Timbo

Wednesday 7th and Thursday 8th October Wednesday and Thursday are Gracie and Arlo days. Days spent picking up from school, driving to Lincoln to deliver shopping and visit Nanny and Ben Gunn as well as organizing and conducting Gruffalo hunts, feeding sticks to owls and foxes in the Gruffalo Tunnel, dodging crocodiles in the shark infested custard and watching the miniphrants dance down slides. There's also a fair amount of stoat wrestling and laughing at T-Rex's in bed making competitions goes on as well. Shed Firkling is limited to the early morning and late evening when boards are removed from the clamps and new boards set in place. By Friday I was ready to start on some joinery. Incidentally, you don't sniff wood glue! For maximum enjoyment you spread it on your hands, let it dry and then pick it off in the largest sheet possible whilst singing the original Mission Impossible theme! Friday 9th October. I have a stack of hardwood boards all ready to go and a smaller stack of plywood boards edged with poplar. The plywood is still twisting, warping and buckling even with a hardwood edge attached to both sides. I reach for the hand plane and level them all off again! This stuff really is garbage with knots and voids microns below the surface veneers. Still, the outer carcase will be invisible when complete so I can hit the wood filler quite hard before the covering goes on! I'd decided on half lap joinery throughout, so set about marking up and cutting the joint the table saw. I leaned up the rebates with a chisel and ran through a test fit before gluing up the first of the outer cases. I used the first case as a guide for the second and used cauls to make sure both outer cases matched each other as close as possible. Leaving everything in the clamps I set about finding myself something to do while the glue dried. Cutting boards and cheese boards are the objects I get asked to make the most. Although I don't like making them, I was a little bit shocked and pleased to discover the other day that amongst the 'well to do ladies that lunch' a Timbo made wooden platter is de rigueur to the candle lit supper and a much sought after item. I'd been asked if I could make a cheese board with a matching cheese knife with a turned handle. Now, I don't have a lathe so I set about carving a handle with a tenon to accept a ferrule...just to see if I could. I managed to keep the tenon uniform and the handle as a whole symmetrical although, as a wooden object, it wouldn't seem out of place in an Anne Summers catalogue. An interesting diversion, but the outer cases of the Safari Bar were ready to come out of the clamps. I used a technique I first tried when I made Ellie's cantilever sewing box all those years ago. I taped the tow boxes tightly together and levelled off all sides using a plane and some sandpaper stuck down to my bench top. As any good musician will say 'it was near enough for jazz'! Out with the router and I cut the rebates for the back panels using a chisel to get the corners square. Now for the hardwood internal compartments!

Thomas Edison said 'To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk'! Monday 5th of October Wood is a material that has a mind of it's own. Enven when it's been chopped down, chopped up, milled, drilled, drawn and sawn it will still twist, bend, wobble, wave and split contrary to any shape the woodworker wishes. When making the rear cabin doors for RT I worked out that you need to sneak up on the timber while it's still dazed and confused from the milling process and press right on with defining the woods new shape before it has a chance to reassert it's morphic field! I had stacks of spalted ash to glue into planks and the plywood was momentarily flat on the hallway floor. Although the sky was fleetingly blue and the sun was warm, I could see dark clouds bubbling and roiling across the Trent Valley and heading in my direction. I still had some spalted ash that needed milling. Pulling the table saw to the door and fetching the chunk of timber to be milled, I made a discovery. By extending the saw's feed table out of the shed door I had enough room behind the saw to safely feed the timber into the blade without taking the saw outside. Soon I had all of my timber milled to rough width and it was time to cut everything to length to start making panels. I decided to make the cuts by hand for the excercise, and to give the neighbours some respite from the table saw. Just as I was cutting the last piece of timber for the smaller panels I realised that I had made a mistake. The smaller panels were less than the fifteen inch length required to go through the thicknesser. Ah well, I will have to plane them by hand, but first I was going to have to get inventive to make some panel clamps. I had several long bolts that I was going to use for a new veneer press but for now I would use them to knock up a small panel clamp. With the first panel in the Heath Robinson panel clamp I made another simpler clamp. Gluing up all these panels was going to take some time! I'd run out of long bolts so instead used a simpler system incorporating a couple of sash clamps. At this rate is was going to take me some considerable time to complete all of the panels I was going to need. It was also going to take quite a bit of glue. Fortunately I have a big glue pot, mine is much bigger than the Psychic Surveyor's! Tuesday 6th October I was still making panels. I was also having to attend the mountebank's office for my monthly check up and dressing down. A few minor adjustments to my meds and a spot of banter with nurses and receptionists and I'm on my way back to the shed. Slowly the pile of completed hardwood panels grew and the larger panel clamp was free to start applying the edging to the plywood. I cut some half inch wide strips of poplar and attached them to the edges of the plywood panels of the outer carcase. This is where I discovered there was a serious problem with the plywood. In a normal panel of plywood there is an odd number of veneers. There is the central core and then two veneers placed either side of that core, then two more veneers and so on until the panel reaches the correct thickness. It's done this way so that each veneer glued on either side creates an equal pressure to that of it's opposite and so keeps the panel straight. This is why when you apply a hard wood veneer to a box top or bottom you place veneer on both sides. This B&Q plywood had an even number of veneers of differing thicknesses. It really was cheap and shoddy stuff. Even with the hardwood edging applied it was still trying to shift and warp. The only solution was to plane the surface to try and remove one of the veneers and hope that stabilized the board. Either that or go buy some more plywood. A trip down to B&Q revealed they had a new batch of plywood in stock, with the correct number of veneers and they had added an outer veneer a good millimetre thick at least on both sides. They had also added forty percent to the price! As Napoleon said at Waterloo 'sod this for a game of soldiers'!

