Saturday 27 October 2012

A Book-Holder for the missus

A Book-Holder for the missus


My wife to be had been complaining for some time that she had nowhere in the kitchen to hold her cook-books whilst cooking. I therefore took if upon myself to get out to the garage and come up with a suitable contraption to mend said ailment.

After a brief rummage around, I found several piece of wood that would fit the bill.

The first thing I needed to do for the lot of them was remove the rough edges by planing them all down to their finery. This took a bit longer than I expected but I got there in the end and was left with a lovely smooth finish over the majority of the wood.

Next I had to mark out the points that I would use for the dowel joints on each board. This was pretty straight forward and took a few minutes with my new go-to drill bit. Once I had the holes in place it was a case of cutting the dowels and gluing them all together.









Once they were set in place I needed to leave them for a while before I could continue with the rest of the work so that they were rigid enough to withstand some heavy kitchen work!







As I wasn't too worried about the back end of the holder, I opted to use 2 wood screws on the back for the stand. If I had had a hinge to hand, I would have used this so that it could have been folded down if needed but alas, I did not, so I decided to make the back rigid as well.





Now the lady indoors has a thing for all things pretty and feminine and as it was, the book-holder was sporting a rather manly look and needed some adjusting. So to get the heart effect in the wood, I marked out the area I wanted to use in pen and then made perfect use of my trusty angle grinder with a sanding attachment to get the grooves in its front face. This was relatively straight-forward and with a bit of practice on some more scrap pieces, I might be tempted to get even more creative in future. 
To finish the whole thing off, I used some left-over wax from a previous project an on the right here you can see the finished result. As you can see I also created some 'page-holders' by drilling 2 holes in the shelf and cut 2 more dowels that can be removed to fit differing sized books in the holder.

So that is this week's project completed, I now just need to figure out what the next one is going to be.

Thanks for looking and check back soon for my next adventure!

Cheers.

Monday 22 October 2012

The finished Shelves and Side-Tables

The finished Shelves and Side-Tables


So I finally managed to get the project for Anthony finished. And below you can see the results. I had the joy of installing the shelves in his old Victorian home and all I can say is, straight lines were non-existent. This presented several niggly issues, but they could all be sorted by a quick use of the circular saw or a bit of planing to get the shelves nice and snuggly fitted.


Below you can see the TV shelf just after its first coat of wax. It really helped to bring out the grain on the boards and has added a lovely depth to them. And beside it you can see the left hand side of the alcove with the TV shelf and the 2 above. Once the TV shelf was in, the next 2 were a doddle.






















Next you can see the final 2 shelves for the right hand side of the alcove. Again these were very easy to install and thankfully only needed a small piece taken from the back of them to get them to sit flush against the front face of the fireplace.













I had tried to keep a lot of the features of the boards as mentioned in a previous post and once the wax was applied it really brought out the letter work on each of them.


And again, trying to retain some of the features I kept some of the metal-work as well. A quick buff with the angle grinder saw the rust fly of this and again I think it's a lovely little touch to help make it all that little bit more unique.
















And finally on the right here you can see the two little side tables for Anthony's living room. Both have one coat of oil and a finishing wax on top to help protect them. Once in their rightful place I'm sure they will look fantastic.

Now that that one has been completed, the next project is already on the cards and I shall have the next post up in the coming week all going well.

Thanks for looking and be sure to check back soon!












Tuesday 9 October 2012

A couple of Shelves and Side-Tables

A couple of Shelves and Side-Tables


A little while ago I was asked to produce some shelves and bed-side tables for Anthony. Here is what I managed to produce for him.

The first port of call was obviously the suppliers to get the relevant bits and pieces for the project. He wanted soft-wood for the tables so I picked up some nice and chunky sleeper style pieces to use for them. The legs were going to be made from 10x10 posts. The shelves as per other projects were going to be made from old scaffolding planks.
As I am still to get an amazing set of tools, the initial cuts are still being made by my circular saw. Whilst it does the job and get through smoothly, there are always lines that do not join on the cut face. It's annoying but can be removed with a bit of planing and sanding. For the scaffolding boards, I used the circular saw as well as it flew through them.

As Anthony has a recessed alcove in his house, he asked that the shelves all come out to be in line with the fireplace, which meant that I would have to extend all of the boards by 3cm. This meant that I had to make up extra pieces to slide on to the back of each shelf so that they sat flush. I have to say this was probably the trickiest part of the whole project. I used some pieces of pine doweling to join the boards together and covered them in wood glue to make sure that the joins were rigid. After all, one of these shelves was going to be holding his TV so it needed to be strong.






The best way for me to make the extra pieces was to take 
a separate board and then slice it length ways at the desired length and then measure it up against the board it would attach to. All in all I had to make 4 of these.














On the left here you can see the set of boards that are to be used for the TV shelf. This was made in pretty much the same way as the other shelves but there needed to be a diagonal in it to fit nicely in the recess. A lot of jiggery pokery and I managed to get it all flush. 




After I planed it all down and sanded the life out of it to get rid of all of the staining from years of hard work as a builders mate, it ended up looking like this. A hell of a lot nicer than how it started out. A few coats of stain to come and it will be a beautiful part of Anthony's home.









When I was sanding the boards down, I managed to unearth some lovely features on them. These letters were scattered across the boards in several places and once sanded back, they added some nice character features to several of the shelves. I also managed to polish up some of the metal work on one of the other shelves, which was used to add support to the boards at either end. It was horrible and rusted when I got it, but after a bit of grinding, I got it to look quite nice. 


Next came the tables which were a pleasure to make compared to the shelves. A few cuts here and a few cuts there and then all that was needed were several pilot holes for the screws and a quick levelling off. To get them level I had to plane a little bit off one or two of the legs and that was it. Relatively simple compared to the shelves.






 Here you can see one of the tables in an almost finished form. At this stage, it just needed a level and a bit of stain to finish it all off.











As you can see on the left, the legs needed some work, before the table was going to hold a pen without it falling off.






The final outcome was a lovely little set of tables like this. This is with one coat of stain and prior to a wax going on the top to help protect it. I will have the completed pictures up soon of the tables and shelves in their new homes.

Thanks for looking and be sure to check back soon for the finalized pics