Bl Working

August already.
Sorry for the delay in posts. I’ve been happily  ‘out of range’ for the past 4 weeks and trying my best to squeeze in a few days vacation.
Summer time 2011.
I brought the Queens Wharf project along with me from Toronto figuring I’d have lots of free time to work on it out here in the shop. I also thought I’d have some time to continue developing some of the new hand tool designs I’d been working on as well…wouldn’t you know it?
; )
Once we arrived in Nova Scotia I was commissioned to build a ‘bench’ for a local resident here on Cape Breton Island.
Now I’m saying ‘bench’ but it’ll be used as a couch or a sofa.
A six foot long, solid cherry piece made to compliment and/or reflect a similar look and feel to my clients Danish made, mid modern rocking chair. He purchased this well made rocker a few years back and asked me to come up with a couch version to match it.
My original thought was to take the existing design and simply stretch it to three times it’s normal width and call it done but once the design developed I quickly realized I’m basically re-designing a new piece from scratch using the Danish made chair for influence and inspiration only.
The first and perhaps most difficult task would be to locate suitable material that would be dry enough to work in my extremely limited time frame here on the Coast. Thankfully after a few phone calls and a few miles I was able to locate some 8/4 cherry planks in the neighborhood and had my ‘essential’ tools with me to begin the project. A local cabinet maker agreed to part with some of his own stock to help me out. Big thanks again Ranald Ross!
Once I had the cherry wood in my shop it’s been about a week of scrub plane to rip saw to jack plane to cross cut back to rip saw and onto smoothing. The bench has many pieces and that meant a hell of a lot of rip cuts!
I had just ordered two ‘new’ reconditioned Disston panel saws from Mark Harrell at Bad Axe Tool Works and my timing could not have been better! Here are some shots thus far. All of these components were dimensioned from plank using a scrub plane, a jack plane, a smoothing plane, a rip saw and a x-cut…a very basic kit but all I needed to make some shavings.
I’ll be putting together a more complete post when I get the piece finished but until then-here are some pics…not much to see really, just a hell of a lot of wood shavings and saw dust.
Oh yeah, I almost forgot…make sure to check out ‘the cover’ of Canadian Woodworking Magazine this month…
you may just see a family face! ha-; )
and finally,
I managed to squeeze in a few tunes here in Mabou, Cape Breton at the Red Shoe Pub last week.
It was a great night of music, food and drink. Thanks to all who made it out.
Here’s a link to a YouTube clip.
Cheers~


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