Indholdsfortegnelse for Issue 159 i Australian Woodsmith

I spoke to Chris Vesper from Vesper Tools recently and asked what tools were popular at the moment. It seems a lot of folk are carving spoons, ladles and scrapers. It is a very therapeutic activity carving something useful from an off-cut or a branch that you picked up on a bushwalk. You don’t need a workshop, just a comfortable place to sit and some sharp tools. In this issue we take you on a journey into the world of incise carving. Once you get a handle on slicing away the serifs on a letter you will appreciate the nature of the timber you are carving. Joining the serifs and making the letter pop out of the wood is just magic. Talking about magic, I spent a day apprenticed as…

CARVING KNIVES Incise carving is addictive! Once you learn how to slice the serifs on a letter in the form of a V a whole new world of woodwork will open to you. On page 58 Murray Taylor presents a master class on carving Art Nouveau letters. One tool he uses to make the magic happen is the continental-style bent aside knife. If you are new to chip carving, I highly recommend that you start your tool collection with a straight and a bent aside knife. The straight knife is just right for slicing out the serifs of a letter, while the bent aside knife allows you to accurately guide the blade from serif to serif. This is done by taking a choke hold on the handle while resting your…

One of the easiest ways to give a project an aged or antique look is by applying a crackled paint finish. This simple procedure creates a maze of tiny cracks and fissures in the surface of the paint, mimicking the look of a piece that’s decades old. This technique was used to finish the shadow boxes you see above and on page 32. Crackling was traditionally done using hide glue (see box on next page). But you can also use a crackle medium designed specifically for this purpose, like the one shown at left. (Refer to page 73 for sources.) Creating a crackled paint finish is a three-step process which I’ll walk you through. But before getting started, I’d like to emphasise that if you’ve never tried this finishing technique,…

We keep a running list of project possibilities. In addition to staff suggestions, the list includes reader requests. Based on that, this heirloom-quality cradle is going to satisfy quite a number of people. It’s what I call a generational project. Shortly after learning of an upcoming birth, a woodworking grandparent (usually) starts thinking about building something special. When the little one comes home, there’s a handmade gift waiting. After serving its purpose, the cradle can be passed along to another family member or treasured until the next baby. In time, the original occupants may use the same cradle for their own children — continuing the tradition. Understandably, most of the attention will be on the baby inside, but the cradle should still look the part. This one is made primarily…

Art Nouveau developed between 1890 and 1910 as a reaction to the academic art of the 19th century. It was inspired by natural, flowing forms found in nature, especially the curved lines in plants and flowers. Art Nouveau is a complete artistic style embracing fine and decorative arts. It includes painting, jewellery, furniture, textiles, ceramics and architecture. From the 1860s onwards, after Japan became more accessible to the western world, the work of Japanese artists influenced artists in the west and so the New Art – for that is what it means – began to develop into the form that we now know. FONTS There are numerous fonts in the Art Nouveau style, ranging from a fairly undecorated form to highly decorative. Let’s first of all take a look at…

One aspect of woodworking that I particularly enjoy is the opportunity to work with different species of woods. And when it comes down to interesting woods, lignum vitae has to rank near the top of my list. Lignum vitae is a tropical hardwood that grows primarily on the islands of the Caribbean, such as Haiti and The Bahamas. However, it can be found as far north as the southern tip of Florida and as far south as the coastal regions of Central and South America. The trees are generally small and slow-growing, with tiny purple or blue blossoms. Typically, the trees only grow to a height of 3 to 16 metres. The name lignum vitae is Latin for “tree of life.” It’s so named because the resin extracted from the…

There’s something about the three-dimensional aspect of shadow boxes that I’ve always found appealing. Unlike a painting or print, the curated items in a shadow box have depth and dimension that somehow evokes the feeling of looking at arti-facts behind the glass of a museum case. But the shadow boxes shown here are likely to attract as much attention as the items they display. Each one features a unique, attractive frame made from built-up mouldings. The frames are easily removed from the shadow boxes without taking them off the wall, making it easy to change out your display whenever the mood strikes you. And to top it off, a crackled paint finish gives these shadow boxes a distinctive look. Traditionally, shadow boxes were used by retired servicemen to store and…

TABLE SAW JIG FOR TURNING PINS The cradle on page 46 swings on a pair of pins that match the material used to make the cradle — beech. These pieces are easily turned on a lathe. However, not every woodworker owns a lathe. That doesn’t mean you’re out of luck, though. One solution is to use the table saw and this jig to make the round parts. The jig attaches to the mitre gauge and suspends an octagonal blank above the dado blade. As you rotate the blank, the dado blade cuts the blank into a round shape. JIG BASICS. The main purposes of the jig are to support the workpiece parallel to the saw table and square to the blade. In the drawing below, you can see that the…

SPIRAL CUTTERS Woodcraft Supplies has been importing spiral cutting heads into Australia for more than a decade. Robert Gregory has visited the Shelix factory in Kentucky USA (where the system was invented) and the CTS factory in China. Robert has a range of common spiral cutting heads in stock but can supply just about any replacement head on a thicknesser or a jointer. His website features a long list of thicknessers and jointers to cross reference against so that you can get a price for your upgrade. If your thicknesser or jointer is not listed, just take a photo of it and send it to Robert (rdg@big-pond.com) so he can identify the make and model. COMPASS, DIVIDERS & TRAMMELS Spring dividers and trammels are available from McJing, Timbecon and Carbatec.…

In our next issue we focus on clock mechanisms and what to look for when you are designing a clock. We review gloves in the workshop and share our insights into fence design for router tables. In our techniques section we show you how to use a chisel to carve numbers and letters in hardwood. Our weekend project is a set of coasters cleverly routed so they look like wooden waffles! Our designer project is a striking set of drawers to store your memories in. The standout heirloom project is a pendulum wall clock. In our turning section we showcase the dangerous craft of therming (barrel turning). Our next issue also includes an extensive index so you can quickly reference the projects, techniques and tools we have featured in the…

With a title like “Ripping at the Router Table,” you’re forgiven if you raise an eyebrow in skepticism. And it’s true, I’m not saying you can (or should) use your router table to cut wide boards into narrow parts. Instead, the idea here is more trimming to width in small increments, leaving a smooth, glass-like edge. This is an idea that I’ve toyed with for some time, but got serious about after a conversation with another woodworker. We both had set up and used a router table for jointing the edges of pieces. The technique works really well, and the smooth edge is tough to beat. The only issue is that after a few jointing passes, you may end up with a slight taper along the width of a board.…

We often drill and tap golf balls in our workshop and use them for knobs in the jigs we build. Sometimes we use the disc sander to create a flat on the top of the ball (when it is attached to its threaded rod). This is handy when the knob has to work in a confined space. One thing you quickly realise when you drill, tap and sand golf balls is that the core colour of each ball is often different. This got me thinking about setting a design exercise for a senior class I was asked to run a workshop for. The challenge I set was to use golf balls in new and novel ways. Tapping, drilling and sanding golf balls is easy. The class came up with a…

My son moved out last month to a share house with four mates. The house needed a dining table and my son needed a queen-sized bed frame and a desk. We got together and designed and built the furniture in the garage workshop. The material we chose to work with was European beech in the form of 2200 x 600 x 26mm finger jointed and laminated panels (from Bunnings). The panels come from forests in Romania and are designed for use as benchtops. We cut the 64mm-wide leg sections using a track saw and then docked them into 740mm lengths. We ripped two of the 26mm-thick leg sections down the centre and then laminated two full 26mm-thick sections around the 11mm core piece. This gave us the leg dimension of…