More Cheese, Mini Poppies, Plaques and Build Photos...

Due to the World Cup and our unusually hot weather I've been pretty slack over the past few weeks getting into the workshop and making much at all. With holidays coming up that'll probably continue until mid-August and then hopefully we'll start to kick back into gear on the Gothic Kitchen and get some other things moving too... 

This week however I was able to muster some energy do a production run on a re-vamped version of the "Che's Board" Cheese Board. I changed to a slightly larger wedge shape which fits its use better. I also curved the text and moved it above the face - I'm much happier with this design and the production process went quite well albeit I'm still playing with feeds and speeds to minimise chipping out the small details, so I did have to re-cut some of the walnut pieces. You can see the board and inlay being cut and a finished board with one coat of oil in the first row of photos below...

Tom, who I share the workshop with had some 20mm holes in a stair case that he needed to plug and thought it would be interesting to make a feature of it rather than just use rounds of the same wood. So he asked me to carve a set of very small (40mm diameter) poppies with a 20mm cylinder on the back of them (to act as the plug). I used a tapered 1/16 inch (1.5mm) diameter tip radius tool to get excellent detail and these ended up coming out really well and have got me thinking about other very small projects I could carve... The second row of photos shows the back of these, a close up with a finger for size and the finished carving of all 10 poppies.

The last row of photos show a Corian memorial plaque I made for my sister's friend in the first two images and the carved Caravaggio maquette I made the other week with some oil on it - which brought the tight grain of the Sapele out nicely. 

I have made a few additions to the website recently to add some projects that were finished a while ago to the Portfolio. I've also created a number of entries on this blog that detail photos from various jobs, if you scroll down from here you can browse them at your leisure. 

World Cup Trophy Replica - Build Photos

During the 2018 World Cup I was inspired to make an oversized replica of the trophy. I downloaded a really basic model of the general shape from the internet that was intended for 3D printing. I sliced this up in Vectric's Aspire software - carved the pieces in 40mm thick maple wood kitchen worktop. These slices were glued and then I hand carved the detail into it. The overall size was 700mm high - almost double the size of the original... 

Organic Bowl 2 - Build Photos

Undulating organic shaped bowl cut out of solid walnut and finished with Danish Oil.

Picture Disk Frame - Build Photos

I was commissioned to build two frames to display a pair of 12" vinyl picture disks. I decided to accentuate the round shape of the disks in the design for the frame. Along with the unusual shape the disks had a design with a cyclops on them so I decided to incorporate a carving on an eye along with the monogram added by request from the customer. You can see the individual pieces that were carved and assembled to create the frames and then finally one of the frames with the glass and disks installed.

Ornate Greenhouse Window - Build Photos

This was a collaborative project with Thomas Philpott Cabinet Makers who had been commissioned to design and build a large greenhouse. as part of this Tom designed an amazing decorative window to fill one of the triangular sections above the entrance. My job was to figure out how to make all the pieces for this part of the frame using a machine only 900mm x 600mm. Below you can see some of the separate pieces being machined and laid out before assemble and install. 

Inigo Jones - Door Book Ends

This was a commission to build two bookends based on a design for a large Italianate garden gate/door designed by by 16th/17th century British architect Inigo Jones. As you can see in the images each bookend was made from 7 seperate carved pieces.

Cherub Window - Build Photos

The customer for this project required an internal window be made to go between two rooms in their house. One room had the 17th century carving you can see in the first picture on display in it. As such I design the window frame to echo the design of the original cherub carving and to also include the quatrefoils which are a feature in the other room. I modelled the cherub in the software based on photos of the original. The engineering for the centre rotating window and the install was done by my associates at Thomas Philpott Cabinet Makers. The last two pictures on the final row show both sides of the finished window

CeorfAmp - Build Photos

These twelve images show aspects of the process used to build the CeorfAmp guitar amplifier. The housing is cut from a mix of oak and beech butcher block kitchen counter top material. This was made in slices which were glued together then I added a front and back rounded section to finish the shape. The small piece at the back houses the batter for the Jam Jar Amps amplifier, electronics and battery. The whole amp is finished with Danish Oil.