"Arbeid vrij toegestaan."

Venus-Jupiter conjunction offering the thunderous lightning-bolts of a late-spring storm and the rainbow-hued clouds of a perfect fluffy afternoon.

Venus and Luna meeting up with Jupiter watching from afar, hanging out with the Twins.

I'm rebooting my modular synthesizer business, selestium modular ( https://modular.selestium.net/ ). If you're interested in modular synthesizer gear that is itself an art project (and which has powered a couple of art installations that have toured Europe), please follow https://mastodon.

A creature has joined the studio!

So the table is finished! And it's amazingly level and extremely sturdy. Here's a family portrait of the table with almost all of the tools used to make it. No power tools were used, even for the screws (I used an eggbeater drill and brace and bit).

Then it was time to cut the tabletop ledgers for the front and back, and the lower stretcher. And then assemble.

Then I decided to do something else I had never done before, but need to know how to do...laminate a tabletop. I needed 60cm square, but the boards I could get were only around 12cm wide...so I needed 5 boards to laminate. That's a lot to do for a first timer. Deep end again.

Not content to just screw it together without any joinery I decided to hand-cut halving joints for all of the surfaces. In knotty construction lumber. Without ever cutting a halving joint before. Jump into the deep end, no?

A workshop table thread.

Next shop-made tool: a wooden straight edge. Yup, that's all it is, a straight edge. Extremely useful for telling when a board face or edge is flat.

Newest shop made tool, some low sawhorses to use with my Japanese-style saws. The Shinto rasp is featured because oh it makes such quick work of the rounded corners. I never thought I would enjoy using a rasp, but this Shinto is worth all that I paid for it. #notsponsored

Stanley no. 5 tote repair, my first one. This frankenplane had a tote with a break in the usual location.

Back at my woodworking after a very long time away due to carework. Thinking about making and selling (as part of Selestium Modular, https://modular.selestium.net ) hand-crafted eurorack cases. Here are just some cheeks as an early test.

The combined Big Dipper + Cassiopeia in their form as Tower Cranes

Good to see Venus again

Back to the stand, finished now! All edges were gently rounded using the spokeshave...they're not "perfect" roundovers but I like it that way. Four coats of boiled linseed oil over two days. Renaissance wax for sealing. I think the wax and my smoothing plane is what gives the shininess of the

Back at it! Making a slightly larger platform this time as a gift. I'm showing all of the messiness here, pre-final planing and finish. I tried a different way of chiseling out the waste but still had some rather large gaps on my pin boards. I think I just need to adjust the intensity of my mallet

Saw some cool art. And some hand planes in a painting.

Small table/platform complete! As I was learning dovetails this weekend I was like, "why don't I try and make a small dovetailed platform in some of the sapeli offcuts I have from Quanto Canto? How hard can that be?" (If you don't know, sapeli is a very hard, dense wood, harder than hard maple,

The carcass is dovetailed and assembled! Somehow the entire thing is square too :) My dovetail skills are improving, slowly. I'd say that out of all the dovetails in this piece maybe 2-3 of them are really good :) But a lot of the gaps will disappear once I do the final planing. Tomorrow I'll

Sharpening nerdiness ahead, so please move on if you're not interested :) This, my friends, is a burr. First time I've gotten a continuous burr off my chisel while honing on the strop. I was pleased :) (For those who don't know, a burr is what is created when sharpening and honing, as it's the

Time to learn the ever tricky dovetail! All hand cut of course. I've watched hours of tutorials on it, so I had a good idea of how to approach things. The first three photos are from my second complete joint which has nearly perfect tails, but my cutting out of the waste around the pins leaves a

Latest steps: chiseled out a rebate for the back, cut out areas for moldings, and cut and shaped a curve with roundovers. My spokeshave worked somewhat okay but is still a bit fiddly. And my HBM spokeshave with a round bottom is a piece of shite, useful only as a boat anchor. Had to do some

Early work on a new build whereby I am following a course that teaches all of the basics of hand-tool woodworking. So all of these pieces have been shaped, planed, thicknessed, and squared by hand. I used my refurbished rebate plane to cut the groove on the back. And then cut the dado for the

Who needs cardio when you have to resaw wood? Those four boards were once two boards before they were hand sawn in (basically) half. Got some work to do on my resawing skills, but they're close enough for the next steps in this project.

(cont'd) And that's a restored fillister plane and its first shavings. I sharpened the nicker and the iron together (from their dull, vintage state) within maybe 10 minutes total. And got beautiful, twirly shavings with a glass-smooth finish. So yes, I heartily recommend that sharpening course.

Sharpening woes sorted! I had followed all of the standard advice to get diamond plates and water stones for my sharpening. So I did. And struggled greatly with them, along with the mess. I couldn't get a decent edge, quickly. I always had to use a honing guide. I was rather despondent...if you

Why buy new tools when you can restore old ones? Got these two wood, brass, and steel try squares for a great price. Just by the design, rust, and pitting on the steel I imagine they're at least 50 years old but could be much older. After taking my silicone sanding disks to them, and applying

I have, for the past two days, undesirably woken up early, probably because of the rising sun in my easterly bedroom window, but decided to walk groggily to the kitchen to see Venus in her morning aspect, a sight I rarely see as a result of my night owl nature.