• Hi all and welcome to TheWoodHaven2 brought into the 21st Century, kicking and screaming! We all have Alasdair to thank for the vast bulk of the heavy lifting to get us here, no more so than me because he's taken away a huge burden of responsibility from my shoulders and brought us to this new shiny home, with all your previous content (hopefully) still intact! Please peruse and feed back. There is still plenty to do, like changing the colour scheme, adding the banner graphic, tweaking the odd setting here and there so I have added a new thread in the 'Technical Issues, Bugs and Feature Requests' forum for you to add any issues you find, any missing settings or just anything you'd like to see added/removed from the feature set that Xenforo offers. We will get to everything over the coming weeks so please be patient, but add anything at all to the thread I mention above and we promise to get to them over the next few days/weeks/months. In the meantime, please enjoy!

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  1. Mike G

    Mike builds a teardrop (hatch detail)

    They go here, Ian: That's the easy bit. Next up comes the side pieces. First, I made a pattern out of ply and hot glue: Note the little blocks so that I could put it back in the same position. I braced it, because it needed carrying 40 or 50 metres to the workshop, and it's fragile...
  2. Mike G

    Mike builds a teardrop (hatch detail)

    That meant belt sander across the grain, then with the grain, then torture boards: Then on a nice dry warm day (ideal for epoxy work), I put 3 or 4 coats on the hatch, and a couple on the teardrop: Unfortunately, the farmer decided that afternoon was a good day to plough up the dusty dry...
  3. Mike G

    Mike builds a teardrop (hatch detail)

    It's been a while. To be honest, I've been a bit fed up with this thing, which seems to be taking forever, so I had a few days off. There are going to be 3 or 4 updates to bring us up to the present. This evenings post is about stuff I did 2 or 3 weeks ago now. I started by tackling the rear...
  4. Mike G

    Do we learn from past mistakes?

    Others will comment on the table saw accident, no doubt. Sorry to hear of the pain....... Yes, of course we learn. But what we tend to learn is less about avoiding the cock-ups altogether, and more about how to fix things when they go wrong. It's fundamental to hand-tool woodworking to mark a...
  5. Mike G

    Making a Rob Cosman kerf extender

    I cut the end off an old bone-handled table knife. I've since come to the conclusion that any form of this technique is too brutal, and liable to cause more damage than it's worth, so I stick with chopping with a bevel-edged chisel.
  6. Mike G

    Big problems ebonising.

    Well, it'll be buried underneath 4 or 5 coats of epoxy resin, and 3 or 4 coats of a two-part UV-blocking varnish. If it misbehaves under that lot I'll be surprised, and somewhat stymied.
  7. Mike G

    Corner or Angle brace.

    Which Andy will get here first? :)
  8. Mike G

    Well, that day didn't go to plan.

    Yep. I'm very used to doing what the physio tells me, and the boring repetition of exercise. If you don't do the exercises, don't expect good results!
  9. Mike G

    Well, that day didn't go to plan.

    Very good, Andy.
  10. Mike G

    Well, that day didn't go to plan.

    I've been riding my bike for about 10 days now, and that's going well. My legs are weak just from not cycling for so long, but I have no issues at all with my achilles. I've just got back from seeing the physio, who said I can now start going out on my bike...:) She also got me running in the...
  11. Mike G

    Joint Practice

    It depends on the size. If it's a massive thing in a green oak beam, then an undersized hole. If It's small and set up to a chisel-width, then chop out with a chisel (actually, I'm perfectly happy to use any old bench chisel, and seldom use a mortice chisel). I can't recall ever drilling out...
  12. Mike G

    Joint Practice

    I've done hundreds of bridles, and they are definitely the most difficult of the standard joints. If I were setting a woodworking test for someone, it would be to make a bridle joint. And yeah, those dovetailed-all-round scarf joints are fun, aren't they. The first time I saw one I puzzled over...
  13. Mike G

    Clamps

    I have nothing good at all to say about those one handed bar clamps. I loathe them with a passion. If you want a decent one handed clamp, these things are superb (and they can be had for £5 or £6 if you keep your eyes open):
  14. Mike G

    Hardest part of hand planing for me is planing edge square to face. Tips?

    Check your planes for square, first. Many of them aren't!
  15. Mike G

    Hardest part of hand planing for me is planing edge square to face. Tips?

    You've been told the basic technique by enough people above for me not to repeat that. The thing I would emphasise, though, is to slow down. I mean, really slow. I've just been doing it for an hour or so and if anyone were watching they'd think I was being unnecessarily pedestrian. Well, so bit...
  16. Mike G

    Marmite

    I don't doubt you're right, Gill, but I'm struggling to work out how you add Marmite to mushrooms and walnuts.
  17. Mike G

    Favourite / Least Favourite Native & Imported Woods

    How far down the food chain do you want to go, Al? I mean, rubber wood, or eucalyptus, or some of the stuff from foreign pallets.......? No-one makes anything much with them, but they'd be far worse than bubinga or padauk to work with. My favourite imported wood would be teak.
  18. Mike G

    Big problems ebonising.

    Right, I've cracked it. The mauve colour was a product of a reddy-brown layer on top of the black. A light rub and brush was enough to remove a reasonable amount of the stuff. I assume it is rust, and presumably from the broken-down steel wool. The way to prevent it accruing in the first place...
  19. Mike G

    Cereal shovel...

    Yep, I got some maths wrong. 187,000 tons is approx 9700 cubic metres.....or approaching 4 swimming pools-worth.
  20. Mike G

    Cereal shovel...

    I asked one AI thingamejig "how much gold has been mined in the history of the world in cubic metres" and was told 20 (cu.m). I knew this to be wrong, but I clicked on the "more information" button, and was told 900 cu.m . AI isn't that intelligent if it can't even spot that it has given...
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