Jonathan Pearce Fine Furniture

Repeat....repeat....repeat....

2012-01-17T15:49:00.000Z

Here is an interesting thing. If you make lots of an object in one go, how much quicker overall is it compared to just making one.

Batch work, that is what it is.

I am making thirty identical objects at the moment. They are trays, about 330mm square, and each tray has eight little compartments. So by making a batch, certain ‘set up times’ will be split across the thirty. Let me give you an example, not connected to what I am currently making, but still a good example.

Suppose I need to shape a piece of wood that will be the back leg of a chair. Look at a dinning chair you have at home. It will probably be curved somewhere so the back leans from the seat. You get the idea. Now I need to make a jig or two that holds the wood while it is being shaped. It might take two hours to make these two jigs, but to actually use them to shape the wood may only take a couple of minutes. If I were making just the one chair, then in total, it has taken two hours four minutes (two hours for the jig, and two legs at 2 minutes each) to shape the two back legs, or 62 minutes each. If I was making a batch of ten chairs, then it would equate to two hours forty minutes (two hours to make the jig, and twenty legs at 2 minutes each), or 8 minutes per leg. You can see the time saving.

It is not all time savings though. Some tasks don’t save time no matter how many you do, as there is no set up time. For example, when you hand sand the sharp edge off a piece of wood and give it a little curve. This can only be done at a certain speed, no matter how many you do. Maybe if you do loads, you get slower as your arm starts to ache!

Anyway, I am keeping times of each task I perform in making the trays to see where the time savings are.

It will make interesting analysis.

To some people.

It's Showtime!

2011-11-30T17:50:00.000Z

Isn't that a quote from a film too? Am I all filmed out?

No....actually, it is showtime.

I am at the East London Design Show that starts tomorrow 1st December, and runs till Sunday. It is my third years doing it now.

Come along if you happen to be in town and in Shoreditch to be precise.

Here's Jonny..........

2011-11-30T17:45:00.002Z

......you know he never actually said that in the book.

So I have been told, it was a bit of improvisation during filming.

Doing it backwards

2011-09-09T15:44:00.000+01:00

A few years ago when I worked for NatWest (now part of RBS), I was on a project team that was called 'Re-engineering' for about two years.

It was a very unusual sort of project for a Bank to have, as it was an R&D project that was making programming tools that could be used to analyse code, with the aim to re-engineer or reverse engineer it.

Lots of old code has been hacked over the years and is lacking in any serious documentation, causes all sort of problems when changes have to be made. Our tools would be able to help.

Another reason that this project came about was because of the approaching year 2000, and all the problems that were promised would happen when the date flipped from 1999 to 2000. So the media said, aircraft would fall from the sky, computer equipment wouldn't work, video recorders would spit the tapes out, and nuclear power stations would go into meltdown. The media hype was so good, that one of my friends asked me if his washing machine would still work in the year 2000. I did quiz him to see if he knew why the washing machine needed to know what time it was before doing the washing, and he couldn't think of any. So I told him it was safe to assume it would still work.

On the Re-engineering team there were some pretty smart people who had been working in the field of code and language analysis for many years. They had great knowledge of the structure of language, how to analyse code and producing a model onto which various forms of data manipulation could be applied. I was most lucky to work with them.

We had two types of manipulation that could be applied, static and dynamic analysis.

The static analysis was simply looking at the code itself and producing a model from it. You could then for example track how data was moved through the program, passed from field to field.

Dynamic analysis built on top of the static analysis as it added information from an actual run of the program. Then you could see the logical paths of execution in the program. This information added much more depth to the analysis.

They were very interesting tools. They were used in some Bank projects in the UK and in South Africa. Some of the tools were even sold to third party companies. I believe IBM got a pretty neat bit of code that run on the mainframe for next to nothing.

So what has this all to do with woodwork?

Well, about a year and half or so ago I was making some presentation Champagne boxes. Once these were complete, I made another using a different technique. Now, a year and a half later I am making some more, but I can't remember that different technique I used. I still have the prototype in the workshop, and I have reverse engineered it and produced a set of diagrams, and the new batch has been started.

So there is the connection. No documentation

Note to self

2011-09-06T11:35:00.000+01:00

Note to self: "Don't left heavy objects when you have a bad back."

