Wood-fired!

The Wood - Part 2 of the Wedding Present

July 11th, 2007

This is part 2 of a series of articles based on the construction of The Wedding Present. If you are interested in the whole project start here.

Sourcing the timber

I’ve always shied away from overtly sexy timbers in favour of letting the form and detailing define the object, but this piece warranted an extravagant and even ostentatious wood. I hunted about for some fiddleback blackwood and eventually found a supplier in Tasmania who had 6 wide sticks of well-figured blackwood. The magic of the internet allowed me to see the pieces before purchase. After a long sea journey the pieces arrived and were brilliant.

Flitches: The six boards stacked as they were sawn. They are about 600mm long and 400-500mm wide.

Fiddleback figure: One of the boards as it arrived showing very strong figure even before it was surfaced.

Breaking up the timber

Much time was consumed working out the best way to break up the figured blackwood. I took the time to create a cardboard template for each piece and this proved an enormous help. The template was designed to show the required shape as negative space, ie the template was a cut so that the internal space represented the piece I needed - this way I could see the exact final effect of the grain and figure.

Negative space template: Shows the exact size of piece required and lets you see the grain as you move the template.

There is a contradiction to be resolved here. You can’t just joint or sand the whole surface because of the bends, cups and winds in such a large and cranky stick. You need to isolate the piece you want in order to reduce these effects and get the maximum thickness from the stick. The dialectic at work here though is that you can’t really see the figure until you’ve finished the surface a little. Some hand planing on the convex side can help but the drum sander is far better at giving you a peek at the grain without taking too much material away.

Figure revealed: Fiddleback figure revealed in a blackwood piece straight off the plane.

The two long sides of the box were done the old-fashioned way using hand plane and judicious progressive cuts. When I came to the material for the short sides this proved very difficult and I eventually gave in and bought a drum sander. Above is an example of the figure that is revealed by hand planing.

Part 1 The present
Part 3 The dovetails
Part 4 The lid

Entry Filed under: Wood