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English Dolls house lights
I think that July will be a month of making lights. On one hand, I have a commission, on the other hand I need to make a lot of lights for my dollhouse, and all this in art nouveau-ish style. I did several sketches, and probably will make all of these projects. I started from the easiest one, I used here a brass strip (remember my post about photo etching?). I’m not very good at soldering, my husband was very happy to give me some tips, because the last time I did it, I was about 10 years old trying to fix my ZX Spectrum keyboard (I failed:) and my tape recorder (this time I was lucky). The results now a more satisfactory, but not good enough for me. Anyway, I’ve just started! 🙂 Drilling was easier 😉
Theatre stage ( for short film)
I finished this project some time ago, one of my favourite commissions. I don’t have many photos, I mean good ones, sorry about that.
Well, the commission was to make a theatre stage for a short film, can’t go into details 🙂 It was supposed to be quite big – 75cm wide, 65 cm high and 40 cm deep. Almost like my dollhouse 🙂 Huuge. And heavy.
Entrance door – not done yet
Well, it’s not completely ready, I need to carve the back sides of the panels and add some more details. But, so far so good, I like this door. On the left is a photo of the doors that inspired me to try this design. The door handle is supposed to be quite simple here, but there’s no place for mail slot, though I’ve seen some very original solutions for such doors.
I really like the color of the cherry wood:
Carving legs
I finished carving these legs last week. I’m almost pleased with result, I was even thinking of making another version of them but I have other projects to do too, so I decided on moving on. I really liked working with cherry, though with pear wood it would be absolutely different experience. The only problem I had is, when I was finishing working with spheres, some of those small claws started to split and fall off so I had to glue them back. But I liked how the joints and claws turned out.
Carving spheres was fun, they look just right from every angle.
The other details above the leg were supposed to be carved by Dremel, but I didn’t like the result at all, simple V-shape micro chisel 0,5 mm was the best option.
I also bought a set of Narex chisels lately. They are quite good for their price, but require additional work. Kirschen is still my number one choice.
I also started working on drawers, two of them were shaped according to the profile of the sides. The most difficult part here is done.
Bombe Chest
I decided to try one more project from Harry W. Smith’s book that I really like.
This chest is made of mahogany in the book, but I really wanted to try cherry for this one. The most interesting part was to make curved sides. Usually I follow all the tips from this book, but this time I was a bit confused. I didn’t like the way of shaping these parts – with a small drum sander held in a flexible-shaft machine. I tried it and found the results inconsistent. Working with a bandsaw was absolutely different experience, very easy and precise. The original thickness of a stock was 8 mm and I shaped it to 2 mm.
Then I cut dovetails for the dividers and glides. All fitted nicely.
The back was also easy to make. Then I needed to carve four claw foots. Something like this:
I’ve seen several how-to videos about carving them, I highly recommend those from Popular Woodworking. Though they all are really helpful, especially their references on different shapes and forms. I’ve been working on them for the last week or so, not really happy with the result but I’m close to the OK version 🙂 Hope to show you them soon.
Long Weekend
It’s not my work, again:) It’s my hubby’s work. Recently we bought a jig for making spheres on metal lathe, and it was the first try. The height of this spinning top is 45mm and diameter is 35 mm. The jig is originally made for Proxxon lathes but it wasn’t compatible with lathe we have, so we had to build the fixture to mount the jig on lathe. The fixture was milled out of duralumin block.
As for me, I’m still working on the balusters, I made six so far and need to make eight more. All of them are made of makore, I decided not to use beech, just didn’t feel right.
Ornaments
The last weekend I tried to focus more on miniatures stuff than upcoming elections, it was such a relief to unfollow some people on Twitter and Google+, got really tired of the politics. I decided to change the way I work on my dollhouse, I was working on only one room before moving to another, which I found not really good idea. In the end, I do it just for fun, right? Besides, I’ve found some really good ornaments for the wallpapers, it was just the right time to try them.
For the living room I chose this great Chinese ornament, so now the room is all about flowers – parquetry, walls, sofa.
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Experiments
I’ve been playing with brass copper etching for the past couple of weeks. I had some ideas for a dollhouse chandeliers and realized that I needed more tools than just a lathe. So I bought myself a dapping block. I think I’ll make a post about it soon.
Making Wheels
As I promised this is how the jigs for cannon were made. The most technologically challenging part was wheels and all the jigs were made for wheels.
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