Second note to self: "Should have written the previous note at the beginning of the year."

This is London calling...

2011-08-17T16:43:00.002+01:00

....London calling all you people in 'social media' land.

Hello!

Is is really that long since I posted my last blog update? It must be, as computers don't lie.

In the last blog I posted I was making my drinks cabinet. I am glad to say that I finished that ages ago. I am not one of these people who spends eight months making a table and has nothing to show at the end of that time!

If you haven't seen the pictures of my finished cabinet, well here it is.

After finishing the drinks cabinet, I made a cabinet for a couple I met at a show I was exhibiting at just before last Christmas. They wanted a cabinet to hold A4 folders, but didn't just wanted a set of shelves. They liked an existing cabinet of mine, and wanted one built but bigger. Well that is just what I did. I do have some pictures of it, but for some reason they are not here on my workshop laptop. But you get the idea.

I have also made a few smaller items that I will sell off my stand at some show I have over the next few months. I have made five jewelley boxes and nineteen picture frames. It is good to have small pieces people can take away with them.

And at the moment I am making a couple more extending coffee tables similar to one I have made before. This time I am making one from American walnut and the other from English ash.

Anyway, if you are a social media type of person, then you might get excited by this. I now have two dedicated accounts for my furniture.

I have a Twitter account that you can 'follow' me on (@JPFineFurniture) and a FaceBook account (JonathanPearceFineFurniture) you can 'friend' me.

Right, my glue has dried so back to real work.

As I was saying....

2011-02-25T12:42:00.000Z

....the sides of the cabinet are made by laminating pieces together and putting them in a veneer bag. I'll show you.

The veneer bag is a heavy weight plastic bag which is connected to a vacuum pump which sucks all the air out. Anything that is in the bag will then get squashed by the atmosphere around us. In theory you should be able to get 1 atmosphere of pressure, but in real life you only get about 0.8 atmospheres which is enough.

The picture shows one of the curved cabinet sides being made. Inside the bag goes a large flat piece of material, in this case a piece of white faced chipboard. On this sit the former which has the shape I want to produce - in this case a simple curve. On top of the former sits the pieces I am laminating. Shove it all in the bag, switch on, leave for a few hours for the glue to set and the result is a panel that has the shape of the former. Easy.

As the curved panels are only 8mm thick, by themselves they would not be strong enough. To beef up the cabinet sides, the curved panels are glued to curved ribs that are in turn glued to a flat panel. This then gives the cabinet side the strength required. The flat side becomes the inside of the cabinet, while the curved side is the outside of the cabinet. I must remember this during the glue-up and make sure I don't get it the wrong way round!

Before the cabinet is glue together, I have to drill evenly spaced holes on the inside faces for the shelf supports. These need to be drilled accurately otherwise the shelf will not sit right and wobble. To do this I use a jig and a router. The jig is simply a piece of ply wood that has holes drilled into it at a regular spacing. On the base of the router a guide bush is screwed. This is a circular collar of metal that has an outside diameter the same as the diameter of the holes I drilled in the ply. You see where this is going? The jig is clamped to the cabinet side, the guide bush sits in the hole and the router is then used to drill the hole.

This picture shows me doing a dry fit of the cabinet components before I do the glue up. It is always good practice to do a dry fit, as once glue up starts it is too late to fix any problems!

You can see how the curve of the cabinet sides is mirrored by the curve of the legs. Another reason for this dry fit is that I need to have the four legs completely sanded to their finished state. The reason for this is I am going to fume the oak to make them go a dark chocolate brown. Once fumed, I can't start sanding down the legs otherwise I could sand all the colour away.

To fume wood, you need to expose it to ammonia vapours. Ammonia is horrid smelly stuff and not nice at all - the fumes need to be contained to get the best effect on the wood. Hence, you can either fume in a sealed plastic box or make a fuming tent. I did the latter.

The tent I made is a simple MDF frame that is covered in heavy weight plastic. A plastic flap is pulled over the top and seal with brown packing tape. It reminds me in some way of the first fish tank I had when I was much younger. It was one of the glass-and-frame types that existed before the all-glass versions you see now days. My Dad got if for me. He found it in a friends garden. It was in a right state. All the iron rusty, glass broken. He did a repair job on it, got the rust off, painted it, replaced the glass. It looked good as new once finished!

