All the wonders of my world

It has been a wet winter and spring is no different, there are some advantages however, I have never known a rainbow stay in the sky for so long and a double one at that, it was visible for 20 min's I guess right outside my kitchen window.

I took on the refurbishment of 2 chairs one had a broken top, they are old and well used having been covered twice well I took off 2 covers and found a thick wad of dry grass as well as springs under the covers, in each joint there is 3   12mm dowels so not a lot of wood between the dowels and all the glue was dry so had let go and the chair was able to wobble whilst still held together, I didn't break the back of the chair apart but did put new dowels in the front legs and where the rails meet the back legs then the big corner glue blocks, this photo is a before and after shot, the front legs were put on the wood lathe and sanded clean however the old stain has penetrated the wood so its impossible to get it totally clean, I am thinking about 40 hours to get them to a stage to be refinished and I
think it took less than that to build them in the first place.
I was playing with this bowl wondering just how thin I could get the wood and cut right through the bottom there is a recess in the bottom to hold the bowl on the wood lathe so most of the bottom is about 8mm thick, the small block at the side I made today and will be made round on the lathe so the purple hart will become a circular stripe then it will be set in the bottom of the bowl to become a feature of significance and will match the table I showed in the previous posting, the bowl is cherry.

Bowls and Bikes

I had enough of bowls so went biking, the cycle shorts date from 1989 I think in the days when I could do 100km now we are out to do an easy 22km along the sand dunes of Opotiki and 22km is just enough on the first day of spring, I anticipated a little rain but it never happened till we were back at the car however it was so cold where we stopped for lunch I was pleased to be back on the bike, like the shorts the bike is from the same time and the tire decided enough was enough and started to blow out the tire wall so a day was spent cleaning the 30 years of gunk from the gears and getting 2 new tires.
Then back to the lathe and bowls now this is fun and so easy to obtain results, the big bowl back right is Matai and the little one behind it came from inside it so I got 2 from the one piece of wood, the dark one back center is a piece of drift wood from the beach either Totara or Pohutakawa, in the foreground is a bowl made from Cherry, I had 2 halves of the tree trunk and have made 5 of 6 about the same most I have given away now, the big bowl is another Matai piece that I thought was too shallow so added a rim of purple hart.
Now I have chairs from many years ago to clean up and rebuild. 
 

How to use tanalised kahikatea

Someone gave me two planks of wood telling me it was Kahikatea that had been tanalised, one was 40mm thick the other 30mm but cut with a chain saw so had a very rough surface and 2 big knots, I thought about using it for outdoor chairs it being tanalised but then could not bear to think of cutting it up into bits, so table that could be used outdoors however I wanted to cut out those knots so it rendered some of it to bits, upon thicknessing it I realised the tanalising was only surface treatment, so I developed a design as I went along, the kahikatea being so white I thought some colour was needed and glued up some stringing using some very old jarrah, I thought the stringing would add some width and make all the joints have a reason for being there, the kahikatea is soft not sutable for the edge the 40mm looked thin around the edge so a hard edge of rimu seemed right
and the pieces I had that came out of the house I renovated were just right, this is the result with a quick sealer coat of epoxy treatment, it seems to have brought out the dark spots of the tanalising treatment that were not taken away in the machining, the top is 1660mm X 760mm which I think is a good size.
I have a fair amount of kahikatea left and some of the stringing and wanted the legs to have a theme with the top, I like the look of the rail to hold the table legs together with the wedges this method also makes for a table that can easily be dismantled for moving and as I intend to transport it to the other end of the country to me son it is necessary, the top took me a week to build and the legs another week now I can see that time again to do the finishing not that I will be on it the whole time as the polyurethane takes a while to dry in our winter.
Now I have a good lathe it is nice to find a worthwhile project for it and turning those pegs was good fun I had to get them correct the first time as I have nothing else to use so I am well pleased with myself, the ends of the tenons are left protruding for effect, the legs had no polyurethane on at the time of the photos so will have more contrast when finished.
Ho so much fun to build as at the start I had no idea other than a basic shape but it could have gone anywhere, just I'm not sure now its suitable to be put outside.