Tudor Reformation

[Timbo]

So Day One of the new build has drawn to an end and some progress has been made...sort of. I started the day off with my usual walk through the woods. What is it with people not keeping their dogs under control? To be honest I don't care if your dog just wants to be friendly or 'just wants to play' if it's impeding my progress, tripping me up or attacking my dogs it's a damned nuisance. As for the 'he's only barking because your dogs are on leads' garbage then your dog has a problem which you need to correct rapidly! With back pain and gob ache, I was not at my best this morning. I did discover just how fast someone can get a lead on their dog and remove it when you take The Boy's off their leads and tell them to 'eat the Jack Russel'.

Back at home I did a few chores, loaded the car and set off for Lincoln. Along Tillbridge Lane, the Roman Road that runs from Marton to the Lincolnshire Show Ground, I encountered a woman driving a Range Rover. Although 'driving' intimates a degree of control and skill was involved. It was obvious the Range Rover was in four wheel drive and the lady driver had no idea as to the dimensions of the vehicle as she straddled the white line even in the face of on-coming lorries and tractors. The other side of Stow the road widened and I was able to slip past the Range Rover at a blistering 35 mph. Checking my mirrors to pull back in after over taking I could not see the Range Rover anywhere. Twisting in my seat I spotted it sat in my blind spot doing it's best to overtake me, in turn, and had increased speed to 50mph, now driving with two wheels on the verge on the wrong side of the road. I wasn't in the mood to play silly b*****s today so I dabbed my throttle and left the idiot behind me.

Eventually, I arrived at Ben Gunn's  and we immediately...had a cup of tea. I say 'tea'. Ben Gunn may be a master of many skills but his cup of tea shared almost as many commonalities to the hot beverage as Brutalism does to fine architecture. After unloading the car, lumber and my jointer on this trip, we got straight onto jointing the large section of lumber I got from Tim Collins. This wood was going to make the two wider stiles that overlapped on the two centre doors. Eventually, we managed to get two flat faces at ninety degrees to each other. But I was pushing the limits on having enough thickness remaining to get two boards from the lumber.

We now moved onto planing all of our lumber to the right dimensions. With all of the lumber at 18mm thick I still needed to surface the two wider boards BUT, I decided I would do this after I had cut the tongue and groove as they were really getting a smidge too thin. With the planer and jointer now packed away, we cut the stiles to length on the table saw, the off cuts will be going to make the top and bottom rails.

Nanny arrived home at this point and put the kettle on...phew! Over a sandwich, I was having real problems with my mouth where I'd had the op on Friday. As the afternoon wore on the pain grew steadily worse.

So after lunch we moved onto setting up to cut the grooves in our lumber. This is where I got 'all confused' and Ben Gunn saved the day. To get the 6mm wide groove that I needed I would have to run the lumber through the table saw in one direction. Take the lumber out, flip it, and run it through again. Only, I was still getting a 7mm groove on the test pieces. Ben Gunn then spotted I was adjusting the fence in the wrong direction. For some reason I'd got it into my head that I needed to make the gap between fence and blade narrower instead of wider to make the groove slimmer. I still can't get my head around it! All to soon it was time to call it a day as I had to pick Ellie up from work. No grooves cut as yet, but we have the table saw locked down. I'm sorry I have no photographs as I forgot my phone and my camera.

The drive home through the evening traffic was a little hectic. By now my mouth and face were throbbing. A moment of light relief as I spotted the Range Rover from the morning no longer straddling the centre white line but a ditch instead. By the time I'd arrived in town to collect Ellie my face was on fire. Straight home, greeted the boys and let them into the yard while I poured a Jack. Before I'd taken a sip my phone alerted me to a text message. My daughter in law had cut the windows using the C in C machine and they were sat waiting for me to pick up. £6.25 each. Bargain!

With my head on fire, I finally got that sip of Jack and then took the boys for a walk. Appointment with the surgeon tomorrow as Ellie suspects I've developed an infection in my jaw. Marvellous! Still, I'm happy with the progress we've made!

[Timbo]

Day two of the build got under way to the smell of raffia knickers and sweaty flip flops on the radio as the Zan Izaal Army vied for supremacy of the air waves with platoons of electric car owners. I half expected Lord Paul to pop up somewhere. After several hours of reporting someone finally asked the question I was waiting for.