Anyway, back to the oak and fuming. Here is the method. Place the wood to be fumed in the tent. Get some ammonia. Wear lots of personal protection equipment. Pour some ammonia into plastic trays. Place trays in tent. Seal tent up. Wait 24 hours or until you have the desired colour (which maybe before 24 hours if only a light fuming is required). Remove oak.

Once the wood comes out of the tent, it really wiffs of ammonia. I left the legs for a few days to air off before I coated them with oil. After that it was the carcass glue up!

So this is the state of play. Carcass glued together. Doors on, but not finished as I have to make the handles.

Ah the handles.........how am I going to do that......

A late Happy New Year

2011-01-19T11:00:00.003Z

Yes, it is a bit late to wish you all Happy New Year. But hey, I am sure you got more than enough at the correct time, a one now will keep that happiness rolling on.

Last week was the Society of Designer Craftmen's show at the Mall Galleries in London. I had four pieces of work on show:

On Wednesday and Thursday last week I was a steward at the show, which basically involved making sure items never got damaged and answering any questions asked - and that might not only be about my pieces!

Doing a show is hard work, the hardest being break-down as everybody is there packing up and trying to get out as quick as possible! It didn't take too long, and it didn't rain too much as my furniture was loaded into the van, but it was all wrappped up to protect it from the elements and knocks.

So I am back in the workshop now, and am working away on the Drinks cabinet I talked about in an earlier post. Currently I am making the sides of the cabinet. They are curved and are made from laminating 1.4mm thick veneer into the curved shape............

My stand at ELDS 2010

2010-12-08T16:02:00.001Z

So the show ran for three full days, with a private view on the Thursday night.

I must say that although I normally stand up all day in the workshop, at the end of an eight hour day in front of my stand, my back was killing me! I must have looked an older man than I actually am as I walked down the road towards the tube station, and then struggled to sit down on the train.

Although the weather was cold, there was good attendance at the show. Of course wanting to look my best in front of all the public, I could not risk wearing a hat on my way to the show in morning as my hair would get messed up and be sticking up all over the place. I never realised I was that vain.

Here is a picture of my stand this year.

In addition to having just furniture on my stand, I also had a number of different boxes for sale (jewellery boxes, pencil boxes, champagne boxes). I am pleased to say I sold a good fair number. It does make the day more pleasant to sell something!

I am back in the workshop now making a blanket chest. This I hope will be one of the items in my next show. For details of my upcoming shows, check out the 'Exhibitons' page on my website.

It was the night before....

2010-12-01T18:31:00.005Z

....not Christmas (but could be with all the snow we have had - even in London), but the start of the East London Design Show.

Yes, once again this year I am doing the show. I have been setting up my stand today in good time for tomorrow's opening at 18:00 (private view). Then three full days of standing in front of my stand talking about the work. If I had a Twitter account, I could tweet. But I don't. So I won't.

I have also updated my website to list the shows I am in...it is now in a new table called 'Exhibitions'. Funny that!!

Watch this space for news of the show!

What's the buzz?

2010-11-05T14:55:00.009Z

So in my last post, I was talking about a black and white chest of drawers that I was making. Yep, done that now! And also I have made the following items:

Two bathroom cabinets

Four jewellery boxes from oak and sycamore

A shelf unit for a computer room

The carcass of an AV cabinet

Twenty two drawers made from cedar

Nine dovetailed pencil boxes

Three book cases

And at the moment I am alternating between making a sideboard and a blanket chest. So I have been busy.

Today I have been spraying some of the sideboard door. The sideboard is completely black, and having sprayed 35 big panels black, the spray room is now black. And sometime, like yesterday, I seem to get as much black over myself as over what I am spraying. Don't ask how or why, but yesterday I did manage to spill 1/2 litre of the lacquer, all over the spray room table, floor, my measuring scales and myself. Although there was lots of black running everywhere, the air was a dark shade of blue!

While I am waiting for coats of lacquer to dry, I swap between projects. So today not only have I been shaping the legs of the blacket chest, I have also been making some 3d CAD models of a drinks cabinet I want to make for early next year.

