I'm ferret-sitting again, so I get to watch cable TV (I don't have a TV of my own - I watch it about once every six months, when I ferret-sit)
Whilst watching the Norm Channel, I found another woodworking show. Paul Blackburn (?) and "Cutting Edge Woodworker". I think it's British. He's a young guy, looks like a contemporary furniture maker with some commercial bespoke experience. Not a bad show really.
Tonight's projects were a circular coffee table, a CD cupboard, and a chest of drawers.
Coffee table was very "Jetsons" in style. A circle of black MDF (Valchromat ?) with walnut veneer on the top surface and an inset glass disk. Legs were tapered "flying saucer" legs, constructed from two flat-panelled solid walnut triangles.
CD cupboard was a carcase of biscuited MDF, covered in maple veneer and with a maple frame and panel top. Six sliding drawers (metal readymade slides) made of more black MDF.
Designs were attractive enough, although they did look like modern shopfitting work rather than domestic furniture. Techniques were reasonable, with just a few grizzles. Card-backed veneer with readymade bookmatching looks ridiculous on a round table. A glued up solid "frame and panel" (sic) doesn't have the crossgrain ends to "stabilise it against warping", they're there to fall off when the middle shrinks and they crack along the join. I did like the idea of using black Valchromat for drawer carcaases though - that would save a lot of effort.
His workshop is a Felder combi machine and "Lester", an unseen assistant who only exists as a disembodied hand. Nice trad bench, but everything else is tailed tools. At one point he borrowed Lester's "posh plane" to chamfer an edge, which turned out to be a bronze L-N #4 (surely a perfect job for a #6, or at least a #5).
Anyone else seen it ?
And I _hate_ weasels as pets. Nasty scrabbling little things that never damned well shut up. Cats are so much more civilised.
-- Die Gotterspammerung - Junkmail of the Gods