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The Big Firkle 2020


Timbo

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I'm starting to see some progress! Well, I can see the top of a bench. I managed to finish sorting out all of my drill bits, forstner bits, countersinks, buffing bits and sanding drums. I even named my two drill presses after some dear friends of mine.
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Vaughan rattles on a bit but is accurate, while Andrew  is smoother but doesn't get enough excercise!

I suffered a plague of engineers this afternoon when a friend asked if he could borrow one of my chisels as his wasn't very sharp. I took one look at the chisel he was using and offered to sharpen his tool rather than loan him one of mine. It took me a couple of hours to sharpen the chisel and when I gave it him back he ran his thumb over the edge and duly sliced it open.
"I didn't know chisels could be that sharp!" he said with a gob full of thumb.
"They are supposed to be that sharp!" 
"Could you sharpen my other chisel please?" he asked passing me another chisel while he hunted for an Elastoplast.

The chisel he handed across was...look, I've dug up two thousand year old metal artefacts that were in better nick than the lump of uselessness he had the temerity to call a 'chisel'.
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 The cutting edge of this thing must have been almost two millimetres thick. It took me quite a it of time just getting rid of some of the rust. 'Andrew' got a good workout with a wire brush (when I next speak to his Mrs on the phone I can truthfully say Andrew is getting excercise!).
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I had to resort to a file to try and flatten and square the business end of the chisel before running through the grits on the diamond and wet stones up to eight thousand. I did my best but I couldn't quite get the edge perfectly square.

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The neighbourhood cats are all looking a bit nervous as space is created in the shed, all wondering who will be the test pilot when I check the space available for the Christmas projects!

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Christmas is coming and She Who Must Be Obeyed has decided we are having a 'traditional Christmas'. My jubilation at her initial pronouncement was short lived. I was under the impression that a 'traditional Christmas' meant the grand kids would get an orange and a stick each and Christmas would last just two days. Apparently, what a traditional Christmas really means is Timbo becoming an 'elf ensconced in his workshop' making wooden toys and gifts from his carefully hoarded fine timber between now and December. Please note, I am carefully trying to hide my glee at being given something to do that I'm going to enjoy immensely!

I fully appreciate that the wooden gifts I've made for people are very much...appreciated by those people or so I'm lead to believe. At first I thought people were just being kind in much the same way they stick the kids pictures to the fridge door. But I have a backlog of requests for things like chopping boards, jewellery and toy boxes, pieces of campaign furniture, toy train sets and the like. As much as I am going to enjoy making Christmas gifts, it is going to create problems of time, space and cost.

My workshop might be a little blue box and I am a doctor familiar with the twists and turns of history ancient and modern, but as for the rest...that's where the similarity ends. My 'blue box' has internal dimensions dependent upon the external dimensions.

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“Could you make me a ten foot long sideboard to match our dining table?”
The answer is 'yes I could' but 'no I can't' followed by an explanation I need a workshop at least twice as long as the longest dimension of the object I'm making. And then there's the issue of storing materials and finished products.
“Can you make me one of these incredibly complicated things by Friday?”
Again the answer is 'yes I could' but 'no I can't as I have other things to do'.

Finally there's the cost part of the equation. The couple of quid some people want to spend will not cover the materials and will definitely not cover the hours spent in the making. I have to admit, I do suffer from a similar attitude when I visit craft fairs as a customer. I tend to view costs against how much I could make the product for without calculating the time and production costs involved. There are also the jokers exhibiting at craft fairs that buy wooden products manufactured in factories in Asia for a few pence which are held together with a few pins and a lot of glue. The 'crafter' then writes a slogan on them in marker pen and try charging top dollar for them.

In the past I've had an inherent dislike of 'batching' products. I thoroughly enjoy making one item but I don't want to work in factory. I've had that experience and was utterly miserable. While I was working in the factory, terminal depressives would go out of their way to tell me to 'cheer up you miserable pillock!'. But as a 'Junior Christmas Elf' I'm going to have to consider making small batches of things just to catch up on back orders.

So, today, I have mostly been making dickey's lugholes! For those not familiar with this wonderful piece of apparatus, the dickey's lugholes is a jig to help refine the forty-five degree angle on one half of a forty-five degree mitre joint with a bench plane.
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The mitre joint is allegedly one of the simplest box making joints, but one I consistently mess up. I think the problem is seated in my 'one handedness' and the hand that works is my 'kack' hand. No matter how hard I try or how accurately I set the angles on my saw, nine times out of ten I will end up with gaps in my mitre joints. With the aid of the dickey's lugholes I can cut the mitre joints roughly to forty-five degrees and then allegedly sneak up on the final measurement. That is the theory, but as I'm finding with all things woodworking it ain't necessarily so!

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The dickey's lugholes turned out well with all of the joints accurately set. I ran the plane through to set the bed angle and all was well. As a test piece I made myself a box out of some cedar to keep my pencils in. I ran the timber through the table saw to rip it to thickness and then I canted the saw blade to forty-five degrees using my digital angle box. I used my mitre sled and stop blocks to cut the mitre joints and trimmed to final length using the dickey's lugholes. Gaps! Not as big as I usually get, but still gaps.

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I turned to a woodworking friend for guidance.
“What's the problem?” he asked.
I pointed to the gaps I could see.
“Nope, still can't see the problem!”
I sighed with frustration.
“The only problem is that you are a perfectionist!” said my friend. “Remember it's wood and a natural material!”

