LeTurbo

Yo! Ahoy! Life got in the way of my Hubbing. It probably still will, dammit. The past year or two involved moving the workshop from Paarden Eiland to Kensington to Woodstock to Bellville. At the same time, moving home from Greenpoint to Rondebosch to Century City and then also to Bellville. Among other things. The old Woodstock workshop didn't have room to swing a cat, even a dead one. Somehow, I managed to make a bed in there, but only by moving the entire place from one side to another. There was also a dude - the landlord's son - living in that space behind the partition. Fully awkward.

Little revelation while looking at an old riempie bench we've had for years: it was early flat-pack furniture. Absolutely brilliant. Everything (in "unrestored" state) is supposed to come apart in sections. When you re-assemble it, you wet the riempies, pull them tight, and as they dry they pull all the mortise-and-tenon joints together.

I've been away a while... On the ferrous oxide treatment - the steel wool dissolved in vinegar - keep the lid loose on your bottle. It builds up pressure that can explode. The treatment works best on woods with tannins, like oak. The wood goes black in just a few minutes, and you can sand it back to get quite a funky grey stain with lighter highlighted grain. On other woods, like pine or low tannin woods, give them a good coat or two of black tea. It provides enough tannin for the reaction. Lekker to see you're all the workshop!

Dankie for all the likes, ouens!

I just finished this for Zonnebloem School up in Walmer Estate as part of their new school library (on which they've done an awesome job). It's 18mm Birch ply, six bookcases in a hexagonal trunk, with adjustable shelves. There's actually about 27 square metres of plywood in there, surprisingly. For the bookcases, I routed the pieces to be interlocking, which made glue up a lot easier. There wasn't any shifting of parts. Then the bookcases align with mortise and tenons. The cnc job turned into a nightmare - all my fault. I was actually going to do it the old fashioned way with a template and a guided router cutter. A friend convinced me to go cnc though, and the company said they could work with a photo of the template as the artwork. Uh ... no. It all came back severely crooked and wobbly, so I had to make up a router jig to tidy up one of the new pieces (a different size to the template) and then redo the entire job according to my original plan. I wore out 2 cutters, and two ball-bearings that just disintegrated. Incidentally, this Torkcraft crap that's taken over the market: what a waste of time! I had to replace one of the router bits on Easter Sunday, and rushed off to Builders'. The Torkcraft bit was blunt out of the box and chattered like a clown on coke. I've got one of their hole cutters that's threaded the wrong way, so it loosens as you cut the hole. Damn rubbish, like riding a Makro bicycle. Rather spend your money on more professional equipment at more specialised stores - it's the only way to enjoy your woodwork or DIY.

Looks like it should be in Fine Woodworking magazine. Neatly done!

Slow December. Interminable January. So-so February. OK March so far. Suddenly everyone wants stuff before winter, bwahaha!

I've just seen this. My eyes are leaking here. Barry, you're in my prayers, bud.

Now I'm no longer in an office and getting paid to Bikehub all day, I don't get here as often as I'd like. No more silly banter, no friday barnies. Ah well. so this is mt latest scrap-wood thingy. I'm getting tired of side tables though. It's the left-overs from the ash bed I made a while back. I had four wedge shaped bits over from cutting the curve on the bed's sides. So I kind of assembled this in bits - just adding a new leg or sidepiece as it needed stability. There wasn't really any plan or design involved, it just evolved. The legs are ash, and the top is hickory. The dowels are ordinary hardware store meranti, but with ash wedges.

About R8000.00, right there.

I'm not a great fan of doing kitchens but this wasn't too bad, mainly 'cos my friend Juan did all the basic cabinetry so I could concentrate on the finer details. Then I got an artist friend to do the shabby-chic/rustic Provencal paintwork with chalk paint and wax. He even did the fake dust with touches of burnt umber. The countertop is a nice laminate of solid ash. We also did some ash shoji screens with milk glass (I think it's called) at R1 300 per square metre! And then had to rejig some other furniture in the place - an older built in unit that had to separated and brought into style with the rest of the place. Lots of beading to add a few extra hundred unbudgeted rands into the equation. Still, we brought it in for about a quarter of what one of the other fancy kitchen companies had quoted.

Thanks for the likes and comments, guys!. Much appreciated.

This bed frame is for a well known guy in the CT cycling world. It's a solid ash frame built up around an existing slat structure. Handcut dovetails and mostly handshaped with plane and spokeshave, though I did resort to sanding discs and even an arbortech disc I've had lying unused for 15 years. Doing this job gave me new appreciation for the Scandinavian woodworkers and guys like Sam Maloof. It's not so much a case of just rounding stuff - the shadow lines are vital and incredibly difficult to see until you've put finish on. Then it's too late.

I grew up with those. My Dad even wrote a book - I'm about to donate most of the remaining stuff to the SA Model Aircraft Association, including hundreds of plans he collected from the 1930s to the 1980s.

I really don't know why I bother with this. Masochism. Non-profitable masochism.