I plan to make the cabinet from oak (the light brown in the model) and wenge (the dark brown in the model). As it is a drinks cabinet, the top most shelf will be used to hang wine glasses from, while the other shelf used to store spirits and mixers. I can't decide yet if I should made something for the bottom shelf area for storing wine bottles lying down.

Past and present

2010-04-02T09:29:00.006+01:00

I have been busy the last few weeks - helping someone in the workshop making a table in fact.

The chance came up that I could help make a table that is a nine-tenths scale reproduction of a table that William Wilberforce used to sign the document that abolished the slave trade. The original table is held in The Museum in Docklands, London.

The we made was about five foot round, eight curved faced drawers and a leather top writing surface. The table stood on a traditional style curved leg assembly on four brass castors. The wood used was a mixture of modern material for hidden areas (ply and the like), with mahogany being used for all the visible surfaces.

Two of us working on it, and it was finished in about five weeks. Not bad going!

So now I am back to making my own pieces. I have come up with a range of product I want to make that allow people to have bespoke furniture, but at more affordable prices. These pieces won't be a cheap as the Nordic/Oak/Pine warehouse places, but won't be as expensive as high end pieces (but I can still make them if required!). All the pieces can be made larger/smaller as required.

The first piece I am making is a chest of drawers. It is being made so one half is white and the other is black. It looks as if someone has got two chests, cut them in half and stuck them back together again. A bit two-tone perhaps?

I am just at the phase now where I am spraying the black half...and it is a right pain, as you need to be very careful not to get dust and dirt on the surface as it really shows. And in a dusty workshop that is hard!

Twenty years ago

2010-01-29T13:56:00.004Z

Yes, it was twenty years ago that I joined NatWest IT. It was the first day of a nine week training course in Jackson Structured Programming and PL/1.

Seems like only yesterday........

......and here I am now those years later not doing IT as a profession any more.

Anyway, the SDC ended the other week. Three shows in three months. Not bad. All different, and all different experiences. The one I enjoyed the most was the East London Design Show. Maybe because it was the second show I had done and knew a bit more of what to expect, and also I had my stand better organised too. I am sure the more shows you do, the better the experience.

I made a bathroom cabinet for our own bathroom, as the one we had was too small and falling to bits (not made by me I must add). The new one is great. Big enough to take every bottle of smelly bathroom stuff, and with two really big mirror doors. So last weekend, I took down the old cabinet, painted the walls and ceiling, then hung the new cabinet. It looks so much better now. Should have been done years ago!

Finished - Bedside cabinets

2010-01-05T15:31:00.003Z

First of all, let me wish you all a Happy New Year!

Just before Christmas, I finished a pair of bedside cabinets made from sycamore and oak. Go have a look at the pictures of them on my website.

I wanted to get the cabinets made for a show that starts this coming weekend (9th - 17th Jan 2010), being held at the Mall Galleries in London. It is a show run by the Society of Designer Craftsmen, which I am a member of. They are an organisation of craftspeople from various disciplines, so at the show there will be much more than just furniture!

Pop into the show if you are in the area...do you wants some bedroom cabinets by any chance (or any other bedroom furniture)?

Back in the day

2009-12-10T12:57:00.004Z

So what does that mean then – "Back in the day"? Does it mean "I remember when..." or does it mean "When I was young..."?

Anyway, back in the day when I worked for people, December was the time of Christmas parties. Going too as many as possible was the thing to do, so you become one of the 'faces' on the Christmas party scene. You would get tickets to all the parties, "The Tech Apps party", "File Server party", "JFPIG" to names a few, but as always our party was always the best one to attend!

When I moved onto other companies, the parties were different, and that is mainly due to the excess of money spend on them. Free wine and beer all night, bar staff walking around with trays full of cocktail drinks that you help yourself to, a vodka shoot where you lay beneath a mini ski-jump made of ice and vodka is poured down into your mouth, the biggest chocolate fondue fountain you have ever seen. But at the end of the day, the simple parties where better…even if the food was some sandwiches supplied by Benjy’s.

I don’t think I will have a company Christmas party this year – I have to put up with myself all day and don’t think an evening of my own company will be swinging!

