• 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. Dr.Al

    Old Glue - an experiment

    I'm going to be taking my travel tool chest for a little jaunt in the fairly near future and I've started thinking about which sort of glue to take with me. Most of the glue I have is rather old and I thought it would be quite interesting try to compare their efficacy. I've seen quite a few...
  2. Dr.Al

    A groovy little two-day project

    I've just finished this simple project but I thought I'd post it in three instalments just to spread it out a bit. About five years ago, I made a set of grooving planes based on an idea from Matthew Kenney in a book on woodworking with hand tools. I use the four planes fairly often as they're...
  3. Dr.Al

    Rain

    There's water falling from the sky! Does anyone know what this strange phenomenon is? Should I be worried? 🤣
  4. Dr.Al

    Mark

    No, not you @TrimTheKing, why do you always think it's about you? 😜 I've decided to make some marking knives. I only need one of them (arguably I don't need any of them!) but making a few means I've got more room for mistakes and if all goes well I can also give one to my other half to use for...
  5. Dr.Al

    Domi-not

    For those who aren't aware, Festool's main Domino patent expired a month or so ago. That probably means that there will be lots of Domino clones on the market in the near future (Kreg have announced one already). At the moment, the idea of a Domino machine doesn't really appeal to me: I'd...
  6. Dr.Al

    Global Temper

    I've had this Global kitchen knife for about 30 years, although my other half uses it far more than me as I generally prefer something bigger. After using it this evening, she put it down (quite gently she assures me 🥸 ) on the kitchen work surface and this happened: That's the sort of thing...
  7. Dr.Al

    Miserden Sculpture Trail

    We had a very pleasant afternoon out wandering around the Miserden gardens and looking at all the sculptures. A few of my favourites (mostly by Graham Hawkins, who's works I've posted here before): This one (called "Flat Out") was made with the engine from an old chainsaw that I gave him...
  8. Dr.Al

    Mumbles

    It's quite amazing what a mobile phone camera can do these days. With my phone held in my right hand, I managed to get this shot of a (captive-bred, obviously) Indian Eagle Owl just about to land on my left hand: (the owl's called "Mumbles" in case you were wondering about the thread title)...
  9. Dr.Al

    A small project with a difficult joint

    Although I've started the bedside table project, I haven't got very far with it yet. The legs have been planed on two sides and are sitting "in stick" (with some weights on top to try to keep them flat) and I'd like to leave them like that for a little while before finishing planing. It's far...
  10. Dr.Al

    Terminology - Two countries, separated by a common language

    A thread on another platform got me thinking a little about differing terminology and I thought it might be interesting to collate a bit of a look-up table of differing terminology. What follows is off the top of my head and I'm sure I've missed a few and probably got some wrong so I'd welcome...
  11. Dr.Al

    Breast Drill Renovation

    Last weekend I was in Lyme Regis. No visit to that part of the world is complete without a trip to the second-hand tool store that forms part of Dolphin Antiques in Beer. I was relatively restrained (by my standards). I came away with a slightly shabby breast drill and a few countersink bits...
  12. Dr.Al

    Bedside Table

    I think I've chosen my next project: it's time to make a new bedside table. For most of the 20 years I've lived in this house, I had a pine three-drawer chest that I inherited from my parents and used as a bedside table. It was quite deep and didn't leave much of a gap between the corner of...
  13. Dr.Al

    Ornate Portuguese Bench Plane

    Seen at the Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology in Lisbon (which is mostly an excellent museum showing the insides of an old power station, along with a load of weird and not-very-nice modern art, but which also had a carpentry exhibit.
  14. Dr.Al

    Like the ocean under the moon

    This is a project I've wanted to have a go at for a while. I think there's a fairly high chance it'll end up going through several iterations as I discover all the design problems but I think the journey will be interesting nevertheless. I'm going to make myself a bench plane. I don't really...
  15. Dr.Al

    Clamp of Theseus

    Earlier in the week, I came home to a large package, sent to me (apropos of nothing) from a very generous member of the MIG welding forum. He used to be a cabinetmaker but doesn't think he'll have a use for them any more and would rather they go to someone who would get some use out of them...
  16. Dr.Al

    Router Plane Modifications

    These jobs have been on my list for a while, ever since @rxh did the same sort of thing. At the time of making this, I couldn't find his post (thanks AndyT) for reference, so I just worked out my own way of doing it. Looking back now, he left the original casting unmodified, but I went with an...
  17. Dr.Al

    Very short WIP - a simple clock

    If you've come to this thread expecting something like a Clickspring Skeleton Clock, you'll be sorely disappointed :ROFLMAO: This is going to be a very short (two-part!) build write-up as there really wasn't much to it and I made my life a bit easier by using power tools for some jobs. In our...
  18. Dr.Al

    Reaching the limit of diameter

    After all the experimentation with the duplicator, I wanted to get back to more conventional turning for a little bit longer before I hang the lathe from the ceiling again. I recently bought a couple of big bowl blanks. One of them is destined to be a new fruit bowl and is big, both in...
  19. Dr.Al

    I really didn't expect that to work...

    This was an experiment, mostly to work out ergonomics and dimensions before designing something suitable for machining from lots of bits of aluminium. However, I think I won't bother with the aluminium now. The experiment started with two left-over bits of walnut (from when I made a lot of...
  20. Dr.Al

    Persuading Stick

    If I had to pick the tools that I enjoy using the most, it would be a dead heat between five: the metalworking lathe, my home-made block plane, a Stanley #4, a Veritas router plane and the humble chisel (probably the curvaceous Ashley Iles 12 mm dovetail chisel if I had to pick one). If I had...
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