louisworld.ca

Wow, it’s been a long time since I wrote here… sorry about that. Well I thought I’d keep you all posted on the progress on my pen cabinet project I’m building in my woodworking class. It surely is a bigger task than I had anticipated. There’s lot to learn and even more to do. I’m currently tackling the drawers and I have to work at home on them because I’ll never finish in time. These drawers are a huge task and even when fully assembled, they’ll have to be covered in fabric and that’s also going to be a big project.

So far I’ve learned a lot from dovetails, rabbets, dadoes, biscuits, veneering, wood preparation and finishing, hand planing, and more.

From the original design, only a few minor changes have occurred. The dovetails are now half-blind, there’s only a single drawer pull per drawer and there’s a 1/4 inch strip of Wenge framing the face of the cabinet.

Le 15 octobre je parlais qu’un de mes stylos se retrouvait dans la “Newsletter” du mois d’octobre du site The Pen Shop. Bien j’y figure à nouveau dans celle de décembre avec mon premier bouchon de bouteille. Disons que j’ai été de nouveau très surpris… En parlant de bouchon, j’en ai fait un second cette fois avec un ensemble en titane noir mais encore en ébène asiatique. La forme est différente car elle est plus courte (je trouvais mon premier trop haut une fois sur une bouteille) et en forme de bouchon de champagne. Cependant, j’ai oublié de le prendre en photo avant de l’emballer pour la personne à qui je le remettais. Mais n’ayez crainte, j’en ferai d’autres

On the right is the most expensive pen kit I’ve done so far. The kit comes from William WoodWrite, it’s the Baron model but in Titanium Gold and evidently this a fountain pen. This particular pen is dressed in Box Elder Burl. Box Elder (Acer Negundo) is known in Canada as Manitoba Maple. The burl part is a growth in the tree consisting of many knots and layers. It is not fully known as to why a burl is appearing on a tree.

Now about the plating, all the pen kits are plated. There are many plating choices and they offer different wear resistance. Don’t expect me to explain the plating process but I can list a few plating variety and their resistance from the least to the hardests:
-24K Gold
-10K Gold
-Copper
-Chrome
-Sterling Silver
-Platinum / Rhodium
-Titanium

Voici des nouveautés pour moi. Il est important d’essayer de nouvelles choses et donc 5 nouveautés en deux stylos. Celui de gauche, c’est un nouvel ensemble nommé Sedona. Il possède plusieurs caractéristiques du modèle Baron mais est plus arrondi. La seconde nouveauté, c’est l’essence utilisée, du Katalox, un bois de l’Amérique du Sud, très dur et dense. L’autre nouveauté, c’est un nouveau produit de finition. Du moins nouveau pour moi, c’est le vernis Matine, des Anciens Ébénistes, un produit de finition à base de gomme laque.

Le stylo de droite comporte seulement deux nouveautés car il est aussi finit au vernis Matine. Ses nouveautés sont un nouvel ensemble également, nommé Cigare, et aussi une nouvelle essence. Bon, malheureusement, je ne connais pas le type de l’essence, ce que je sais c’est que c’est de la loupe. Mais c’est quoi de la loupe? C’est une excroissance de l’arbre produisant des motifs internes irrégulier. Je ne suis pas certain que la cause de la croissance d’une loupe est connu mais ça donne du bois très prisé pour sa beauté et rareté. Habituellement, la cueillette d’une loupe résulte en la mort de l’arbre…

I’ve been talking about them so might as well show two practice pieces I did on my course. The first one is through dovetails made of pine. Being a soft wood, it’s more forgiving because you can make the joint tighter and it’ll still in. The second has more complexity being a half-blind dovetail joint but also because it is in hardwoods: cherry and maple. Another difficulty is the closeness and smallness of the tails and pins. This is an exact replica of how the dovetails will be on my drawers for my pen cabinet project. The piece is 1 and 1/4 inch high with two dovetails in them. That’s gonna take some time to do 7 drawers has this joint is done twice per each drawer. These examples are not perfect but very acceptable being my first hand cut dovetail joints.

I took a course with a private woodworker, Karel Aelterman. It’s a great course, and he pushes me pretty hard to achieve very high standards in my operations. So far I’ve seen basic tools manipulations for a few of the most common woodworking shops power tools: table saw, bandsaw, jointer, planer, drill press, router. I’ve also seen a few manual techniques such and rabbets and dadoes done with a japanese saw and cleaned with chisels, through dovetails, half-blind dovetails, tenons and mortises, biscuit joints. I’ve also been initiated to hand planes and plane blade sharpening and chisel sharpening.

The through dovetails I’ve done have impressed my teacher and I started a set of half-blind dovetail since I’ll have to do some for my project. My main difficulty is with the hand plane when preparing the pieces for the dovetail joints. The have to have perfect squareness and it’s pretty hard to achieve that rapidly.

This week I’ve started to prepare the wood for my project. I selected quilted makore for the wood (costing me an arm but it’s so gorgeous). We made a few pass on the planer to have a better visual of which piece would go where basically to ensure the best figured section have the better exposure. Can’t wait to complete it!

Haven’t turned on the lathe in a few weeks… I visited a new outlet that offers exotic woods in Ottawa, KJP Select Hardwoods. Nice friendly staff, very helpful! On my last order from William WoodWrite – PenBlanks.ca, I had order my first bottle stopper. This one is in chrome but it is also offered in other platings.

The wood is white ebony, sanded on the lathe with 120, 180, 220, 320, 400, 600. The finish is a few coats of CA glue MicroMeshed to 12,000 grit.

My only problem, is that it’s almost useless, I never leave wine in an opened bottle

Dans le cadre de mon cours d’ébénisterie, je ferai ce projet:

Un boitier à stylo pouvant contenir 98 stylos. Encore une fois je me suis servi de SketchUp pour faire le dessin détaillé.

Comme difficulté, il y a la répétition contenu dans les 7 tiroirs mais j’ai ajouté les queues d’arrond sur les côtés. Celles-ci seront faites à la main. Il me reste à sélectionner dans quel essence de bois je faire ce boitier, qui contient 5 PMP de bois.