Since my last update I have done a couple of shows. The first was held in Chelsea Town Hall and was called "Handmade in Britain", and that was during November. The show I did last week, "The East London Design Show" was held in Shoreditch Town Hall (seems like lots of shows are held in town halls).

It is an experience doing a show, standing up for hours on end, talking to people about your furniture. It has to be done though, and gets my name and work out to the public.

Here is a picture of my stand at the East London Design Show.

Must get on now. I am making a pair of bedside cabinets. It seems to be taking ages to make them, but I keep getting interrupted by these shows!!!

A stones throw away

2009-10-23T15:59:00.004+01:00

Today I went round to a veneer merchant to buy some sycamore veneer. It is for a pair of bedside cabinets I am making. The sycamore will be married up with some oak, and will give a light/dark combination.

The veneer merchant I use is on a big industrial estate in Beckton, East London. It is really funny as I grew up in East Ham which is only a couple of miles away, and even more odd as my grandfather worked on the gas works that used to Beckton before it was knocked down many years ago (Seen the film 'Full Metal Jacket'? That was filmed in some of the old gas works before it was finally pulled down. I remember them filming it, as all the building were made to look war torn).

Although I now have my veneer, I won't be able to use it for a while as we have a new veneer press in the workshop that is currently being renovated, as it is probably over 50 years old. It is hard to describe what a veneer press looks like. It is a cross between a cider press, a printing press and a medieval torture machine! When it is finished I will post a picture here.

I have added a couple of video links to the gallery section of my website...see if you can find them!

The trio of bookcase have now been installed and some pictures of them can also be seen on my website.

I have my first show coming up in a couple of weeks. It is called Handmade in Britain and is being held in Chelsea Old Town Hall. I have never done a show before so I am sure it will be an experience!

Till next time.....

Working from home...Scooby Doo.

2009-09-30T15:06:00.002+01:00

Today I have been working from home busy getting images sorted for some postcards - not of my recent holiday I should add! I have three shows coming up over the next few months, so I need some sort of publicity that people can take if they like my work.

I already have business cards made - I did those earlier in the year. These are the first business cards I have ever had in my life...I can't have had a job in the past important enough to warrant them I guess. I always get a smile on my face when I think about business cards, as it reminds me a story about my dad. Many many years ago, he was given some business cards to give out to clients. A few months after he got them, I happened to find them in a box in the shed. When I asked my dad what they were doing there, he said "I gave some out, and then someone phoned me up. I don't want that to happen." Hopefully people will phone me up!

The set of three bookcases I have been making are now finished and are ready for me to collect them from the workshop. I will get some pictures done of them and post them on my website.

A lot has happened...

2009-09-05T18:15:00.008+01:00

...since my last post! Honest.

First of all, I did a major revamp of my website. This was for two reasons. The first was I wanted to change the look and feel of it - this was not too difficult as all I had to really do was change the CSS that provided the site style. As a result, and the second reason for the changes, was because I then found it only worked with IE7 - so I had to do more little CSS tweeks to get it working on various other browsers. It now works on IE6, IE7, FireFox, Chrome and Safari. I am holding back on testing it on IE8 for a while.

I have also finished my sideboard. You can see pictures of it in my website gallery.

My nephew who is 15 had to do two weeks work experience. For his second week he came to the workshop and together we build a coffee table he designed. I don't have any proper photographs of it yet, just this one I took in the workshop.

Currently at the moment, I am making three oak bookcases. They are to replace some old shelves in a chimney breast alcove. Eventually there will be a fitted cupboard in the alcove.

Anyway, I am halfway through my summer holidays at the moment, having just spent the last five days in Shropshire, and flying tomorrow morning to Croatia for a week. I'll send a postcard!

Drawer action

2009-06-21T20:26:00.004+01:00

I was out a couple of months ago with some chums for some after work beers and a curry.

One of them, we shall call him 'MM', says he remembers seeing something on an Antiques Roadshow type TV programme many years ago about how to spot furniture with well made and fitted drawers.

The expert said that a well made drawer can be pushed shut by the pressure of one finger at the side of the drawer. If the drawer is well made, then it will glide in. If not, then the drawer will stick and bind (it will 'rack').

I said I would post a video of the drawers in the Ash hall table I was making, to show how they open and close....have a look.

.