Apparently, in the Mitsubishi electric car it takes forty minutes to charge sufficiently to travel thirty miles at a cost of 75p per mile. So my house to Norfolk would cost £106.20. I would have to charge my car twice and on a fast charger that would be four hours each charge. My total journey time there and back again would be would then be twenty-four hours at a total cost of £112.40. Friends of the Flip Flop and various government can kickers do tell me that a lot can happen in twenty years...odd, as it appears we are still in the same mess we were in between 1979 and 1990 but with crap music! 

Anyway, back in the temporary workshop, I started work on cutting the grooves in the new stiles. One major problem with the Bosch Table Saw is that it has a non-magnetic table and the mitre slots are too narrow to take standard featherboards. Consequently, the grooves were incredibly difficult to cut. My left hand cramping badly after the first cut.

Eventually, I managed to get all of the grooves cut.

And I have the perspex ready to fit into them. I now moved on to cutting the rails. We decided to try and cut these in series to keep my fingers away from the blade. Ben Gunn proffering advice on measurements. The test pieces seemed fine, however, we soon ran into difficulties. I'm going to have to start all over again tomorrow as the tenons are just too sloppy in the grooves...

[ExSurveyor]

Tim,  I enjoy your social commentary as much as you joinery exploits.

[Timbo]

There are four laws that govern my work habits. These are encased in adamantine and therefore non-negotiable or breakable. Any attempt to break these laws result in a reduction in the amount of work done or the job grinding to a complete halt. The laws are as follows.

1. There will be frequent cigarette breaks
2. There will be frequent tea breaks
3. The amount of s*** expands to fill the space available.
4. Never trust a dog with a curly tail and/or ginger eyebrows

Day three of the build saw Ellie and granddaughter Gracie come across to Lincoln with me. We picked Gracie up this morning and she had not had a lot of sleep the night before due to a sleep over with her cousin.
"I'm very mardy Timbo, stop singing, but could you just sing the Tigger song?"
For Gracie, now a big five, to want me to sing the Tigger song she must have been feeling out of sorts. So I dutifully commenced singing.'Oooooohhhhh therrrrrrrrrrrrr wonderful thing about Tiggers is Tiggers is wonderful things!'. By the time we reached Lincoln Gracie was fast asleep. She was transferred to a bed at Nanny and Granddad's and stayed asleep all afternoon!

While Ellie and Gracie kept Nanny and Ben Gunn occupied I slinked outside and started work cutting the top and bottom rails. I decided I would cut new rails and cut each one by hand. Fiddly. Very fiddly! My fingers very close to the saw blade I cut the tenons and made frequent stops for a cigarette break. In fact, as is my usual want, the roll up was glued to my bottom lip.

Oh now stop it! None of this anti-smoking rigmarole, I can't be doing with it. I used to be one of your healthy, athletic types. I had fourteen big strokes and three heart attacks over three years. So I took up smoking and drinking and I've only had five small strokes in the last fourteen years. So that's 73.7% fewer strokes and a 300% reduction in heart attacks on fags and beer!

Anyway, taking the cutting of the top and bottom rails at my own pace and nicotine assisted resulted in a faster and more accurate production rate. All of the top and bottom rails are now finished barring a small clean up with a sharp chisel. I was then joined by Ben Gunn and we set about cutting a section of plywood for a restoration to his bathroom.

Now it was time to cut the bottom panels and the centre rails. The sapele planks were really bowed, cupped and warped. So I decided to rip the large plank to length and then cross cut the panels to reduce the degree of curve in each panel. Once I had everything to size the bowing and cupping had dramatically reduced. So to ensure flat boards I secured the planks to the remnants of the plywood I'd cut for Ben Gunn with some carpet tape, adding shims to keep the surface flat. Then through the planer a couple of times, flip the boards...and I have flat stock to work with. At last! We planed the board for the centre rails down to 18mm and then planed the panels down to 6mm checking the fit in our stiles as we went.

I sorely needed a cig break and a cup of tea by this point. I was starting to get tired. I was rescued by Ellie suggesting it was time to go home! So tomorrow...finish the centre rail tenon's, clean up all of the components and then it's time for the glue up!

Oh....no pictures again as Ben Gunn, although the first to ask if I have pictures of any project I'm working on, couldn't see the point in photographing what I was doing. I will take some tomorrow though!

 

[Malanka]

Tim my friend. Elon Musk made a profit ONCE, the rest of his ventures including the all mighty Tesla loses billions but is propped up by the Californian state since Donald cut his gravy train off at the knees . I.e. No subsidy after 90k cars sold. Ooops.. 

 

the man is an expert subsidy miner , there are many like him and they just loves trees.

