| Blog series by shipwright | updated 05-24-2016 12:50 AM | 9 parts | 19945 reads | 154 comments total |
Part 1: Wood Gloat and a Little Glueing
OK, I’m a little impulsive but I work quickly so maybe I can pull this off. I’m showing my jewellery box at the Sooke Fine Art Show in a week and will be doing four hours of chevalet / marquetry demos there as well. When I have done this in the past I have always had inquiries about classes which I have always put off because a) I didn’t feel I was good enough or experienced enough to teach marquetry and b) because to teach this kind of marquetry to a class of more than one ...
Part 2: Making Hand Tools with Power Tools
I would love to have the time to work on these chevys with hand tools without the noise, dust, and sharp whirly things but I’m on a mission here and time is of the essence. In that light, this morning started out (after cleaning up the glue-ups) with dadoing the recesses in the columns to match those made in the face plates yesterday. I am pleased to say I can still count to ten without using any toes. Next I laid out the mortises in the bases and moved on to the mortiser (sorry,...
Part 3: Lots of Parts,Lots of Joinery
I guess I got lots done today although I didn’t get as far as I wanted to. (Do we ever?) There have been enough blogs on chevy construction and I’ve got lots of pictures so I’ll keep the text to a minimum and let the photos do the explaining. These are the cheeks for the sides of the columns in way of the arm clamps. I band sawed them to save time. Then, before I glued them on, I cut the part catching gullets on the column tops. ... and sanded them. ...
Part 4: Day Four ....... Seems Longer
Just a few pics today. I started off by cleaning up yesterday’s glue-ups on the column cheeks and generally tidying things up. Then I cut the recesses for the threaded rod in the carriage logs and glued in the filler pieces. The posts won’t glue in until the ends of the carriage logs are machined. The rest of the day was consumed by assembling the arm clamps with carriage bolts and with cutting and fitting all the seat parts. Here’s the photo I wanted to ge...
Part 5: "Furniture" Complete, Done for Now
Today I got the “furniture” pretty much completed. What remains to be made are the working parts of the saws and they will have to wait. Tomorrow I will switch gears and get into preparing for my presentations at the fine arts show. They are on Saturday and once I get through them (and maybe go sailing for a couple of days) I will get back to finish these little guys. The first shot here is of the chaos that happens when I get into a project. There are off-cuts everywhere and e...
Part 6: Slow Progress ......but progress none the less
When I left off last time I said that the “furniture” was done. That wasn’t quite true and it took quite a while to finish the job. Because I will have to break these chevalets down for storage (or possibly shipping) I decided to bolt certain joints that I normally glue so they could be dis-assembled. In the case of this arm to post joint it also allows the arm to be reversed to left handed position. I may need that at the school some time. The shipper managed to brea...
Part 7: Saw Frames, Clamp Springs, and Adjustable Height
Just a bunch of photos from the last few days to bring the project up to date. When I left off I was about to make the saw frames and the clamp springs. That went quickly. Then I got a little sidetracked on adjustability of height for students of different statures. All of the chevys I have built have adjustable arm height by re-arrangement of graduated thickness shims, tightened by matched wedges ….... .....but in the past adjustment was infrequent and the re-...
Part 8: More To It Than Just Pretty Chevalets
When I last posted in this blog, I had almost finished the chevys and was feeling about ready for the classes to begin. Well ….... that may have been a little premature. It seems that teaching a marquetry course requires a little more hardware than just some pretty chevalets. First I’ll update the construction part. All that really remained to do on the actual machines was to make the blade clamps (covered in a separate blog here), the knobs for the saw frames, and of course, t...
Part 9: Rebranding, a Hide Glue Story
When I originally built the four new chevalets the school didn’t have an official name so I branded them with my usual cypher, PRM. Following the first round of classes last fall it became The Canadian School of French Marquetry so I decided to rebrand the chevalets. Here’s where it becomes a story about the virtues of hide glue. I was able to rehydrate the old glue holding the ciphers onto the chevy face plates and remove them without damage by applying hot water and driving i...
