Isolation builds...

[danish]

So, I've never build anything in my life, but for my birthday in Feb (getting close to 50yo) the family bought me a tablesaw, and being pretty much locked in by the pandemic I had a good time with it....

Started by making a cutting board... I'm sure you've all made those

Quite rough around the edges - then I was asked to make an insert for the kitchen island...

Was actually hard for me to make, had no idea how to cut the lines in the wood (for the knives to be inserted), ended up with raising the table saw blade through the wood. Total newbie here.

I then wanted to make a small table:

- this was super fun. These joints:

were really hard for me.

A birthday came up, and someone wanted a dressing table...HEY - Can I make that!?
I gave it a go:

I was in way over my head here, gluing up the timber, mitre cuts, shaping/hardening the leather for the drawer fronts etc etc...Took me forever, and was 2-3 days late for her birthday.

A few days ago I finished this table for the Uuni pizza oven

with room for the gas bottle hidden below. I'm still making some small chairs to match that can go inside next to the bottle. It's not perfect, but a lot better than

It's been fun weeks, I am learning every day - Youtube is great, so many awesome projects to be inspired by


D

 

[MikeG.]

Fantastic stuff! =D> For someone who started woodworking only a few months ago you have made some beautiful things.

Welcome to the forum.

 

[danish]

Welcome to the forum.

thanks Mike

 

[samhay]

I was in way over my head here, gluing up the timber, mitre cuts, shaping/hardening the leather for the drawer fronts etc etc...Took me forever, and was 2-3 days late for her birthday.

So the draw fonts and handles are a single piece of moulded leather, glued to a flat front? Would be interested to see more detail of this if you wouldn't mind?

 

[danish]

So the draw fonts and handles are a single piece of moulded leather, glued to a flat front? Would be interested to see more detail of this if you wouldn't mind?

Yup, it's basically large sheets of leather that I shaped, cut and glued on to the drawer fronts.

The first step is to soak the leather in luke-warm water. Keep soaking it until it no more bubbles comes out of the leather pores, a few minutes in my case. The leather is becoming super soft and slightly sticky.
Second step is to put it in water JUST below the boiling point for around 20-30 seconds.
After that the third step is taking it out and start to work on it. It will be super hot so take care. It's key that you stretch it and if you want to make shapes (like the handles I made) you need a mould to place it on. I then left it to dry for ~24 hours with some weight on top. What ever weights you use should be padded so it does not leave marks. In fact, take care as everything, even your nails, will leave deep permanent marks in newly boiled leather.

The whole process is aimed at transforming the leather from a soft sheet like this:

To a stiff/hard sheet like this

As for the moulds I made them out of some scrap wood I had:

Here is the result close up:

If I was to do it again there are a few things I would do differently:

1) I used 4mm leather, I thought that it needed to be really thick in order to work as handles. 2mm would have been just fine as it expands while being in the water ... and 4mm is much harder to mould than 2mm. And I actually think 2mm would have ended up being 'stiffer'. Also, 4mm is super expensive.
2) I would be much more exact about the time in the hot water. I noticed that the longer I left the leather in (almost) boiling water the darker the colour and the stiffer/harder it was after. As you can see from the image above the leather ended up being in different shades of tan ... that would probably not be the case if I had timed it exactly.
3) I used beeswax to treat the leather with after, it was ok but took almost another 24 hours to dry. Perhaps normal leatherfat (like the stuff you put on your shoes) would have been smarter.

I hope this makes sense, ask away if you have more questions


D

 

[samhay]

Thanks, that's very helpful.