If you want to see more pictures of this table, then have a look at the gallery shots of it on my website

I am still around...don't worry.

2009-06-18T20:50:00.005+01:00

Bad bad bad bad. Has it really been over two months since I did my last update? Bad bad bad bad. I will do more updates - yes I know I have said it before, but I will now aim to do one at the end of each week.

Anyway, in those two months I have not just been sitting down enjoying the sun that seems to come to us late spring/early summer. I have actually been doing some work.

First of all, I have finished my hall table, but to be honest, I haven't done the mirror yet. I do have the mirror glass (it is all wrapped up in the workshop with 'danger' signs stuck to it) but have been side tracked by other things.

So what else have I been doing? Well, when I ordered the wood for my hall table, I made sure I had enough to make a small sideboard. This is made frame and panel construction, the frame being from the ash, while the panels made from something called olive ash - it just has more colour than ash and can look a bit like olive wood. I have nearly finished this project, I only have the handles to make and then I can move onto the 'finishing' of it. This will be new, as I normally use oil as a finish, but for this project I have decided to use a spray finish which will be something new for me to learn. Lots of furniture made in the workshop is spray finished, and it is a very useful skill to have.

Also since my last post, I have given my website a complete revamp. I have changed the look and feel. Go have a look, and while you are there you can have a look at the hall table too!

Website update - Tallboy pictures

2009-04-07T12:16:00.004+01:00

I have made an update to the gallery on my website to include the pictures of the cherry tallboy.

Go have a look and you can see what it really looks like.

A couple of pints please

2009-03-27T17:40:00.001Z

I came in on Monday morning and checked the kiln to see how much water had come out of the wood over the weekend. I was really surprised, as there was half a bucket, which was about a couple of pints.

I checked the moisture content of the wood, and it has dropped down to about 11%. This is a good enough level to allow me to start to machine the wood up closer to its final thickness, and then putting it back in the kiln to dry out a bit more.

The long and short of it is, that by Wednesday I was ready to take the wood to the final dimension and actually start to make the table!

For the last few days I have been doing the joints in the table that actually hold it all together. As there are thirty-six components in the table (excluding the pieces that make up there drawers, and that is another thirty-two), I guess you can see why I am still doing them today!

A delivery of wood

2009-03-20T16:17:00.002Z

I had a delivery of Ash turn up today. It is for a Hall table and a matching wall mirror.

It was sent to me from the merchant who is just outside Bristol. The lorry that delivered it was big enough to move a couple of households. The wood itself was all packed up safe on a pallet.

Unfortunately, the lorry driver dumped the wood off in front of the building before I could get down to him. Sadly where he put the wood was the other side of the building to where the lift is. Guess who had to move it all round the building to the lift…..

Being English timber, the wood normally arrives waney-edged with the bark left on. I could feel that the wood was still a bit damp, as it is air-dried timber. Wet wood is no good for making furniture, so I need to dry it out a bit. Here is my plan of attack.

The first stage is work out the best way to get the components from the wood – keep wastage low, get the best grain pattern etc. I know all the dimensions of the components, so it just means looking at all the wood and making a judgement call.

Next stage is to rip off any bit of bark, sap etc, as there is no point in keeping them on the wood. There is a big bag of firewood in the workshop now up for grabs!

As the wood is still damp, about 14% moisture content, and needs ideally to be at about 10%, the final stage of my plan is to put the wood in our kiln for a couple of days. Now this isn’t the sort of kiln most people think of – the sort used by potters for firing pots. This kiln is rather less violent and doesn’t require loads of heat! Basically the kiln we use for drying wood is a big box made from chipboard. Inside the box you place the wood to be dried. Here is the clever bit. Also in the box is a dehumidifier. Nothing special, just like the ones that can be purchased at local DIY superstores.

Once the kiln is sealed up, the dehumidifier will suck all the moisture out of the air, which causes moisture in the wood to replace that lost in the air. Hence the wood gets dry.

I will leave it running over the weekend and check on Monday to see how much moisture the wood has lost.

You can hear a pin drop

2009-03-13T15:01:00.007Z

You could hear a pin drop? In other words it has all been very quite here on my blog for a while.

It doesn’t mean that I haven’t been busy though. Sit back and I will tell you what has been going on.

