Joinery

Ladder Plans and construction

Ladder Plans and construction

Image: Don Robertson Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License

At the beginning of this year (2021), I enrolled in a Certificate in Construction Trade Skills – Joinery course at Ara Institute. It was a very interesting course, and I greatly enjoyed it. Unfortunately, the course got cut short before we could make the Macrocarpa outdoor chair, which I was really looking forward to.

Ah well, we got to make a lot of good things — even if most of them were just small items to give us experience with a technique or tool. I will put pictures of some pieces here - some I am proud of, some not so much.

After the course, I was dead keen to get into doing some work at home — first thing would be to sort out the workshop and build some cabinets and storage. Turns out is isn't so easy when you don't have hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of machinery lying about and a selection of well made jigs and so on. I made a cabinet, but have had to hold off on the drawers until I get some better methods of securing pieces while working on them.

Also get a little held up with the school holidays, junior sport and an inability to leave my computer alone. Sigh.

Shop Vac

Home built dust extraction

Home built dust extraction

Image: Don Robertson Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License

The serious business of dust extraction
The home built dust extractor.
One of the first tools I bought was a router. On reflection, I should maybe have gotten a smaller one, and man — they make a mess.

One weekend, Bunnings had a shop vac for sale at a ridiculously cheap price, so I went down and got one. It lasted long enough for me t...

Cubby Boxes

Set of small drawers

Set of small drawers

Image: Don Robertson Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License

Surprisingly useful set of drawers
Set of cubby drawers.
One of the more useful things we made at Ara was this set of cubby-boxes. These were made to demonstrate the use of the hand router and how easy some good jigs can make things.

Unfortunately, they are partially responsible for me heading home and thinking I could knock up...

Garden Potting Table

Garden Potting Table

Garden Potting Table

Image: Don Robertson Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License

Many years ago, I designed and built this potting table. It is narrow enough to fit down the path into the garden, and has a couple of wooden wheels. I also put in a couple of hatches on the top, and some lugs to hold a removable mezzanine level. The idea was that the hatch could come off and a bag...