Wood-fired!

Spring workshop renovations

January 3rd, 2009

Well I started drafting this post in late Spring. It is mid-summer now. So much for spontaneity in posting! Still the cleanup was actually done in spring.

I need to revive my lathe. After an initial honeymoon with my wood lathe some 20 years ago it has sat neglected in the corner of my workshop. As I mostly make contemporary furniture, the lathe is only useful for creating cylindrical elements and for years I have been making these by hand-planing and sanding. Now I need some shaped cylindrical elements so the lathe must arise.

For the last 18 months the lathe has been used to support a stack of blackwood and figured eucalypt. In fact that whole corner of the workshop had become a bit of a dumping ground. Fortunately I didn’t photograph it before the cleanup!

The spring clean turned up a few interesting items.

This is the safety guard for my Wadkin saw. I don’t use it because I find it safer to have a clear view of the blade¹. What’s impressive to me is the size and solidity of the components of these old machines. This guard weighs almost 5kg even with some aluminium parts! I should have put a scale in the photo but the guard is about 150mm (6″) high. The arm that supports it is 1.5m long and so has to be pretty hefty itself - it’s a steel rod about 40mm in diameter and damned heavy. I don’t know if the guard has its the original paint job but anyone who loves old Wadkin machines will find the logo as ’stimulating’ as I do. The guard is sitting on the sliding table of the saw which itself weighs over 1000kg. You can see the dark but shiny patina that has developed on the milled steel surface over its 50+ years.


As an aside - this is the rip fence for the saw. As you can see, the fence slides longitudinally on a dovetail and tilts to 45°. The position mechanism is a delight to use. You slide the fence to roughly the right location and lock it using the cam lever at the back. Micro-adjustments can then be made by turning the knob at the extreme right. The final location is then locked with the cam lever at the front. The inset scale is highly accurate. You can confidently rely on it for at least .25mm accuracy - probably better.

This box has been sitting on a shelf behind the lathe for some time. It held a few parts for my trimmer router and some other tools. The box deserves, and is now getting, a little more respect. It represents my first serious attempt at dovetails.

Back in 1990 I was considering getting some formal training in woodwork. I was looking around the world for somewhere to study (including Krenov’s College of the Redwoods) and found that one of the best teachers in the world - George Ingham - was teaching right here in Canberra. I dipped my toe in the water by enrolling for a week-long summer school to make a dovetailed box. The course was run by George and his partner Pru Shaw. This is the box that I produced.

It’s quite a simple, even austere, box. The wood is plantation mahogany from Fiji. The top and bottom are MDF². Many of the other students were perturbed that we were using a man-made board for the main surface of a box that took so much effort and care to make. But the choice made perfect sense to George. Much of new furniture design especially in the 20^thC has been driven by the arrival of new materials or technologies - think about steam-bending technology, plywood, lamination, plastics. In his own work George strove to get people to consider MDF for its own merits rather than just as a stable substrate for flashy veneers. Nevertheless some students insisted on a traditional look and veneered the lid.

My eyes were opened to a whole new level of excellence during this workshop. In addition to acquiring some skills I got a glimpse of what one could strive for and an insight into the importance of systematic approaches to the processes of woodwork.

I now have this box close to my handwork bench and use it to store my more delicate components such as fine brass hardware and supplies of mother-of-pearl. It holds a place in my workshop more in keeping with its role in my development as a woodworker.

And now the result. Shelves were erected to store some of my more valuable sticks of wood. The lathe is usable again and I have some table space for saw accessories.