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Or engineer a couple of sliding legs actuated by a cam with a handle long enough to give plenty of leverage to jack the whole desk up? Using hardwood offcuts the only expense would be the fixing/pivot bolts for the cams.

The British Dental Association have a museum- you might get some useful leads from there. The torque on treadle powered systems was much better than the modern air driven but the vibration must have been dreadful working at such slow speed! Good luck putting it to more civilised use. G

When I made something similar I found I got significantly more flow through the filter by putting an exhaust duct of sorts on the back of the fan- I used some thick polythene and lots of parcel tape. For more regular use I'm sure a more elegant solution would be nicer, but it was pretty effective.

Many thanks, both. I'll give a hard wax a try as I handle wax fairly regularly with my other hat on so I should be able to apply that experience (and some old instruments). As a hobbyist I'm treating this as a learning opportunity. Since my daughter and I are working on it together there's no...

I've got some ugly blowout at the edges of a couple of the seat mortices in the chair I'm building at the moment. The seat and legs are maple, with oak wedges in the tenons. Which filler would be best- I can blend either wax or shellac to match? Finishing plan is shellac sanding sealer followed...

Knowing that I am interested in woodwork and recently acquired a lathe, a work colleague has given me three pieces of horse chestnut, each about a metre long and 20-25cm in diameter from a mature tree which he had felled a couple of months ago. I have no idea what to do with it. My first...

At school, every woodwork lesson was concluded by sweeping off the benches and cleaning up before making sure all the vices were ajar. I'm certain we were told that in the event of a fire the tension resulting from expanding metal in a closed vice could lead to them exploding like mortars and...

Does the thread protector push the drive centre out as it unscrews? That's how my CL2 works, but someone who knows better may be along shortly.... G

Thanks Custard, I'm assuming that's to run the guide bearing along a template to create both complimentary curves in the workpieces below simultaneously, starting with the pieces separated by slightly less than the width of the cutter? G

All good points. Didn't fancy my chances of steaming the maple in one. Since I'm working with hand tools, I figured a quarter inch would be a reasonable compromise between thinness and labour. My gut instinct was that that is still too thick to push into shape as Custard has said and...

I'm making a small staked chair for one of my girls, and to extend my skills I'd quite like to steam bend the crest rail rather than carving it out of a large blank. Since this is my first attempt at a chair I'm using up some maple which has been sitting on a shelf for several years since I...

Great. It's double doors as it happens so the plan is to shave one and then repaint both meeting edges. Hopefully the draught strip will stop a gale blowing through the gap when the doors shrink back! Thanks

At the risk of asking a really dumb question (but I'm going to anyway). What is the best/proper approach to shaving an exterior door? Never having needed to do this before I figured I have everything to gain and little to lose by asking here first rather than coming back tomorrow for advice on...

Could you lay up the exact shape you want yourself? The carbon cloth is fairly easy to cut and the laminate can be trimmed closer to final shape with a sharp knife once the epoxy has gelled but is still green. This way you could probably minimise the amount of finish cutting involved. As others...

This was made from scraps of maple, hardboard and plywood. It's holding up surprisingly well five years later.

That's great and thanks for linking the manual. G

I'm seriously considering dipping my toe in the woodturning water, initially with a view to making some staked chairs from the Anarchist's Design Book, and after that, who knows? Having read endless threads on here I've been keeping an eye on the 2nd hand market. Unfortunately used entry level...

We originally specced accoya for our garage doors, but for various reasons ended up using softwood. We ruled out hardwood on grounds of weight (and relative expense) as our doors are pretty big. The windows were made in a single unit for each door with dummy sash bars planted on. In hindsight I...

My garage, while double glazed, is unheated apart from the warmth coming out of the dehumidifier. At the moment it's about 5 degrees in there. A hygrometer measures somewhere in the region of 60%, compared with about 40% inside the house. The dehumidifier will typically fill it's reservoir (2...

ED65--I expect if the hands were sufficiently calloused they would rub away any sharp corners in time, the tool altered by the very hands themselves rather than the other way round. However, my day job requires that I moisturise! So I'm not going to put that theory to the test. AndyT-- think...