I finally finished up the magazine rack I wrote about earlier. Here it is in production …

I’m quite happy with the end result. It’s a simple, clean design with a few nice elements. I’m also very happy with the way my first dovetails turned out. This is in fact a “sliding dovetail” (I think). You can see them in action in the feet of the stand.

To finish the piece, I began by sanding it with my beautiful Festool RO 150. <gush>There’s something to be said for great tools. Whether hand tools of electric, a well machined tool is a truly a pleasure to use. This sander is smooth and comfortable and does an incredible job at any speed and grit.</gush>

Now that I have that out of my system … I sanded to 320 grit. I have been using a bit of Shellac lately so I thought I’d apply it to this job as well. In the past I’ve found that it can give too orangy a finish for my likening so I thinned it out making a 50/50 mix of Methylated Spirits and my Shellac mixture. Applying three coats of this gave me a really nice solid finish which still showed off the wood grain.

The finish touch was a very thin coating of wax. I haven’t worked with this before but after my initial experience, I really like the end result. Reading all the tips on it’s application, I took care to only apply a very thin layer of it. Now, the piece is nice and smooth, not sticky in any way and the wood grain shines beautifully as it sits on our loungeroom floor.

Another project done!

After a few weeks getting our house in order, I’ve finally been able to spend some quality time with my tools.

I’m making a very simple magazine rack. My hope is that it will hold my New Scientist and American Mind magazines, but I fear it will end up stuffed with Marie Claire and New Idea instead.

After planning the project and measurements, I began by cutting the pieces that will form the “walls” of the rack. The Festool power tool system came into great effect and use here. In the picture below I have a piece of Tasmanian Oak ready to be cut to length. The Festool TS-55 saw, guide rail and the combination angle make this really easy. The thing I love about it is that you don’t need to worry about drawing your cut line perfectly square. The combination angle attaches to the guide rail. One arm of it sits along the length of the timber keeping it at the your desired angle. Then the saw glides along the rail ensuring your cut is at the perfect angle.

Next came the tricky bit, dovetails. I’m using a dovetail joint to attach the bottom rails to the walls. I haven’t done work like this before so I put my trust again into the Festool system. I also built a little jig to help me keep the joints uniform and repeatable.

Unfortunately, my first results were terrible. I might as well have bashed the hole out with a hammer it was that bad. Perhaps it was my lack of skill, or the fact that I was going about it all wrong. I know you can produce excellent dovetails with the Festool system and a dovetail jig, but I didn’t have the jig and was also a little impatient.

The main issue was the huge tearout the router caused on the right end of the dovetail. I thought about it and realised that as the router bit reached the right hand side, the clockwise rotation of the bit pushed out the wood fibres and caused them to split.

My solution was go back to hand tools. Something I’m not very practiced with yet but am looking to do more of. With a tenon saw, I cut the ends of the dovetail first at exactly the right angle. I then placed the piece into the jig and used the router to clear out the hole. This had significantly better results and gave me a really nice clean edge and flat bottom. It became very clear to me that power tools, although faster, are certainly not always the best tool for the job.

Quite revolutionary for me. Beautiful weather this weekend so I spent it outdoors starting yet another project. This time however, I finished it!

Whilst the Huon Pine coffee table is still a work in progress, I whipped up a nice little outdoor bench out of some smaller pieces of Huon I just happened to have laying about. I wanted to make sure it didn’t have any nail marks so had to resort to using dowel joins.

I am not particularly good at the dowel join thing but I think the end result is still pretty good. I just wouldn’t sit on it!  :-)

In an effort to “get back in touch with nature” I’ve begun my next project. It’s a coffee table. Not just any boring old square coffee table, but one made from Huon Pine and with no electrical assistance.

We bought the block on our trip to Tasmania earlier this year and it has since been sitting in the garage. Last weekend I gave it a good rough sand and clean-up. In doing so, I quickly discovered I had a lot to learn about manually working with wood. A belt sander and electric plane would have done the trick easily, but I wanted a challenge.

Wasn’t that a stupid idea! There are a few marks from the original saw which will take some time to work out as well as some rough edges which I want to keep (but tame somewhat). I bought myself a hand plane and started using it yesterday. It is a lot harder work than I expected but am actually enjoying it.Not much progress to date, but I’ll endeavour to do some work on it each weekend.