It's a bit like playing backgammon, it all depends on where you start your move, end your move, how many pieces you have on a point and if you unable to make a valid move then your move is forfeit. So, for folks in a Tier 2 area travel is permitted to amenities that are open, for work or to access education, but people are advised to reduce the number of journeys where possible. Tier 3 folks Travelling outside a very high alert level area or entering a very high alert level area should be avoided other than for things such as work, education or youth services, to meet caring responsibilities or if travelling through as part of a longer journey. Residents of a tier 3 area should avoid staying overnight in another part of the UK, while people who live in a tier 1 or tier 2 area should avoid staying overnight in a very high alert level area. Of course, at the moment the language used is 'advised' and 'should'.

Sunday 4th October The sun is up, the sky is blue, there's such a lot for me to do...before it starts raining...raining in my yard. Other half dropped off at work, dogs walked and watered. I pause briefly to make sure I did those things in the right order and the beagles are not running riot in a perfumery while my other half sprawls on my duvet covered in mud. Hope is eternal, apparently. Disappointed once again, I got on with building the safari bar before the rain started again. I'd spent a few minutes the previous day trying to draw a plan and cut list, but I was damned if I could find what I'd done with it. Time for some 'fag packet' design or in my case 'cig paper' design. Black clouds loomed ever closer, as did my neighbours who were peering nervously over the hedge at the sound of the whiskey, gin and rum bottles I'd fetched from the house clanking on the top of my table saw as I checked their dimensions against the materials I had to hand. My neighbours are cautious and keep an eye on me when I'm using the table saw but when they spot a combination of table saw and hard liquor they get positively nosey! With rough plans, and I do mean rrrrrough plans, scrawled on paper, dimension calculations made I start with cutting the 18mm plywood that will make the outer case. Each 'half' of the bar will be a five inch deep 'tray' of plywood edged with a hardwood. My Bosch table saw is the largest of their contractors saws and the table will expand to take sheet materials quite comfortably. The biggest problem is physically lugging the sheets about. I change the saw blade for a specialized plywood finishing blade and cut several oversized strips which I then rip down to final width. The inner case of the bar will be made of hardwood. In this case ash, as I bought a job lot cheap two years ago. I need four inch wide planks but unfortunately I only have three inch by three inch lumber. I will have to glue up some panels. But first I need to rip down the hardwood. So, out with the finishing blade and in with a dedicated ripping blade which has larger teeth with deeper gullets. I rip down the ash into 12 mm thick planks but, before I cut everything that I need, it starts to rain. A mad dash to get the saw unplugged and back inside the shed ensues. I now have enough hardwood to make one half of the bar and enough plywood to make all of the outer carcase, but there is a problem. A problem that will haunt me through the rest of the build. Cheap and crappy DIY store plywood! The instant that it was cut the plywood has buckled. It was Alan Lee that gave me a lesson on plywood and fortunately he also gave me a partial solution to the buckling problem. I'd always assumed plywood was used because it is stable and cheap. It turns out that plywood is not only expensive but it's none too stable. It's the moisture content of the various veneers inside the ply that cause the buckling. If one side of the plywood dries out more than the other, then the sheet will buckle. The cure is to dampen off the concave side with a small amount of hot water and to lay the plywood on a flat surface with the side you've just dampened facing down. Now apply some weights to the top. I have a long corridor indoors with a flat linoleum covered floor. I damp down the plywood, lay it flat on the floor and add some weight in the shape of heavy cases and two fat beagles!

