Garden Gate Project - Part 14 - More finishing and gilding

Finishing can be really boring. The gate requires 7 coats of varnish all over and the application of which is very time consuming. Each coat needs 24 hours between drying and every other coat needs rubbing with 320 grit. Also the dilution of each coat gets less between coats until you end up with the varnish going on neat from the can.
I hadn't worked out a way of coating each side at the same time and the gate is too heavy to place onto painters pyramids or a simple bed of nails. So consequently 7 separate coats ends up taking 14 days to achieve. No pictures of paint drying I'm afraid.

In the meantime we have had guests over from foreign climes and we have been hosting for them. I did manage to get a little shop time last Sunday whilst they went to a Manchester United football game against Chelsea. I have absolutely no interest at all in football so had a few hours in the shop.

I decided to highlight the letters of the sign with black paint and gild the numbers with gold leaf.
The signs all had a base coat of shellac followed by a thin coat of spar varnish. When that had thoroughly dried I started to apply so black enamel paint. Unfortunately this paint was water based and would not take to the now varnished over letters! DOH!. Luckily I had some oil based exterior black gloss paint so carefully applied that paint instead.

Dunluce is the name of our house

Garden Gate Project - Part 13 - Finishing

All surfaces sanded to 180 grit, my makers mark branded on and then the first coat of Epithanes spar varnish. This is thinned to 50% using either mineral spirits (known as white spirit in the UK - this is not odourless in the UK) or Epithanes thinner. I used the latter as it is odourless and is the same price as white spirit.

Just another 6 coats to go! Gradually reducing the amount of thinners to get to full strength eventually.

Sanding complete

Not bad amber tint for first coat
It will get deeper with more coats

Commercial Benches bench dog hole layout.

One of my friends on Woodtalk asked me about where to position dog holes. He had built a great bench and just needed some drilling details. My bench is a commercial bench made by Sjobergs here and is adequate for my use for now.
I don't use all of the dog holes but do tend to use quite a few of them at the left-hand end when using a hold-fast. I do find that having such a grid of holes is advantageous as I also use Bench Cookies with risers. The risers fit in a 3/4" hole and having the flexibility of so many hole is great.

Here are a few pictures of the bench dog layout from the lefthand end of the bench.

Longitudinal spacing

Garden Gate Project - Part 12 - Glue up #2

I like the smell of epoxy in the morning.

After the glue had cured the pieces of wood that were protruding from the mortises were cut off.
Then using a combination of flush trim saw, various block panes and that DIY tool that never gets used in fine woodworking, the Black and Decker belt sander (!), the joints were all sanded flush. It really is the right tool for the job and I bought it many years ago to sand a table with it ending up on the shelf ever since. I have a new found fondness for a power tool.

Using a Japanese ryoba saw to saw off excess