The start of this week saw me in production mode with the Gothic Kitchen. I started by cutting the quilted panels that will inlay into all the vertical posts in the kitchen. These are carved in walnut wood using a pointed round-over tool, making simple 2D straight line passes. As I needed to cut 30 of them I spent quite a bit of time perfecting speeds, feeds and cutting direction to get the cleanest finished part I could (you can see a close up in picture 1 below). To minimise material waste I made my own wooden stepped piece to help clamp the ends of the boards (picture 2). The other parts I've been cutting for the kitchen are some small square shallow pyramids that you can see in picture 3 - these will also inlay into the posts.
A couple of projects I worked on a long time ago were picked up by the guys I share the workshop with this week for the final finishing work. In picture 4 you can see the frame I designed and made with the vinyl disks placed within it. You can see where I got the reference for the eye that is carved in them now from the image on the disks. This is 95% done and just needs some felt to cushion the disk and then final assembly. In pictures 5 and 6 you can see the Cherub window frame I carved at the end of last year. Adam did a brilliant job with making the window so it will be able to be rotated about its centre as you can see in the image as well as making sure the carving lined up with the outer frame... This was quite a challenge due to the thickness of the carving. This is being stained this afternoon and I'm hopeful it should be installed next week.
Lastly I continued my bowl experiments using a scrap block of Sapele I had left over from the greenhouse window frame parts. I wanted to look at the affect of using different types of cut on the same shape. So I created a basic nonagon shaped bowl on the computer and then carved one with a straight tool as a stepped finish, one with a round tool doing the same and then finally a "normal" smooth version with a typical finish pass. In the last row of pictures you can see the result of these. They are all appealing and interesting in different ways and all present different challenges with sanding and finishing. I think my favourite is the one with the round-tool stepping which is in the middle of the three shown in the images below. I'll probably now cut some more variations based on this idea adjusting spacing, tool size etc.
Next week hopefully I;ll be continuing work on parts for the Gothic Kitchen and hopefully have time to fit in some more bowl experiments. I'm also starting the computer work for a piece of art examining the idea of belief. That will be a number of weeks work to complete though...
