Bl Working

The fence for the woodstove is finally finished! Yes!



Heres a shot showing the hinged gate section in the open position. This will allow us to easily add wood to the stove or clean out the ashes. It was also the biggest headache of the whole project.


This view gives you an idea how the fence integrates with the rest of the living room. One of my design challenges was to build a piece that was structurally strong enough to do its job, but fine enough to not feel overly "chunky". I am pretty happy with the balance I achieved. The fence is visually delicate enough to feel like it belongs, and at the same time suprisingly stiff.


The fence passing its first real test! (And yes, Teague beat me - he started walking a few weeks ago...)


And finally, heres a shot of the total tool kit used - as always all hand tools:

Heres the section that will be on the far side of the table. Ive got a couple of ideas for this piece that will add some complexity but should also make the whole project really distinctive.

Here are two cringe-inducing pictures:
As you can see, there is still a lot of flattening to be done. Hopefully that #7 will come in today. Youll notice that opposite corners are up which means that this guy is twisted, rather than just cupped/crowned. Grrrr, are we having fun yet? I see lots more planing in my future:


Heres a partial solution for that nasty check on the one end:
Ive got a massive end vice that would easily span the two sections and stabilize them pretty well. For a couple of reasons I had pictured this end having the face vice (opposite the end vice) but the situation may warrant a change. Im also planning on epoxying the void to stabilize it; Im thinking un-dyed amber West System would do it. I wish they sold it in smaller quantities...any donors out there?