More projects

Before we get into that I’m pleased to advise Jan found her missing blackberry plant.  But only after we had purchased a replacement!  She had placed the pot containing the plant inside another empty pot which had a different label on the outside.  The end result is an extra blackberry plant, so that probably means more jam!

The second half of our king size bed has the drawers fitted.  No photo because it’s identical to the first half.  I spent an evening working out the sizes and lengths of Jarrah we will need to clad the exterior and then calculated the quantity of difference sized standard lengths I would require in order to minimize waste.  The Jarrah comes in 1.2, 1.8. 2.4 and 3m lengths.  The bed project has temporarily stopped whilst we convince the bank manager to release sufficient funds to purchase the Jarrah.

In the meantime I’ve taken a closer look at some of our other timber furniture and discovered more remedial work.

The legs on our beautiful NZ made dining table are looking rather sad.  The table is made from solid Rimu and is was a honey brown with a lovely grain.  Jan has the damp table legs drying in the back bedroom.  Once they are dry I’ll lightly sandpaper them and experiment with some Danish Oil.

We have a carved oval coffee table made from Teak.  We purchased it when living in Singapore back in 1981.  The carvers were working on it outside a local shop and as we both liked it we almost instantly decided to buy the table.  Singapore is obviously very hot and humid and I knew the table might split once it was taken back to NZ. I an effort to prevent this the table was turned upside down and I drilled holes in the base of the legs.  For 18 months it was regularly given a coating of Teak Oil.  I don’t know whether my theory was sound but the table never split on our return.  However some 10 years later a crack appeared in the top.  The last six years of storage has made things worse and there are now three adjacent cracks.

My guess is the timber ring around the glass top started to shrink and the glass didn’t.  The top of the table is deeply carved (almost 3D) in a Chinese war scene.  This next photo provides some detail.  It’s one of the few photos I haven’t resized for the blog so you should be able to double click on it and see a larger image.

The table came with six small stools which fit underneath.  When our storage container was broken into the thieves threw one of the stools out of the container breaking it.  then it lay out in the rain for three weeks.

I’ve decided I’ll attempt to repair the stool before the table opting to do the easiest task first.  The table and stools were all hand made with no power tools involved.  I’m therefore expecting to find nothing is flat or square.

Some sawing, sanding, drilling and screwing later

On a more positive note, I appear to have finally correctly configured the Linux media server.  The RAID is working and Emby is broadcasting videos over the home network.  The next step is to configure the server to broadcast over the internet.

I’m trying to whip up the enthusiasm to fit the front free-wheeling hubs I’ve refurbished to the 4x4.  Perhaps tomorrow?