• 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!

Post a photo of the last thing you made...

This morning I made a rather diminutive little hammer:

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My travel toolchest is rather full with not much space for extra stuff to be added. The only persuading stick I have in the kit is a soft-faced mallet. The mallet is really nice for hitting chisels with, but occasionally it can be useful to tweak a plane setting with a metal-headed hammer (and the mallet is a bit big to be much use regardless of the head material). I'll be taking a bag of clamps with me, so the easy option would have been to just bung a hammer in with the clamps, but I thought it would be fun to make a small adjustment hammer. It doesn't need to be very heavy duty as it'll only be used for tweaking plane blade positions.

It's made from stainless steel with some sort of brass on one end and some sort of plastic on the other. All the material came out of a skip so I can't be completely sure what any of it is. The head is 16 mm diameter; the handle is 10 mm diameter. Given its intended use, there was no real point adding different jaws (rather than just using a cylinder of steel), but I thought it would be fun to add a bit of bling!

The handle is offset from the centre of the head so that it sits on the centre of gravity (which is obviously offset as a result of the plastic being lighter than the brass).

The handle is screwed into the head such that it can be easily removed in order to store it in one of the free pockets in the tool chest:

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Not visible in the photos is a small (4 mm AF) hexagonal hole that I rotary broached in the bottom of the handle. I added that just in case I over tighten it by hand and struggle to get it apart: an Allen key (which sits in one of the pockets you can see next to the hammer) will help me get it apart if needed.
 
I've just finished a pair of end grain cutting boards. one of which will be a wedding present and the other we'll keep. The one on the left is maple, black walnut, American cherry and sycamore, and in the one on the right the maple is swapped out for sycamore. It was just a case of using what I already had in the woodpile! I used this Youtube video as my plan so not much point in doing a WIP
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RogerM said:
I've just finished a pair of end grain cutting boards. one of which will be a wedding present and the other we'll keep. The one on the left is maple, black walnut, American cherry and sycamore, and in the one on the right the maple is swapped out for sycamore. It was just a case of using what I already had in the woodpile! I used this Youtube video as my plan so not much point in doing a WIP
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They look fantastic! To receive one as a wedding present must be wondeful, you must be very proud of them I know I would be.
 
No they are strips glued in when I glued up the boards for the base, so they go all the way through the base.
 
You’ve got that inlay put in perfectly, makes my offering look very shabby indeed!
Simple ply box to house all my Spindle blocks, cutters and Groover spacers.
The knob turns the latch which tightens up as it turns, might put a small fillet of wood with P strip on it for the door to close onto to keep any moisture out.
Ian
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Robert,

Lovely board.

Did you make the cross board inlay yourself (not the edge banding)?
 
Stuart said:
Is it as simple as a sandwhich approach or something more complex? Interested in copying if I’m honest!
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It is Stuart. I just use 18 mm strips of coloured veneer which are glued and clamped between two matching cauls.

The tricky bit is then cutting the inlay lines. A fine tooth blade and close fitting insert on the bandsaw is essential.

Before making each cut I clean one edge up with a sharp block plane and this goes against the bandsaw fence. The second face is cleaned up once fitted with a scraper.

I hope that makes sense!
 
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It's made of American black walnut with mitred (at the bottom) dovetails and the same simple hinge I've used on all the other ones. I've now made three with "TEA" carved into the top (all American black walnut), one with "KEEMUN" carved into the top (made of cherry) and one with "EARL GREY" carved into the top (ABW again). The Earl Grey one (of which I can't find any photos at the mo) was a present for my parents, the Keemun one is (predictably enough) for Keemun, which is what I mostly drink (weak and black). The bigger one of the existing "TEA" ones holds English breakfast tea, the smaller one has different things in depending on what we trying at the time (currently Darjeeling). The new one will also hold Keemun tea but is for me to take into work.

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With that done, I had a fun little session using my little home-made block plane to make a load of shavings out of maple, walnut and cherry so that I could take an arty photo of it, which I'm going to get printed on a mug as it'll be a bit more interesting than the one I have at work at the mo:

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I do not usually get the opportunity to bake, I guess I taught and encouraged the kids too well.
Needs must as the missus had committed to make something typically British to take to work for one of their international themed days. Not having enough time to make a trifle and then not having enough time to bake a cake she delegated.
Mrs Beeton’s birthday fruit cake is under home made royal icing and shop bought marzipan.
We decided the rough and ready look to the icing rather than glass smooth was more suitable;). I just hope the icing hardens off overnight.

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Shop-bought marzipan! Whatever were you thinking? ;) :ROFLMAO:
 
I beg your forgiveness M’lud.

Time was not on my side. Due to circumstances beyond my control I was faced with baking, marzipaning and icing a cake on all on the same day. My book, Mrs Beeton, recommends letting the marzipan dry out for a day or two before icing or the icing will discolour. I had no time to source ingredients everything was already in the cupboard .

Cake was very well received with enough left over for me to sample. Pleasantly surprised that marzipan stayed stuck to the cake and icing to marzipan as I had no apricot jam but used marmalade (homemade) instead.

