Monday Again!

Stay strong! Weekend is coming soon.

Another week is starting. Fortunately in Germany that will be a short business week.

It is national holiday on Thursday. That means a long weekend.

Here are the news from the last weekend:

• The first kustom packaging box
• Resawing like crazy
• A Summer Night Lamp

A short but busy upcoming business week. But I will have a four day weekend. Hopefully time for some more woodworking.

Kustom Packaging Box

In parallel to my Mid-Century Table I've made a small packaging box.

Why?  

So that I'm not only preparing wood for the table build. 

Because I was inspired by Tom Fidgen who encouraged his online members to build one.

And last because I have got an idea in my mind, which I will bring to life this week. But more on that later.

Packaging Box

It's a nice little box for packaging purposes. Made from pine (case) poplar ply (bottom) and oak (splines).

Gluing in Splines

Nice little side project. Every time I was tired from sawing I switched over to "make" something.

Guess who is inside

I'll report about how the box was made in my next post. Stay tuned.

Resawing like crazy

I've reported in my last regular post that I'm cutting my lumber to size. After rough cross cutting I have established some reference faces so that I could mark out the lines for resawing.
And that's what I'm doing at the moment.

Resawing action

I'm resawing the apron parts. I have to be pretty careful because I haven't got much space for the saw kerf. Otherwise I would loose too much of the material thickness.
But with calm it works very well. I'm really surprised about the quality of the results. But honestly it is time consuming.

Summer Night Lamp

If I remember right then I've mentioned that too. I have to build a Garden Lantern.

My sister in law asked me to build one for her. She had seen some on a holiday trip. 

The picture she showed me I didn't like very much. Because of that I started to gather some ideas. But I wasn't pretty successful. 

I'm still thinking about it but maybe this time I will design while building.

Nevertheless I've scribbled down some ideas.

After trying out some fancy ideas I came back to the very basics. That is definitely more my style - straight lines.

The stiles will go trough the top and the bottom.

I will make some grooves to hold the fill and reduce the dimensions at the ends of the rails.

The top will be fixed with some wedges, so that the fills will stay replaceable. That means I have to do some trough mortices.

The lamp will have a door at the front so that the light source can be changed if necessary.

So that it wouldn't be too straight I'm thinking about a profile like shown in the picture.

This is easy to make without the need of a moulding plane.

I gave it already a try. It's just making two rabbets and to round over the middle part wit a block plane.






For the fill in between the rails there will be some options

The first one would be simply to use glass. Maybe a colored one.

Another idea I have got in mind, is to make a fill from wooden strips like shown in the picture.

Still not finally decided but I like the idea.
Maybe someone of you had already done something like that and some experience with that.



I like the idea with the "woven" fill. That will open the possibility to use a citronella candle in summer. If the mosquitoes will bother you at night.

Regarding the material I'm thinking about douglas fir but on the other hand I've got enough pine off cuts to build it. Maybe I can varnish it with some teak color.

And last but not least, I have to be ready by end of June and I'm in holiday for two weeks in June. 
Not so much time.

What's next?

As you can see, enough on the bench.
The packaging box will need some finish. Easy task and I will do it in between the projects.
I'll come back on this later this week.

I've still to prepare the parts for the Mid-Century Table. I will skip the project report this week and do something different instead.

I have to start with the lantern if I will get it done by end of June. This evening I will check if I have enough stock for doing it and then start with the "design during build" process.


Have a great week and stay tuned.

Stefan

Keep on making!