se7enthdevil

you'd have the patience for that sort of money. the whole job was a fiver under two grand and i pocketed £1000 plus i dint use all the wood have already sold some maple on and still have some iroko left and maple shorts. if i sold it all i could get another £250 one of their members was going to do it originaly and he quoted them £3000... .

you can see a slightly more in depth process on their website in the news section as they wished for me to document the whole job from delivery of the timber to the final coat of oil.London Skittles just a few stats it is 54" square 8" thick overall and weighs 280kg, thats over 600lbs... the pins are 14" high and 6 3/4" at their widest and made from hornbeam and the cheeses are 10"x 3" discs (a fat discus is the best description i can think of) and are made of lignum vitae and weigh about 5 1/2 kg. they are thrown 21' at the pins without hitting the deck first. now you can see why i had to make it so robust... .

once the appron was finished it was time to fit it. all the components went to the pub we ripped the old one out and cleaned up the crap that was underneath and me and a friend bolted each layer together and laid them in place with a few dozen screws to stop any movement. once it was level we could stand the pins on it so see how it looked. the two iroko base layers got a couple of coats of osmo exterior uv protection oil but the maple had a coat of polyx. these were needed as the basement of that pub has flooded many times (partly why the old one looked so manky) and i hade to take all these precautions to future proof it as much as i can.

now it was time to start work on the appron which is an angled bit of maple attached to the two front edges to protect them. i set my rip saw up at the correct angle and made a 5 1/2" deep cut allong the length. it was then cleaned up, sanded, mitred and heavilly bolted together as that will probably get hit quite often and i did not want it comming appart.

once i got going it all came together rather quickley as these things often do. once the two base layers were done then i finished of with the maple to wich i added buiscits to the construction to keep the top skin 100% level with no posibility of movement. most people will think this is overkill but go back and see the old frame and wait till you see what they throw at it.

everthing was labled up before machining and once completed i knew what went where, a neccesity when you do something complicated like this. as you can see it all machined up very well and i was impressed at the quality of both the maple and the iroko. if you stood 30feet away you would have sworn it was teak it looked that good. very oily too. right, on to the drilling. this was the laborious bit. i marked out and drilled lots of holes for threaded rods with a nut reccesed in to either side that would basicly clamp the whole lot together. i hade to be quite precise in my marking out and made sure that all my equipment was set square. once i had gone as far as i could with the pillar drill i drilled though with my hitatchi and that huge auger.

i had to slightly redesign what was being replaced but here's what i came up with. first i made a model of the frame to be built, then i ordered the timber and cut most of it to length and labled up the iroko so i could keep track of the two base layers as they were all different widths.

as you can see by this pictur its actualy constructed of three layers, two layers of 3" oak joists all screwed together. the top maple layer like the other two were all laid in alternate directions to keep it square...

thanks for everyones comments fellas, much appreciated... just remembered a job i did earlier in the year, not exactly furniture but quite a challenge. i was asked to make whats called a frame for the london skittles league that play in the freemasons arms on the edge of hampstead heath. the frame is what their skittles stand on in a diamond formation and is constructed of a base layer of heavy lumber with a skin of 2" maple on top. well tjhe mapple had taken a hell of a beatting over the years and i had to come up with a way that would future proof it against any damage that will happen in the years to come.

what sort of diameter are they???

got told once that for beech at least they felled perfectly good trees and left them in a field in contact with the ground for up to 3 years to let the spalting to do its thing.

admitedly i have very little experience with this wood but i made a pair of drumsticks for my brother and they are still straight not sure of its strength properties but i would think it good for bespoke furniture...

we've all done it... .

ahemm, he said rapseed oil... .

i used to use danish oil on my skittle pins and only recently turned to polyx but have already noticed the difference. one advantage is that i only need to lightly coat each pin once with polyx to get the same finish than i would with danish. another is that its very durable which is quite a plus considering that they will be beaten to within an inch of their life each night. i've tried polyx on wet timber and because of the wax content of the oils it really inhibits the moisture transfer reducing splitting drasticly, i would have thought this was something desired of anoil for carvings using wet wood. as you can see the pins that i used danish oil on (first two photos) are dull to matt in their finish and the ones with the polyx (last two photos) are almost shiny in appearence. alot of customers buy with the eye and will feel like they've got their moneys worth if the finish can make it look half decent. if i actually took some time and added more than one coat and buffed them i reckon you could see your face in this stuff... .

should be quite good timber to use. ive only had a couple of blocks but if its dry then it should make a wonderfull timber strong light and relativly stable once seasoned. excelent for turning what sort of size do you have???

pm sent...

why go abroad? so we can get further away from the french..... .

its a hornbeam alright... .

hi steve thanks for that comment. to be honest im crap at finding markets and things like that as i would make them all the time if i had an outlet. how does any one else market their work, i could use the help... .

i also made a very simple tv cabinet for my parents.

glad your pleased john. let me know if you want anithing else. here are a couple of other bits that i've made in the past. this was for the first year of college

osmo are good. poly x or uv protection stuff for me. i did the oak table and benches with the osmo uv protection oil 420 clear, works a treat...

let me know when your free then. the finess is definatly the part you learn when you do coures and do it for a living. every thing on that unit was pretty much done by hand, the only exception being the top as cedar easilly chips so i took advantage of the wide belt sander they had at college. i probably could have done it with a fore plane and a belt sander though... you possibly dont have some ofthe hand tools i used to create the unit but they dont cost too much on ebay and once you buy them you can use them for the rest of your life... i may not decide to make items in that style but it happened to suit the house which is edwardian. .

it depends how much you presently know and in what field. im already a qualified bench joiner and this was the level 3 course so just refeining some skills but learning others like diong dovetaild by hand on curved surfaces, thats tricky... muttley why dont you pop round and we'll talk what sort of things you wish to learn about. where about in bucks are you??? .