Walnut Box

Hi All,
Firstly, regarding the title of this post. I'd like to point out that it concerns a box made from walnut wood and not a box to keep walnuts in.

Anyway, I had this idea to make a box with my scroll saw and decorate it with a design of fuchia flowers. I would burn the flowers into the wood with my pyrography iron and then paint them. The box would have fret work sides and top and as such should be suitable as a pot-pourri container.

One of the main reasons for purchasing a scroll saw was the scope it would give me in making boxes for my pyrography work and I thought this project would be good practice. Over the next three or four posts I will go through the process in detail, from the purchase of the wood to the completed project.

The starting point with any project revolving a scroll saw or pyrography is in acquiring some wood, so I purchased a small plank of walnut measuring 4inches by 18 inches from a company called Hobbies.com. The plank of wood is 6mm thick (about a quarter of an inch) and believe it or not but that is the largest plank of hardwood of that thickness that I can find anywhere. If anybody knows a source of bigger pieces of quarter inch hardwood please let me have the details.

By the way, this was the first time I'd worked with walnut and have to say I was a bit disappointed by its appearance. The tables and other items I've seen on the antiques road show that have been made from walnut always look fantastic and they made the piece of wood I'd received look some what dowdy by comparison. Perhaps it will look much better when it has been finished off. I do hope so because this sniffling little piece of wood cost me almost a fiver.

Once the wood arrived I designed the overall shape of the box on it. Once it was divided up into the six parts that make up a box I could then start working on the design. Here is the plank of walnut after I  divided it the parts for the box.

I would concentrate on the front and sides of the box first, so that was where my design began. I measured the size of the front and opened a new blank file in adobe photoshop to that exact size.
I then drew a image of a fuchia with a pencil onto a piece of paper. I used a pencil so that I could keep rubbing the image out until I was happy with it. When I finally had a stylised image of a fuchia that I thought would suit my needs, I went over image with a pen and then scanned it into my computer.

Okay, so perhaps it isn't the most spectacular fuchia you ever did see and it won't win any prizes at the Chelsea flower show, but I have every faith that it will look good on the finished box. Once the fuchia was in the computer it was a simple matter of copying the image and pasting it into the the blank file I had opened earlier.

This is the way I do most of my design work and I will go on to explain the next steps in my next post.

Blade Draws

Hi All,
When I started scroll sawing, finding somewhere to store my blades wasn't an issue because I only had the few blades that came with the saw. However, every time I started a new project I had to purchased more and more blades to suit the size of the wood I was going to be cutting.So I soon had lots of blades ranging from size 1 to size 12 with 12 being the biggest. You may think it is obvious that size 12 is the biggest, but that rule doesn't alway apply. With fishing hooks, for instance, the higher the number is, the small the hook is. You could hang a dead pig on size 1 hook, but you could thread a size 26 through the eye of a needle.

Anyway, with my blades in danger of getting into a dire mess, I decided to make a small set of draws to keep them in. And while I was at it, I would include a draw for my junior hacksaw blades and my Stanley knife blades.

I cut the main structure from a piece of 15mm pine and made the drawer fronts and sides from 6mm pine strip. The bases of the drawers were cut from 3mm plywood. The wood I used was all stuff lying around my workshop, so I guess I made the whole thing for free. Everything was cut on my scroll saw so there wasn't any hard work involved in the project, which is great because sawing a lot of wood by hand is very tedious.

Originally, I had intended on using my pyrography iron to burn the blade sizes onto each drawer but I decided against the idea. The draw knobs were kindly made by my wife from clay and I painted them blue.

Here is a picture of the finished set of drawers.

Considering I didn't take too much time over making this item I am pleased with the results. It looks good and it is useful, so in my book that counts as a success.

Another good thing that came out of the project was my first encounter with 'sanding sealer'. I first heard about this product almost fifty years ago when I was a young lad who enjoyed making model air planes from balsa wood. The sad thing is that the only money I had in the world, in those days, came from my paper round, so I only bought necessities and 'sanding sealer' was deemed a luxury too far.

As it happens nothing much has changed in my life and I still don't like to fritter money away, but seeing as there was a lot of open end grain on the pine I was using, I decided to give it a go.

The result was brilliant. I used it after the final sanding, it really does improve the finish. If I'd known how good it was all those years ago I might have risked thruppence on a bottle.

Mighty Oak

Hi All,
In my last post I showed you an acorn snuff box that I had made with my scroll saw and decorated with pyrography. Well this week I made another box in the shape of an oak leaf.

