Hi,
Colin - please upload your artwork! Eagerly anticipated!
Thanks for your encouragement alp which is truly appreciated. Not my artwork but another of Bron's pyrography and this one is for our lovely neighbour Carole; Carole has a cat called Max so this is going to be well received.
For my part I've had a couple of highly frustrating days helping Carole with a problem. It started when Carole emailed asking if I would please pop round to look at her ceiling coving; the ceiling had suffered severe water ingress due to Blackie doing his thing; the roof repair had been carried out and the ceiling guys had been in to replace the large section of ceiling; like most tradespeople these days these guys did the minimum by just installing and skimming the new plasterboard but left the coving in a bad way. The original coving was still in place along the front wall but damaged although it would fill; a 6' length of coving though had to be destroyed in order to effect the repairs and it was this Carole was very concerned about.
I spent about an hour browsing the web but there are thousands of different coving profiles and I couldn't find the one needed; Carole had given me a short length of coving so I could determine profile and size etc.
To cut a long story short I thought I'd be quicker making the length of coving; I had a length of mahogany so laid the original coving on top and marked for width then ripped this on the table saw; I put it through the thicknesser and brought it to correct thickness then using the bandsaw ran a pair of 45 degree chamfers; I thought great I'm making progress until I offered up the original coving to find I had ripped the mahogany too narrow? It took quite a while to suss out what had happened but I was badly caught out; laying the original on the mahogany it looked perfect as to width but I had run the chamfers leaving a sharp point; anyway I now hadn't enough width also what I simply regarded as a pair of 45 degree chamfers this too was jumping to conclusions; the coving didn't sit neatly balanced into the ceiling/wall joint it was seated at an angle other than 45 degrees so mistake number two which really made my day; all I wanted to do was to sort out this coving because it was interrupting with my woodturning thoughts.
Just before closing time last Saturday I visited our local timber yard and bought two lengths of softwood plus an offcut of 18mm thick MDF this now giving me a good excuse to make more silly mistakes. Back in the workshop this time I placed the original coving end to end with the MDF and drawing the profile before ripping the MDF; now I knew for certain if I kept outside the line the profile would be the correct size; simple when I know how?
Now for major frustration; I have a large selection of router cutters and cutters quite near the cove and bead size so this shouldn't be a problem but it proved a major headache; the plunge depth on the router in my home made router table fell well short of what was needed; the only solution I had was to do it the hard way; I used router cutters which allowed me to remove as much waste as possible then I resorted to hand plane and coarse abrasive paper. At last I finished the coving taking at least two hours final sanding ending up with sore fingers.
Sunday afternoon Bron and I popped round; whilst Bron and Carole enjoyed a natter I set about installing this new coving; whilst inside Blackie behaved; I could see through the window if it was raining; twice I had to visit my workshop and twice Blackie ensured I got wet but each time I was indoors the rain stopped; I detest Blackie with a passion. Nothing like giving new bare MDF coving a wetting is there? I took great care checking; double checking and checking again before finally cutting the cove to length. I didn't have coving adhesive but I do have a large selection of screws; the original coving is polystyrene and this can easily follow out of true walls; MDF is much less forgiving so I attacked the wall chiseling off old adhesive and removing some plaster. I used eight 50mm long stainless steel woodscrews to secure the coving; this coving won't be falling down. This small job as normal blew up in my face turning into a much bigger job; the workshop was covered in a thick layer of dust; I had been wearing ear defenders and dust mask.
I was wide awake at 1:35 Monday morning wondering if I should do the filling around the joints and over the screws but decided against it because one job leads to another; if I had done the filling then would I remove the old ceiling paper; re-paper then paint? No I think a full two days as a favour was plenty; Carole did say she would get a decorator in and up front Carole only asked for my advice so as a volunteer I'm not complaining in any way. Both Bron and I try to help anyone if we can. Carole is delighted with the new coving. This morning I tidied the workshop and used the compressor airline to blow a huge cloud of dust and debris into the driveway; how typical because I was fighting against Gale who kept blowing the debris back into the workshop; this tidying took a lot longer than it should but then most jobs do because of our dire climate.Once the debris is in the driveway i find it a lot easier to sweep and dispose of it.
I had the workshop set up for some serious woodturning but I had to clear the lot away in order to make the coving; I've now lost the plot a bit because making the coving has scrambled my thoughts; I tried a bit of woodturning but couldn't settle so instead I've been sowing seeds. I'm a typical guy who finds it impossible to multitask; I can do one job and do it well but only one job at a time; each job gets my full concentration.
The pictures below give an idea of what was involved; It's unlikely I'll be making more MDF coving soon? So alp this has been my artwork over the weekend.
Kind regards, Colin.
