Innholdsfortegnelse for June 2023 i Australian Wood Review

More or less In these days of stripped back minimalism there’s almost a sense of escapism in talking to someone who wants to make something that’s completely over the top! Thirty-five years of intermittent but unrelenting effort have seen Michael Gill finally complete his ‘life’s masterpiece’. Over five metres in length, the Sydney Harbour Bridge Cocktail Cabinet is large in a woodworking life. It’s an encyclopedia of traditional and decorative woodworking techniques that takes inspiration from its namesake’s Art Deco era of origin. Personality-wise, Michael is also larger than life – voluble, effervescent, a (‘dark’) greenie, a volunteer snake ‘rescuer’ and as you might expect, a cocktail connoisseur. He’s shown on the cover with his favourite axe ‘Sylvia’, along with some of the woods he has collected over the past…

If you often saw your own veneers and bent laminates, cleaning up the rough-sawn faces to a uniform thickness can be daunting when you don't own a drum or belt sanding machine. After a major downsizing, I let go of my drum sander due to space constraints, however for a recent commission I thought I would see what I could achieve in this regard with my excellent, spiral cutter-equipped Felder AD 410 planer/thicknesser. Not even this remarkable machine is always able to avoid flimsy, thin stock from being lifted up into the cutter-block and getting torn apart, especially as the piece is first fed in. I wanted to take straight-grained solid wood down to 1mm thick, something most machines can’t do without a table-raising, sacrificial platform. The problem is keeping…

There are strange ways in which designs evolve in the mind of a maker. I woke up one morning where my mind must have been sparked by something the night before and I had an idea for several coffee table designs buzzing, so I grabbed a piece of paper and began sketching and annotating possible extensions of the basic design. Still excited with my idea, I headed off to my local super hardware store to see what standard timber sizes were available and what the costs were. I had my teacher’s hat on, thinking along the lines of a design that could be made with minimal custom machining of timber, especially when there are many woodworkers out there who don’t have all the machines required to create components that make…

For more events and news sign up to AWR fortnightly newsletters at: www.woodreview.com.au Diary listings are free. Email to: linda@woodreview.com.au Note: Listings are current at time of printing but may be subject to change. Always check details with organisers before planning to visit. 20–21 MAY Wood Dust 23 The Woodworker Games: Celebrity woodworkers compete in two-day live project builds, plus rolling workshops and Timber and Tool Marketplace, 9am to 5pm daily, tickets $75 per day The Meat Market, 3 Blackwood Street, North Melbourne https://www.wooddustaustralia.com.au/ 18–28 MAY Melbourne Design Week 2023 An 11-day program of talks, tours, exhibitions, launches, installations, and workshops across Australia’s design capital. https://designweek.melbourne/ 18–21 MAY Melbourne Design Fair Designers, commercial galleries and organisations come together to promote collectible design from Australia and the world Melbourne Convention and…

I guess it was always going to happen – cordless tablesaws. And as we’ve come to expect from the Festool stable, this saw excels at what it has been designed to do. Coming in at 20.2 kg without batteries and packing away (along with all the required accessories such as blade caddy, overhead guard, mitre gauge, push-stick etc) into a hard systainer-style case measuring 512 x 396 x 296mm, this unit is truly portable. Portability and utility on job-sites is further enhanced with the addition of the UG-CSC-SYS underframe, which serves as a rolling handcart when collapsed and a dual-height work platform for the saw unit. Aside from the obvious benefit of being cordless (and running on proprietary Festool 18V batteries (min 4Ah) common to other tools across the brand),…

Registering the Festool Domino DF500 joinery tool on narrow and thin workpieces can present a challenge to some users. With this accessory, the engineers at Veritas Tools have developed a unique workstation to help minimise these difficulties. By fixing the machine in place and effectively bringing the workpiece to the tool, the effect, in very loose analogous terms, is that of a simplified horizontal slot mortiser. Some easy and minor assembly is required, and as is common with items from the Veritas catalogue, requires a No.2 square screwdriver and a 5/32" (4mm will work) Allen key. A quality birch ply tabletop, and fixed aluminium fences either side of the reference face of the tool, generate a substantial increase in surface area for both table and fence for workpiece registration, than…

