How to fit a Door Closer

Or more to the point, how to fit 40 door closers.

I think I've got it down to a fine art now. The tricky bit is removing the old perko door closer (door closers are fitted here due to building regulations and stopping the path of a fire - not sure if you guys have the same rules in the states) these are fitted in the back edge of the door, sprung loaded and can be nasty if your finger gets caught. I've been using a pair of needle nosed mole grips (you'll get them back dad I promise) to hold the chain while I take out the screws (many have had to be drilled out due to the last carpenter rounding off the heads). When I release the mole grips it snaps together and makes you wince at the thought of your finger being in there (or at the height they're fitted at something worse)!

Then I fit a new overhead door closer (the setting out measurements are forever in my head 68mm, 105mm, 16m, 46mm) pretty easy things to fit if you read the instructions and use the templates - practice makes you faster.

Later I've got to drop back and repair all the doors where the perkos were, but access in a hotel can be a problem and it does hold me up a bit when rooms aren't available. Still the chamber maids are a good laugh and not many carpentry jobs you can wear a t-shirt in January.

Sorry if this is a boring post!

Hospital Job

Don't worry I've not cut a finger off or anything.

"Hospital job" is a term we use in the building industry for a job we can drop on anytime and fill in between our other work. To have a hospital job is great as it gives a little bit of job security, even if its only for a few weeks, it means if a customer cancels at the last minute you've got another source of income for that day or if you finish a job early you've got something to keep you going.

I've got a great one for this winter - Renovating a horse box from a rough shell to holding three horse with living quarters in the front. The only thing I've ever done like this before was when I converted an ambulance into a camper van (then travelled all round Europe in it with my now wife- but that's another story) so this should be a good challenge. The other bonus is the truck is being stored in the larger of my dads workshops (heating in January and good company - I think I'm going to be spoilt!).

The shell is pretty rough (I'm not doing the metal work on the outside - my work is just the inside) and after looking at the kitchen and units in it (and smelling them) I decided to rip them out. The last "coach" builder made a couple of mistakes, like not tanking the living quarters off from the horses so every down hill trip resulted in more urine under the floor - not a great smell. Stripping the carpet off the walls revealed more flies than I've ever seen in one place, the wall was black in places with them.

Still the dirty work is done now. Last week I managed to get a new dividing wall up, insulated and fit the ply floor base, fit ply to the rear ramp and refit all the windows (its also been painted and body work patched up) so its looking better already.

Not working on it this week, fitting 39 overhead door closers in Birmingham, but no doubt I'll be back on it again soon (it's a job that will wait for me).

Happy New Year

And sorry about the lack of posts! We're now in our new house and currently have no Internet or TV, had a manic Christmas driving round seeing friends and family and only now will our life start to get back to normal - well until the baby turns up!


The move was quite rapid with lots of helpers, although I was told off by quite a few people that I shouldn't have made my wife move at 8 months pregnant, but everyone could see why as the new house is ideal for us to bring a family up in.

[Picture looking across two of our fields at our new house- a 1950's semi]

I've got my container all set up to house my tools, made a few minor alterations to the house and unpacked lots of boxes, changed the fuel tank, put furniture back together - it pretty much felt like home the first night there.

The house is a cosy little 1950's semi-detached with open fires and a nice layout, we've then got a good sized garden and 5 acres to the side and below. This is split into three fields, all to play with, divided up with some beautiful large oak trees, a few larch, ash and willow with some patchy Hawthorne hedging. I've already had my brother there altering a few trees to allow a tractor in the bottom field!

The next year is going to be interesting! A new baby(really exciting), hopefully lots of work coming up, a smallholding to plan and get going and a new veg garden to start growing.

I'll be posting all my self sufficiency type stuff on my other blog http://keepingmyroots.blogspot.com/ which will now involve more than growing veg and a few chickens. Hopefully we can now produce more of our own meat as well as plant an orchard with a big veg garden right on our doorstep. I'll be trying to preserve as much produce as possible and hopefully we're become less dependant on the "Big Machine".

