Door frames

More details about the doors. While studying the photo of the cabinet with open doors it looks like the frame is made from two vertical posts joined by two horizontals, top and bottom. Probably joined by tenon and mortice. The frame is then veneered.

Best seen in the middle door.

Here is the parts I made to simulate the original door.
Front view:

 And backview:

Dry assembly of the middle door.

/Niels

Back to the workshop

 During the last weeks I haven't spent much time in the workshop. Been around in the city and country.

Sinner is found! 

My tablesaw had a burn mark on the top.  Looked like someone had left a burning cigarette on the saw.

Then the other day when I entered there was a smell of burning wood but no smoke and no fire. Looking around I foind this piece of wood with a burnmark on the tablesaw.

And above was the sinner. My magnifying lamp.

So always remember to cover the magnifying glass or turn the lamp away from the window! Actually I don't use it very much.

New (old) computer for the CNC.

I was tired of rewiring the laptop every time I wanted to use my small cnc-machine. So I decided to use our old TV-computer as a dedicated cnc-computer instead of standing in a corner waiting to be old enough for the dump.

The computer is placed on the top of the cabinet and an old monitor was mounted on the wall. Time will show if the computer can stand the heat up there.

Aspire

In the process of investigating cnc-software i borrowed a licence for a very interesting piece of software Vectric Aspire. With Aspire it was very easy to make moldings.
The molding is drawn the cad program, in my case Qcad.

Then imported into Aspire.

And with a few clicks with the mouse the toolpath for the molding is generated ready to be cut in the cnc.
I cut one and began cutting miters when it hit me: W"hy cut those miters by hand?" The machine can do that and more precise than with the handsaw and old miterbox. So back to the drawingboard (cad-program).

And shortly after this was produced. The frame for one of the carved doors.

A little cleaning up.

And a little glue.

Cutting the moldings isn't fast. On my little cnc this small molding takes about 45minutes.

The frames placed on a printout. 

Have fun
Niels

Deja-vu

One year ago (2-jul-2011)

Yesterday (19-jul-2012)

Luckily the rain stopped soon after the photo was taken.

Playing a little with depth of field

Three in one. I have just touched the surface with some very fine steel-wool and then applied a single coat of cellulose laquer (aeroplane dope).

/Niels

A few hours later

A few months ago I dropped a project of several reasons. Now I will try that project again but first the carvings on the doors should look right!

Below is the first try. Looks good except for the center flower. Size is approximately 14mm by 14mm.

Light form snother angle:

The original is a very low detailed photo taken from an auction site so I can't make better photos.


Original cut out from a photo. Size is 108*114pixels.I haven't found an easy method for transforming a photo to cnc-code. Some programs can do that but they requires more detailed (= more pixels) photos.

Instead I made this low resolution interpretation of the carving. This drawing is then processed with a program called MeshCam-Art. The colours in the drawing representd the depth of the cutting.

Meshcam can calculate the time to be used by the cnc-machine. It told me that runtime would be about half an hour. So I just transferred the code to he milling machine. Half an hour later the machine was still running and only one third was cut :-) Then I inspected the code. Meshcam had made 1500000lines of code! The total runtime was 4.5hours.
Learningcurve for those cad/cam programs is quite steep.

Here is another doorfront for the project. Cutting time was less than one hour so I have learned a little :-)

The milling cutter I use is a 0.1mm 10degree V-cutter.

Have fun
Niels

Stepwise refinements

In the freetime at the GuildSchool I traced the photo of the chest from the online catalogue. It was a quick and dirty trace just to show my class mates how to transfer a photo to be used in a cnc-tool. Outer frame is 42mm * 17mm half size of the chest I carved at the GuildSghool.

Here is the first cutout in cherry. Intention at this point was to make the basic and boring cutout using cnc and then add the finer details using handtools.

And in a piece of pear. Still problems with the stems.

Then I retraced the original photo. This is done by drawing small line segments following the contours in the photo.

A little better:

Adjusting some of the cutting parameters for the cnc-machine. Now the pearwood grain gives trouble so back to cherry.

Before I made the last cutting I added more details!

Monday I will try staining the piece. I don't have the right colours right now.

Have done a little touchup using handtools :-)

Have fun
Niels

No dust

Well, I spent three days cleaning up my old workshop. One corner a day. So one corner left :-) I also dismanthed the large mdf cnc-machine. It took up too much space and I haven't used for about a year and I wasn't really satisfied about the performance.

I had decided to wait trying the new thickness sander until the workshop was in better shape. Today I couldn't resist any longer.

For dust collection I use an wacuum cleaner intended for removing ash from a stove. It doesn't have a bag inside.They come in two styles here in DK. One with a motor and one without to be used in front of an ordinary wacuum cleaner.

Then several years go I got a smart Proxxon device. When the sander is turned on the wacuum cleaner starts and when the sander is turned off the wacuum cleaner stops after 5 seconds. I looked through the new Proxxon catalogue and couldn't find the device. Instead they sells a wacuum-cleaner with same functionalty. I like the idea of a separate device better.

How is the sander?

Very good! Off course a sander is for removing wood in small increments. But for delicate woods with grain in all directions it is the only way to go. And for sizes less than 1.6mm which id the minimum for the Thicknesser DH40.

And at last todays photo. I found this little Chevrolet Spark LS  in an american modelcar shop. Unfortunately they didn't have it in black like ours. This blue one was parked in front of our neighbours house for a few hours. I had to play a little.

 The model is 1/24 scale.


Have fun
Niels

A great week is gone

After a nice week at the IGMA Guild School in Castine I'm back home.

We had a nice tour from Castine to Boston. The most fascinating sight on the tour was those creatures.

 Atlantic Horseshoe Crabs. I had never seen them in real before.

One was lying on the shore so after having taken a photo I gently moved her or him around and she/he crawled into the water. I wasn't sure about the tail was dangerous like an scorpion. Later I found out it wasn't :-)

Well, back home I wen't to the garden for removing some of the weeds. When doing that I heard the sound of buzzing bees. Has my neighbour got a beehive ?

No. It was this plant that was filled with bees. (I don't know the name.)

There was hundreds.


Lessons learned at the GuildSchool: Carving a lot. I took both of the classes given by Ann High. She was a very good teacher so we learned a lot.


24 hour class: 16th Century Carved Chest (with a little extras :-)

12 hour class: 16th Century Boarded Stool with Pierced Tracery

And a little extra just for fun

Next is to try out the new tool I brought home. A Jim Byrnes drum sander.

I made a drum sander many years ago but it has two big faults. The sandpaper is glued to the drum so changing isn't easy and it doesn't have an easy way to collect the dust so sanding is a mess. So this new thickness sander is a nice supplement to my Proxxon Thicknesser for preparing wood.

Have fun
Niels

PS: A photo trick. I use a black granite tile to get the mirror effect.