Veneering experimentation

I have a large amount of veneer that I have accumulated over the years. I have occasionally used my stocks in smallish projects doing edge-banding or fixing flaws. I'm currently working on a keepsake box for my nephew and his fiancée for their forthcoming marriage in June.

I had some sapele veneer in strips about 6 feet long 10" wide and also some oak burr veneer so decided to try flattening the veneer and veneering the top of the box. This is essentially a piece of 9mm MDF cut to the size of the rabbets I had cut in the box upper sections.

I enquired on Woodtalk Online forum if anybody had any recipes for a veneer softener as the commercial softeners are not available here in the UK. The commercial ones in use in the US are SuperSoft 2 Veneer Softener or the other one "Veneer Softener/Tamer". The mailing costs were prohibitively high or there were export restrictions.

Fire Screen to stop little cats going up the chimney

A few days ago I awoke early one morning at around 5AM. I went down stairs to make coffees and sat for a while in my living room watching breakfast TV. I was joined by Anna the cat who is a totally black cat. She sat on my lap awhile and then got off. I heard her mooching around opening cupboard doors and the like. Next minute she appeared standing on the fire (which wasn't lit) staring up the chimney. The next thing I knew she had disappeared up the chimney and bits of soot and brick dust were falling down. Now the fire is gas powered and there isn't a great deal of soot up there but I was dumbfounded. "What do I do if she gets stuck?" - I thought. I had visions of firemen dismantling the brickwork of the chimney to get her out. Fortunately she emerged a few minutes later none the worse for her experience. I had noticed in the past that there were occasional black foot prints on the carpet so it must have been a regular thing for her.

Sketchup 14 tiny review

I'm been a user of Sketchup for years and I've been testing the Pro version of Sketchup 14 for the 8 hour evaluation period and have found it very good. The additional features of Sketchup Layout are fantastic if you are a professional user and have to get working drawings out to clients. I'm not a professional engineer anymore, having left that profession using AutoCad many years ago, so don't need the feature.

New to this version is a template especially for woodworkers either in inches or millimetres. This was previously called Product Design Woodworking in V13 but has now become a template in its own right. They have also made vast improvements to the Extension Warehouse. One extension I always install is called Layer Manager by D.Bur. This is a superb tool if you are familiar with the concept of layers.

The 3D modelling extras in the Pro version are useful but not essential in a woodworking design environment. For instance if you want to project a radius all the way around a surface (producing a representation of  a roundover like the lid on this box)

you can do it quite easily using Intersect Faces command. You then have to erase all the extraneous lines produced manually. The Solid Tools command does all of this for you but it costs $$$ (or £££ if you are English like me) for the privilege. I, as a weekend warrior garage woodworker, am happy to do this by hand so it's no big deal.

Tool Rack MK 2

I've been operating with a tool rack made from some plywood mounted in the window, as suggested and used by Chris Schwarz, for about 12 months now (see my original one here). It has been a good experience so I've decided to "improve" it by making a new one.
What spurred me onto doing this was the chisel rack I'd added to the original tool rack.

Original Tool Rack
The chisel rack is mounted on the front LH side

Essentially it comprises a piece of 1/2" ply 2" wide x around 30" long. Into this I'd drilled a series of 7/8"