This blog will still detail what I get up to with wood (as well as the work we've got to do on the big oaks (I hope you're reading this Dave)) and I'm going to push hard for interesting and varied work on a wide variety of projects.

Thank you all for following me over the last 12 months or so, having this blog and reading everyone else has made me so more passionate about what I do (if thats possible) and its made me want to learn much more. Thanks again.

This is going to be a good year.

Moving House

Well today we signed on the dotted line, so hopefully I wont jinks it by saying that we're moving house!

We've managed to buy a smallholding of five acres with the beautiful backdrop of the Malvern hills. This is something I've always dreamed of and maybe we're mad to do it but it means we're be able to live a life that's much more self reliant, growing more of our own meat and vegetables, have space for children (in the not so distant future) to run around in and the space for me to build a large workshop and develop my business.

Where we live now has been a great home to us but I've always craved more space as I was brought up on a farm. I've built a lovely workshop but its size enables me to have only one project on the go at a time and I have to lug my tools up and down the garden to the van as its at the far end of the garden.

[Picture of my current workshop]

The garden is also full to bursting with two greenhouses, 9 (now deceased) chickens in two pens and raised beds full of veg, as well as two allotment plots in a nearby village which was just too far away to "pop off" to.

The new house means I'll have a good base to build my carpentry business from as well as trying to give my future children something near the upbringing I had, involving hard work, fun and with lots of time spent together.

Above is a picture of my new "temporary workshop" (although it will loose the wheels at its new destination) in my fathers workshop after its green paint job, this is until I can build something a little bigger.

I've now got to work harder to pay the mortgage but its now for the thing I always dreamed of, with my wife who I want to spend the rest of my life with.

Feeling quite scared but very happy! Watch this space!

Dormer Window

I went back to the "Complicated Little Roof" today to fit the roof on the dormer window.
It was no easier than the rest of the roof as the drawings were next to useless and the customer wanted it different to how it was shown anyway. Once we'd worked out what overhang he wanted (it's different to the rest of the dormers on the house as it sticks out from the brickwork) I managed to get the rafters and ridge board up and then cut the long compound mitres on the jack rafters (which fitted first time - to my surprise!).
I've got a day left on this roof when the next window turns up, I just hope the weather is as dry as it was today (although maybe not as cold). The main downside today was I had to put my tools away in the dark!

Sharpen-up Sunday

There's something strangely therapeutic about sharpening up your tools on a Sunday night ready for the week ahead.
These are my hand tools that need sharpening, and they stay with me everyday of the week.

Off Centre Turning

Had my last wood turning lesson for whats going to be a while the other night. I'd been learning how to turn off centre on the new variable speed Axminster lathe that the guild house have bought. The AW1416VS lathe is great for this type of work as it turns at any speed you want, meaning when I was turning off centre I could turn the speed right up to just before it starts to shake! The turning was done with a special chuck of Chris's (my tutor) and although I was only turning with pine I learnt the basic principles even if what I produced didn't look that great! ( I didn't bother sanding to too higher grit as its only a test piece) The speed has to be kept low but still fast enough to produce a good finish, not easy for me as I like to turn everything at a fast speed!and when you adjust the chuck to bring it back on centre parting off is a little more tricky than it would be with a normal piece.

Anyone else tried off centre turning?

Closing The Gaps On Some Windows

Although I keep being let down with work at the moment what I do have is pretty varied!

Wednesday and Thursday this week I spent trying to close the gaps on some old windows. The windows need replacing really, and the customer understands that, but due to budget (as the house is listed and the windows would not be off the shelf) they decided just to have the gaps closed up a bit to try and save on heating and to make the house a bit more comfortable to live in.

First job was to take out some leaded glass from an old frame, break the frame apart, clean it up and re-glue it back together. I had to be really careful with the glass as its hundreds of years old, really thin and the lead holding it together was pretty weak. Then I had to linseed oil putty the glass back into the frame once it was back in position. My putty work will never win any awards as I don't do much of it, but it looks fine where it is and should last a bit longer now.

