Fairy Emilie

This is my niece and god daughter Emilie standing outside her house frontage. These are built every year by the parents of all the children who take part in our local galadays. Her dad Derek, my brother inlaw put all his talents to good use in this house frontage  for fairy Emilie, who was one of many fairies .In the Linlithgow childrens Galaday  :)

Wet And Dry

Over a very wet weekend I put the chair together dry, I'm  quite happy with the way it looks. There's still loads of sanding and holes to be plugged and the big glue up but that's for another day:)

Shape

I spent the afternoon in the shed working on my chair . Sometimes I draw some ideas for rustic furniture but in general the timber dictates what it should be, the more buckled and cupped the better . No straight lines or plans to follow, the only requirement is that it pleases the eye. Here is the top of the backrest, I spent most of the afternoon shaping this, so that this would flow around the top of the back legs, I rounded the ends to soften the top, this is where the chair will be handled so I wanted it to be tactile . What do you guy's think ? :)

Yes! More Waney Edges

With poor weather over the weekend there was no escapes off into the countryside . I got to thinking about another chair ,so with some waney edged field maple, and some square lengths of the same, I put my thoughts in to action . Deciding on 4 pieces for the back rest and 4 for the seat, these parts will taper slightly so that they fan out a little at the top of the backrest and towards the front of the seat. Then came some trials for the layout, of the legs and bracing rails, once I was happy with the look of things. I then marked and cut the tenons and chopped out my mortice's, the field maple seems pretty nice to work with here's where I'm up to :)

Sunset

I took advantage of some good weather recently, and walked high into the hills and found a small lochan and I stopped to watch the birds for a while. I tried to take more pictures but the memory was full, but the last picture made up for the full memory :)

Refurbishing

A while back I bought an adze and after a little use the handle began to work loose from the head. So I decided to replace the old beech handle, with a more suitable ash handle, this was chopped out of a chunk of ash that Iv'e had hanging around for a few years . Then the drawknife and lots of spokeshave work, and some final sanding until it was a good fit in my hand . But not being content with this I have completely reprofiled the adze head too , the adze was ground on the underside from the factory . To get the flowing edge that I had in mind, took a bit of grinding then around 3 hours of filing until I was happy with the shape. This was followed by honing with various stones, then grades of paper from 600-1000 and finally stropped with leather and autosol ,here is the refurbished adze :)