Using up some scraps

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MikeG.

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I had a pile of offcuts left over from making stairs and doors:

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There was a lot more than that! I thought I would do a job which has been rising up the list for a little while. It's the panels in the background, at the bottom:

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What you can see there now is the back of the panels on the kitchen side. Anyway, I did some sawing and (machine) planing, and ended up with a pile of smaller pieces of wood:

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Starting randomly on a raised panel, which will be the focus, I routed a rebate then a cove together, then attacked the raised edges with a blockplane and shaped scraper. And a bit of sandpaper:

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It's very rare indeed that I use two blockplanes, but here I set one for deep cuts to hog off to shape, and then a finer one for finishing.

Then I made lots of half lap joints, using a combination of handtools and the radial arm saw:

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Then I glued them together:

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My little upstand shelf at the rear of the bench can provide a useful little stop sometimes. Here I have a couple of stops set, and I'm just cleaning up the face of the frames with a hand plane:

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Next, to the router table. I need some rebates in which to sit my panels:

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Dust control was an issue. Well, not so much dust as chippings/ shavings. It piled up, and there was no way of attaching a hose anywhere near, so it was just a question of blowing a lot, and using a hand brush.

There's a thread here somewhere asking about the back of stuff. Well, if it was furniture I wouldn't tolerate anything like this:

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But this is the back of panel work, and I am using up scraps. So long as you work from a reference face, there is no difficulty in having decent joinery with varying thickness timber. Next, obviously, I needed some funny little pieces from MDF:

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Do you know what it is yet? :)

Most stuff I make has chamfers, and I despise chamfers just stopped with a blurry burnt machine cut, so........:

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Hot melt gluing them in place turned out to be a mistake. It would have been much better to pin them. Anyway, they're obviously there to guide the router chamfer cutter gently in and out of the cut. The one on the right has been done (there are three panels in total):

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I cleaned those up a little with a scraper and some sandpaper. Then it was time to shape and glue in the flat panels. These vary in thickness from 3 or 4mm to 8 or 9mm. As I said....using up scraps. I left a little message from history for anyone foolish enough to take this lot apart:

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Right, three days later, time to get on with the real work: a bit of carving:

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I glued them in place (the other was still in clamps as I took this photo):

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Then spent a couple of hours getting them to fit in the holes:

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I've since removed them and coated them with a water based lacquer. They'll get fixed in permanently this afternoon.
 
But Mike, you could have made a bread bin with those "scraps" :D

And would you mind slowing down a bit please... :wink:
 
Thanks guys. My honest critique of it is that the frame around the centre panel is too close to it, and maybe the raised part of the panel starts too close to the edge. I dunno, it just feels a bit crowded in the middle there.
 
Well I think it lifts the eye in a linear progression with the pillars thanks to the outer panels being thinner than the square middle panels and are generally reflective of the overal structural aesthetic of the wall. An example especially demonstrive of the natural human preference for the tripartite. Three flowers in a flower bed looks right, two looks false for example. Hence here, the square centre only accentuates the fact that the panels are about a third of the total pillar height if I guess aboutish right. Just looks right. Rule of thirds.
Just saying. But then I'm a window cleaner. Wtf would I know?
(hammer)
 
Now you have started mass-production of roses, it struck me that they are all identical. I wondered when you did the stairs if three different roses might also look good, but i didn't want to say anything . Now you have at least six, and perhaps more, would this be a good time to make mention that non-identical roses might be another way forward? Perhaps just the centre one with a different design.

Just musing out loud as it were...
 
Trainee neophyte":j8aupeb5 said:
Now you have started mass-production of roses, it struck me that they are all identical. I wondered when you did the stairs if three different roses might also look good, but i didn't want to say anything . Now you have at least six, and perhaps more, would this be a good time to make mention that non-identical roses might be another way forward? Perhaps just the centre one with a different design.

Just musing out loud as it were...

I'm just about getting the hang of this one, and you want me to alter it? :lol:

The thing is, not only are this lot different from the last lot in that they are incised, but they'd have to be really very different to be able to tell the difference. Our eyes and brains are great at looking for patterns, and will look for similarities even if they're not there (the basis for any optical illusion). The Tudor Rose is a formal design (it's in our national coat of arms and on our coinage, for example), so without going into the realms of the impossible, like acanthus leaves or acorns & oak leaves, it's not easy to think of what I could do differently whilst still maintaining the essence of the iconography.

There going to be at least two more, on the backs of the carvers when I eventually get around to making my dining suite.
 
I'd have stopped here:
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but I live in a 1970 housing estate. And probably would have messed up by then anyway.
Lovely work on the carving, it looks great.
 

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Chris152":2kbddtok said:
I'd have stopped here:

but I live in a 1970 housing estate. And probably would have messed up by then anyway.
Lovely work on the carving, it looks great.

:D Thanks.

I know what you mean about stopping there. It's a little oriental, isn't it. I guess you'd use slightly slimmer sections, and then ebonise, or even paint black. The thing is, this is our kitchen wall and the bloody smoke detector goes off every time I cook anything at all, so getting it completely closed off is something of a priority.
 
Well, decoration is personal taste. I probably would not have done the rose centre panels (or made the roses much smaller) and probably not put the stopped chamfers in. When I was in my guitar making years I went through a period of using a lot of figuring, edge binding and complex inlays. Then I went right off it and got back to simplicity.

I definitely would not have used the completely hidden MDF :D

But I very much admire the quality of work and there is no doubt you are working faster than me! I am just dithery in comparison :|

It's a quality job.
 
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