Using my scroll saw, I cut it from a piece of solid ash about 1 inch thick using a number 12 reverse tooth blade to reduce any tear out at the bottom of the box. The inside cut isn't too difficult because I was able to follow the drawing that I had stuck to the front of the wood. If I wandered off course a bit nobody but me would know. However, when it comes to the outside cut extreme care is required. The wall of the box is only about 4mm thick, so any lack of concentration would see the thickness of the wall made either too thin or too thick and that wouldn't look good. Scroll saw blades move very quickly so errors can be made in a flash.

The other difficult thing with an object like an oak leaf, is that the irregular shape makes if difficult to sand. Square, round and even oval boxes can be easily smoothed on a belt or disc sander, but an oak leaf shaped box can't. So it is important to get a smooth as possible finish when the object comes off the saw because life is too short to be doing a lot of sanding by hand.

For the base, I just drew around the box and cut it out on my scroll saw with a number five blade. I used the same method and blade for the lid, but this was cut out of a piece of quarter inch thick oak, which I thought very appropriate for the project.

As with the acorn box, that I showed you in my last post, I used magnets to attach the lid to the box. These are both hidden under the stalk end of the leaf and allow the box to be opened with a swivelling motion.

I have used pyrography to decorated the lid of the box and I think it works very well. In fact, I am always amazed at how well pyrography suits organic pieces

Here is a picture of the top of the box and the pyrography.

I am currently working on a bigger project and will show you that in my next post. If you have any questions about pyrography or scroll sawing please let me know.

By the way, I know some of you read my books and you may be pleased to know that the follow up to A Staffordshire Boy is starting to take shape. It is called "Ten Pound Pom" and should be available for purchase early in the new year.

Acorn snuff box

Hi all,
At the moment, there seems to be a glut of of antiques programmes on the telly. The antiques road show, the antiques road trip, flog it and bargain hunt just to mention a few. I'm not moaning, in fact, I have to admit that I quite like these programmes because they are gentle and at times they can be very informative.

Anyway, at least once a week a snuff box will turn up on one of these shows because they are quite popular with the collectors. I like them too, so I thought I'd put my scroll saw and pyrorgaphy iron to work to see if I could make one.

Here is the finished result.

It is an acorn made from three pieces of wood. The top is cut from a piece of pine. I chose pine for the top because I knew it would need a lot of shaping. Pine is a soft wood and easy to shape.

The box part is cut from a piece of maple, which is a very hard wood and one that I won't be using again in a hurry. The shape of the box has sloping sides, so I had to cut them at a twenty degree angle which made the sawing task more difficult than normal.

The fact that I have an excalibur scroll saw however did make it slightly easier because of one of the unique features of the saw is that sawing at an angle is facilitated by angling the blade and not the table as is the case on other scroll saws.

The base was cut from a piece of 3mm ply. If you are wondering what the black circle is, I can tell you that it is a magnet and it is used to attach the lid so that it opens with a circular motion.  Another magnet is positioned in the underside of the lid and it holds the lid in place.

I tried using magnets on this project because I dislike using miniature hinges, but to be honest, magnets turned out to be just as big a pain in the butt. The magnets are 12mm in diameter, so I purchased a 12mm forstner bit in the expectation that I would get a snug fit after drilling the holes. How wrong can you be, either the magnets are well over 12mm or the forstner bit is well under. Getting them to line up was also another headache. I finally overcame that particular hurdle with a tube of water colour paint, but I won't go into that now.

Here is the finished box.

The pyrography was a pleasure to do. I used a spoon tip as usual and a high temperature setting to do some arcing lines for the acorn cup. I then finished it off with three coats of varnish.

I hope you like my little pyrography acorn box, now all I need is some snuff.  By the way, I will be continuing the oak theme in my next post as I am doing something else in oak. It will require some nice pyrography work and I am looking forward to sharing it with you.

Pyrography flower pot

Hi All, I was busy with the scroll saw and pyrography iron last week and here is what I came up with. I designed it myself and being a prototype it came out very nice.

Now you may be saying to yourself what the hell is that? The answer is a vase.

At this point you may have started laughing to yourself because a wooden vase is about as much use as a chocolate tea pot; they are both apt to go a bit soggy. By now you are probably thinking that I've lost the plot and spent a lot of time doing scroll and pyrography work on a doomed project.

Well I haven't really, and here's why. A couple of posts ago, I mentioned that my wife had taken to making flowers out of clay, so I thought I'd make her something to put them in. Yes I know it is hard to believe that they are not real, and even the insects have been fooled. We've had all sorts of bees banging on the window to get at them. Here's a closer photo.