*Reaches for his notebook

It depends how close to kicking out time it is! I see you've met my ex-wives? I've not been picked up for a long time...they just tend to leave me where I'm lying and step over me! Ah, that's cos you just bought a boat...you can't afford me now! It's Maxwellian you've got to watch out for. We've weened him off the chianti but he's still at the fava beans!

Hi, I'm Timbo. I drink beer and Jack Daniels. My interests are boats, woodwork and archaeology.

Morning, I mean afternoon all. New legislation with implications for the forum and our organization as a whole seems to pop out of the woodwork almost weekly. Ian and I have the mind set of getting out in front of any and all new legislation and not only putting in place all legally required procedures in a timely fashion but also taking an active role in the discussion and development of that legislation. It's not just legislation targeted directly at online forums and social pages that has an impact on us as an organization. Everything from the Equalities Act to the Data Protection Act, Health & Safety to the increasingly sporadic implementation of legislation around the current pandemic all have an impact on the running of the organization and its forum. The security of our members is paramount which is why the NBN Chairman, Treasurer, Secretary and moderation team members are all DBS checked and undergo the now legally required raft of safeguarding training. Although as Alan says, we increased the number of sensible posts we rely on the experience of our moderation team who review all posts on the forum and regularly review new members for full membership of the forum. We also regularly review and remove inactive members of the forum to maintain the accuracy of our records to comply with legislation and to provide accurate marketing information to our sponsors. Two years ago we had around 2500 active members. We now have around 85,000 active members of the forum and we send out over 100,000 notification emails a month. The NBN team are a bit like swans, occasionally all serene on the surface, paddling like hell underneath and yes, there is the occasional flap of wings and much honking should someone bring out a Warburton's Toasty, but they all work extremely hard, for which I for one am very grateful. They even have to put up with regular cryptic phone calls from me!