 

edited as I forgot to add that his subsidies to date exceed 6000, 000, 000 dollars. 

 

Google it ! 

 

M 

[Timbo]

Just now, Malanka said:

Tim my friend. Elon Musk made a profit ONCE, the rest of his ventures including the all mighty Tesla loses billions but is propped up by the Californian state since Donald cut his gravy train off at the knees . I.e. No subsidy after 90k cars sold. Ooops.. 

 

the man is an expert subsidy miner , there are many like him and they just loves trees.

 

M 

I followed behind a Tesla the other day...for about 0.3 seconds where he vanished into the horizon somewhere! I just wish I could afford one...one that was high off the ground and could fit a full sheet of plywood in the back! 

 

[Malanka]

They are beautiful cars and very quick. So they should be with 30k of US subsidy behind each one. 

 

I would love one one so I could virtue signal with the rest . 

 

M

[Timbo]

On 22/07/2017 at 1:34 PM, brundallNavy said:

Frame mastic in Brown that does not go hard.

 

So in preparation for tomorrow's glue-up, the windows...

So i squeeze some frame mastic into the groove, peel back a small area of the protective polyethene on the perspex and shove the frame into the groove? If I have 'squeeze out', how do I get it off the unprotected part of the perspex? 

[grendel]

carefully trim back the protective film the same depth as the groove, then any squeeze out will go onto the protective film.

[Malanka]

Quick question? Why are you using my grandfathers invention rather than glass? 

 

M

[Malanka]

We have one Perspex window which will soon be glass .... helps with the air draft too 

 

M 

[BrundallNavy]

1 hour ago, Timbo said:

So in preparation for tomorrow's glue-up, the windows...

So i squeeze some frame mastic into the groove, peel back a small area of the protective polyethene on the perspex and shove the frame into the groove? If I have 'squeeze out', how do I get it off the unprotected part of the perspex? 

If you put too much in you will not get the frame to squeeze up. Just put a small bead inside the groove to bed the window on. You can always seal with sikaflex after by masking up.

Today's progress.

 

[Timbo]

9 hours ago, Malanka said:

Quick question? Why are you using my grandfathers invention rather than glass? 

 

M

Three reasons Martin, weight, safety and money. As part of RT's Heath Robinson 1970 refit of the cockpit, those folding cockpit sides and the soft top canopy were fitted. The folding sides were very heavy, something I became more aware of when I had to make the replacements. In the old ones, you could see the flex in both the wooden structure and the glass. When the cockpit is folded down, the sides and the panes of glass run up from the deck and are in a prime location to get kicked by someone walking down the deck.

I was recommended to use toughened safety glass, but having seen the price and felt the weight I involuntarily yelped the Yorkshire anthem of 'ow much?'. 

On the aft doors, it was the door furniture and the problems I was having with the warping timber that decided the use of perspex. Once again it was the cost/weight/strength ratio I was thinking about. The 'glass' in the aft doors will be acting as tenons to keep the doors straight. The stainless steel piano hinges are, well, really expensive and I'm on a very tight budget indeed. I decided in the long run that if I traded the use of glass for perspex I could spend a little bit more on stainless steel door furniture.

The real deciding factor, from an economic view, is that my daughter in law works for a plastics supplier and has access and the ability to use the C in C machine!  So twenty-five quid for the windows for the aft doors and the one day turn around getting them cut was a boon. It means that should the perspex get scratched etc in general use its cheap enough to replace.

I did think hard about using perspex considering RT's design and 'integrity' of RT's vintage. But then she is a 'girl of the 60's', and her existing construction shows the integration of modern materials and ideas with traditional boat building techniques and materials over the years.

As for air draft, there have been a few changes to the design of the Timbo since last we met my friend. There's been a rather large veranda situated over the toy shop with tectonic movement meaning the foot hills of the twin Mt Moobs are now situated just above the high street where it seems some joker has erected an over inflated bouncy castle without planning permission! Now there's a thought...instead of a bridge pilot, folks could hire me to stand on their boat and pilot the boat under Potter themselves!

[Timbo]

9 hours ago, brundallNavy said:

If you put too much in you will not get the frame to squeeze up. Just put a small bead inside the groove to bed the window on. You can always seal with sikaflex after by masking up.

Today's progress.

 

Stunning Doug! RT has her eyes back! 

I'm currently in negotiations with Ellie to get back down again and bring all of the supplies I've bought. I need to order the timber for the port cabin side and to replace that front deck! Hopefully, the aft doors will be ready to fit and I can finish filling the port side of the hull.

