New Wanigan in old Pine

Time to drag out the form and put one together for the Gr8 homeroom teacher. Good teachers just make you want to build...

Leftover big pine from what was used to plank the form. A really kool piece was kept for the lid

Old pine sides, white cedar ribs and western red cedar planking

Making the turn around the bottom

Planked and ready to lift from the form. 

Finished, sanded and ready for tung oil

That satisfying moment when the oil hits the sanded wood

Oiled inside and out, 3 coats rubbed and paste furniture wax rather than varnish

The apprentice oiling the lid next

Walnut, pine and WRC

Second coat of oil soaking in

Ready for furniture wax

The lid, complete with blue staining from Pine Wilt disease,

more here:

• Pine wilt is a lethal disease caused by a native nematode (Bursaphelenchus xylophilus), vectored to trees by a wood borer insect–the pine sawyer beetle (Monochamus spp.).
• Rapid change in needle color from green to gray-green to brown or light tan, beginning in late summer
• Wood from recently affected trees is very dry, brittle and lacks any resin accumulation when cut. No evidence of exit holes, sawdust, or pitch tubes associated with bark beetles or wood borers in branches or the trunk
• The wood is discolored by blue stain fungi
• The blue stain fungus, Grosmannia clavigera, is a species of sac fungus. It spreads to lodgepole pine, ponderosa pine, Douglas-fir, and whitebark pine trees from the body and a special structure in the heads of mountain pine beetles. The blue stain fungus has evolved a relationship with mountain pine beetles that allow them to travel from tree to tree on a special structure in the beetle’s heads and stops the tree from producing resin to pitch out or kill the beetle, encouraging the pine beetle infestation
• The blue stain fungus spores germinate and produce a thread like mass (mycelium) that colonizes the phloem and sapwood. Fungal spores are usually blown away by wind but blue-stain spores are "sticky." This process eventually blocks the nutrient-conducting columns of the tree draining the trees of their nutrients eventually causing the tree to starve to death.^[4] The symptoms and signs of blue stain fungus are a blue-gray discoloration of sapwood in wedge shapes of recently killed trees

More boxes

Dont have any use for burned out old teachers, the kind unions protect while they act like entitled children and dont deliver the education children deserve. Again we've been fortunate to have 2 that are making a tremendous difference in helping our kids reach their full potential. Still time before xmas to make a few boxes, like my oldest asked to do. They even stepped up their contribution in the shop. First a super light all cedar, then a birdseye and black walnut one nearing completion. 

All cedar just after a coat of Tung oil, with ash rails

Plaking is alternating red and white cedar

Gluing up lid of figured maple and black walnut

Sides planed

  

Sides, ribs and planks stacked on the cruiser

   

Lots of dust, and comfortable shoes for a concrete floor. Asics gels in support of breast cancer research

Dust collector barrell full

  

Shaped, ready to mount after oil

Tung oil will prevent water stains during building

  

Nice colour contrast

Ready to build

Move is done, new shop almost set up

Its hard enough to get in the habit of blogging, but a move and setting up a new shop along with everything else will keep it far down on the list. Top of the list has been taken by the necessity of a new workspace. After finishing some painting and new flooring in the house, the tempered glass-top desk we'd been using decided to explode with enough energy to approximate a gunshot, the entire 2'x4' piece of 1\4" glass scattered itself over the entire room, dumping a laptop, camera and all in one printer to the floor in a hail of broken glass. For some 5 years now I've been carting around a 6' slab of walnut a friend gave me after his fathers passing, and I've never found a project worthy of it until now. Repurposing the desk frame, it will be planed, trimmed and several build coats of epoxy bar top coating applied to make the kind of desk people would expect someone who works with wood to use.

It will be trimmed for length, the live edges left and a small ledge put on with the offcuts to lift a printer up leaving room below for paper and so on. Tempting as it was to make a coffee table, we dont drink coffee and it wouldnt really fit in. There are some terrific examples however.
More to follow, it will really pop once its dressed and oiled....

Maybe it was bad luck leaving Muskoka, or maybe just movers not taking care. On dismantling the table, one of the support bars was bent slightly, therefore there was no support for the glass over 18" of the middle - a time bomb waiting to go off, and it did.

Board is dressed and the first coat of epoxy put on. It will get several more to build up a tough top coating with lots of depth, then sanded and coated.

Holes filling in, and the trapped bark and outer layers are stabilized and filled.  One incredible slab of walnut. Almost done...

One more coat of epoxy, buff and coat and I'll have a great place to blog from. Oh, and pay bills and help kids with homework and so on. Not sure about the walnut striped uprights, likely block it up with solid walnut like the shelf.