Friday I'm going to be making a Safari Bar of a type the Victorians and Edwardians would have taken with them on their trip to massacre unsuspecting lions, tigers or natives come to think of it. An Oxbridge education taught me one thing, if anything. When you are chinless and gormless the social niceties requires the consumption of large quantities of alcohol. Because you are chinless and gormless, of course, means you can only swill said alcohol from the correct glass served on a fancy tray, the bottle resting on a drink coaster and your shiny boots resting on the back of your manservant. Campaign furniture, as a furniture style, has always interested me. Perhaps it is the eighteenth, nineteenth and early twentieth century that call out to me? It could be because I was born in a colony of the British Empire and for most of my adult life lived and worked in various former colonies of the old empire and resided among the furnishing detritus of past glories? Then again, it could be the absurdity of the chinless and gormless who could not contemplate mounting an expedition into the back of beyond without a collapsible bed, armchair, chest of drawers, shower, gun rack and bar strapped to the back of a camel or pachyderm that appeals to my whimsy? Whatever the reason, the simple lines and utility of campaign furniture fascinate me. So, when given the opportunity to make a piece of campaign furniture, even a small piece, I jumped at the chance. I'm getting quite good at understanding the construction of furniture. I can recognise and cut many of the joints employed by the cabinet maker. I'm also getting quite good at spotting the evidence of Mrs Cockup having popped in to say hello with her friend Mrs Cheap N' Shoddy. I'm also of the Yorkshire persuasion. Therefore, when I started researching the style of Safari Bar I was being asked to make I quickly spotted several things. First and foremost was the price these small 'boxes' were being sold for, between £750 and £1160 pounds a time. Secondly was the cheap materials they were made from. Cheap plywood with offcuts of leather, scraps of hardwood and cheap Chinese hardware. Finally was the dodgy joinery, even on the better quality pieces. A closer inspection of the image above will demonstrate that both Mrs Cockup and her friend have paid a visit. But could I do any better, hampered by the shoddy quality of materials available through the local DIY store and the small quantity of good timber I've ferreted away? We shall have to see! Saturday Rain, rain, sod off and give me a break! Hardly poetic, doesn't even rhyme, but it does accurately reflect my sentiment. Stuck indoors as I am with only the rustle of feathers as little Donny's pigeons come home to roost pooping on his bedsheet as they land to brighten my day. Just as I'm setting off to traipse through the woods with the beagles the postman delivers a package. Things really are looking up as these are the missing blade holders for my scrollsaw ordered Friday morning from Machinemart spares centre. Now that is quick and efficient service! I'm soaked through on my return from the woods and in need of something hot and spicy for lunch. I dry the beagles off before making a Malaysian Laksa. Don't be getting all impressed. Pot Noodle has a cornucopia of flavours these days. I head off to the shed to fiddle with the scrollsaw and start the design process for the safari bar pausing to chuckle at the Beagle Brothers who having filched a noodle pot each from the bin and now have them stuck on the ends of their noses unable to get them off. Outside my workshop it's gloomy with a chill and the rain is siling down. 'Siling' another one of those Yorkshire dialect words, from the Norse 'sila' meaning to filter or strain, that so confuse my American and Canadian friends. Inside my workshop it's bright, the daylight LED lighting is doing it's job, and although rather an odd word to use for a shed, it is comfortable. With the footie on the radio, a pot of tea and slice of cake, I sit and firkle to my hearts content setting up the scrollsaw. An email from Ben Gunn to ask if I've finished the job he wanted me to do has me nipping out in the rain to the car to take the timber for the job out of the car. Give a man a shed and he starts to accumulate timber. Where I accumulate offcuts of walnut, oak, maple, mahogany or cherry, what my future father in law collects has more in common with John Innes than any specific species of tree. Much of his hoarded timber is best described as compost with nails in it. Lots of nails in it. After a mangled blade in the past by means of 'pop this plank through your tablesaw for me' I decided I'd pop it through my hand saw and my bench plane after I'd located and removed every single nail. The planks are from the old conservatory taken down this week, so no time for decomposition. They required a forty-five degree chamfer along the top edge as they will be fasten to the bottom of Ben Gunn's workshop doors to stop the rain from seeping through. Job done and as the final scores come in I give Chelsea my usual boo for the benefit of my Chelsea supporting neighbour and head off to collect my better half from work.

YouTube old chap. I watch a lot of woodworking content, VFX critiques and I'm more than a bit partial to my science fiction series for which Amazon Prime is one of my providers. Current favourites are Doom Patrol and the Umbrella Academy. I have to admit I'm also a fan of Finnegan Fox!

The Mail was always a little 'behind the Times' in grasping modernity, but it's still sad to see it go. The Times had a good forward thinking editorial team behind it, even ten years ago. I do miss the old style of angling press and literature. From Walton's Compleat Angler (I have the 1676 fifth edition in my collection) to Bernard Venables' Mr Crabtree comic strip (still essential reading). On TV A Passion for Angling, The Great Rod Race and these days Mortimer & Whitehouse Go Fishing are frequent watches.

Live! From Norwich, OK Lincoln, OK just outside Lincoln, OK not quite live but upright...it's Daft Question Time! I'm sure I already know the answer to this but I just wanted to check what the Brain's Trust think? I've been asked to make a 'portable bar' in the campaign furniture style to replace a damaged one someone had bought and to repair the original. This will be a box that is 9" in length, 10" in depth and 17.5" in height. I've taken a look at the original and it was constructed from 18mm plywood wrapped in leather. The box was split into two and hinged in the middle. Both halves are fitted out in rosewood to accommodate two bottles of booze and a drawer in one half and six glasses and a wooden tray in the other half. On the original box, which cost over a grand and is best described as 'knocked together on a back street in the Far East', hinges were screwed into the edge of the plywood and this is where the box is damaged, the plywood splitting and cracking and the hinges coming away from the plywood. The simple solution would be butterfly hinges screwed to the face of the plywood, but could I get away with edging the plywood with inch thick hardwood strips glued and dowelled into place and then fitting a piano hinge to the new hardwood edge? Would hardwood edged plywood and a piano hinge (just like RT's rear doors) be a suitable design for the new box?

