Sacked by the "downturn", an unemployed architect touring the country in a bus...




I used to live in New York City. I designed homes for the tycoons of Wall Street; Park Avenue, Scarsdale, Greenwich. It was great fun. And, after years of saving up for a down payment, I was just about to buy my own little place in Fleetwood, half an hour north of the city, when the economy fell apart. Architects are like canaries in a coal mine when the economy slows, and true to form, there were massive layoffs in firms all over the country. Devastation of the profession. So, I decided to try to find something else to do for a while. I bought a 23' school bus and I'm on the road to see if I can figure out what that might be.

Sunday, September 26, 2010

Jigs and splines

Here is a jig I made for gluing the book matched triangles together to make the 4 diamond shapes that comprise the seat.  Thin wedges fit between the pieces and surrounding stopping blocks to apply pressure to the pieces.  In this photo, I'm still using test wood, Zebra wood will follow.  I also made a jig to glue the diamonds together to make the seat.  I made that from one of the test seats, which was already of the correct geometry for a jig of this sort.  I cut some holes in the bottom of it, though, so I could keep an eye on the seams from both sides.  Finally, I tested a spline cut from Afromosia, cut with it's grain going the long way.  It split too easily, so I cut all the splines I will need for several chairs, with the grain going the short way, so that the grain bridges the joint.  The tricky part was to handle such small pieces safely on the table saw.  Click Here for a Flickr show.

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