I have been doing stuff I promise

I have been doing some woodworking. I have been teaching some people some basic stuff about woodworking, how to construct a loom and even teaching my daughters how to do sawing with a hand saw.

The reason I have waited so long to post is because the big project I was working on was a christmas gift and I wanted to make sure the recipient didn't know his present was on it's way. I made a chess set! yup a real chess set but not only a chess set but what I am told is a royal chess set.

now the difference is that the board is 10x10 instead of 8x8. the back row has 2 extra pieces in it, the Champion and the Cardinal.

here are the individual pieces:

The Queen

The King

The Knight

The Bishop

The Rook

 The Pawns

 The Champion (this was supposed to look like a dragon but turned out more like a chicken)

The Cardinal

 and a look at the set from the other side.

I had a chance to play a game with the extra pieces and it was pretty fun. I just can't bring myself to look at my lathe for a while now lol.

Another Giveaway

Well rob is offering another cool giveaway over at the Concorde Carpenter

Go here to check it out.

Thanks again Rob for the opportunity to win cool stuff!

so to sum up...

Ok to make a short story shorter, I thought I had been more active in woodworking. I guess I failed in that I only had one more project that I did to catch me up.

I made some looms for some nice ladies up north. From all accounts I have heard they are enjoying them even with some little flaws that came through the final product. I bought a planer to dimension the lumber needed to make the looms. I have to say I am pleased with the planer ( Dewalt DW735) right out of the box it worked great with no snipe or anything noticeable as far as finish goes. Here is what I made with it:

Thats a pretty good sized pile o' wood shavings lol. This pile was about a foot tall 2 feet wide and about 4-5 feet long. But geez it was fun hehehe. So after making all this I made the looms:

The last picture is of a couple of shuttles I included with the looms. Happy weaving ladies.....

Two posts in as many days....

Honestly I need to get a backlog of posts done so I can move on to new stuff in the shop. I promised myself I wouldn't start any new projects till I am caught up on my blogging.

So after the disaster with the bowls I made some ball and cup games as well as some baby rattles. The ball and cups are made from maple and cedar respectively. I turned the cups on the lathe while I bought the balls from Michael's (I know I should have turned those too but I was on a time crunch.) The string is held in pre drilled holes and wedged tightly with a toothpick and some carpenter's glue.

After those were done I made some baby rattles from maple. it is a nice clean design using captured rings. there is no glue to worry about or toxic chemicals either.

Stay tuned.... I will be posting again tomorrow.

I'm Back!

Been a while Since I last posted. Here is what I have been working on.

Bowls: I bought some exotic hardwoods (Woodcraft) to try my hand at bowl making and managed to screw them up. The marblewood bowl shattered while I was turning the inside of the bowl. The fruitwood I was careless and turned through the bottom of the bowl.

So catastrophic fail on the bowls.

I will post more tomorrow....promise

So I go out to buy this wood, it is all select pine, there is a 1x10x4', 2 1x3x6', and 2 1x4x3'.

First step I glued up the 1x3's and when the glue cured I scraped away the glue. Next I jointed the sides of the boards to get them flush (there was some movement when I clamped the glue-up.

I then cut the 1x3's and 1x10's in half.

Next I lay out the mortices in the feet and legs of the loom (1x10, 2x3)

I clean out most of the mortices with a forstner bit then clean out the rest with a chisel and fine tune the fit with a file.

ok so I forgot about taking pictures for a few steps but ultimately I made these locking tenons on the stretcher (piece between the feet) and the brace (piece between the legs). I made all these cuts at the band saw. The brace is held in place with our good friend gravity. The stretcher is locked in place by the legs as you will see later.

I started using my vice to shave the legs with my draw knife but decided it would be much faster and more controlled on the shaving horse.I finished up the rounding with some sandpaper. I really meant to use card scrapers here but I found out that my scrapers need sharpening and I was on a bit of a deadline to get the loom done.

Last thing I did was to ease all the sharp corners with the router and a round over bit. Here are all the peices finished.

The brace slides into the mortice and slides down to lock the legs in place. The stretcher inserts into the feet up to the shoulders.

The legs then slide onto the bottom assembly and locks everything in place.

VOILA! an Oseberg Loom for my Lady.

Here is the loom in use. this is going to be the start of a sheet of fabric. My Lady spun,dyed and wove the trim running from leg to leg and is inserting threads that will hang down from a larger loom to be woven into fabric.

There you have it. Hopefully I will get a little better at documenting my builds as time goes on. I also know I promised this post sooner but I just could not find the time to sit down and post everything.

Until next time.
Bear

Win a Milescraft #1223 Router Kit Guide

The Concord Carpenter is offering up a prize, or rather Milescraft is via Concord Carpenter. check it out here:
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/AConcordCarpenterComments/~3/FEq062YXJew/3-days-left-to-enter-to-win-router-kit.html

here is one of the parts to the kit, Router not included. 

So go to his site and enter to win., BTW I will be posting later today about the Oseberg loom I made recently.

In honour of Safety week...

I went out and bought some push blocks/sticks. this is a big leap for me as I usually would just grab whatever items were at hand to do the tasks I needed while keeping my fingers. In the past I have had some close calls using some of these improvisions. I have had push sticks explode(only so many saw kerfs will support a workpiece), had slim sticks fall through the inserts in the saw etc.

So here's to Safety Week, Cheers!

well this isn't quite going as planned...

So I have done next to nothing in my shop over the past couple weeks. My busy schedule and weird hours have kept me from woodworking. This week seems will be no different. so in the meantime I thought I would post some pics of some older stuff I have done.

Here are some mugs I made for a friend. She requsted them for a co-worker who had some "special" mugs broken in a move. From what I understand The lady always sat down on a particular day with her 2 kids and had some iced tea. After these mugs were delivered, I was told the lady in question burst into tears at the sentiment and marveled at the work and hand carving that went around the mugs. The mugs were made from maple and cherry. There was a square cherry core, wrapped in maple then wrapped in cherry again. These blanks were cut into octagonal blocks and then turned on my old cheapie mastercraft lathe. I then carved the names "lisa","cole",and "bernie" as well as some knotwork into the mug with a chip carving knife. So if I can't do more woodworking I will plan on posting something I have done or something about woodworking.

So I figured I would start a wish list of things to build. in no particular order here is what is in the plans to be built.

• Solar oven in a chest
• mastermyr drinks cooler
• help Yukio with slat beds
• help Yukio with japanese house
• build "cheap" glastonbury chairs for the front porch
• build bench found in swedish church

ok so this entry doesn't have much to do with buildingperiod furniture but it deals with a couple improvements to the shop.

1. I put up a couple more lights to brighten the place up
2. built a wood storage rack to store my wood and keep it up off the floor

Now I have to go through the garage and the basement and get the wood loaded and sorted....

here we go.....

So I have decided to venture out into this world of blogging. I think I will start this out as a trial on all the woodworking stuff I am doing. I was following the podcasts of Marc and Matt on "woodtalkonline" and have watched numerous posdcasts by both of these gentlemen as well. so here goes:

The premise of doing this blog is to try to document some of the things I will make that have to deal with "Period" stuff. I am a reenactor and enjoy things particular to Norse life and culture. I have made a bed that my wonderful wife and I use not only as our every day bed, but it knocks down and we use it as our camp bed as well. I have made the frame for my A-frame tent, complete with carvings on the uprights. I have made, cups, picture frames, chests, chairs, fibre arts tools for combing, spinning, and weaving wool.

So here will be the further adventures into my period woodworking.....