The same flaps to the right of the image may give the game away. I suspect the roof either leaks or drops flakes of rust onto the boats below and the sheeting was put in the roof to catch the drips but has since fallen down? The things they hang in the roof of boatsheds never ceases to amaze. It took me ages to work out why a bucket was hung in the sheds at Wayford and even then Doug had to explain the concept of the 'rat bucket' hoisted into the roof space to stop the rats getting at the milk, sugar and tea bags!

Just watchit news on the forumbocker about trageymost stoppage of Broads01 holidale and peeploders stoppage in Wales withoutymost good reasole, oh yes! Timbo is stuckly indoors also, too sickly for endage of shieldage and travelode to boatly. Nevermile, wishing you deep joy and all be over by Chrimbole and hope you have good suppile of tiltyelbow while watchy telebockers. Timbo has no telebockers but listen musee all trickley-how on waxley cylindrol, ten inchie bakerlite diskers and forty-fido seven inchers. Musee from Mozarker and Beethovel to Laydle Gaga and the Chemicold Brotheys all good stuffly but deep joy footiebole back on radioloppers! Interety to hearl buttonloder avail for correcty nonsensical sentiles? Deep joy, Timbo not needle such digitale correcty of wordage. Keep spirit lifty Broadage01, Timbo now off for walkage of beagles with the headpholes stuffit in the eardrobes for joyfold listenit. Ledly Zeppelers today, I think. Deep joy!

What happens if you are out and don't get the email? Keep that blog coming!

Even worse when you are travelling back from Scotland at night and stop for a pee in a layby in a lane just before the English border and claim you didn't hear the Mrs get out of the car to do likewise and didn't realise she wasn't sat in the passenger seat beside you until you reached Doncaster as you were 'paying attention to the road in the dark'. Not Uncle Albert this time, but his father.

Oh MM, that's not how you jump up and down on thin ice...this is how you jump up and down on thin ice... Boating has nothing in common with driving any other vehicle with the exception of one. Just like a boat that vehicle pivots from the stern when turning, frequently encounters other vehicles of similar type drifting about aimlessly and is also found in profusion in rivers and canals. I am of course talking about the shopping trolley. Whoever pilots the shopping trolley in the partnership generally turns out to be the better boat pilot. In our case, I pilot the shopping trolley. I keep a steady pace up and down the aisles in a methodical manner, keeping a weather out for where they've put the special offers and where most of the products are located. By maintaining a steady pace, even when the boss stops to stare at a shelf for five minutes, I can encourage a rapid progression through the store, out the lock gates at the checkout and back to the carpark before successfully mooring the trolley, collecting a few more vessels left adrift on my way to the dock. I have to admit that on occasion I generate a fair amount of wash but only when the grandkids are with me. You can't stick Arlo in a shopping trolley without swooshing him around a few times, or nudging the trolley with my beer belly pretending he's running away in the trolley! Sometimes I get caught and slow down for a few bends but once round the corner it's one, two, three, swoosh!

