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.

Stitching horse

I have started doing a bit more leatherwork lately, and once in a while it would be nice to have some decent work holding for hand sewing.
Some years ago I made a clamp that you could hold between your legs, and while it worked, I never really liked to use it. 

So to get back into the woodworking mode and actually start using my tools and my shop again after a long period of essentially not doing any woodwork, I have started making a stitching horse. I found a plan for a really nice traditionally looking stitching horse in a pdf file of a book called "Farm woodwork". There are a bunch of nice projects in the book, some more useful than others, but an interesting little book nevertheless.

Gustav has been practising milling with the mulesaw, and he milled an old beech trunk, that I had left on the saw almost two years ago, and never gotten around to milling. Beech if not milled will very quickly develop black streaks inside a trunk. I don't mind it since it ads a bit of visual interest to an otherwise fairly boring looking wood (in my opinion). Anyway, one of those boards that were milled wasn't even in thickness along its length, and I decided to use it to make the seat of the stitching horse. 
I marked up the wood according to the plans, and sawed the curvaceous shape out on the bandsaw. A slanting mortise was chopped and I drilled 4 holes for the legs. 

The legs were made from some ash that I had milled several years ago and never found a use for. I'll turn a round tenon on the ends of the legs that will go through the seat. But this was about as far as I got today.

Double pear shape

Seat and legs + stretchers

Making a Roorkee chair with Laura

Two years ago Laura started making a Roorkee chair in the workshop.
She hasn't lived at home all the time, so getting the chair completed has taken a little more time than originally planned.

Before going back to sea this time, I asked her if we shouldn't try to make it a goal to complete the chair so she could bring it with her as she was moving to go to university.

She agreed and we found all the parts from the chair.
We were pleasantly surprised to find out that she had completed the turnings of the legs, so the only woodwork left was to turn the stretchers, drill some holes and make some tenons and finally do a little bit of work on the back pieces and round over the top of the legs.

The wood used were some scraps of whitebeam that I had left, and while it isn't a particularly beautiful species with elegant grain, it sure is the most sturdy species I know of. So there should be very little chance of the stretchers breaking on this chair.
Laura liked that the wood was so uniformly white and pale, so when we started talking about what leather to use, she decided on the plastic coated candy apple red leather that I once got from my dad.
It is originally from clogs production, so that is why the plastic coating is on it.

Her thoughts about the contrasting leather is that very often in kindergarten, chairs would have a contrasting seat or leg etc. to create some visual interest for the children, and she thought that it would be fun to make the chair stand out a bit more compared to using veg tan leather for the straps etc.

I didn't have enough of the red leather to make a seat and a back from it, but she wanted those parts to be made out of canvas anyway, so the leather was only going to be straps and armrests.

We helped each other with the seat and back, and I instructed Laura in how to do the riveting which was needed for mounting all the buckles to the straps.
In very short time she became really good at it, and the for each piece that was completed, the chair looked more and more like it should.

Once it was all assembled Laura was thrilled, and the chair looked just like she had imagined.
Again I was amazed at how great a project it is to make a Roorkee. It is really difficult to mess it up, and even small irregularities won't be noticed when it is assembled.
She proudly brought the chair with her to Aarhus where she is going to be studying. And since she also brought one of her campaign book cases, it looks right at home in her room!

Laura's Roorkee chair.

Have chair - will travel

Riveting indoor.

And then we moved into the shop..

to keep the noise out of the living room.

Making a project in the shop with Laura

A couple of months ago Laura and I got into talking about woodworking. She surprised me by saying that she would have liked to learn how to make something while in school.

I had to tell her that she was actually quite good, because I remembered that her sundial was very well made and nicely finished. 

I could also tell her that she had made a bird on the lathe at home, and that she had helped making leather belts for her friends and herself.

Nevertheless, she expressed the interest of making a project in the shop if it was possible.

She acknowledged the fact that no one had ever been prevented from going to the shop at home, but she just felt that now she actually would like to do it, so if I had any suggestions to what she could make, she would like to do just that.

Now this isn't something that happens everyday!

An 18 year old high school senior girl expressing a genuine interest for building something.

It didn't fit into the schedule last time I was home, so I hope that we can do it next time I am home.

My criteria for the build was that it had to be something that we could do in a weekends time. I will take care of the stock preparation ahead of time - to ensure a steady workflow.

I made a list of possible projects that she could make, and I mailed the list to her.

1. Dutch tool chest
2. Shaker hanging cabinet
3. Roorkhee chair in canvas
4. Moser inspired deacons bench
5. Six board chest
6. Peg board
7. Roubo campaign stool

These are the same links that I sent her, just so she could get an idea of what I was suggesting.
Brian Eve suggested the six board chest.
It dawned on me that even though I have built a Roorkhee, I only have a semi hidden picture of it on my blog, but Brian has several Roorkhees, so I just linked to one on his blog instead.

After looking at the list for a couple of days, she has decided that she would like to make a Roorkhee chair.
I think it will be a great project to do together, no intricate and complicated joinery, and it is a project that is highly usable.