Here's something I'm picking up a lot recently. If you want outdoor wood to go really vrot ... I mean fall-apart-into-crumbs-vrot ... give it a coat of acrylic paint like Wall & All. It'll make a nice jacket around the wood until water gets in, as water does. Then the water can't get out again, and it's like one of those terrariums that people liked in the 80s (before most of you were born), circulating the moisture round and round ad infinitum. This shutter, in fact, probably dates from around 1912. It was painted black, then green, then white. All with turps-based enamels. it was the final coat of acrylic that caused the problems. Some other shutters on the house are new meranti - less than 10 years old, and won't last another 3 winters.

Personally, I don't get hung up on any of the definitions. I doubt that most of the "teak" furniture sold these days is genuine teak anyway. It's a fairly endangered wood with a much more beautiful grain than you'll find in these products. Maar nou ja, ons praat van Rhodesian Teak ... nie eers van Zimbabwe nie. I'd just bung raw linseed oil on. Feed it up. Sanding definitely is unnecessary in 99% of cases. If you feel you'd like to steelwool it, that's fine. Apply the oil with the steelwool. If they're going back outside, I'd give it some Timbaseal wood preservative once the linseed oil has settled and been absorbed after two or three weeks. Concentrate on getting lots of preservative absorbed into the end grain of legs, and elsewhere.

Riding past the rustic furniture places in Woodstock, with all their rotten recyc ... uh, "upcycled" floorboards, it struck me that people will pay a surprising amount to bring woodworm and woodborer into their homes.

I've used Woodoc 10 penetrating polywax varnish on counter tops and they last forever. Follow the instructions: keep the surface completely wet for 10 minutes per coat so it really sinks in. the advantage is Woodoc can also be easily repaired, unlike any epoxy. Sometimes, for more depth, I find the Plascon Ultra varnish bonds perfectly ok with the Woodoc. What you may need to do before using anything, is get silicone and wax remover from an automotive paint supplier. Modern spray waxes like Mr Min have enough silicon in them to destroy a finish. It fish-eyes all over the place. You need to really rub the whole thing down four or five times, using the remover very liberally. Keep changing clothes, or use paper towels. For water spills and marks on varnish, quickly dab mayonnaise or anything oily on the white mark. The mayonnaise, and the mark, will be gone by morning.

Did you get the free house before or after it was demolished? Sorry, I couldn't resist.

Nicely done on the box joints, DJR. They look fantastic in plywood. The box'll make that espresso a whole lot richer and more rewarding.

I thought I'd just add some trouble here, because I'm feeling ornery. As far as I know, linseed oil is still a major component of most varnishes and paints. The classic equation, used by artists, is that each coat must be oilier than the previous one. And some of those artworks have lasted centuries. I think that's why most varnishes say to do a first coat with 30% turps added, then about 10% for the next coat, and the final straight coat. With Woodoc, you keep the surface wet for 10 minutes, so the varnish really gets absorbed. There's also the difference between a wood preservative and a varnish. As I understand it, a preservative sinks in deeper and perhaps has antimicrobial additives. And you can use a varnish over a preservative. Correct me if I'm wrong. (On the other hand. I've heard of someone who first paints his outdoor woodwork with a lot of raw linseed oil, then primer, undercoat and topcoat. It seems the primer bonds better with the oil in the wood.) My experience with the new water-based "enamels": avoid, avoid, avoid! They're harder to apply a decent finish as the paint goops and blots more; they don't dry particularly well and, for example, a door will stick to its frame and take off small amounts of topcoat; they always have a slightly sticky feel unless you wax or polish the paintwork, and they're terrible for any surface that gets wet, like tabletops. The water-based varnishes have slight uses, primarily as a "quick seal" on the top, bottom and sides of a door or window that needs to be installed and painted the same day. I'd never use them on anything that needs to look and feel good.

Have a look at www.ufcc.co.za

Moridin, I've been thinking about your garage wall. I saw some stuff - Sikagard 703W - that's a water repellant, probably silicon-based, and that (by the picture on the bottle) can be sprayed with a garden pressure sprayer/ It's R539 /5litres at Pennypinchers. Maybe that for the outside wall? And then, can you squeeze a gutter pipe down the side of the building? That might be enough to catch water off-run and carry it away from the building. Just thoughts. Oh yes, if you have an older house (+/- pre 1910, as I recall) in Cape Town, please do research on water-proofing of old/heritage houses. You can't use cretestone or cement, or acrylic paints, and most water-proofing solutions are counter-productive. The older bricks and materials and design relied on good ventilation so that the walls can breathe. Ideally, they should only be plastered with lime plaster (very eco-friendly, at least) and traditional whitewashes or milk paints. There's often no dampcourse in these older houses either - the rocks used as the foundation were often dampcourse enough - provided, as I say, the walls can breathe.

If you ride ss or fixie, don't forget spanners for your back axle in case of punctures ... Bugger it. Anyway, I've tested the Serfas claim of FPS Flat Protection System, or whatever it's called. Riding with a flat back wheel from Pinelands to Rondebosch, standing up and leaning over the front wheel. We'll see if it worked ...