I've Got A Scrollsaw And I'm Gonna Use It! One of the last presents I received from Uncle Albert was a scrollsaw. I've only used it on a couple of occasions and even then not really to very good effect. When I say I've only used the saw a couple of times I do indeed mean the saw part of it. The flex-drive attachment with the Dremmel-like tools I use quite a bit, but the saw itself is left idle. Until yesterday. I decided I would try my hand at cutting out some letter shapes from wood to fulfil my better half's suggestion I put Grace's name on her pencil box. I have several pieces of figured black walnut that would provide a good contrast. “Looks a bit eighties, definitely quirky!” was Ellie's judgement on the result of a day's firkling. She was being kind of course as my efforts were an unmitigated disaster. Since the big Windows 10 update my printer and several other peripherals have decided to stop working, or rather Microsoft has decided I should spend money. And that ain't gonna happen! Neither was my first thought of printing out the letter design I wanted. Instead I reached for some squared paper and my geometry set. At the thought of pi...I got hungry, so time for a cup of tea and a biscuit, one of those new McVitie's VIB's with chocolate hazelnut. Armed with a cup of tea, biscuit and compasses, I set about designing letters to cut out on the scrollsaw. There are a couple of problems with the scrollsaw. Firstly even though I bought the finest tooth blades Machinemart had to offer, they are still very aggressive for 24tpi blades. Secondly the baseplate where the blade dips inside the table is not what you would call a flush fit. Small pieces of work run the risk of being dragged from my fingers and down the gullet of the saw. Climbing up the charts to number three is the missing adapters to take pinless scrollsaw blades. I have some expensive spiral cut blades for the saw and although the instructions and the box say they were supplied with the saw...they were not supplied with the saw. I have some on order but for now I will have to make do with what I have. With my patterns drawn, I cut them out and stuck them one by one onto the walnut I was going to use. I designed the letters to make use of 10mm and 20mm holes, so starting with the letter 'G' I used Vaughan to cut the 20mm holes and Andrew to cut the 10mm ones. I then set too cutting as close as I could to the lines of the pattern on the scrollsaw. It was a little easier cutting to the patterns. I used my band saw to cut any straight lines, tidied up any curves on the bench sander and used bench files to get rid of cut marks in more awkward areas. I do need to add a set of needle files to this weeks 'tools shopping list'. Another break for a cup of tea between the letters 'A' and 'C' and I whizzed through 'E' quite quickly just using the bandsaw. When I picked Ellie up for lunch she approved the new lettering, so after lunch I got on with fixing them down to the lid of the box. While the glue set up, I had a quick firkle cleaning up, putting tools away, getting rid of rubbish into the wheelie-bins for collection tomorrow and using the shop vac to hoover up all of the dust. I then got on with applying the fist coat of Beagle's Ear Varnish TM. So that's two pencil boxes ready for Santa's sleigh, just a couple more to make and I can move onto the next project!

I reckon JanetAnne pulled the plug out of Oulton Broad!

The recipe for quick wipe varnish was...a resounding success! No brushes to clean as it can be applied with paper kitchen towel, no runs or drips as you wipe it onto the surface in this layers and it dries quickly. Each coat of varnish took seconds to apply and by Saturday night I had four coats of varnish on the finished box, the final coat rubbed down with 0000 wire wool and some of my home made Beagle Ear Wax applied and the whole thing given a final buffing to make it shine! I think my varnish and oil concoction could have boat applications such as toe rails and those fiddly bits close to nice white paintwork. Basically the recipe is two thirds yacht varnish to one third Danish Oil. Being a Timbo...I've applied four coats of Beagle Ear Varnish TM to one piece of mahogany and four coats of Beagle Ear Varnish TM along with an application of Beagle Ear Wax TM to another off cut of mahogany and left them outside in the elements to test the durability of the finish. Also being a Timbo, I've ordered some tung oil and turpentine to see if I can get a better finish with better ingredients. The helping hand was originally destined to be part of an automatic waving machine for the boat after someone complained that they had waved to me from behind the tinted black windows of their hire boat and I had ignored them. I was going to attach it to some springy steel and mount the contraption to RT's cockpit so that the hand would wave whenever we hit some turbulence. However, in the meantime it found a home among the clamps in my shed and I started using it as a prop in the photographs requested by Ben Gunn of the projects I was working on. His resulting confusion at one too many hands in a picture makes me chuckle. When granddaughter Grace visited my shed she spotted 'Helping Hand' in my clamp rack and immediately insisted I 'make him a box to live in'. She is a big fan of the Adam's Family Values Film and will regularly shout 'Jeez Fester get back in your shed!' at me...accompanied by giggles from her and Grandma! Saturday...I've rediscovered the joys of Saturdays. With Ellie working every weekend, Saturday became just another day of the week. Now that the football season has started again, Saturday's have become a special day with the match on the radio and a cup of tea on the go, I can firkle to my hearts content undisturbed! With the second pencil box being glued up, I showed the finished first box to Ellie. "Oh that's all right, we can paint it and put Gracie's name on it!" "Paint? On fine figured spalted ash?" So now I have a thin piece of black walnut on which I am tracing letters to be cut out on the scroll saw and attached to the second box. 'Paint it' indeed!

