Oak Frame Repair

A good few days work on this old oak frame repair, not very easy going as a lot of hand work to get it back to somewhere I could work from.

A large crack that had started to rot due to it being filled with concrete and the wood not being able to breath

Taking the bad wood back to good. I decided that as the upright would need two splices as well it was best to replace it at the same time.

Splicing in the top piece

Some of the bottom section chiselled out - this took a lot of work!

The completed repair

The bottom joint.
 I made the pegs on site as well.

A picture showing how heavily scribed the bottom piece is - I made a template first and then it fitted pretty easily (well for oak anyway)

The repair fits in nicely as the rest of the frame has had work done to it in the past. Once this greys with age you won't be able to tell when this repair was done.

Picture showing the whole frame

The customer seemed really please with the job and I've another repair to do on the frame lower down once the scaffold is dropped.

Scribing Oak Skirting

I had to do some fairly difficult oak skirting last week. It had to be scribed both ways, into the floor and the wall by as much as an inch in places.

Showing how bad some of the walls were

With something like this I try to limit myself to being allowed to make three sets of cuts on each piece. One for the floor, one for the wall and then one just to make it a little tighter, all marked with a pair of compasses then cut with either a jigsaw or the electric plane and finished off by hand..

I can get it pretty tight in those cuts.

The scribe cut for the floor - a slight bow in it I'm sure you'd agree!

A bend in this wall made it really difficult as oak doesn't like to bend!

 The customer was really pleased with the result and it now means that the room can be finished. The pictures don't really show just how far out the floor was!

Making A Wooden Cooker Hood

A customer wanted an unusual cooker hood for their kitchen extractor to go above the cooker.

 This is what he came up with!

Built out of ply, biscuit jointed together and bolted to the ceiling joists, this makes a bold statement in the kitchen but it looks good, even though I was quite sceptical as I made it!

Repairing An Old Door

Repaired an old door today.

Splicing in a lime block

After looking closely at the door I decided that it was lime, there are lime floor boarding the house so that's a clue and I could tell from the close even grain and the way it cut with the chisel. I did think at first it was elm but it was far too soft for that.

The corner had rotted away with woodworm so I chiseled this out and added a block off an old lime floorboard.

Gluing the block on

 

Carving the detail in.

 I then had to carry the moldings on across the new block. I did this with my carving chisels, it's good to use them as not much work calls out for them any more and luckily it's lime as its one of the best woods to carve. I was pleased with the finish and by the time it's oiled up it will look like a quality repair - not hidden from sight though as that's not being true to what you're doing to a three hundred year old door!

Hanging Doors With A Circular Saw

Although I'm ever the traditionalist I do like to try new methods of doing things and seeing what works well. I'm sure the traditional carpenters of "old" would have tried new things if it made their job easier and better.

 So yesterday I had a try at hanging two pairs of door using my festool circular saw and no plane (except to remove any saw marks at the end).

Ever since I brought this plunge saw/guide rail combo I've been thinking that it would be easy to hang certain types of doors with it. In practise I'd go as far as to say it was a brilliant way to hang the doors.

 First of all it's a good clean way to trim the tops and bottoms of the doors so they fit in the hole. Then it also worked really well to get the doors square in the opening, normally this can involve a fair bit of planing if something is out of square. All I had to do here was set the guide rail up and within a few minutes the door was cut perfectly straight.

As these were pairs of doors they needed quite a heavy leading edge, again this was easy done with the saw, just set it on the angle and zipped along the guide rail in a few passes, giving me a perfect leading edge down the length of the door.

Four doors hung!

I'm not sure how many doors I've hung over the years but these are the first ones I've done completely with a circular saw. Although the method would only work for certain types of doors, its a good and accurate way of fitting doors and I'll be trying it again in the future.

Anyone else done it this way?