At long last, I have fitted another pair of planks onto the clinker dinghy. I am embarrassed by progress that would shame a snail, but it is difficult work to fit the jerralds at the bow, so I find myself putting the work to one side, happily taking on other projects by way of distraction.

With 10 planks per side, I am yet to reach the halfway mark, but it does feel good to get a pair of planks fitted, with the help of Sylvia to rove the copper nails.

I take a lot of pleasure in making wooden items for friends and family. I seem to remember that “It is more blessed to give than to receive.”

Here some recent examples – I think they have been, and will be, well received:

A wine bottle coaster for my cousin Graham and his wife Nicola, whose birthday(s) drinks party we recently attended in London. (I forgot to take a picture of the actual item, made in walnut, so here is an earlier one to the same design.)

My brother Darryl, and his wife Libby, have recently completed some major refurbishments to their lovely cottage, and were looking for some roller towel holders. Commercially available ones are too wide, so I have made a couple of made-to-measure ones.

Much as I espouse hand tool woodworking above machines, the groove in the side pieces and, even more so, the “keyhole” grooves in the base for wall mounting, both called for the use of an electric router. I don’t like using these tools. They’re noisy and throw dust everywhere; and they can kick back and ruin the cut. Happily, the result was good.

The roller is beech, turned to size on my lathe, and the frame is oak. I feel a little guilty for using glue-and-screw butt joints rather than hand-cut mortice and tenon joints, but Darryl says they are to be painted (!!). I salved my conscience somewhat by strengthening the joint with a 6mm rod dowel.

Still, not many people can boast having a handmade pair of bespoke roller towel holders!

Meanwhile, another pair of planks is almost completed on the clinker dinghy, and I’ll post a photo of that landmark moment soon.

It has become something of a tradition, that this Grandad makes a box for each of our grandchildren.

Last month, with Lily’s birthday approaching, Sylvia said: “you need to make a box for Lily’s birthday.”

Lily is a great fan of the Disney character, Stitch, so it was easy to choose the pyrography decoration.

I am pleased to report that she was really pleased with it!

In order to fit the bow to the seat itself, I wanted to use floating walnut dowels. i.e. the dowel would fit into the ends of the bow and then into the seat. This jig enabled me to drill my holes in the bow as centrally and straight as I could:

Drilling the 350 angled holes into the seat was more tricky, but by making up some guide blocks, I was able to do some practice runs to get the angles right:

With a 35o home-made mitre box, I was able to bevel the ends of the bow and get the desired “fit.”

Now, I was ready for our week at The Windsor Workshop. It was good to see James Mursell and his wife, Louise, again, and to stay in their “Old Stables” cottage..

The seat bases were cut to size and marked up for the leg holes, which we drilled on the drill press and reamed to taper the through mortice for the matching papered legs tenons. Then it was on to shaping the seat, mostly by hand with a travisher and card scraper (with some power shaping by James using an Arbotech disk on an angle grinder to speed the second seat along).

By Friday, the legs and stretchers were fitted, with the footrests set to fit our differing leg lengths! It was time to fit the bows to the seat and drill and fit the spindles I had prepared.

Here is the final result, better than I had dared to hope, and with many thanks to James for his allowing me to join his own barstool course, for helping me create these stools – and thus fulfil a dream.

Thomas Moser-designed Bowback Bar Stools in walnut and ash.

For a long time I have wanted to make a couple of Bowback Stools, as produced by Thomas Moser’s company in the USA:

https://www.thosmoser.com/product/bowback-stool/

I have previously made a Windsor Chair with James Mursell at the Windsor Workshop: https://thewindsorworkshop.co.uk

Here it is with the desk I made for Sylvia:

We recently met James Mursell at a craft show, and he kindly agreed to help me make a couple of Bowback Stools on one of his 5 day Two Stool Making courses, and we have arranged a course in the spring.

Because I will be making a different stool than the rest of the group, I decided to do some preparatory work.

Firstly. I purchased a couple of Tom Moser’s book cheaply from on-line sites: “Thos. Moser’s Measured Shop Drawings” and “Thos. Moser’s Windsor Chairmaking.” From these I have seen able to obtain sufficient design details to reproduce the stool. The second of these has 1:5 scale drawings of the seat and the bow, and I have had these enlarged to full size at a local printers.

I was hoping to get permission from the Thos Moser company for me to include here a couple of photos of the drawings in these books, but have not had a reply. I heard last week that, sadly, Tom Moser died on 5th March, aged 90. He leaves a great legacy of fine furniture.

The plans shows the angles for rake (forward and backwards angulation) and the splay (sideways angulation) of the legs and spindles. From these two angles I have used Peter Galbert’s layout method for converting the compound angles into the sightlines and their angles for drilling the holes:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_i3Mnz8VTYM

As the leg of a stool is angled from a vertical position, the distance it moves across the floor gets greater per degree of angulation. It’s not simply a matter of a fixed distance per degree of angulation, as can be seen on the Taytools Bevel Setting Gauge” below. Peter Galbert’s technique and this bevel setting gauge makes the process very straightforward.

Having marked out the sightlines on the drawing, I needed to produce a template to create the shape of the seat.