I then worked on closing the gaps on the four large windows on the front of the house. Not really a very fun job, sticking strips on and planing them down to fit. But it did mean I worked with hand tools for 2 days straight, mainly my three favorite planes (60 1/2, No.4, No.778)

The gaps are much smaller now and it should make the house less draughty, I even filled and then primed the repairs, ready for the windows to be painted.

A lovely old house to work on (the upstairs even had wide hewn oak floor boards).

Complicated Little Roof

I had my first time off ill from work in 6 years this week, but by Tuesday night I was ready to get back at it.
I started this little roof on the Wednesday morning and straight away I knew it wasn't going to be straight forward. There's 4 steels marked on the drawing to go in; to take the old roof and support the ridge beam as well as the end gable brickwork, there's also a dormer window and a large valley gutter one side with a parapet wall containing a concealed gutter on the other. The first thing was a bit of head scratching and deciding where to begin ( as the picture below with drawings, bevels, scale rule and calculator shows!)
We decided to get the "cranked" steel in first, then the steel that's supporting the old roof, involving stripping the tiles, removing the old dormer window and cutting the old rafters.
We then managed to get a couple of rafters up with a ridge board (scarf joint ready cut) ready for us to place the new ridge beam so the brick layer can build up to it.
The sun was setting fast as we finished off tonight, but next week should see us shoot ahead with it (although I can already see that the drawings are missing another steel as there isn't one to pick up the shorter section of the new roof, so i guess we're have to come up with a solution for approval!).
Only a small roof but hundreds of things to think about! People forget how much a carpenter has to remember!

Carving Chisels

I decided to have a bit of a tidy up in the workshop today (moping around as a fox killed all my chickens last night).

I brought a cheap Stanley toolbox the other day and decided that it would be good to keep all my carving chisels in one place. When I rounded them all up I was quite surprised by the number of them as this doesn't include my wood turning chisels or any of my normal everyday chisels that I use for work.
Some of them need quite a bit of work doing to them and I'd like to re handle quite a few of them but the ones in the tool rolls are all sharpened ready for action. None of them have cost me over a couple of quid but they have taken me quite a few years to accumulate (I've just remembered I've got another set of six tucked away that I wasn't happy with and not shown here).
55 here so far, ideally I'd like to have them in a big cabinet on the wall, but that will come when I get a bigger workshop!
Need to find more time to use them now! Anyone else got a nice set of specific tools that doesn't get used as much as it should (although they do get used!)?

Boyz In The Wood

I'm sorry my blog has been so boring lately. I've been so busy driving to Birmingham everyday and decorating every night that the weeks are slipping by.
I stayed at the farm last night as Mum and Dad are on holiday and my brother wanted to go out. My brother, Dave (Some of you already follow his blog http://davidalviti-rusticcreations.blogspot.com/) had left me out a few books to borrow (as we both read a stupid amount of books a year) but inside the one was a old picture he was using as a book mark.
It made me smile as we must be about 3 and 6 - a happy childhood on the farm.
Still somethings never change as this photo from last year shows (although we're stood the other way round in this photo). I hope we can have another photo like this when we're old men still cutting up bits of wood!

New Back Door

Sorry this isn't a more interesting post!

My week at work has not been very taxing on my brain, but we've got quite a bit done fitting out shelves in 18 different cleaners cupboards along with some other jobs so its gone quite fast.

More jobs at home again! I decided that this weekend I would change the back door from the kitchen as its always looked a little rough and is single glazed.

Bread and butter work again for a carpenter but I've grown to enjoy hanging doors and chopping out hinges. I've also stained some more windows and started to paint the landing up stairs - I've been quite busy with all these jobs but I can't say why just yet, but it will make for a more interesting blog in the future if it all comes off!

Jobs at Home

Well I know its always the way, but I have a habbit of putting off jobs at home (the cobblers childred always go bare foot and all). But this year I've been a little better. I fitted a new front door about a month or so ago which makes the house look much smarter in post box red - although I didn't take any pictures (which is unsual for me) It only took me four years to get round to it!

