Saturday, May 28, 2016

Safe in Finland

Heikki’s Standard mandolin is complete! We had another tense few days following the progress of it, to its new home in Finland and I'm glad to report that it arrived safely.
Here are a few photos of it before it left home….
 And here is a rather contented looking Heikki with his new mandolin. It's always good to put a face to a name.

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Wednesday, May 25, 2016

And a bit more on Paul's.......

Just completed carving the neck and cleaning-up Paul’s Standard Plus mandolin, prior to setting it up, “in the white.”
Looking good, even if I say so myself ;-)

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Friday, May 13, 2016

Paul’s Standard Plus Mandolin

Just in case you’ve been wondering what’s happened to Paul’s mandolin, here are a couple photos of the purflings and bindings. The herringbone has come out really well- I like to use brown (as opposed to black) herringbone so that visually, it merges with rosewood bindings.
 
 Here’s the completed tailpiece.
 

And the story so far!

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Tuesday, May 10, 2016

Pavemaster Rustoration

If you’ve been following my blog for a while, you may remember that two years ago I bought this kid’s Pavemaster bicycle, probably made in the late 50’s, early 60’s.
 
So now Jacob has turned 3, I thought it was time to get it back on the road and ready for him to ride. I stripped it down completely and greased all the bearings etc. The idea was to get it safe to ride, relatively clean, so that Jacobs doesn’t get grubby whilst riding it, but keeping the patina of age; after all it’s taken 50 years for it to look this good.
 
As you can see it turned out really well; I was very impressed with its quality throughout; clearly built to last!
 Talking of built to last; at the weekend I picked up this old Stanley 4½ plane. 
Fortunately, there are so many "old tools" websites about, that it was easy to date this one; 1925, made in the USA. What a story it could tell- 91 years old, born in Connecticut, and found on a market stall in the Fens- what happened in between?
It’s going to be very satisfying giving new life to this piece of woodworking history.

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