So in my last post, I was talking about making the handles for my tallboy. So by using some card, I came up with a shape that was happy with. Next I had to make the actual handles out of wood.

Cutting a long story short, I did that and put them onto the drawer fronts. But I wasn’t too happy with them. I still liked the idea, but there was something just not right with them. I have a picture here of the tallboy with the handles on the drawer fronts.

You can see what I mean…it just isn’t right for the piece.

I needed a rethink. Rather than worrying about it, I just put some blankets over the tallboy and forgot about it. Let ideas run around in the back of my mind for a while, and get on with making something else.

I have always wanted to make something that is coopered, i.e. similar to the construction of a barrel, but without actually making a barrel!

James Krenov is always making cabinets with coopered doors, and as I am a bit of a fan of his, then I thought that I will have a go.

I had some American cherry left over from making the drawers in the tallboy, so I decided I would use that. Also I wanted to cut some dovetails on my Woodrat, and that lead to the design of having the carcass sides dovetailed together.

Inside the cabinet I wanted to put a couple of drawers. I managed to get some off cuts of rippled sycamore veneer, so the drawer fronts would be made of that. The white colour of the drawer fronts would contrast the rich red colour of the cherry.

Anyway, if you want to see some picture of it, you can check out the cabinet on my gallery pages.

After making the cabinet, I knew the solution to the tallboy problem. I should have stuck with my initial idea of routing a handle into the drawer fronts rather than changing my mind half way through and wanting to make an applied handle.

What I came up with was to route an elliptical handle in the drawer fronts. The down side was that I will need to make another set of seven fronts!!

A trip to the veneer merchant and a nice bundle of cherry veneer under my arm (and somehow a new mobile phone – I am easily side tracked) and I could then get to work making the final set of fronts get getting the project finished.

Well here it is. The completed tallboy with the new drawer fronts.

At least I am now happy with it.

Cabinet handle design

2009-01-07T13:31:00.006Z

I had an idea for the handles.

I wanted some sort of long handle that runs from top to bottom of my cabinet. I then came up with the idea of having two handles on each drawer front.

Then came the idea of having the handles curved running from the bottom most drawer and merging into one on the top most drawer.

I wasn't sure, so I cut out the shape that I wanted and using double sided sticky tape (in the best Blue Peter fashion) stuck the cardboard handle shapes to the drawer fronts, as you can see in the picture.

It is well worth checking something like this first, as the is lots of work involved actually making the real handles from wood!

No polo neck jumpers

2008-12-23T19:50:00.006Z

I have now broken up for a few days over Christmas, but will be back in the workshop next week.

For the last couple of days I have been putting coats of oil on the carcass. This involves sanding it down, hoover off the dust, apply the oil, lets it dry over night. Then repeat the process. It takes time to get a nice smooth finish, but it is worth doing it correctly as a poor finish can let down a finished piece.

Here is a picture of the tall boy with the drawers and top fitted.

I will be working on the handles next...but I need to get my head round how I am going to make them yet. That is something to do over the next few days in between a mince pie or two.

Have a good Christmas everybody!

21 days later

2008-12-22T13:14:00.003Z

For the last few weeks I have been making the drawers for my cabinet.

When I was training, we were told to allow three days per drawer, so with the seven drawers I am making gives a total of 21 days. No wonder it seems like I have been making them forever!
Let me tell you why making a drawer takes so long, and I am sure you are thinking ‘it is only an open top box’.

Well, you are correct, as a drawer is basically and open top box. But it has to be a box that is square, stable, fit into a hole, and have dovetail joints to make life fun. Each drawer I am making has twelve separate components, giving an overall total of 84 components – and that excludes the frames the drawers run on (an extra 48 components if you are interested).

The sides of the drawer must be made from timber that is dry and stable. Ideally it should be made from wood that is quarter sawn as it is very stable and does not move significantly, but finding good quality wood sawn this way is very hard. I have made my drawer sides from American cherry as it come shipped very dry, and the way I have cut it gives me sides that are near enough quarter sawn.

