My grandmother laced pieces of old greeting card together with her crochet hooks. Her arthritic hands never stopped achieving! This wooden approximation of her work is clumsy by comparison. But the act of weaving edges together relieves the complex geometry of joining compound angles.
These little tables are remarkably strong. Birch ply give access to lovely graphic lines. It is a happy design exercise to make a toggle that matches the legs. I like the birch ply, but should have avoided the circle of the body!
Junk is stuff you have no use for. Here is a blade that was destined for land fill, so was the timber. Junk can be reclassified! The teeth have been ground smooth and the weight of the blade gives the table a nice stability. In making this there was a nice exploration of cutting compound…
Radiata pine is omnipresent but is also a timber with a reputation. It generally has strings of adjectives attached to it where the first is, cheap. Here, a recycled piece, 300mm x 400mm, has been cut into a jigsaw. That was tedious, but more-so was the finishing. Each piece was scorched with a blow torch…
For Whom Do We Make? The stuff we make involves many interested parties. There are: the makers, staff who help, managers of the centre, recipients of the objects, et al. Given the positive power of enthusiasm, it is good to spread that good feeling as widely as possible. When the makers make more than they need,…
There is a quiet room where the more stressed of my friends find gentleness. Fixed to the wall is a plywood panel that enables us to stick stuff where ever we feel. The stuff is really a collection of toys that have something sensory about them. It may be a movement or a gentle noise….
Sometimes a piece of wood is too good to throw away. Here is the end result of pushing a piece of blackbutt from one end of the wood rack to the other for about three years. It coincided with the acquisition of a long plug cutter. These tools can cut plugs over 100mm long, that…