[grendel]

I can think of another reason for the perspex, can you imagine just how few fingers Timbo will have left after cutting and handling sheets of glass.

[Timbo]

Two steps forward and one back, one to the side, a quick shimmy, down the snake, across the ladder, one for his nob and two for his heels...

Arrived at Ben Gunn Lagoons this morning to find him just getting to his feet after knocking himself out by walking into an apple tree in the orchard. Old BG likes silence when he bangs his head, this is a regular occurrence, shame he had me to contend with as I chattered on about archaeological discoveries in the Lebanon this week while I made him a cup of tea. 

Ellie and Gracie had gone with Nanny to the pictures to the opening of "Captain Underpants". 

As much as I would have enjoyed an hour or so of puerile fart jokes I can always visit the NBN jokes section, so I was left to get on with the woodwork!

Once again on this latest design, the middle rail was proving both difficult and dangerous to cut the tenons on the table saw. So I resorted to old fashioned hand tools. Although Ben Gunn had a really cool old fashioned back saw, I've seen sharper politicians, so I resorted to my Japanese dovetail pull saw. Although a superb flush cutting tool, it's not the best for cutting fine tenons. But finally, I managed to cut both tenons on the first of the four rails.

I now set about cleaning up all the components for the first door, just so I could make sure everything was coming together correctly and to give BG a sign that the door project was almost over and he could put his car back in his garage. With my now super sharp chisels and the Japanese pull saw, I'd brought it with me to clean up the edges of the grooves in the stiles, I cleaned up all of the tenons, and gave the panels a final plane to make sure they fitted correctly.

At last time for a test fit. I spun around looking for my phone to take a photo or two. The phone was nowhere to be seen. I cast my mind back to when I last had it. This morning, dog walking, battery died, put it on to charge, so it's still plugged into the charger on my bedside table. Damn!

Carefully I fitted everything together and...what the hell has happened here! Something was very much amiss as I had a 42mm gap between the bottom rail and the bottom of the panel! After much frantic checking of my plans, I realised I had cut the middle rail at 108mm instead of 150mm. Why I have no idea. To complicate matters further I did not have enough wide boards left over to make new rails. I needed a cigarette but BG was having none of it.

Pondering the problem I rolled a cigarette anyway. I knew this was a 'two roll up problem'. Sparking my special edition Zippo classic chrome into life and taking a swift 'pull' on my roll up, the solution presented itself. I had a large piece of lumber 68mm wide and I would make floating tenons on either side, so I would need to cut 20mm deep grooves all the way around the new pieces. I also had a long cut off which was 6mm thick so I had plenty of material to make the floating tenons.

'Tra La La! Captain Underpants!' Gracie and Ellie had returned and I needed to chauffeur them back to Gainsborough...so until tomorrow where I will cut the new middle rails, and start the glue-up....and get some pictures.

Oh in case you were wondering, I did run a straight edge and a square over the door...and it's flat! The design seems to be working! I will know more tomorrow!

[YnysMon]

Doh...now I want to go and see Captain Underpants.  Why did you have to do that to me!  I'll just have to restrain myself and wait for the DVD/BluRay. 

Helen

[YnysMon]

OK, nothing to do with this topic (apologies) but younger son Alec returned this evening with finds!

He works for a landscape construction company and has been working on a site of a school near the old  Battersea Power Station. Came home with some stuff he had dug up...an interestingly decorated pipe bowl (smoking type), and a couple of shards of beautifully decorated pottery. The pipe is unglazed, and must have had a very fine pipe stem. The bowl is decorated to resemble a barrel with a grape bunch decoration on the underside of the cup. I can't help wondering if there should have been some archaeological investigation, but don't know that much about the site. 

Will take some photos tomorrow when there is more light and will post them.

Helen

 

 

[Timbo]

2 hours ago, YnysMon said:

OK, nothing to do with this topic (apologies) but younger son Alec returned this evening with finds!

He works for a landscape construction company and has been working on a site of a school near the old  Battersea Power Station. Came home with some stuff he had dug up...an interestingly decorated pipe bowl (smoking type), and a couple of shards of beautifully decorated pottery. The pipe is unglazed, and must have had a very fine pipe stem. The bowl is decorated to resemble a barrel with a grape bunch decoration on the underside of the cup. I can't help wondering if there should have been some archaeological investigation, but don't know that much about the site. 