 

The crazy thing is, she makes it all look so easy, so it isn't any wonder that her pyrography work is so good. Anyway, I'll have to leave it there because my computer is playing up and I don't want to lose everything I've written. Please excuse my spelling if it is worse that normal because the spell checker isn't working either. My next post will contain more original pyrography.

Damselflies

Hi all,
It was my wife's birthday last week and I bought her some presents in line with her requests. We both hate receiving useless gifts of which we have both been the recipients. Somebody once decided it would be nice to knit me a bag to keep my electric tooth brush in. I appreciated the effort, but after a decent amount of time had gone by I'm afraid I succumbed and banged it in the wheelie.

Anyway, I got her a load of stuff that she wanted for her new hobby, making flowers from clay, but I wanted to do her a surprise. It was hard work making it in secret, especially as my workshop is next to the kitchen, but here it is.

I cut it out with my scroll saw from a piece of American cherry and used box joints on the corners. I think the red of the wood gives it a rich look and surprisingly it worked very well with the pyrography.

Here is the top.

Those of you who have been following my pyrography blog for a while will probably recognise the design because I have used it before on a previous box. That one was done with pyrography only but I thought the design would lend itself well to being cut out with a scroll saw. One of the good things about doing your own design work is that you can adapt it for several projects. All I had to do in this case was find the file on the computer and tweak the size and shape to fit the panels on the box.

Here is the front

After I'd done the pyrography work, I painted the damselflies with some of my wife's special paints. They work extremely well especially on the wings. I then sprayed the whole thing several times to give it a good protective coat of varnish. All that was left then was the worst bit. I love scroll sawing and I love doing pyrography but I hate sticking felt inside boxes. My wife usually performs this hideous task for me, but seeing as the box was for her, I had no option but to do it myself.

When her birthday arrived I don't know who was the most excited as she unwrapped her present. I hoped she would like her surprise and I wasn't disappointed, she loved it.

My only problem now is finding time to do some scroll work and some pyrography that I can sell, perhaps this week I will be lucky.

Berries And Flowers

Hi all, In my last post I said I'd show you what my wife has been up to with her pyrography iron. She completed this 10 inch plaque during the heatwave. It was too hot to be inside the house, so I ran an extension down the garden and she plugged her pyrography iron in under the shade of our willow tree.
I think it is very nice and so different from the stuff I do. I'd love to hear what you think.

 

 The bad news is that it might be a while before my wife's fine  pyrography graces these pages again because she has taken up a new craft. She has always had a passion for flowers and is now making them out of clay. I've been stunned by how good her first attempts have been and will show you one of them in my next post

I also said in my last post that I'd run through the method I used to create the box I showed you last week. To save you going back,  here is a picture of the box again.

 I decided on the size of the box and then cut out the 4 pieces for the front back and sides and once the size was decided I could then do my design to suit.

I chose leaves because I could use the tendrils between each leaf for bridges when doing the fret work with the scroll saw. The bridges are the bits that connect the wood together and without these it would all just drop into the box.

I also chose leaves because I wanted to do something different. If you look at most fret work, you will find that it is symmetrical and I wanted to get away from that.

Once the drawing was done, I transferred it to the wood. This was done by sticking the drawing onto the wood with some temporary adhesive. I then drilled pilot holes between the leaves and tendrils. The pilot holes are there to allow me to thread the saw blade through the wood. By the way, if you are thinking of getting a scroll saw, make sure you get one that takes plain blades. Pin end blades do not allow you to do fine fretwork.

Once the drilling was done, I carefully cut the design out of wood and then burnt in the pyrography pattern.

Then came the really tricky bit; I had to make joints for the corners. At this stage of my woodworking career I decided that dovetails were well out of my league, so I thought I'd have a go at mitre joints, which I would make on my disc sander. I'll cut a long story short, they came out crap. In fact, they looked like I'd done them with an axe. The joints needed to be hidden so now you know why there is a column on each corner.

The next thing I did was cut out the base. I put a curvy design into it to match the columns on the corners. Once all this was glued up I did another design for the lid, which I then cut out and did the pyrography work on it.

The lid was then attached to the box with hinges. these were glued on with epoxy resin and pins. I hate fixing hinges to anything because they seem to have a mind of there own.

I then gave the box 3 coats of varnish and stuck some felt on the bottom and the base inside.

The whole thing was time consuming and took a lot of concentration, but the end result was worth it. Being able to create something pleasing out of a few bits of wood is good for the soul.

Having done one box I thought I'd do another and I'll share that with you in my next post.