My wife and I sat down a few weeks ago to list the outstanding jobs around here, and to put them into some sort of priority order. Surprisingly, this little job was quite close to the top of the list:
I got out my only remaining full boards of oak, and worked out which I could allocate to this job, and which I needed for a door:
Sometimes the boards are so discoloured/ stained that you have to plane a bit away to find the sapwood. One or two needed a little flattening anyway, so I got out my new favourite plane, courtesy of AndyT, and did a little cleaning up:
It was worn out from it's original job, so I had converted it into a scrub plane a while back:
The cleaning up and flattening process enabled me to choose which board would be allocated to which job. The one for this cooker hood, after further flattening to remove some wind, went through the planer thicknesser, in classic hybrid hand & power tool manner. I only needed one good face, but cleaned up the back enough to make laying out joints pretty easy. I decided to do London pattern dovetails for the corners. I've never cut them in anger before, and frankly, I regret doing them this time:
After de-clamping and cleaning up, I used the same bead cutter as I'd used on the piers to put a bead on the lower edge. This involved hot-gluing a temporary supporting shelf in place to stop the router tipping. I used the router rather than a scratch-stock because of the endgrain at the corners:
The soffit of the hood was MDF and softwood. It's shown here sitting in the groove I ran into the back of the oak fascia:
Even crappy softwood like this can be properly jointed:
With the aid of a couple of bits of 2x2 screwed to the uprights, I was able to do my first trial fit:
Next, I moved onto the brackets. These will support the whole structure, so need to be pretty strong. I made some backing plates of 4x1, with rough-as-old-boots no-marking dovetails:
I did the glue up indoors, and screwed them temporarily in place so that they would sit at exactly the correct angle when dry:
No workshop is complete without a stash of old ceral packets. It took me lots of attempts before I was happy with the shape of the brackets:
I found some old bits of 4x2 and 6x2 framing timber which had been stored indoors for a few years:
After a bit of planing, I did a 6-piece lamination:
My new bandsaw is a thing of wonder and beauty. It sliced through this like a hot knife through butter:
The re-sawing is not something I would have attempted with my old one, but it was a breeze. After a bit of shaping, mainly with a sander, I put a bead on each edge of the brackets. Here's one done, and one not done, to show the difference that makes:
Here they are glued and screwed in situ, and with a broom handle let into their inner faces:
Next, I moved onto the cornice. I didn't have enough seasoned boards , so I pulled out a left-over piece of 4x4 from my porch build of 4 years ago (I think). It had been sitting outside under cover, and was measuring 14%, so I thought it might be a gamble worth taking. Circular saw from both sides, then planes, then planer, then bandsaw:
Incidentally, the joy of being able to tilt the bandsaw table in seconds, safe in the knowledge that it would go back precisely to where it had been before, was indescribable!
The cornice is in 3 parts, centred on a piece of coving. Without spindle moulder, but possessing a hollowing plane, I took the following approach to making the coving, in this order:
I found it quite hard to see where I might have left tool marks or scratches, but a quick wipe with white spirit revealed all:
The other two parts of the cornice were straightforward mouldings on the router table, using a round-over cutter:
Mitres! God, I hate mitres. I don't know if I've ever mentioned that. Especially large mitres, which are bigger than any mitre box I've got. I did this this in classic offer-up-and-adjust fashion: hand sawing to lines, then planing, then more planing. That's all well and good for 3 of the 4 faces, but the final face you have to arrive at the correct angle at the same time as you arrive at precisely the right length. Like I said, they're the work of the devil.......
That's them glued up.
I used my standard wiping varnish mix (1:1:1 Osmo: satin oil-based varnish: white spirit), and built up 4 coats in 4 days:
I got a bit slack with my photo taking for the remainder, but it was only softwood and MDF, a bit of painting, and the fitting of a shelf inside the cornice, flush with the top.
Here's the job all-but finished. I need to fit a knob on the brackets opposite the pole ends as a sort of finial:
I'm not overjoyed by the vent:
So one day I'll probably make something in wood in its place. There is a recirculating extractor mounted in the soffit, which filters smells and grease out of the air. Our house ventilation system then deals with the remnants, including water vapour.