Starting the bench

Hi faithful reader.

So, I finally heard about the other project I had in the works.  It’s a bedroom set.  King sized bed and two end tables.  It’s on hold for now.  The price was a bit more than they thought and they had some unexpected expenses. (do’t we all?)  With the price of fuel driving up the price of everything else, it’s a wonde anybody has any money.  Anyway, I got started on the bench today.  I got the patterns for the back and ends done yesterday.  Here they are.

The big one is obviously the back and the small one is for the two ends.  I think you can see what it’s going to look like from this picture.  The seat is going to be a cubby unit that fits between the arms.  If you can’t picture it, it wil make more sense later.  The actual pieces are going to be 1 1/2 inches thick and veneered in walnut.  The seat will be leather.  It should look nice when it’s done.  To make these templates, I would normally swing them with a router.  By that I mean I would make a compass with a router instead of a pencil and cut the arcs that way.  These are elipses, which means the radius changes in the arc.  The only thing I could do was draw them on the computer and print them out full size on multiple sheets, tape the together and cut them out.  I then trace them on the work piece and cut that out.  A bit of sanding and iI have my templates. 

Today, I get started by making the blanks that will be veneered.  Heres one of them in the bag.

This is going to be the back.  It’s two pieces of plywood glued together and pressed in the vacuum bag.  Next I’ll be edging them in solid walnut and veneering them.  I’ll have pictures of that process too, don’t worry.  It’s nice veneer too.  So anyway, that’s where I’m at and what’s going on in the shop.  Hopefully some more work will come in in the next few weeks.  This bench won’t take that long.

I almost forgot.  The guild will be having a show at  Vermont Artisan Design.  This is a beautiful gallery in Brattleboro Vermont.  The show will run for the month of August.  I have a few pieces there already and a few other pieces I could put in the show.  I don’t know if I will be making any new things for the show.  I’ll let you know. 

That’s all for now.  Thanks for hanging in there.