Tangram

This is a tangram puzzle I made for my cousin some years ago.
I used some veneer for decoration and pine leftovers for the rest.


The workbench



It was easier to split the top in pieces than to inlay thin lines.
Bonus: the pattern is visible on both sides of the cover.



Gluing the contour



Small, small miters!



The end result



Looks good



The tangram is stored in two layers in the box



yep



You don't need much to have fun with wood

Excellent work Francis!  

Do you have any other woodworking projects to show us?

thanks for sharing.

Thank you Judith

Here's something different.

This is "Old Toby", made from maple almost 16 years ago. Lots of fun to make. The stem is removable for easier cleaning but the stummel is near impossible to clean. The bowl is also much too deep.



My brother enjoying the best weed in the Southfarthing! This is from 2002, time flies!



I made a new pipe in September from unknown wood. It's all in one piece with a shallow bowl and a larger bore. I like not having to measure anything.



This one I call "Straight Pipe".



I really enjoy a nice pipe right after supper.



Ready to go.

In 2006 I decided to build myself a shop. These photos date from 2007 and are about making windows. As usual, I don't really know what I'm doing.

Gluing the sash



All done



A finished window with temporary braces on the jambs.
The wood comes from the property and I found the glass in one of the garbage piles that are scattered on my land. There was this bunch of old, old single pane windows with very thin glass. Cutting this glass was very satisfying. Clean, easy cuts.



With plastic enamel paint, ready to be mounted.



The siding isn't finished but all the windows are finally on.



I'm happy with my work, the windows look nice. I used a router to shape the sash and a cheap table saw to rip the stock to size. The rest of the work was done with hand tools. Hand tools fun to work with, quiet.

Hello permies, I wish all of you the best!  Happy 2018!

Here is another project I did a long time ago. At the time I got curious about veneers, inlay, marquetry, parquetry, bandings, etc so I made a box.

I've only made a couple of boxes, this is one of the first. It is older than Old Toby the pipe so I guess it's around 20 years old.
It's a core of meranti 1/4" plywood veneered over with stained maple veneer and inlayed redwood burl escutcheons.
The veneer was stained with a black aniline dye. The contour trim is poplar. The box was finished with a thin coat of oil followed by several coats of shellac.



I kept the box to myself because it has many flaws. The aniline dye didn't penetrate very deep and even a light scraping revealed the original colour of the veneer.
The dye uses alcohol for solvent, so does shellac. This caused the colour to bleed from the veneer to the poplar trim. Also if you look carefully on the bottom
right of the box you can see the veneer peeling from the plywood core (an easy fix). Using PVA glue for veneer can be difficult but there is a neat trick that makes it easy.
Dilute the glue in water, paint it on both surfaces to be glued and let dry (doesn't take long).
Put the veneer on the core and press everything down using a cloth iron on low heat.
The glue will hold. No creeping, no clamping, easy as pie.



I like the box even if it's not perfect. Redwood burl is beautiful (and a bit creepy).




treasures, seeds and memories.

Je promène mes regards sur cette foule innombrable composée d’êtres pareils, où rien ne s’élève ni ne s’abaisse. Le spectacle de cette uniformité universelle m’attriste et me glace, et je suis tenté de regretter la société qui n’est plus.
-Alexis de Tocqueville. De la démocratie en Amérique, 1866

in English:
I gaze upon this innumerable crowd of like beings, where nothing rises or falls. The spectacle of this universal uniformity saddens and chills me, and I am tempted to regret the society that is no more.

We usually get three wishes, right?
I wish that money and value were not bound so tightly together in the mind of people.
I wish people would reduce the amount of mass produced goods in their lives.
I wish people would give meaning to the objects that they use.

I made this box for a friend a long time ago. He uses the box to carry his card decks (Magic The Gathering). I don't understand the game but the artwork pleased me and I felt like taking on a challenge.
Like the previous box it has a plywood core veneered over with an exotic wood of some kind.



The inlay was fun to make. Brass, thinly sliced ebony and lots of patience. Ebony was really expensive at the time. It seems that jet black ebony is difficult to find nowadays and that is kind of sad.









At the time I was building the box I was also fooling around with jewellery making. The silver solder used on the dividers was invisible initially but after all these years the brass and the solder aged differently. The dividers don't look too good now because of this but my friend still likes the box and this is the important part. One of the hinges came off one day (the top one in the next picture). My friend was able to fix it but he didn't notice the alignment of the screws. I'm a recovering perfectionist.



That's pretty much all the pictures I have from my woodworking projects.