Christmas Project No 1: The Pencil Box Writing and drawing implements have always been a fascination for me. My arrival at secondary school was ignominious to say the least. For the first three weeks of term I was the only kid without a school uniform, my books and the pens and pencils I'd scrounged up carried in a Bugdens grocery bag. When my school uniform finally arrived it was accompanied by a brand new Gladstone briefcase, brown full grain pull up leather with brass corners and lock fittings also with my initials in small brass letters under the lock. Inside the briefcase was a large dictionary, a thesaurus, a selection of leather bound notebooks and journals, along with a Parker 75 fountain pen, a selection of inks and a wooden pencil box, made for me by my grandfather. The pencil box contained new pencils and a number of mapping pens with a selection of nibs. So started my lifelong habit of writing notes with a fountain pen in leather bound journals using a cursive hand with the occasional flourish...oh and buying pens and pencils in wooden boxes whenever the opportunity presents! So, a stocking filler for my granddaughter Gracie and her friend Lola who enjoy colouring and drawing...a wooden pencil box. I will also make several extra as gifts for adult friends and family who are also fond of drawing and crafting. First things first, I planed up some spalted ash and ran it through the table saw to give me a plank 10mm thick and a thinner plank at 5mm thick. I swapped out the rip blade from the saw and replaced it with a flat toothed finishing blade. The 10mm timber will make the sides of the pencil box and the 5mm timber will make the lid and the bottom of the box. I set the saw to cut a 5mm grove 10 mm from the edge on the 10mm plank. As the blade only has a 2.3 mm kerf I had to nudge the saw fence over slightly to make a second pass and get my 5 mm by 5 mm slots cut. Next it was out with the crosscut sled and to cut the sides and ends of the box to length. Once all of the pieces were cut I nipped off the top of one end piece so that the lid could slide into the groove in the sides of the box. I saved the off cut to use as a handle on the lid. I then gave all the sides and ends a good sanding to 340 grit on the inside faces. The thinner 5mm plank was sanded down and on the lid slight tapers given to both side edges and one end of the lid piece. The tapers are to allow the lid to slide easily in the runners and the taper on the end of the lid allows it to slip into the slot when the box is closed but to wedge in with enough friction to keep the box shut when fully closed. Now for the joinery. I was going to use half lap joints so that I could hide the slots at either end of the box. I cut the joints on the table saw using both the fence and the mitre gauge. Because I was not cutting all the way through the wood, just flush with the bottom of the grooves, there was no risk of kickback, so the fence kept me nice and straight through the cuts. Now for the glue up. I used my favourite Titebond 2 and clamped the box to the tablesaw fence to help keep things square. Once the glue had dried it was over to the drill presses. Today it would be 'Andrew's' turn to drill holes into the sides of the box to take two dowels on each side of the joint. I used some mahogany dowels I had loafing about to create some contrast to the joinery. A final sand on the bench sander and then hand sanding up to 340 grit, I added the cut off from the end onto the lid using both super glue gel and wood glue, and it was time for the finish! The finish is an experiment. I've tried various types of finishes but my favourite of all is varnish. Besides which I imagine pencil boxes will get quite a lot of knocking about...not to mention being doodled and graffitied. But, I was running low on all of my finishes so I combined the remains of my Danish Oil with yacht varnish (both Wilko own brand). Roughly two thirds yacht varnish to one third Danish oil. After three coats I have to say it's looking good. Dries quickly, is tough, durable, glossy and can be applied with kitchen paper and leaving no brush marks. Photo's later when the camera is charged up! Just got to make a few more now!

My dear sir, such an horrific wound, fortunately the doctor spotted the malformation, and you'd only gone in for him to take a look at your piles you say? Good job you weren't scratching your head or picking your nose!

I was on the phone the other day to my good friend Psychedelic Percy, no...that's not right...er Mystic Meg? Surely not. Was it Septic Sid? Unidexter Unwin? Prophylactic...noooo, anyway I was on the phone to my good friend Psychic Surveyor, I knew I would remember, and he asked me which glue I used for applying veneers? I decided to give him a helping hand... I use this one...Titebond II

A joint message from the Anglican, Catholic and Greek Orthodox churches in our community magazine this week finishes with "To all those bemoaning the loss of a 'traditional Christmas' this year, notices of services over the Christmas period dependent upon any local Covid-19 restrictions will be pinned to the church noticeboards and published on respective websites and in local press." I like clergy with a sense of humour!

Ah...but not Britain's biggest seller of 'good' coffee!