The joints on drawers are traditionally done as dovetails as these are very strong and resist the forces put on a drawer each time it is open. A jig can be purchased to machine cut the joints, but on my drawers they are all hand cut – you get a much more elegant joint if they are hand cut.
For the drawer bottoms, I am using Cedar of Lebanon. This is a traditional wood for drawer bottoms as it has a wonderful smell that is supposed to keep at bay any insect attack. I do personally love the aroma you get when a cedar-bottomed drawer is opened.

But that still doesn’t really say why it will take about 21 days to make the drawers…just believe me, it does!

A sudden cold snap

2008-11-25T16:16:00.002Z

It has been cold here in London during the past few days. Even a bit of snow over the weekend, but I wasn't in town to see it.

There is nothing more unpleasant than having to work in a cold workshop. Your hands get cold, your feet get cold, and it is very hard to concentrate on what you are doing. And when you don't concentrate a mistake is bound to be made.

Lucky for me, the workshop I am in is nice and snug. A couple of years ago, the owners had an industrial gas heater installed. It is rather like a very large hair-dryer that blows out a vast amount of hot air. It gets the whole workshop warm in minutes.

The only downside is that I have no excuse to loose concentration and let my mind wander!

Gluing the carcass - phase two

2008-11-19T17:30:00.004Z

In the previous post, I was gluing the drawer frames to the carcass sides. The next stage is to glue the back panel and legs to the side assembly.

Once again it is done in a couple of stages. First I glued the two back legs to the back panel. Once this was dry these two assemblies come together. All that is missing are the two front legs. These two are glued on one at a time. It just makes it easier and less chance of mishaps.

Here you can see the final leg being glued on. It did the front leg glue-up with the carcass standing vertically. This is to ensure the legs are level and the carcass does not wobble.

And here it is...one glued up carcass.

Now I am working on the drawers.

Gluing the carcass - phase one.

2008-11-17T14:53:00.004Z

I have been doing the first of many glue-ups today. This is always where it gets very stressful as if something is stuck in the wrong place then it usually means starting that piece again. Hence care must be taken!

What I have been doing is taking the drawer frames (the things that the drawer sits on and runs on) and gluing them to the carcass sides. As I have eight frames, each with four joins, that gives a total if my maths is correct of thirty two joints. The best way to attack this is in stages, which is just what I have been doing.

To make things easy, I glued the frames to one carcass side first - but only a couple of frames at a time. This then lead to the big glue-up when I had to glue the other carcass side to the frames. This had to be done in one big hit.

This picture shows that final glue-up, during which I had to use all the clamps I own, plus a couple of others from the workshop. You can never have too many clamps!

The next stage will be to assemble the back panel and gluing on the legs. But that is for another day.

Who needs Brain Training on a DS?

2008-11-16T21:18:00.004Z

I don't, for one! Not after spending a day working out how the pieces of my tallboy carcass fit together. Okay, I do know how they fit, but working out all the joint work was a bit mind taxing. Let me tell you why....

I have lots of pieces of wood that need to be stuck together, but rather than being flush to each other, they have to be offset by a few millimeters. All that really needs to happen is I cut the joints offset. But that is where the problem lies - how do I work out the offset and how do I make sure the offset is in the correct direction?

The best way to solve a problem like that is to do some test pieces - make the joints in scraps of wood before you do it on the real thing.

Anyway, after I did the joint work I did put the carcass together, it did fit correctly. Doing test pieces is well worth it.

By the end of the day, I could feel my neurons well and truly stimulated.

My current project.

2008-11-11T14:19:00.008Z

At the moment, the project I am working on is a tallboy chest of drawers standing 1.4 meters tall.

It is made from English cherry and American walnut, and has seven drawers each slightly larger than the one above. The sides, back and drawer fronts are made from the cherry, while the legs are made from the walnut.

The legs of the tallboy are tapered in a curved shape, similar to the boxes in my website gallery.

I think it will look good when complete.

Welcome to my Blog

2008-11-10T20:49:00.002Z

Welcome to the first posting on my blog. So what is it all about?

Well, to put it in a nutshell, you can read all about the furniture I make. Simple as that! I will write about the items I am making, what I am doing in the workshop, what is being planned...all sorts of things really.

I have a website that shows all the furniture I have made, and gives more background information about me. You can find it at http://www.jonathanpearcefinefurniture.com. Have a look there too.

So please come back from time to time. You may get hooked!