New Project

 I have been gathering wood and wondering what to do with it, the wood turning I do is too hard to sell not that a rocking chair is going to be easy however at the moment there is no intention to sell I would like one in the house, this chair is made from macrocarpa and in a previous life it was a park bench and had become very weathered, dirty with lots of splits and cracks so what I can rescue is is only a small part, this type of chair creates a lot of waste wood and is better suited to a harder type of wood however for a first time following some instructions it is a good exerciser before I get into a higher valued timber.

This is a take off of the Sam Maloof chair that was first made in the 1950s, then Hal Taylor took Sams look and developed it over a long time before making plans available for sale, so it is Hal Taylor drawing that I have bought and am following.

The plans lay it all out in detail, made for those with less experience, it is still a challenge and a good one to work through, the top picture is taken with the back braces just stood in place, the legs are just pushed into the joint and the whole thing is just sat on the rockers, it still needs some packers making that lifts the chair higher and are positioned on the bottom of the legs, there are also arm rests that need making and are quite a feature of the finished chair, all the corners have a big radius on them so the look is very slender and different to what is seen here.

The benefits of back ache

 I had done a few stretches but had not been for my morning walk then I went out and started painting a window it was too low and I was bent over trying to control the brush, by the time I came in I had back ache, in the possess of changing my shorts I bent over and the ache became something more serious, I knew I was in for a few days of pill popping and laying on the floor to get the muscle spasms to settle down, new years eve and I am in bed early unable to stand up any longer.

January 1st and it seems a good idea to sit and not do anything that puts too much strain on the back, I did manage a short walk.

This bowl has been saying colour me in ever since I made it, there were some muddy looking areas in the grain that needed to be hidden, ever since I bought my pyrogrophy machine I had wanted to try and bring some scales into the center of a bowl in an organized way, I had also promised myself I would try doing color over the osmo oil, today in the process I had to try do the burning over the color.

In my eyes, today, it is just the best, and on a day spent trying to do very little but recover I am particularly pleased with myself we will see what the people at the market say.