Or: That Was The Week That Was. (Which will tell the knowledgeable what I was doing late on Saturday nights back in...1962, was it?).
Apart from dealing with invalid dog and the almost continuous downpour, I've been working on the hall-table carcass (lovely word, that) for S. & B. On Tuesday it looked something like this:
which is a page of notes to myself about the method of attaching the top front rail and how to deal with the panels in the base.
Later in the week it had progressed to this:
Here the carcass is dry-assembled on a level surface (not always easy to find). It's actually upside-down, and the bottom panel is being tried in place. At this point I should have looked at the base more carefully.......
Now it's the right way up, and glued. The last job will be to cut and fit the missing top rail (the waiting tenons can be seen on the two middle posts).
This is the dovetailed joint for the top rail. The sketch I made on Tuesday shows a second dovetail into the top side-rail, but this somehow fell out of favour. (Too fiddly.)
In the end, it looked OK:
It's all square, everything's in a straight line, it's clean (no glue drips or fingerprints) and all the wood is hand planed with the Norris smoother.
There is a problem though, which I've been thinking about. Can you see what it might be?
On other fronts, our Beeswax Polish is about to be launched. The formula has been the subject of much experiment, and the best proportions of beeswax and turpentine determined. Suitable tins have been found, ordered, paid for and shipped; our friend Rebecca has designed the label, and Sticky Business in Victoria has printed them for us on self-adhesive circles.
Next weekend our local Arts Council is holding their annual Christmas sale at Mahon Hall in Ganges, and we'll have a little display there with a variety of tins of beeswax polishes for furniture and also for chopping boards, salad bowls etc.
As soon as the tins are filled and labelled, I'll finally update the "Polishes" page of the website.