The wedding coffee table I am building is coming along nicely so far. I’ve almost finished the top and have build the main frame which includes the legs and aprons. So far, this has all gone quite smoothly.

Tapered leg

Table frame

This weekend however I had to venture into unknown territory – bending. Having not done this before I was faced with quite a nervous and stressful weekend ahead. The first order of business was getting together as many clamps as I could. I bought out an entire box of 15 clamps from the local Bunnings and a few large boards of cheap chipboard.

Once I was back home, I started to build the “form.” A form is simply a piece of wood which is cut to the shape you need the final bend to match. Kind of like a mould, but for wood instead of chocolate! This took the better part of a day to complete.

Creating the curve

With the form done, I moved to cutting up a heap of strips of Silky Oak. I made these around 3mm each. Still solid enough but thin enough to bend without cracking. With the most stressful part coming up next, I took a little break before diving into it. Because I only had a few minutes to work before the glue dried, I had to have anything at the ready.

Everything ready at arms length

15 clamps to hold it into place

After 24 hours in the mould, I hesitantly took off all the clamps. The result? Perfect! It still needs some cleaning up and sanding, but the curve holds really well and it surprisingly quite solid.

Bending results

I’ve just gotten my first official woodworking commission! Alright, it’s through a friend of mine but the eventual owner of the piece is someone I have never met so I guess that counts! The commission is for a coffee table to be given as a wedding gift. A reasonably safe/traditional design but with some elements of difference to make it stand out. I started sketching out some designs last night so here is where things are at so far …

The top will be made using some of the MCG English Elm I acquired. When finished, it displays quite a nice rich brown/gold colour. Inlaid into the top will be a strip of Silky Oak. This should pick up on the lighter golden colours in the Elm and add an interesting feature to draw your attention to.

Table top

Looking on from the side … I’m thinking of beveling the ends of the top to lighten the feel of the piece. The top will be supported by two solid blocks of English Elm similar to what I’ve done with another table. I will taper the legs down to the bottom again to lighten them and will also cooper them (curve) towards the centre. Two stretchers of Silky Oak will sit near the bottom along the longer sides of the table.

Side view

The two stretchers will be held “in tension” in the middle giving the whole piece some nice curves. I’m already wondering how many pieces of timber I will snap getting this right! Not sure what timber I’ll use to hold these stretchers together yet or the join that I will use to attach them to the legs. Those details will eventually show themselves once I start.

Stretchers in tension

It looks like a Valentine’s weekend full of milling wood for me!

A few weeks ago I wrote about the auction where I purchased some old English Elm. I’ve now had a chance to work with some of it and I can happily say that it’s really nice wood to work with.

Many of the slabs unfortunately weren’t dried properly so they have some splits and checking on the surface. This means that it’s difficult to find wide pieces to work with or pieces for finer wood working. For the stuff that I intend to make however, it’s still damned fine enough!

Long English Elm Bench

Over the last month I’ve been busy putting together my first piece from this stack. A long bench. It was also my first commission (unpaid, requested by my wife, but I think it still counts!) You can see my progress here on Flickr. I apologise for the poor picture quality. I should have my real camera back in a week so should be able to take some better quality pictures from here on.

It was also a new experience in finishing. I’ve been using Shellac mostly but this time I went with polyurethane instead. The final concoction was:

1. Sanding sealer (1 part dewaxed white shellac : 5 parts methylated spirits)
2. 4 coats of Minwax wipe-on Polyurethane
3. 1 coat of Ubeaut EEE (a kind of cut & polish)
4. 1 coat of Wax

I absolutely love the end result. It’s durable and shows off a lot of the grain features in the piece. Definitely a process I will use again.

Next on my list is (in no particular order):

• A few smaller benches from the English Elm
• Coffee table from the English Elm
• Coffee table (Huon Pine & Blackbutt)
• Coffee table (Sassafras)
• And I’ll try my hand at a few small boxes

English Elm at an Auction

A few weeks ago I participated in my first timber auction. I came back with two large trunks of an English Elm tree. This wasn’t just any ordinary tree either …

These trees were cut down from outside the MCG in 2001 to make way for the new stand they were building. Instead of turning these old trees into woodchips for mulch (which is what was going to happen), a few thoughtfull “woodies” arrange to take the trees, slab them and dry them over a few years before selling them to fellow woodies. I think this is a great result for trees that were otherwise destined for woodchips.

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