The only problem is that there's still some time before I go home again, but I am already looking forward to that project.

Since she has turned 18 I was in doubt whether or not it would be OK for me to label this post as "Childrens projects", but I take the chance.

Laura displaying a belt that she made.

Laura and our first dog "Børste"

Campaign bed, frame saw style

At some point I got inspired to build a campaign bed.
I trawled the Net for inspiration, and ended up finding this bed.

The original looks as it is made out of beech, which is a traditional furniture wood over her, but as usual I wanted to make it out of larch. Because it is what I have.

I have never seen one of those beds in real life, but based on that the overall dimensions are 80" x 32" that were described, I thought that I could come up with something that looked similar, and besides the most important thing for me was to test out the frame saw system.

The two main dowels are 1 7/8" thick. I made them by octagonalizing some long pieces and then planed them round. They aren't 100% perfect round, but they are fairly close.

The legs were drilled with a 1 7/8" hole and ripped apart. After that the legs were mounted in the lathe and turned down to give a sleek appearance. Instead of rounding the top, I chose to saw a diamond shape.
Finally I marked out and drilled the stopped holes for the short dowels.

The two short dowels are 5/4" in diameter and I made those on the lathe. I made them overly long, to be able to trim the length afterwards.

I found my old roll of canvas, and borrowed Mettes sewing machine.
It is a regular household sewing machine, so I was a bit curious if it would be able to sew in this thick fabric, but it worked admirably.

Assembling the bed was pretty straight forward, though I had to shorten the two short dowels even more than I anticipated. Right now they could still be shortened with perhaps 1/4", but I choose to wait to see, if perhaps the canvas will stretch a bit over time. They are not perfectly plumb, but splay a bit (I guess 1/2"). But I think it is preferable to the legs pointing inwards.

Thoughts on the build:
Planing a long round dowel takes a bit of practice. I could feel that the second dowel was easier than the first one, but that is hardly a surprise.

My drill press is not very good when it comes to handling large Forstner drills. It lacks power, and it flexes a bit, causing the hole to not be 90 degrees.
It isn't a deal breaker, but I think that I could probably have made a hole just as accurate by hand.

Once assembled, the bed will flex a bit when you sit on it - kind of like a Roorkhee chair.
If the rope is twisted tightly, the bed is surprisingly comfortable. I tested the bed myself, and I it held up just perfectly.

The original bed might have the legs a bit closer to one another, which would stiffen up the whole thing, so I might do that if I make another one at some point.
Mette likes the bed so much that it has been placed in the living room, which is a sure way to determine that the project has been a success.

Campaign bed frame saw style.

Larch stretcher dowels before planing.

Crappy light, but notice the romantic roses!

Load testing the bed.

Holding system.

Danish rocking chair with rocker bracket.

Our oldest son Gustav took some pictures of our rocking chair, and sent me the pictures. That helps a lot in explaining how a rocker using the IPA rocker spring looks.

I don't know who has made the rocker itself, but I know that Mettes grandmother made the upholstery. So I guess that once you could buy those rockers and finish them yourself.
There are a lot of similar old rockers for sale in Denmark, so maybe a company produced them, or you could make one yourself using a set of drawings.
I have seen a little variation in how the legs are attached to the lower platform, but apart from that they all sport a lot of bulbous turnings everywhere.

I would like to make a newer version of this chair, without all those decorative turnings. My chair should also have a curved lower platform, where the platform ant the actual rockers were mirror images of one another. The back should sort of flow from the rockers instead of being planted like it is on the old chairs. The armrests should also be a bit more integral

A fine thing about this idea is that the rocking motion won't mar the floor and the rockers can be kept fairly short, so the chair don't take up that much space.
The chair is comfortable to sit in, so it is just the design I don't completely agree with.

Danish type rocker, matching stool next to the door.

Fancy turnings.

The fabled IPA rocker spring.

Complete under carriage, with 2 springs.

Titanic deck chair

For once I have made a project which does not involve pallet wood. And furthermore isn't it a box of any kind.

My wife has wished for a deck chair for a couple of years, but I haven't found the time to build her one until now.

The plans for this chair can be found at Popular Woodworking, they were issued in 2012, 100 years after the sinking of the RMS Titanic.

I made my chair out of elm which originally comes from trees belonging to my neighbor. They were among the first boards that I ever milled, so they have air dried for some 8 or 9 years now.

The construction of the chair went along OK, but with a few screw ups along the way, some were my own fault, and some were due to the cut list and plans.
It is not a quick project, but that should come as no surprise with 43 individual parts, of which 26 of them have to be shaped on the band saw.

As a finish I applied two coats of oil based marine varnish.

Since I will sign on the ship tomorrow, I won't be home for Christmas this year. I have therefore already given the chair to my wife, so now it is OK to blog about it, even though it is a present.
That is also the reason why I didn't blog about the build itself.

Titanic deck chair made of elm.