'Practise' they say 'makes perfect'. So the first project out of the Christmas Elf's Workshop will be some smaller pencil boxes. Let's see how we get on?

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1 hour ago, MauriceMynah said:

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If you decide to throw away those two dustbins, What do you put them in?

Oooh arr! Them's not dustbins, them's hagricultural. Them's essential to the fishing for and capture of prime Tench...being worm farms ooh arr! One is fine English Red Worm and the other is the larger Dutch Dendrobaena worms.

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22 minutes ago, Timbo said:

One is fine English Red Worm and the other is the larger Dutch Dendrobaena worms.

My father always used to tell customers at Hearts that the only way to catch bream on the Broads was with left handed wiggle maggots. The ones that wiggled to the right weren't any good.

The joke caught on in Thorpe and the newsagents on the Green used to sell them in jam jars, labelled "left handed wiggle maggots"!

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When I first started fishing my Dad would give my little brother a handful of maggots to play with to keep him occupied. 
"Gone!" John declared and Uncle Albert would reach down without taking his eyes off his float and hand him another four or five maggots.
"Gone!" more maggots issued.
"Gone!" Uncle Albert gave him some more but this time watched what he was doing with them.
He was eating them!

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Firkle interruptus! With my other half quite ill, I've had to take over her duties of kid wrangling with the addition of much errand running backwards and forwards between GP surgery and Chemist, food shopping, shopping delivery and general Timbo taxiing. I've also got additional compootering advice and fixation to do for family members who claim on their CV to be 'computer literate' and yet...I can't see an end to these additional duties until at least Sunday.

I spent Saturday negotiating the interminable roadworks that inflict Lincolnshire at present. UK Border patrol could do themselves a power of good by employing the half wit from Lincolnshire Council that plans roadworks in the county. This numb-nuts has instigated roadworks on every entrance and exit to Gainsborough and Lincoln, effectively sealing off the population between now and late December. To reach Watson's house in the southern villages of Lincoln I was sent on a route of endless detours. At one point I was closer to Norfolk than I've been all year.

Plywood! I watched an interesting film by the Victoria and Albert Museum comparing the production of plywood in the 1950's and production techniques at the turn of this century.

 

In the fifties production was centred in Canada with timber from the Douglas Fir. The best quality plywood now comes from Scandinavia, health and safety and fewer workers more evident. The production techniques however, were still the same. Soaking the logs, removing the bark, rolling the log against sharp knives to produce veneers which are then laid in alternate directions, glued and pressed into plywood sheets and then trimmed.

In the twenty first century that technique has changed, judging by what passes for plywood sold by B&Q. I bought some sheets of plywood for projects I will be making soon. Large labels applied to the sheets declared them to be FSC certified and guaranteed that the area under the large label would immediately be recycled. I removed the labels and the surface of the ply came away with the glue. Modern plywood it seems is constructed by recycling the tree bark into chaff which is fed to flatulent Far Eastern beaver and moose. Chaff laden moose farts are then directed at poor quality compressed laminates covered in tomato soup coloured glue where a microscopic layer of fart dust coats the board.
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These boards are unfit for purpose. Even using them as a substrate to hold a veneer would not work as the layer of fart dust will not hold the veneer and glue. It looks as though I will have to source some birch wood ply for my projects, but then there are only a few pennies between the good stuff and B&Q FSC (Fart Slurried Crap) plywood!

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Axle pins! Until such time as I can build myself a mini lathe or Santa delivers one (fat chance) I have to resort to buying axle pins for the toys and gifts I have planned. I ordered these from a wood turner in Welsh Wales. Good quality beech pins but expensive at around seven quid for fifty of them. Still, it will mean cars, trucks and trains will be easier to construct. I do have an old Bosch drill in good working condition that I scrounged from Ben Gunn that is destined to be the base of my home-made lathe, but I can't let myself get distracted from the Christmas projects. You never know, Santa just might come through for me?

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Door! My upstairs neighbour borrowed two planes from me to plane down the bottom of a door that no longer fitted after having new carpets laid. Although he is a self proclaimed expert in all things DIY his wife tells me this morning that he was unable to do the job as the 'planes were too heavy' and were 'too big to fit between the bottom of the door and the carpet'.

I'm off to walk the dogs in the woods to have a good laugh where they can't hear me. Oh to hell with it, MuHahahahhahha!!!!! (Five exclamation marks!)
 

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Hire boatyards don't like maggots.  If a fisherman spills maggots in the aft well (sometimes they bring gallon tubs of them) they happily wriggle off into the warmth and dry of the bilge, where they then hatch out into bluebottles.

Thousands of them.

What's more, it doesn't happen to the hirers who dropped the maggots.  They hatch about a week later, on next weeks hirers.  Usually starting around 3 o'clock in the morning.  there is absolutely nothing you can do except take the boat off hire and leave it with all the windows open, for about a week.

Always leave your pot of maggots in the gas bottle locker, where they can't escape into the boat.

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Yes! My dad was banned from keeping maggots in the house (officially) but managed to spill a pint of them in the coal cellar with resultant plague of bluebottles heading up the steps to the living room...thousands of them. The cellar walls were black with them when we checked. He was deeply unpopular.

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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
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9 hours ago, psychicsurveyor said:

If I could post a photo I would show you my middle finger, damaged and scarred.:default_biggrin:

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! 

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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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!
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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!

 

 

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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!
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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.

 

19 hours ago, ZimbiIV said:

I see from the photos you now THING from the Addams family is you helping out!

paul

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!
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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!

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