Between the coats and after the final coat, I rubbed the surface with steel wool. As a final touch I gave it all a coating of Mel's Wax made by Don Williams. This stuff is really excellent!

Now I just need to find a leatherwork project that will benefit from me having my own stitching horse (or I could try to sell it).

Completed stitching horse

Marking jig for length of legs

Mel's wax, packing, product and clear instructions!

Hardware.

Stitching horse part 2

 I completed all the mortises and tenons for the frame of the stitching horse, and I even made a test assembly. Given that the legs are splaying, the frame and the seat will all have to come together at the same time, so that is going to be a bit of a challenge, especially since I don't like complicated glue ups. The legs are left overly long. My idea is that if anything warps a bit during the glue up, I can still fix it if the legs are not yet cut to length.

All the individual parts have been drawbored, and I have made some 5 mm dowels using my Blum dowel plate that Alex from Austria gave to me some years ago. 

The instructions show a bit of extra shaping of the seat, so that your legs will not rest on any sharp edges, so that was another extra bit of work. 

I can feel that I haven't made much fine woodwork the last two years, so everything is going a bit slow compared to how I used to work, but I am also deliberately trying to take my time and enjoying making a project that I have thought of for a long time. 

For the clamp part, I found some elm, and the bandsaw made it easy to cut the curved shape. Instead of bolting the two parts together, I used some glue. I am pretty sure that it will be plenty strong enough, but if it isn't, then adding a couple of wagon bolts later on won't be a big deal.

The hinges for the clamp were some old black steel hinges that I found among some of the stuff that came from my parents summerhouse in Sweden. They look just right for the project and have almost no slack in them which is a huge bonus for this application. I couldn't bear to just mount them without letting them into the wood. It just looks so much better in my opinion.
I wanted to find some straight slotted steel screws for attaching the hinges, and that gave me an option to take a picture of my new inventory cabinets.  Those were made using parts from the old windows of my parents house, and I also used boards that came from my dads giant stock of wood to make the cabinets themselves. I still need to make some more shelves to fill in half of the cabinets, but that will have to wait for another day. 
My thought was that I'll make a stores room in the room next to the workshop, (where the big metal lathe is placed), then I can keep the workshop as a workshop instead of a combined store/shop. The big glass doors and a bunch of shelves also makes it easy to find different types of screws etc.

Dry assembly.

Test assembly upright.

Hinges ready for marking up

My inventory cabinets

Part of my inventory of old screws.