Furniture Making School
We’ve reached the end of the first term and wrapped up the term with a photography lesson from Matt at Petrel. My photos undoubtedly require more effort.
In the meantime here’s what we’ve been up to for the last couple of weeks with lots of dodgy mobile phone photos.
Tray with inlays and lipping.
The lipping (which is the bit round the edge) is made of beech. Cut and planed to 40mm square and then mitred at the ends to fit around the centre panel. The mitre surfaces are glued but most of the strength comes from biscuit joints along the edges.
Lots of planing 
beech has a very smooth surface 
Aargh! those mitres
The centre panel is veneered mdf. The two outer inlays were made by cutting the oak veneer in half along the centre (as you can probably tell because the join is a bit ragged) then laying the two half on top of each other and cutting a triangle in the edge. Stick the two half back together and cut through the holes onto the other veneers to get the diamond shapes and then stick everything together onto some masking tape.
The inlay for the rectangles is more interesting. Some of the veneer used was ready made construction veneer and some was cut into 1.5mm thick strips on the band saw. Here’s a photo story of how it was made:
Glue 4mm strips of 1.5mm thick veneer together 
Cut stips across at whatever angle takes your fancy 
Lots of fragile strips 
Glue 2 opposing strips together 
use a thing stick to hold the strips down 
glue ordinary veneer on its side as an edging
Now use the mini router plane to cut out the veneer on the centre panel to receive the inlays.
Lie Neilsen router plane in action 
cutting the rectangles 
Test fit the inlay. The outer strips are held together with tape
The inlays are glued into place and then carefully planed and scraped until flush with the surface.
The short end of the beech lipping was given a curve using the band saw. I left the long edges straight which leaves some of the end grain exposed on the short edges:
Exposed end grain 
Close up of the inlays
The shaping on the beech lipping was achieved with a Veritas round bottom spokeshave and a card scraper.
It’s finished in Danish Oil which should allow it to take plenty of domestic abuse.
Finger joint
We made a finger joint. A sort of wooden hinge. Might need a bit of practice to get one of these looking nice but it works.
Cabriole Leg
Just the one leg for now:
Start with a rough sawn piece of beech 
Cutting the rough shape from a paper template 
Waste removed from all four sides 
That spokeshave again 
Get the flat sides shaped and then round over 
Rounded over and sanded
And finally a bit of split carving:
Back Home
I bought a band saw. Record Power BS300E. It’s arriving today apparently.
I have a month off before returning for the second term at John Lloyds so I plan to finish off the Ottoman and to make a cutlery box for a friend, and see what I can do with the band saw.
Baylis Handmade 