Story chair update

Now where was I?  Keep getting interrupted by courses, stove remodelling, fitting doors, skirting boards, bees etc, etc.

Well yesterday I found I had to split out some more oak for a back panel for the chair.  The butt was not so big, but nonetheless still needed the winch to haul it onto the trailer.  It turned out to be heavily infected with something oak is prone to but which I couldn’t identify, however, the timber that isn’t rotten is a warm brown.  I’ll be making the side wings from it which need to be as light as possible to maintain the bottom heavy weighting for stability.

Here’s me doing some speed splitting – nearly as good as watching paint dry.

(Did I notice the head come off the sledge-hammer?  Really! -Ed)

Today I’ve been fitting the panels in the back.  At first I was going to have them raised with a small upstanding rebate and worked them up so using a fillister plane and a little finishing plane for the chamfer:

Eventually I decided to go for a less formal fielding without the step as in the East Riddlesden chair:

It’s a more colloquial style more fitted for an outdoor location, so here it is dry fitted:

The riven oak is producing some decent grain patterns, the storytellers will need to beware of this eye in the back of their necks!

Next up will be stopped chamfers to the frame and then the arms and seat, and finally attaching the back frame to the seat frame – no chair has been built like this before (Good job too – Ed)

I rebuilt the stove today as the firebox was just too big; that was what caused the flue fire.  I only need a slow fire to produce smoke in Summer to keep the midges at bay.  I decided to try keeping the smoke a bit more under control by adding a plate from scrap steel plate to join the flue to the fire bricks:

It seems to work very well, with almost all the smoke going up the flue.  With the amount of firebrick in there I should be able to cook potatoes in 25 minutes.

On my commute this week a new dwelling has appeared on Silsden Moor, a splendid new shepherd’s hut:

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All around my hat …

Well Spring has certainly well and truly sprung and it’s so busy – bees:

Went to an auction at Brickhill Farm (above) run by Halifax Bee Keepers Association yesterday and there was quite a lot of stuff there, these’re just some of the 300ish lots.

I managed to buy a good used hive for a fraction of the cost of a new one:

Pine, so I need to treat it with some harmless-to-bees preservative, and get some frames and make them up.

Also I picked up a small smoaker, I’ll be finding out what from my extensive wooden stores smolders nicely.  Maybe I could bottle some of the stuff from the charcoal kiln.

There were stock and extensive fruit gardens at the farm where the auction was on the outskirts of Bradford,

Bradford Town Hall (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

with added pigs:

Back at Strid Wood, rebuilt the stove at the bodgery last week, adding a further dead wheel to the base in hopes of getting the top of the flue well above the tarp to keep the smoke exit level higher.  I’ve got a cough!

Fired it up Sunday.  You can see that the flue is now higher than the ridge and more smoak should stay out of the workshop.

I fixed the flue up with three scavenged Jubilee clips co-united.  Minutes after I lit it I had a rather hot chimney fire, but managed to put the ridge timbers and ropes out standing on the lathe bed and playing the fireman with the sharpening water luckily.  ‘Worse things at sea.’ As they say when they’re not at sea.

Still hammering away at the shepherd’s chair, here’s some speed axing of part of the back panel (One day, you’re going to fix that unstable chopping block. – Ed):

The axe chips vid that comes up after the axing finishes, is just for people who rather enjoy watching paint dry.

Watch this space for the slowly evolving story chair story.  Got the third of the major tenons fitting today (well nearly).

 

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Fire burns hotter in the cold

Especially if you use petrol as a fire starter.  Lovely smooth hands now, and no bobbly bits on my fleece.

I took a spare length of stainless flue liner in today to improve the draught on the new bodgery stove.

The difference it makes it very noticeable.  The stove now roars.  The firebricks are steaming out the summer rain, hot enough to dry more wood and gloves round the outside.  And the added luxury of a wooden door (soak before using!).

OK, so now it stacks up like this:

1. A large stone half buried in the ground.

2. Rusty old wagon wheel.

3. Centre hole covered with the flue blank from the new RC wood burning stove.

4. Firebricks, dry walled, air ingress where they do not sit tight to the wheel.

5. Wooden door.

6. Flue liner.

7.  At the base of the flue liner an old chain to weigh down the flue.

8. Drying fire wood.

It is a really good hand warmer.  Standing with your back to it it also warms the parts other stoves are too civilised to reach. Possibly the best stove in the word.  Definitely carbon neutral.

And when accompanied by fine food it completes an abode of bliss:

Also featuring in the picture is my lunchtime work.  A new small ladle from the silver birch we took down at home.  Safely stowed in a plastic bag so it does not dry between times working on it.  I know I should have taken a photo of the fantastic crook I’ve taken it from, but then …

Being snowy it was surprisingly quite in the woods, I guess people are busy getting festive.  They certainly don’t seem to want to buy Christmas tree decs anyway.  It was rather cold:

I had rather a lot of snow shovelling to do as the NE wind had brought a lot of snow inside under the short tarp.  I spent some time doing a Winter solstice clean up.  The off cuts and failures accumulated over a year had become an unmanageable pile leaning against the  back of the sycamore tree.  In fact I had to walk round it to get into the workshop.  OK so now it’s all reduced to logs and sitting in the trailer waiting to come home for the ever hungry  RC stoves.  It’s surprising just how much there was.

The new Landy is becoming a more familiar tool.  Needs WD40 in the locks to stop them freezing up.  Back window heater is bust, needs to be fixed under the guarantee, along with a couple of other niggles.

It takes me great places though.  Look at this.  The view’s been featured before, but it’s worth it:

What a commute!