I will not be entering Bake-Off any time soon.
 
Marmalade. MARMALADE! Repent, sinner.

Joking aside, almost any rich fruit cake is a good cake. My wife just said the ultimate oxymoron......"I've made far too much christmas cake mixture", so we have a christmas cake, a spare fruit cake, and two big christmas cakes for overseas family-in-laws, who think it's the weirdest thing on earth that the English make a cake 2 months before it's eaten. At least, they thought it was weird until they tried it! The Spanish, believe it or not, hardly use dried fruit at all. Until a few years ago it was nearly impossible to buy sultanas etc over there, and it's still impossible to buy mixed peel. Heathens!
 
I really LOVE fruitcake. Especially when liberally laced with cherries as well as sultanas and raisins. Inexplicably my otherwise quite nice wife hates it. She also hates marzipan. Obviously I love marzipan and it is super easy to make. We're catering an 80th birthday party shortly and the gentleman of honour has requested a rich fruit cake, with marzipan and icing, but not looking like a Christmas cake. The cake itself is already made and is being fed regularly at the moment. I made a small one for me and one for offspring.
 
AJB Temple said:
I really LOVE fruitcake.
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I recollect as a nipper my long dead mum making a tolerable weekly fruit cake, the centre of which was 'acceptable'. However the exterior surfaces were encased in thick belt armour; only the ill fated Triptz possessed anything remotely similar. As little'ns we were 'encouraged' to consume all the cake put in front of us but the crust was something that man (my dad) beast (the cats) or us simply couldn't swallow, literally.

On the very, very few occasions that I've done any sort of a tuity fruity cake I found that copious, folded copies of The Sunday Times wrapped around the tin and multiple layers of said newsprint above and below produce a cake where every single crumb can be consumed with relish. My top tip for extra yumminess is to lob a whole packet of chopped walnuts into the mix. I used to take one into Ax on my birthday and there was nothing left after the tea break....and Axminster used to float on the stuff - Rob
 
Woodbloke said:
My top tip for extra yumminess is to lob a whole packet of chopped walnuts into the mix. I used to take one into Ax on my birthday and there was nothing left after the tea break....and Axminster used to float on the stuff - Rob
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Walnuts. OMG. Eat a tiny bit, realise my mistake and head for nearest hospital, with epipen sticking out of me ☠️

This is why I don't eat fruit cake that I have not personally baked.
Many people love them and I get that, but scary for me and anyone with me.

This is why I don't understand parents with kids with serious nut allergies buying stuff from the likes of Pret.

Sorry. I digress.
 
Back when I was in charge of such things fruit cake would have included glace cherries and liberally laced with whisky daily for a week at least. There is probably a 50-50 split between the locals here as to the merits of fruit cake. I did add cinnamon and nutmeg and allspice to mine which was liked.
Dried fruit available here but expensive and not the selection, we stock up in the UK.
 
AndyP said:
Back when I was in charge of such things fruit cake would have included glace cherries and liberally laced with whisky daily for a week at least. There is probably a 50-50 split between the locals here as to the merits of fruit cake. I did add cinnamon and nutmeg and allspice to mine which was liked.
Dried fruit available here but expensive and not the selection, we stock up in the UK.
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Whisky? Interesting. I've never had anything other than brandy in fruit cake.
 
AJB Temple said:
Walnuts. OMG. Eat a tiny bit, realise my mistake and head for nearest hospital, with epipen sticking out of me ☠️

No1 son's partner is heavy pregnant with No1 grandson and for the last few months has been eating peanut butter on toast for brekky...

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...so that he won't develop an allergic reaction to nuts. As she's Canadian she's been weaned on the stuff; personally I can't abide it. AndyP, if you'd care to look on the wall directly above Emma's bonce, you might recognise a familiar and autographed picture 😁 - Rob
 
I am told by my older sisters, that when I was little and they, under our mum's supervision, would make the Saturday fruit cake, that I would sneak in and open the oven door allowing the middle of the cake to sink into gooey loveliness that I was the only one who would eat it. :)
 
I don't eat much cake being diabetic and so never really developed my home cake making skills but I do like the Aldi Fruit loaf and Irish whisky cakes as a naughty treat, with or without butter and a lump of strong cheese, these cakes are the dog's danglies - loads of fruit too unlike many shop cakes.
 
Wife bakes a fruit loaf 'bread', very easy and simple, couple of times during the year. Safari Fruit Mix.
I also get a date loaf, the last lot eaten with coffee this morning.
Xmas sees a very large square fruit cake, or 2, or 3 :cool:. Gets cut into blocks, wrapped in tin foil and then stored in bottom of fridge.
No brandy, as she cannot handle alcohol. When we were first married (nearly 50 yrs) I found out where the brandy was hidden away. She was not impressed.
 
Well, as it happens we also have a new fruit loaf (bara brith), made from the excess of fruit soaked for the christmas cakes. It is subtly different from a fruit cake, and another favourite in the household.
 
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