Bennett Fox Designs

#finishing #windsorchairmaking

Building colour on a Moonah chair (designed by Ben Grieves-Johnson @other_furniture) built last week in a chairmaking class run by Ben.
Couple of coats of liquid nightmare, with a van dyke crystal water stain wash. It’ll get a light black aniline water wash and then a few coats of garnett shellac.

Scales for a knifemaker mate. The timber’s Gidgee, a dry savannah acacia. Ripping logs even this small on the bandsaw makes you really appreciate your fingers and thumbs.
Nothing a little jig making can’t solve.

Winter morning on Galambary Canberra #Ngunnawal country. The seasons are shifting. Nummerak in bloom, buds before frost’s end, lomanda throwing green shoots.
#alwayswasalwayswillbe

The base uses levelling casters which are omni-directional with bearings sitting a lubricated race so very resistant to clogging with dust. Gliding close to 250kg across the workshop floor is one of life’s pleasures.

Lots of cleaning, lubrication, recalibration (oh the discovered joys of dial indicators), bit of head scratching to reverse previous “repairs” and i seem to have indeed bought a 12” Jet combo machine for a very good price.

So this was definitely one of those “Is It Too Good To Be True?” ©️ buys from Gumtree. The machine presented as a bit worse for wear; someone had not treated it gently at some point. And the blades were in unusable condition.

Winter solstice in Canberra - already minus 2 celsius. Thinking of Palestine. May we protect and fight for your rights as the year swings towards its end.

Fine Woodworking have just put up an 11 minute video, featuring Katie Hudnall walking through her just opened show. Fabulous. Thanks FWW. https://youtu.be/b-D_49OaKGw?feature=shared

I think these sort of episodes will gain traction over time - like those issues of Home Furniture we’ve all got stashed away and keep going back to again & again.

Great conversation - thanks so much to Robell & NBSS

Furniture maker Robell Awake joined us last week to discuss his new book, "A Short History of Black Craft in Ten Objects," which examines ten significant handcrafted objects and the stories of the artisans behind them.

Watch the full conversation: nbss.edu/news-events/...

Good question - it has rosewood tote and knob so probably no later than late 1950s? They’re both heavily varnished so I’d guess late 40s but that a guess

Stanley number 78 rebate plane Comes

Aiming to do politics on Bluesky as bfdkj.bsky.social & making + art blah blah blah here on Flashes as @bennettfoxdesigns Trying to repeat Twitter/IG split of yore. There will be overlap but let’s see how this works. And that’s a Stanley no. 78 rebate plane if you’re wondering.

Oh there was a lot of work to get it to that point. It functions. But it’s basically a scrub plane.

These are the mortal remains of a Record no 5 i bought on ebay. The other one was even worse, ending up as a parts donor. But what i had not realised is the frog and casting where the frog sits is a copy of Stanley’s legendary Type 11 planes. #woodworking

Frank Klausz and his bowsaws

Thoughts on sharpening. As if anyone ever needs to write another word on this topic.

http://bricolagebfd.blogspot.com/2025/02/did-someone-say-sharpening.html?m=1