Recent content by mike*

Spot on Paul. For me, it was the little things that made me smile - like when your pencil lines join up when marking around the wood, or only needing a quick swipe with the plane after resawing and ripping a piece. Simple things please... and no noise and masses of dust.

A couple of years ago we moved into our new home. The developers were still building other houses and chatting to the foreman one day I asked what they did with their waste wood. Next day I find a load of construction timber on the drive. Mostly 4.8m lengths of 6x2 and 8x2. All a bit manky...

I purchased 1.3m black pipe lengths from an Ebay supplier uniquefurniture2000. Unthreaded both ends (about £12.50 per pipe inc p&p) but I think you can easily find threaded for sale from them. There are of course other merchants. The two gotchas I found when working this all out was what pipe...

At the risk of derailing my own post... I have an 8lb maul. Never used one before. No access to powered tools - what would be your approach to chopping these rounds to size? I'm kind of assuming the first thing to do is get then halved and then quartered? I did swing the maul into one of the...

Thank you everyone for the comments and opinions. As ever the members here prove themselves to be knowledgeable, practically and theoretically. I think what I'll do is take a couple of the rounds and chop them up for kindling, and then chop another couple for larger pieces, just for the sake...

Having a wood burner installed next week and have ordered a ton of kiln dried hard wood for this season. During the recent storms a good sized lime came down on a mate's land. The tree surgeon was called and dealt with it as it was part in a neighbour's garden. All the branches and smaller...

Just for info, I've just bought the Lidl one and also similar from Aldi, in stock now. The Aldi one is bigger (30L) stainless container and has the PTO outlet, £5 more. Looking at them I'd guess they're both manufactured in same factory as the fittings are very similar. For £5 more I'd say the...

I wasn't sure if simple butt joints would be an answer but more than happy to accept that as a solution. Presumably plenty of glue on the end grain joints and clamped cauls to apply pressure across the length?

When making a workbench top from laminated sticks standard practice is to laminate lengthwise. That is, if the length of the bench is 1.5m, we laminate 1.5m pieces together. But might you use shorter sticks and laminate them perpendicular to the length, gluing across until you get the length...

Big thanks to everyone for taking the time to reply. Some excellent pointers. Some of them seem obvious once the detail has been mentioned but would have remained blind to me otherwise. Who'd have thought the mouth would get wider as the sole is progressively lapped. Doh! For those that...

Haha! I never thought of that, other than was late in the evening, all the obvious mike combinations had gone, and I just hit the character. Perhaps the asterisk can represent my training wheels and designates me as an apprentice... All - thanks for the welcome.

Evening all... Last 9 months or so, been using my No 5 and 6 planes to flatten some large slabs. These are really rough sawn, and take a bit of work to get them approaching flat and ready for taking out wind / twist and final flattening. Invariably they have large hollows or bumps. See picture...

Hi all. Me - been a weekend not so elegant maker of things in wood for a couple of years. Can't even say I'm a woodworker - nothing so craftsman like! Mostly garden benches, various planters, shelves and some agricultural laminated worktops and trestles . All made in the garage, no power in...