• 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...

Very nice Alasdair. How thick is it? I guess a lot less sanding is required after the CnC than after, for example, the scrollsaw.
 
AndyP said:
Very nice Alasdair. How thick is it? I guess a lot less sanding is required after the CnC than after, for example, the scrollsaw.
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Thanks Andy - about 20m thick - the cnc I have (Carvera Air) will happily do 50mm plus (you have to allow for the height of the milling bit etc.) but this is probably my happy place for this purpose - I am not aiming to do bowls - I have a lathe...

There is still sanding - but that is a learning curve - the main sanding is that you can have frizzy bits around the top / bottom surface edges, depending on whether you use an up-cut / down-cut / compression bit - often these just rub off, or a quick few seconds on the belt sander (always on 240g in my workshop) and they are generally gone... the sides tend to be almost polished in comparison to the scroll saw.

It is though still a learning curve - you can set it to do an end routine after a first exercise in roughing out material - so that you get rid of the bulk quickly and then do a fine polishing around with a different bit afterwards... lots of options exist.
 
AndyP said:
Strictly speaking not the last thing I ever made but seeing Alasdair’s whale reminded me of a jigsaw I made quite a few years back.
View attachment 36535
Cut on the scroll saw from a single beech board with a ply back. Painted with colron wood dyes, Excuse the dust.
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really like that - and a good example of how precise a scroll saw can be in expert hands. There are in my view three ways of doing this (I have all three and play with them):
- Scroll saw - takes longer, is manual, so less identically repeatable / more prone to mistakes; but gives a very fine kerf or cut line - allowing for a close fit of the final pieces... will cut quite deep pieces - pretty cheap bit of kit / no extraction or fire risk!
- Laser - computer controlled, so very repeatable / narrow kerf so good tight fitting puzzles, but it is difficult to avoid burn marks esp. on the edges. Come in a variety of types and power, so range in price from cheapish to expensive. Cheap ones are mainly for engraving - the more expensive can cut wood, mine is 20W diode - it can cut up to about 10mm of oak. I have done a number of puzzles with my laser, but the burn marks do spoil the end result a bit.
- CNC - very clean finish / very repeatable / sits there and gets on with the making... however, the kerf is huge - so to cut out e.g. the whale above, or the pieces below, there i a c. 3mm cutter going round the outside of the drawn piece to cut it out - so you would have a minimum gap between pieces which is quite obvious. This can be negated by moving the pieces apart and then effectively you could run around the outisde of each and get absolute precision.


The swan above did this latter approach and the pices fitted together perfectly - the image below I think there is a problem with the 3rd party files as it was not a perfect fit until after a lot of sanding...

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How about wire EDM for the ultimate fit?!

ezgif.com-optimize-3.gif


The equipment is probably out of the price range of your average home workshop though!

GIF stolen from here: https://wackycompany.com/product/electrical-discharge-machining-edm-puzzle-pieces/
 
Had a play with nesting animals that were exactly the same - when cut it is too tight a fit - played around and a shrinking of both pieces by 0.4mm works well… it gives the equivalent of a kerf - less than you would get if you used the 3mm mill to cut the two apart, so a tight but comfortable fit…
IMG_9634.jpeg
 
The ladles start an a thick branch with smaller one coming out, so you cut the main one above and below the side branch to get your blank.

Pete
 
I hollow spoons with a crook knife as the bowls are shallow.

I have been doing some serious pruning to the trees in my garden so have some wood I can use.

Pete
 
Pete, all the carved spoons I've seen seem to be big serving spoons or ladles, or decorative hang-on-the-wall type things. What would you say are the chances of making working soup spoons?
 
Mike G said:
Pete, all the carved spoons I've seen seem to be big serving spoons or ladles, or decorative hang-on-the-wall type things. What would you say are the chances of making working soup spoons?
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I have made loads of small spoons, it’s a good place to start, if you slip with and cut the edge of the bowl you haven’t wasted to much time and wood.

Here is one I made between a normal spoon and a teaspoon.

https://flic.kr/p/2rEDH6k

Pete
 
Mike G said:
Right, so after I've made the table, I'll have to carve a set of soup spoons, and some soup bowls...... Our guests will think they're back in the 15th century!
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As I was the other day, wooden cutlery on a Boeing 777, quite incongruous.
Not nicely carved a la Pete though I imagine the spoons and forks are steamed to shape from thin stuff and the knives are stamped, they worked just fine though.
 
