Tuen's Blog

Over the last month or so, I’ve been working on my workbench, which is the largest project I’ve tackled todate, in terms of size and volume of work.  I finally finished it last night, more or less.

The size and thickness of the wood required me to laminate smaller pieces together to get the larger sizes required, and since the pieces were large, I couldn’t easily use my machines on them, so had to resort to quite a bit of handtool work.

It’s very satisfying to have finished this bench, and I look forward to building more stuff on it!

I’ve been busy with my woodworking and making more stuff, and getting a few more tools for my workshop. Since my last post I’ve completed a box (which I like very much), a cross and a firewood holder.

Guess which was easiest to make? If you thought the cross, then you are wrong. It looks easy, but because of the rebate and mortise (hand-cut) it was not as easy as the firewood holder, which required only cutting to size, mitering, gluing, sanding, staining and finishing. The box was the hardest to make and took almost 3 weeks because of the dovetail joints.

I’ve been quiet on the blog front in recent days. That’s because I’ve taken up a new hobby; woodworking.

It all started from the jigsaw puzzle we bought from Singapore. I was looking ahead to when we finished the puzzle and getting it framed. Frames are quite expensive here, especially large ones, so I thought about making my own frame and started reading up on the subject. That’s when I expanded to reading about woodworking and borrowed a book from Knox library on the subject. That got me hooked and because there were a number of projects in the book, I started working on them.

I have since spent a small some of money on tools and equipment, and on a peg board for organising said tools. I’ve made a small shelf, and a small work table so far.

I’m working on a cross with stand right now, which was requested by Mary for her Godstart programme in church.

Well let’s see where all this leads. I’m well known for taking up many hobbies but losing interest faster than many others.  :)

But I always (mostly anyway) come back to them in time…

In case you are not suitably impressed, take note that these items were made from recycled, undressed, pieces of lumber I found lying around in my garage roof, where a previous owner had left them.

We bought a jigsaw puzzle back from Singapore and we’ve started on it. Well, the family started on it the first evening, but ever since then it’s mainly been me who’s been putting it together.  I estimate that it will take about 4 to 6 months, and I intend to put up progress photos on the blog to track the building of the puzzle. It’s a 2000 piece puzzle and I intend to have it framed up and hung on one of our walls. In fact, I might even try to construct the frame myself. I’ve been reading up on the basics of woodworking.

The last time we built a 2000 piece jigsaw was probably over 10 years ago. That piece took many months to complete too, and is now hanging on one of our walls although the colour has almost totally faded away. The new jigsaw would be a nice complement to it.