Often my design process vacillates between; how simple can I make this thing? And how simple is too simple? It’s a push-pull between production efficiency and preserving the design intent. Therefore, I find myself persistently pondering what is craft furniture and what is labelled commercial furniture, particularly with detail design. Of course, it’s about creating an intuitively led, client specific result. However, questions about the business of craft are noteworthy, and as simplicity often correlates with production complexity and time, it’s a meaningful question to contemplate. I discovered woodwork in my late 20s, which is much later than most professional craftspeople, yet found my style quickly. Due to my previous career as a product designer, I’m naturally captivated by the potential of waste materials, minimalism, efficiency, and batch production. •…

The Lost Trades Fair celebrated its ten-year anniversary this year at Bendigo Racecourse. Glen and Lisa Rundell organised artisans to come together to relish craftsmanship, heritage crafts and inter-generational knowledge. Toolmakers, ropemakers, locksmiths, wheelwrights, chairmakers, coopers, carvers, fly-fishing rod makers, pipe makers, luthiers, hatters, weavers, leatherworkers, gunsmiths, bootmakers and bookbinders—just to name a few, of the over 150 makers represented. I arrived on Saturday morning, roughly an hour after the gates opened. Already the thronging crowd were six-deep at the entrance stalls, testing the 15,000 person event capacity. Near the entrance, Seth Gould, a metalsmith and toolmaker from Bakersville, North Carolina, was pounding on an anvil before a rapt audience. Seth was demonstrating how to make a pair of dividers. He held each arm before the crowd, pounding each in…

Carbitool manufactured tools are a no-brainer for those who want to support Australian-made. With a history stretching back to 1973, the company was acquired in 2018 by Sutton Tools which is itself a family-owned Australian business. I had an opportunity to review three sawblades including a 24 tooth rip, a 32 tooth crosscut and a 32 tooth combo blade. Carbitool has offered a mix of Australian-made and imported sawblades for cutting timber and board product since its inception. The blades sent for review were Lamitec branded (made in Sweden). Carbitool uses the same specification system found across most manufacturers (e.g. 300 x 3.2/2.2 x 30 T32). This specifies a 300mm diameter blade, with a kerf width of 3.2mm, a saw plate thickness of 2.2mm, a 30mm bore diameter and 32…

Known for their burrs and shaping tools for grinders and powercarving tools, Kutzall are no strangers to shaping wood, and have recently released a range of handheld rasps for use on wood, rubber, rigid foam and more. Available in 150mm (6") in half-round or warding profiles and 200mm (8") flat, in either coarse or fine cutting action for each size and profile, there is a reasonable range of cutting options available. I was sent the coarse and fine 8" flat tools for review. With tungsten carbide teeth, I found these tools cut fast with no degradation in cut quality after some time cutting. Further, with the random spacing of the teeth, the cut surface is much cleaner and required far less subsequent work than when using cheaper mass-production rasps, with…

One of the most fundamental questions that a designer maker must be able to answer in order to establish a sustainable business is: Why should people come to you? ‘I make heirloom quality fine furniture designed to last using fine timbers and traditional techniques.’ Okay. I can rattle off a list of two dozen other small-scale woodworkers around Australia within delivering distance of your client that offer the same services. What is the specific value that only you offer? One aspect of answering that question is to find your voice in design. People come to you because only you make work like you. They can’t get it anywhere else. One of the most important things a small scale independent woodworker sells isn’t just the work we make, it’s ourselves, and…

This compact workbench is designed to be demountable and can even double as a kitchen island bench, or sit on a small balcony. The top is 725mm wide x 630 deep x 60mm thick with a 40mm overhang front and back and 25mm on each side. It’s made from 190 x 45mm F17 KD Vic ash, quartersawn and clear of defects, which is cut into thin strips that are glued up into a panel. To create the strips, rip each length of the hardwood twice, using the same setting on the bandsaw to get as close to 60mm finished as you can, not forgetting to factor in the blade kerf. Saw the strips to rough length and width, and then dress them on the jointer and thicknesser. They only need…

People often love their family table and it is not an uncommon restoration job for a maker to receive. In this case a work friend wanted their heirloom restored. It wasn’t until work progressed that I realised I am the third person to build this table. And so it begins The table was first made possibly around 70 years ago. The wood appears to be what is loosely called Tasmanian oak, the commercial name for a group of eucalypt species such as messmate and mountain or alpine ash. Clear, straight quartersawn wood like this was commonly available then. The table arrived at my workshop in terrible condition. The original polish had fully degraded and every joint of the top boards was open, possibly from being left out in the weather.…