I added a 10W Sculpfun laser to my machine list last August and was blown away at how much better it was than my old 2.5W laser, which I have had for many years. The 2.5W laser was fine for engraving but wasn’t really man enough for cutting. The 10W Sculpfun did a grand job […]

Someone asked me the other day about my workshop so I thought I would do a quick workshop tour post. Here is a quick-n-dirty video of the workshop. It’s a bit flickery as I slowed down the video to enable the machine description texts to be read. Here is a list of the machinery that

Actually it was finished earlier in the week but I forgot to post the update. The header image is the final piece mounted on a 120cm x 60cm backboard.. Back to part 3

Followers of this blog will know that I have been working on a large Intarsia project. This has given me an ideal opportunity to run a couple of “long burn” laser projects at the same time. I say long burn as these boxes each took around two hours to burn on the laser. Now that’s

Yay, I’m finally on to the shaping. I did have a bit of a set back by slipping on my backside while walking Oscar, jolting my shoulder quite badly. I thought it would get better on its own, but a fortnight later had to give in and go to the doctors! Anyway… I’ve had a

Part 2B! Ha ha, well this is just a quick update so hardly qualifies as part 3. Just over a week and that’s all the parts finally cut out, ready to start shaping, which will be the subject of part 3. To be fair I have had a couple of days off during that time

Carrying on from my earlier post covering the design of the owl intarsia pattern, in this post I pick some of the timber and layout the pattern and the cut sheets. Here we have a variety of woods that I think will suit the project. You can see the overall layout pattern (taped up) with

It may seem obvious but it is worth saying – LASERS CAN START FIRES! The instructions that come with the laser emphasise that they should never be left unattended. There is even a label on the laser gantry – There are loads of examples of the possible consequences of not keeping an eye on on

Over the last few weeks I’ve been trying out different projects with my new laser. My first project, for my workshop, was a little bottle rack to hold small bottles of wood stain/dye. This worked out so well I made three more! These were cut out of 3mm plywood. I was pretty pleased with how

The other day, it was chucking it down in Westray, and the workshop had a roof leak just in front of the location of my shiny new laser! Above is an old photo of the workshop with the ceiling in place. I was aware that because of the ceiling insulation, where the leak was coming

I recently invested in a new laser, it is a Scupfun S30 10W. My old laser is a hoky coky (no name brand) 2.5W and has served me well for engraving general artwork plus branding my other wood work pieces but it was not powerful enough to cut pieces (unless I set it to do

The shed is almost completed now. The new roof is on, and a new front wall and door have been constructed. We even managed to incorporate a stained glass window we had lying around. There is still some remedial work to complete on the floor and inside wall but the shed is now usable. This

The garden room is great especially if there is a sudden change in the weather when having a barbecue as it can be brought into the garden room and carried on even if it is raining. Well, that was always the theory. In practice bringing the barbecue inside just meant filling the room with smoke

Oh, my it’s been a while since my last post! The days are lengthening significantly now here in Westray and the weather has been grand of late. Sooo… Rather than “playing in the workshop” we’ve been doing some fairly major building work. There is an old semi-derelict shed built onto the back of our house

I have already posted on my Facebook page about my trip down South to visit sawmills and buy some green timber. I have been processing some of that and alway enjoy discovering what the logs are hiding inside. In truth I think I enjoy processing timber (“making wood” is alway my reply when asked what

I posted a little while back that I had popped some pieces of beech wood into the waste/compost pile to see if they would spalt. Once these were removed they needed a little while to dry out as they were very wet from being outside. After some time to dry a little, I put one

Spalted wood is much sought after for its interesting and beautiful grain patterning. Spalting is a natural process caused by fungal attack on the wood, if left to progress too far it ultimately destroys the wood as rot. If caught at the right time though and the wood then dried it is completely stable as

I started my woodworking hobby on a scrollsaw, making mainly intarsia pieces and was pretty dismissive of woodturning. I always berated the process as “only being able to make round stuff” and being very wasteful as most of the wood ends up as shavings on the floor! Then, I was loaned a lathe to have

it was the Westray Christmas Fair at the weekend. Held in the Parish Kirk with refreshments provided by the RNLI it was an enjoyable if not massively profitable event. It was rather quieter than in previous years. As a few people said, I think money is a bit tight this year with the general cost