I’ve been making pattens today. First off, I’ll mention that it is truly disturbing how many people spell “pattern” without an “r” on websites, particularly IT people.
I wandered downstairs this morning, and poked around in the woodpile to see what caught my eye. I almost hacked into the big piece of 19mm radiata that I’ve been saving, then remembered that I’d taken a stair tread out recently. Hmm, I thought. Random Australian Hardwood. Nope, way too thick. Then ephiphany two struck.
I threw the tread on the tablesaw and ripped off a length a bit wider then I needed, then flipped it end-for-end and shaved the painted edge off. Then (close your eyes) I took off the guard, and resawed my piece to desired thickness by cutting part-way on one side, flipping end for end, and cutting through the rest of the way. Mountains of sawdust, but at the end I had the same number of fingers I started with, and some nice red hardwood.
I put that aside for a bit, and cut a template out of mdf on the little GMC bandsaw. Now, this was intended to be a quick-and-cheap trial, but it’s standing up well to use, as long as I’m not too demanding. More on that later. Anyway, it took a couple of minutes to smooth off the template, and I was on the way.
Out comes the double-sided carpet tape (good stuff), and I was ready. I was planning to use the router and a pattern-following bit, which was a reasonable theory, but first I had to cut away most of the waste. Hmm. Would the tiddly little bandsaw handle it? Lets see…. bzzzz…. bzzzzz… sproing. Broken blade. Oh, well, I kind of expected that. You see, this whole exercise was a trial to see if a certain fabrication technique I have in mind (which will involve a serious bandsaw to do the shaping and re-sawing) will work. Anyway, I chopped away more waste by hand, and with the table saw and threw it on the router table.
This worked fairly well, but I found that the timber was splintering and tearing. On two occasions the bit grabbed, and split the timber. Thank god for proper glue, eh? After about an hour of nibbling away with the router, and mountains of shavings, they were looking good.
Penultimate step was to run around the bottom with a roundover bit, then I shaped the toe with a spokeshave so that it curved up off the ground a bit. Zip through with the tablesaw to cut the hinge, back onto the router table to cut a shallow but wide rebate for a leather hinge. All done!
Well, sort of. I sanded the pieces off to a good finish, then absolutely drenched them in linseed oil. Tomorrow or the next day I’l give them a rubdown with wax as well, and they’ll be as waterproof as gumboots. All that will remain after that is the leather work.
I now have tired arms and hands, an interesting collection of embedded splinters and nicks on my hands, and have breathed in approximately 750g of fine red sawdust.
All fun.