Will take some photos tomorrow when there is more light and will post them.

Helen

 

 

Looking forward to those photo's Helen!

Clay pipes were one of the first things that got me into archaeology as a child. Although all of my male relatives were pipe smokers at one time or another, my maternal grandfather is someone I most associate with pipe smoking. He smoked a variety of pipes including clay pipes. It was he who first explained to me why as a kid digging in the garden I would find so many clay pipe stems and fewer bowls. The clay pipe stems would break when the dottle was knocked from the bowl of the pipe. Although the clay pipe was seen as a disposable item, the poor man would continue to smoke his now shortened pipe. Indeed the shorter pipe stem was favoured by the working man who could continue to smoke the shorter stemmed pipe while he continued to work.

Clay pipes are very much the 'cig buts' of yesteryear, but not always as 'old' as we anticipate. Clay pipes were manufactured in England shortly after the introduction of tobacco around 1558. The first literary description of smoking dates from 1573. By 1680 to 1700 clay pipe production had reached its peak and just about every town had its own local pipe manufacturer, however by 1720 pipe production went into decline due to a global industrial downturn itself a result of wars in Europe and America. Indeed the 1776 American War of independence was partially a result of tobacco farmers such as Jefferson and Washington getting themselves into debt with British Tobacco Merchants.

The industrial revolution of 1760 to around 1820 to 1840 saw another surge in pipe production with the American Civil war meaning once again cash crops of tobacco flooding Europe to finance hostilities. Nineteenth-century imports of meerschaum and briar pipes which were more durable started to impact clay pipe manufacture. Pipe production in the UK continued relatively until 1914 to around 1930 until cigarettes and cigars started to alter smoking habits.

A simple guide to the age of the pipe is the more decorative the pipe the later it's manufacture. There are a number of complicated dating typologies that can be used for dating clay pipes. I preferred the Harrington method. The bore of the pipe stem reduced as pipe making technology advanced. Here's a very rough approximation of the Harrington scale and dates of the pipes. The bore is measured in 64ths of an inch.

9/64 1590-1620

8/64 1620-1650

7/64 1650-1680

6/64 1680-1720

5/64 1720-1750

4/64 1750-1800

Of course, dating is not always easy and there are some additional formulae to be attached to this system. Lewis Binford found errors when using the Harrington method and used statistics to produce a formula which would cover all dates. Y = 1931.85 – 38.26X where Y is the projected date, 1931.85 is the theoretical date at which the bore size would equal zero and X is the arithmetic mean bore diameter for the whole sample.

Scio multus of ablatisque testiculis

There will have been an archaeological search done on the site before it was developed. If in doubt contact the county archaeologist for the area or the Greater London Archaeology Service if in the capital.

[YnysMon]

 

Wow, Tim. I was hoping you could enlighten us but as usual you have surpassed my expectations. The pipe is certainly decorative and I will post some photos tomorrow. 

Oh...err.  Am not sure that we have an accurate enough method available for measurement of the bore of the broken off stem of the pipe.  Earlier this evening when Alec first brought his find home one of my first thoughts was that the bore was so very fine.  Incidentally, given the fine bore it occurred to me that using the pipe would be a good way of naturally restricting the more negative effects of smoking...one of my grandfather's and my mother in law having succumbed to the effects of smoking.  Of course they were smoking in the 20th century with cigarettes rather than pipes.

I need to ask Alec more about the site. When he arrived home today Alec mentioned something about the digging site being thought to be Victorian. Given that he sets off for work each day by 5:30 and he didn't get back to the depot in Woburn Sands today until almost 8pm (a usual occurrence) our communication often gets a bit hit and miss.   

Helen

[YnysMon]

Rather than continuing to hijack Timbo's restoration thread I shall post photos of Alec's archaeological finds in the Broadscot Lounge.  Hope that's the appropriate place!

Helen

[Malanka]

Perspex was invented in the 1930s Tim. So all boats could have been fitted with it. TBH I wouldn't have worried about the small panes being vulnerable to breakage . All but one of Mals windows are glass and yes they are heavy as they are easily 3.5 mm thick. Glass is strong stuff mate. Not bad for a supercooled liquid eh ! Mal is already well over ten tons so what's a little extra.

I really can't wait to see  RT floating. Make sure you pop by when we is in Beccles. We won't have the Boris ( we is coming in the lady from Coventry)

 

M

[tjg1677]

Wasn't it invented for / by the aero industry and called plexiglass? Or is that another totally unuseful nugget of inaccurate trivia that seems to haunt my cerebral regions these days?