The seat drawing is not perfectly symmetrical, so I make a template of one half (using some stiff clear plastic sheet I obtained for templating parts of the dinghy I’m slowly building). By transferring the details of one half of the drawing, I was able to make the shape perfectly symmetrical by simply flipping the template over to do the other side.

The next step is to define the shape and size of the bow. I made a drilling Jig to drill the correct angle and then fitted a length of 4mm diameter mild steel rod.

I then drilled the holes for the spindles and adjusted the bow to fit.

Using some card, I was able to take the shape of the bow and produce the former for the bow.

The template was not symmetrical so I chose one half and marked the wood accordingly, having adjusted the line to take account of the thickness of the bow. Using a batten, I faired the curve and extended the bottom of the line to provide some spare length.

With on a pine board marked up ready to make a prototype seat, and the ‘former’ ready to make the bow, I moved on to preparing the wood for the two sets of components

James would normally use ash for the stool parts, except for the seat; with ash, tulip wood, sapele frequently chosen for the seat.

I would like to use walnut for the stool’s seat, and for the bow – if you look at the Thos. Moser website, using the hyperlink above, I think you will appreciate why.

Unlike ash, walnut does not steam well, so I have decided to laminate the bow. If I am unsuccessful, we will at least have the ‘Former’ to steam bend some ash on day 1 of the course!

The dimension given for the bow is 27mm. I made my laminate strips about 2-3mm thick and 40mm wide to allow for any mismatch when glued up. My attempt to laminate the bow in a single step failed – three of the eight strips broke at the same place, where there was a wave in the grain. As a result, I had to glue each laminate strip in turn! Here is one of the set ups with a few strips in place:

And here is one of the two completed laminations:

After cutting the laminate off the former on the bandsaw. I planed the width and thickness down to the required 27mm. Using the 7:10:7 proportion rule I marked out the lines on each of the four faces to which I needed to plane off the corners (with a spokeshave) and make it eight sided. From there it was a fairly simple but careful task to shave off the resulting smaller corners and round off the bow.

Here are the bows:

I did cheat a little with the seat blanks – with my friend Matthew’s help and his surface planer we “jointed” the pieces to make the seat blanks. The stock I had bought was not quite wide enough to make the seats in one piece.

Three more steps are required before I’m all set for our Windsor Workshop trip: I shall transfer the shape, the hole positions and the sight lines for drilling to the two blanks, like the prototype above; fit walnut dowels into the ends of the bows make the “loose tenon”s” that will fit into the seat; and I need to make a jig to help create the 35o bevel on the ends of the bow.

Ah well, “back to the bunker!”

I am surprised at just how long it is since my last post … in September ’23; less so that I have not made as much progress on Mischief as I would have liked. As usual, other projects the usual fits and starts and “perfection being the enemy of good” are to blame! Anyway, at last, here is an update.

It is several months since I finished fitting the second set of planks:

At last, after various distractions, family events, sundry projects and cataract surgery, Sylvia and I finished roving the third pair of planks this morning. I must say it’s a lot easier to dedicate time to the boat when the days are longer and there’s more natural light.

It is important to get the copper nails in a straight line and perpendicular to the keel/centre-line of the boat. We were taught to use a flexible batten of 3mm plywood, which works fine in the centre of the boat but it is tricky and less reliable at the forrard sections. I had used a laser level and mini-tripod inside the bottom of the boat, but it was very difficult and time-consuming to get the laser lines correct for each nail in turn. Eventually, I struck upon the idea of putting the laser level on a perspex board which, being transparent and resting level on the mould fixing struts, made the job a lot easier and quicker:

Other projects that I have done since my last post include a knife-making course with our son, James; spoon carving with our grandson, Noah; wood-turning some pepper mills; a toy box for our latest grandchild, Jude; a traditional sailmaking course at the Boat Building Academy in Lyme Regis; installing diesel heaters in the Workshop and garage; and making a footrest and footstool for Sylvia to use in Millie, our new motorhome.

I will get the rub rails fitted to the third planks, and then I can start on the fourth set of planks! And I hope to be able to report further significant progress a lot quicker next time!

At college, when doing clinker planking, we drilled the holes for the roved nails “by eye.” Mostly, we were fairly close or on target but, unless you have a lot of experience, it is difficult to be accurate.

Getting the copper roves running up the hull, in straight lines, at right ankles to the keel, and equally set in from the plank edges is the goal.

To try and achieve that goal, I have made a drill guide using two metal guides, and a couple of short metal rods. One of the arms is free to move up and down the rods.

Siting the nail on the target point on the inside of the boat, then angling the jig, so that the drill bit is on the line marking the midpoint of the plank below, I can hit the nail spot on 90% of the time, and if I’m “out,” it’s within 1-1.5 mm.

Although I can do this single handed, it is even easier with a helper ensuring that the top nail doesn’t drift from the target point above.

The overlap between planks in a clinker built boat is called the land. The copper nail should pass from the mid point of the land on the outside of the lower edge of the plank to the midpoint of the land on the inside of the lower plank – as shown below.

So here’s my simple jig:

Yes, there is a little “play,” but it give me much better results than just judging it by eye.

And here’s the result:

With huge thanks to Steve Jones for all his hard work and kindness in relocating this blog, I am delighted to announce that the blog is up and running.

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