Thread: Study - WIP

I am hoping I have a few things working in my favour.

1. I sat the boards in the study for several days prior to glue up in a vague attempt to acclimatise them.

2. Glue up day was a lovely dry 25 degrees in Melbourne.

3. SWMBO never lets temp in house drop below 21 degrees during winter (which would be 25 degrees if she had her way). I know this ... I just got the gas bill for winter !

[emoji3]

The dowel jig was pretty good actually. I think it needs a little more calibration, but best as I can tell, it has all the original bushes along with what appear to be some custom specials grandpa made / picked up. And now I can add some nice bronze bushes to the collection.

Unfortunately No.3 will likely work against you.
Cold moist air comes in from outside and is then heated to 21° -- which turns it into warm dry air able to help dry the wood for your next project.
The rest of the year you will likely have moist air circulating in the house

Anyone know where I might be able to get something like this ... But in an antique brass or bronze finish ?



To match (or resemble) 1 534 022 ...

Have a look here: http://www.gbrownantiques.com.au/

Is this one close enough?
HDLTH1560.jpg
From Elraco

Thanks lads ... Lots to look at there !

Before grain filling, I thought I had better reduce the width of the cable tidy lids so they didn’t bind, and also add a chamfer to the ends to neaten them up. Some time ago I made myself a bevel shooting board for just such a task ! First we set gauge to the right width, mark, the load into shooting board. 30 gentle strokes later …







At risk of offending the “finishing gods” and having thunderbolts launched from the heavens in my direction, I thought I had better make a confession. When I glued the end panel up, the end piece dropped a smidge without me knowing, leaving a .009” lip between it and the main section. I was rather leery of attacking this with the scraper for fear of falling off the edge and onto the end piece causing even more damage. I was equally leery of having a go with a smoothing plane. To add a little complexity, right at one of the intersections is a section of reversing and upright grain that I had already challenged the scraper. The only way I could think to resolve this was to attack it with some P80 sand paper in the sander, which as it happened did the trick quite well. This was followed by P180 in the sander, P220 in the sander and then P220 by hand.

Last time I grain filled Sydney Blue Gum, much of the timber had quite a pink tinge to it, so I chose Timbermate Mahogany as the grain filler. This also serves to fill any gum veins that are sometimes unavoidable, borer wounds and wiggly grub wounds etc. However, over time the timber has turned a richer brown, which makes the pinker filler stand out a little.

This time, I will be grain filling with their Jarrah product (which is deeper brown). The Timbermate is diluted with warm water to turn it to the consistency of cream. Then screeded over the surface with a flat piece of scrap and then worked across the grain with a rag.



Once dry, it’s sanded off, with sanding continuing (only by hand now) up through the grits. Of course, what the grain filler also does is show up any machine (or in this case scraper marks) that I have left in the timber. Oh well - better that we find them now than after 20 coats of shellac !





In the photo above, the piece is sanded to P220. Before starting to polish, I need to get to around 800 grit or higher (so my polishing handbook tells me ..).

While the grain filler is not necessary, it makes the French polishing process simpler as the grain takes far less filling with shellac.

1.5l of Ubeaut’s hardened shellac ordered too … so it can spend time in the post while I am getting my hand done.

Thanks for looking…

Well, I am largely back in the saddle after carpal tunnel surgery. Still not at full strength, and with the occasional twinge, but other than that .....

All pieces have now been sanded to 800 grit, hit with sanding sealer and gently rubbed with 1200 grit.

Rather than French polishing, this time I thought I might try my hand at spraying with hardened shellac. So I went and purchased a reasonable quality conventional gravity gun from one of the local auto paint supply stores. It's not a Devilbiss or Iwata but the bloke at the store said they were quite a respectable gun, with a 2mm tip.

I tried it out on the unseen side of the cable tidy lids at the rear I'd the desk. It has taken a little while to find the right setup, but I have landed on 8 or 9 psi with the tip on just opened. Certainly that is allowing me to build up fine layers. I did try a slightly wetter coat set at about 10psi, but ended up with fish eyes.

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I am spraying Ubeauts Hardened Shellac cut 50/50 with pure meth, and retarded with 5% turps (thanks for the advice Neil !).



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In the photo below, I have shot about 350ml, but its quite clear the grain isn't fully choked. Anyways, I am quite happy with the result so far. It's not stipply, nor ropey (which is what I probably would have got had I French polished [emoji50] )

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Thanks for looking...

Sanding and spraying continues. With some more advice from Neil (UBeaut) and Robert (Shines), I have started adding about 6% butyl alchohol to my shellac mix (which is diluted down to about a 1.5lb cut). The butenol certainly retards the drying time, giving the shellac a chance to flow out and choke the grain.

I still need to sand back with 800 grit between coats, but I don't think anywhere near as much as I would have.

I still have a couple of pores that don't want to fill, resulting in fish eyes. Tried to pad it out, but just at the moment, it bloody kills my right wrist, and I don't have the coordination in my left.

Here are a couple of comparison photos .. 1st pair after a couple of coats, second pair the most recent shots. Certainly a vast difference.

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I will cut these back with 1200 grit and see where that lands me. If the grain is fully choked, I can concentrate on the final top coats.

Thanks for looking.

Time to start making the leather panels.

The MDF sheets were cut neat to fill the voids left in the desk. I then used some pieces from the leather hide to determine the appropriate gap. This was done by trial and error, taking .5mm off with the plane, and then refitting the panel so there was just a small amount of friction requiring a light push to press the panel into position.



The panels were then chamfered to take away sharp corners and provide a better glue bond. The bottoms of the panels rebated just a hair deeper than the thickness of the leather. If I need to shim the leather panel up in the desk, that can be easily done.






With the panels cut, I then cut the pieces out of the hide. It certainly was a big beast ! That hide measures more than 2.1m x 2.1m.





Perhaps somewhat naively, I made the voids to take the panels with square corners, rather than radiused. This means the leather must be wrapped around the panel and tucked underneath without any overlaps or puckers - which would make the panel too large to fit. Of courses, if I catered for that, it would leave gaps elsewhere.

In my childhood, I had seen how boot makers fixed leather uppers to the midsole of a shoe by taking sections out, gluing and beating on a last. After some trials with small test pieces, and a little bit of youtube research on leather upholstery in cars, I landed at the following cut out that let me fix the leather and hammer out any wrinkles.





The little tags help to pull the leather around to stretch it to the right shape. At worst, its better to make several little overlaps in the leather, which are easily beaten flat, rather than one big one which will very rarely beat out flat. By the end of the process, only a couple of the tags are actually left (in the photo above - only 3) - with the others cut off.

Of course, when it came time to fit the panel, it was a little tighter than the trials done earlier. As I havent done the big panel yet, I will take that into consideration.






Very happy with myself at the moment ... SWMBO is pretty happy too (although - she is starting to lose patience).

Thanks for looking !!

Big panel now complete.

The finish is in sight !

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So, with the leather panels completed, I disassembled the top into its component pieces.

Rubbed back with 1200 grit wet and dry on a rubber block, with a little water and detergent. This gave a nice dead flat surface. Then applied some EEE ultra shine, and reassembled.

All I have to do now is the panel that will act as the front legs.



We can't move in for another 2 weeks while the hardener in the shellac cross links ... But that's all that's stopping us now.

Thanks for looking.

You have done a very good job and should be proud of yourself.

Really great going on getting this project completed.