And this week we've had a new boiler fitted, major expense but the other one was so old I'm sure it was costing a fortune in gas. This weekend I had to fix the floor boards back down and I've decided to replace the skirting as its been painted so many times and looks really rough, I'm also going to replace the back door (the only bit of the house that isn't double glazed) and a new door on the much emptier airing cupboard, also going to box all the pipes and wires in with MDF. Should fill a few evenings!

Is there any jobs you've been putting off for years that you should start?

Summerfield Park

Well on Monday I finally handed over the park keepers cottage at Summerfield Park to the Council. The orginal deadline had no bearing on the end date as we unearthed so many problems that had to be taken care of. It went from this:

To this:

I'm really pleased with how the project turned out, on the whole I enjoyed it and made some good friends and learnt a lot in the process. It's a shame that we couldn't render the outside like the oringal plan or paint the whole of the inside but with the extra works we had to do to the roof and other areas the budget wouldn't allow it. That said I'm really pleased they decided to go with a new roof covering as this will last the building many years to come and looks really smart when viewed from the park. The other area I really like is the landing upstairs. The ceiling here was so low you almost had to be hunched up to walk around it. That ceiling pretty much fell down as we were working on it so under instruction we created a "vaulted" ceiling and a much larger feeling landing with the purlins on show, when painted out this area is going to look great.

I've been invited to go back and see how it looks when its all wallpapered and painted out and I'm looking forward to seeing the building in use.

Right next project please!

Moulding planes

I'll keep this post short, I had a rather good time at the car boot on Sunday and bought one or two planes...

You all warned me what would happen!

I'll do a post later on what I've been making or this will turn into just a tool blog! Still restoring this lot will keep me busy over the winter months.

The Top of a Slippery Slope...

I did something rather rash this morning - I brought a wooden moulding plane.

Up until now I've never know enough about these planes to buy one or even give them a second look at the car book sales, but with what I've been reading lately I decided to look out for one and maybe try it out if I found a good one.

Rummaging around in boxes of old tools this morning I found one that looked quite good. The blade was in good condition, the wedge fitted tightly and the whole thing looked well made, the sole for the moulding even having a different timber fitted nicely in the sole of the plane.

It was £2 so I decided to risk it. It looked nice even if it didn't work very well!

Its stamped with the Hibernia Marple's & Sons Sheffield shamrock logo, I'm not great at dating tools but I guess that puts it somewhere from the 1937 (when they started using the shamrock) to when they stopped making wooden planes (anyone know more?)

When I got back from the car boot the first thing I did was to go down to the shed and take the plane apart to look at the blade, it was quite sharp and pretty much ready to go.

So I put the plane back together and adjusted it with a few taps to take a small cut. Pushing it along, two handed, felt great and with two strokes I had created some fine shavings and this lovely little bead.

The trouble is now I want to buy some more moulding planes, I think it will be nicer than using a router on a small project. Just need to do a little more research so I know what to look out for (recommendations of books will be appreciated).

Watch this space!

Making a Carving Mallet

I was looking for a simple project to have a go at during the evenings this week and decided to make a carving mallet.

Traditionally lots of different woods and materials were used to make mallets, from the heavy Lignum vitae (which is now like rocking horse poo to get hold of) to brass, to beech or fruit woods. Some were made from one piece of wood others had beech heads with ash handles (for example).

I brought some locally grown apple wood at a auction not so long ago with the intention of making a few mallets as apple is known to be a tough wood.

And tough it was! I had to sharpen my tools quite a few times during the project to keep them cutting cleanly. Unfortunately there is a little bit of woodworm in the wood and I only realised this once I had turned the basic shape, so I've treated it with woodworm killer and I don't think it will affect the way it is used as the wood is so hard.
I always worry when turning things like this as its difficult to know what shape to turn it as there are some many different kinds out there. From reading different articles about it and using the mallets a little bit, one that stands up is handy (as it wont roll of the bench) and a slight concave in the shape of the head of the mallet helps to land a clean blow on the chisel.

I've given it a coat of linseed oil and now hopefully someone will be able to use this and carve a work of art.