[Timbo]

Day Five: Watson's Weturn & Day Six: Flash Bang What a picture!

Remembered the camera today so some shots of the progress made on Day Five of the build and some of the state of play at the end of the day.

By Day Five we were almost ready for assembly, with just one essential component to make. The middle rail. This had caused some problems on the first design. It caused even more on the second! Just like the first design, I cut the rail to the wrong dimensions at the end of day four. I was tired. But tired or not I was still left with a 50mm gap between the panels and the bottom rail. 

So first things first, cut new centre rails and make the grooves along every edge to accept the window and panel in the top and bottom edges and two floating tenons on either side. The grooves in the side of the rail were easy as I cut these before cutting each rail to length. The top and bottom groove were going to result in me losing fingers to the table saw. So, I decided to resort to hand tools to cut these. So while I removed from Ben Gunn's garage to his shed, Ben Gunn sloped off somewhere.

Benn Gunn is a man with a richness of 'sheds'. First of all, he has the double garage which we are using as the 'machine shop'. Normally he keeps his car and his collection of lawn mowers, chain saws and various other 'large' bits of gardening equipment in here.

He also has a large brick built shed some twenty foot by fifteen foot, known as the 'Dog House' now used to house wheel barrows and as an apple store over winter. He also has a sixty foot by twenty-foot brick piggery which is used for, well, nothing. Finally, he has his forty foot workshop.

While I was in the workshop making the centre rails, Ben Gunn had made a sign which he placed outside the workshop door.

The centre rails were still fiddly using hand tools. I needed to cut a 20mm deep by 6mm wide slot across the end grain to marry with the grooves down each side. First I cut to depth either side using my Japanese pull saw. I love using pull saws. Being one handed they seem more natural to use than their western counterparts which cut on the push stroke. Once I had defined the groove I cut down through the middle of the waste material and then two more cuts at a diagonal to remove as much waste as I could. I now turned to my newly sharpened chisels to finish cutting the slots and to clean everything up. Finally I cut two floating tenons and once again cleaned up with a chisel. I love using sharp tools!

At this point, Ben Gunn and I took a trip to Machine Mart, as I discovered that the clamps I had brought with me were not long enough. As Sensei keeps pointing out 'you can never have enough clamps' so I was happy to buy three more. What I was not happy about is this constant fishing by retailers for home and email addresses from their customers. In the end, I chose to have this months catalogue and freebies sent to the bloke at Yare House.

On our return, we discovered Watson and his gorgeous wife Carol had popped in for a visit. Watson is certainly batting above his average! While Ben Gunn was otherwise distracted, after a cup of tea I headed back out to the workshop to start the dry fit before glueing up the first door.

With everything laid out ready to go, I set to applying glue and frame mastic before sliding everything together. At this point, I realised I had not brought in some scraps of wood to pad the clamps and set off at a run to get some from the garage before the glue 'put up'. Back in the workshop I tightened up the clamps and tapped everything into place and square. Watson and Ben Gunn arrived breathless.
"Pack it in Tim, I've never seen you run before!" wailed Watson once he knew I was fine.

Day Five ended with the first door put together and sitting in the clamps.

Day Six and it being a Sunday, I had the workshop to myself. I took the door out of the clamps and proceeded to give it a good sanding. You will have spotted that I gave the solid wood panel a coat of stain before I put it into the frame so that when shrinkage occurs there won't be an unstained section of the timber visible.

Door number two, the other centre door, was a little more difficult to fit together. The 'cupping' was back, however, with a few gentle taps of the mallet I managed to get the thing in the clamps. This time I added a few more clamps top and bottom and managed to take out the cupping.

Working steadily I managed to get two doors assembled today. I discovered what it is I do differently when I'm working alone. I do a lot of standing around, smoking, but also 'looking' at my project. I catch many more potential 'chicken ups' that way...call it idleness if you wish, but I get more done if I do things my way!

So, that's door two...

and door three...

...assembled, with one door remaining to assemble tomorrow. A final job to do in Ben Gunn's workshop will be to use the router to make the rebate for the overlap on the centre two doors.

Tonight I start researching setting up my block plane correctly ready to plane the bottom of the doors when I get the project and all of my tools back to my workshop rabbit hutch.
 

 

[grendel]

Tim, I am glad to hear you agreeing with me that there is no such thing as too many clamps, just to help this lot there are 7 vices on or around my model workbench, and a big one outside in the conservatory