• 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!

Mike builds a teardrop (doors, cedar strips, ironmongery)

I had no idea he designed furniture too. Having now educated myself I can safely so that no I do not like his furniture designs, far too fussy.

Are the teardrop interiors going to be Gaudi inspired then?
 
I like Antoni Gaudi's designs. He dared to be different and make a mark. We went to an exhibition in Barcelona of his chair designs and a few other items. They had exact repros of the chairs that you could sit in and some of the shaped wooden chairs were extremely comfortable. Ergonomically well thought out. The originals were very well made.
 
We visited nearly every one of his building, viewed outside and inside if possible.
Not our style, but very impressive.
We skipped the inside of the cathedral - queue of about a 1,000 bloody tourists ;) trying to get in.
 
Phil said:
We skipped the inside of the cathedral - queue of about a 1,000 bloody tourists ;) trying to get in.
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That's a shame Phil as it's weird but impressive.
It was a long time ago for us so the queue wasn't too bad and we climbed one of the looooong winding staircases as well. The views are something to remember as well.
 
Right, now where was I?

Ah yes. Building a kitchen. Obviously you start with a couple of hollow core sapele doors from Facebook Marketplace:

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....and you make a little tray with a hole in it:

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You then put some battens in the galley area, and cut the door down to suit. This involves clearing back the internal stuff from the 2 cut edges, and inserting some carefully sized trim pieces to edge the door/ worktop:

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Then you go off and build a dining table.

With the workshop just about unuseable due to the drying varnish of the table, I fiddled about in the garage with scraps of ply, and off cuts of pine, to make the centre panel:

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The horizontal pieces are there to take the ends of screws from drawer sliders on the other side. There's only one on this side:

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This is what that sliding tray is for:

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Without access to the workshop, I'm a bit limited as to what I can do for the next few days. I have drawers to make, and a face-frame and cupboard doors to do too.

The hole in the tray is just below the drain-off bung in the bottom of the fridge.
 
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I thought I might do the cabinetry next. And, on a whim, I thought I might do it in sapele. I ripped up some stock and thickness-planed it to 18mm:

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I then started squaring up one of the edges, but, I don't know, it didn't quite go right. It must be the plane:

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That'll have to do. I ran a 6mm groove in the back, but because the edge wasn't quite dead straight, I had to use a straight-edge as a guide:

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I took it out to the teardrop to check it fits (it sits on the overhanging lip of the ply shelf of the upper kitchen cupboards):

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No-one will notice.

I had to clean up an end. Planing end-grain sapele is an absolute joy:

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I had to glue some bits back on in an effort to straighten things up a bit:

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In hindsight, maybe trying to rip it straight with a coping saw wasn't the best idea:

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I best try it for fit again:

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That'll do for the bottom member of the face frame. The top is a bit more awkward, because it meets a curved ceiling. My pet octopus was otherwise engaged, so I hot-melt glued some scrap to hold the top piece in place:

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Note the additional bit of extra sapele glued in place. I will get this thing straight!!

Anyway, now that I have my pattern secured, it was back to the warmth of the workshop, and the fitting of the verticals (stiles and muntins [are they muntins?]):

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That'll have to do, roughly. I marked the shoulders with a knife, chiselled out to the line, and cut some shoulders:

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I'm just half-lapping this set of joints, as the back won't be seen.

The first set of temporary braces were in the way, so I glued on another set before removing the first:

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I could then flip everything over and work on the back of the frame, starting with marking around the tenons for their housing joints:

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I then chopped out the housings:

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........and glued everything up:

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Note the tempoary cross-pieces bulging up. This is because both knife marks were inside the rails, and this meant the stiles were short by two knife kerfs. Ho hum:

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Let's see if I can do a bit better next time, hey?
 
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De-clamping was a pleasant experience, as the joints were all spot on. I roughed off some of the waste with my second-most-rarely used tool:

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Then took it out for a trial fit:

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....and with flash:

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Blimey, it took forever to clean up, and included an outing for my most rarely used tool, a B&D Power File:

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Everything, including the edges and the tight curves, was finished with a cabinet scraper, which is just such a brilliant tool on sapele:

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I told you the joints turned out well:

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This next trial fit was just for the camera:

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Right, best get on with the doors. They'll just be standard stile and rail panelled doors. I thought I'd start with one of the muntins for the big door in the middle. Thre's a lot of hot-melt glue being used on this job:

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I had to keep the mortice and tenons back from the edge of the final shape so that they aren't exposed when everything is cut to final size:

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Good enough. Let's glue that up:

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The following day I marked up the shoulders, and cut them in the usual way, but with an unusual variation for me in that I sawed the tenon faces with a handsaw (I usually chisel them, or, if the shoulders are square, might do them on the bandsaw. Somehow, some of these shoulders had just slipped a gnats off square):

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The mortices were chopped out with a 1/4" pig-sticker, and it all went quite nicely:

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Having learnt my lesson with the enormous amount of clean-up on the face-frame, I decided to use Forstner bits for the quivalent junction on the doors. This typically meant hot-melt-gluing in a bit of scrap to located the centre-point:

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That probably saved me half an hour per junction:

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Oops. Those rails look slightly out of parallel. No-one will notice. Let's move on to the stiles. These will be joined at the corners with bridle joints, so, as always, carefully mark out and cut the soulders. This time I used a bandsaw for the tenon faces:

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Do you think I'll get away with this?
 
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I roughed out the final shape, and this is a dry fit:

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It doesn't yet fit in the hole. There's hours with a spokeshave, sandpaper, rolling pin, snooker-cue-off-cut, and scraper to come. It then gets complicated, because the final shaping etc all has to be done to a dry-fit. I'll explain as I do it.

I made a start on the other doors as well:

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Blimey.

I can't imagine having the confidence to try something like that.

Coincidentally, I've been using my Black & Decker Powerfile today as well.
 
So much work just to pay homage to that Goudi chap.
And I bet sapele dust will not help with a cold.

Get well soon .
 
AndyP said:
.......And I bet sapele dust will not help with a cold.

Get well soon .
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Thanks. If only.

They had to fetch help at the doctors, because someone heard me in the toilet throwing up. And for some reason no-one has been able to explain, they found I was hypo-thermic, despite the house (and the car) being toastie warm. I'm still the same now.

Sapele dust doesn't bother me at all, luckily. You all know that I have no extraction system.
 
Sounds terrid Mike. Hope you recover in time for 1st January. Must start the NY well. Best wishes to you and L. A&S.
 
Phil said:
We skipped the inside of the cathedral - queue of about a 1,000 bloody tourists ;) trying to get in.
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And all are taking effing bloody pointless selfies. We’ve stopped going out because you can no longer actually enjoy looking at the exhibits because of the mindless cretins taking selfies.
 
I am glad you are feeling better, but maybe take it easy for a few days to fully recover.
 
Sorry to hear Mike, maybe a little R&R before you resume?
Missed this latest contribution, crikey you’ve been busy, funky stuff too! But I think it’s exactly what that space and project need, mind you nobody is going to even notice it because they will be spellbound by the outer shell of this travelling art piece, the word starburst comes to mind, can’t wait to see it.
 
Heres hoping you’re on the mend Mike.
I am in awe of your wood working skills, all looking very good.
 
I was enjoying going through your thread Mike... all those funky shapes and joints and the doing a Google for 'muntins'? - until I came across your post about being ill at the docs and then the ambulance one 😳. Then to see you say your feeling a bit better at the moment 🤞. Try to take it a bit easy for a couple of days.

Muntins is correct 😉. Looking towards your thread on boat building later in the year 😎
 
I'm a lot better today, chaps, and thanks very much for the well wishes. I've just had half an hour tidying, and sorting out a chisel, but that's my workshop time for the day done. Hopefully I'll get some food inside me later on and will start to get my strength back.
 
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Mike G said:
I'm a lot better today, chaps, and thanks very much for the well wishes. I've just had half an hour tidying, and sorting out a chisel, but that's my workshop time for the day done. Hopefully I'll get some food inside me later on and will start to get my strength back.
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That sounds a bit more promising Mike.
 
Mike G said:
I'm a lot better today, chaps, and thanks very much for the well wishes. I've just had half an hour tidying, and sorting out a chisel, but that's my workshop time for the day done. Hopefully I'll get some food inside me later on and will start to get my strength back.
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Take it easy....

You think your back to strength nut half an hour in the workshop and you feel it.

I had a trip to a+e too, infection in my hand and arm on Saturday ooh GP appointment and antibiotics prescribed. (Mild flu like symptoms and redness tracking up my arm)

Nice day yesterday thought I might walk to hebden bridge for lunch and back got 3 miles in and though stuff this! Turned round and walked home!
 
I hope the cause of the feint can be satisfactorily explained, must have been scary for the family too.
Glad to hear you’re on the mend.
 
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