A very complex framing job involving a spirit measure and recipe card, which involved positioning both items at two different heights within the frame. Made in Bubinga with Bog Oak splines and UV resistant, non-reflective glass. A few 'in progress' pics and a couple of the finished frame:

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Finished with a single coat of Odie's Oil and Odie's Butter - Rob
 
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You do like a challenge, don't you Rob?
Does the recipient have to break the glass if they suddenly experience an emergency-level thirst?;)
 
AndyT said:
You do like a challenge, don't you Rob?
Does the recipient have to break the glass if they suddenly experience an emergency-level thirst?;)
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Probably the most awkward thing(s) I've ever had to frame. The story's fairly convoluted but to cut it sideways, the items were a memento of Emma's (my son's partner) dad's best mate Jerry in Victoria BC, who sadly died very unexpectedly this summer just gone. Years ago, whenever Emma was at home in Victoria, she used to slide next door to see Jerry and glug several hisl margaritas on the veranda; when he died she was left the spirit measure and the recipe card....and did I want a job to frame them, pretty please? - Rob
 
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Today, after hanging the wood lathe back up, I went from this...

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via a bit of this...

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to this...

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It needs painting (which my other half has volunteered to do, so that's a massive result: I detest painting) and then a wooden top putting on it. Oh, and some 3D-printed plastic feet on the bottom to cover up the steel edges.

Yes, I probably could have made it completely from wood with lots of lovely M&T joints, but it's needed relatively quickly and this only took me a couple of hours.
 
AndyP said:
Is this something for the workshop or garden?
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Neither - for the dining room (which is currently mainly used as my working-from-home office).

It's going to be painted black and then have a wooden top put on top of it. All being well, it'll look something like this:

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I've just bought a new 3D printer and it's quite a bit taller than my current one. If I put it where the current one sits (on top of a low-ish chest), it'll block quite a bit of the window. Instead it's going to sit on that low table.

The top is going to be cut out of a table-top I found in an antique shop in Gloucester a year or two ago.
 
Alasdair said:
Who remembers this?

Thought I would post an update as life came along and (as life does) hit Bernard a kick that no one was expecting. On his 83rd birthday Bernard was diagnosed with acute liver failure (for a man who doesn't drink he was shocked) on top of this he was also diagnosed with a tumour in his brain. He is now on medication to make life easier and is responding well but he never did get around to sorting out the brass plaque for his shell casing. This was something which was causing him great anxiety, I had a chat with him about what he wanted and after a bit of back and forth we came up with some wording. This was the proof from the engravers.

View attachment 35863

With Bernard happy with the wording i went ahead and ordered the plaque. it arrived last week and I fitted it on Saturday.

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All that remains now is to get it to Hereford. Bernard has said that he would love to make one more trip but also knows that he isn't fit. He said that death is coming but he is not scared as he has kicked death in the balls to many times, its his turn now. My son is a Royal Marine Commando and has said that he would be honoured to deliver it so we are hoping to get it to Hereford before Brenard faces his last battle.
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As a little update on this project sadly Bernard passed away peacefully last Wednesday without hearing back from Hereford. I had also written to the regiment and last Thursday I got a reply just too late to let Bernard know that they would be honoured to accept his presentation of a memorial to his friend and comrade Talaiasi Labalaba. Bernard is being laid to rest next Wednesday and following on we will organise with his family to take the shell he carried back to his regiment.
 
Christmas present for my Dad.

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He makes model boats (mostly sailing yachts) and ran out of space in his garage workshop so, in October, I helped him put up a shed to put the boats in. The sign is for the shed.

I hadn't done any carving for a couple of years so it was good to give it another go.
 
NickM said:
Christmas present for my Dad.

View attachment 37044

He makes model boats (mostly sailing yachts) and ran out of space in his garage workshop so, in October, I helped him put up a shed to put the boats in. The sign is for the shed.

I hadn't done any carving for a couple of years so it was good to give it another go.
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Let's see the boats!

Marbleheads?
IOM??
 
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