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Beauty longing (Part 2)

OK, in order to get the bigger picture and compare the "before" and "after" you have to go back to the post Beauty longing. I was busy restoring the huge old dining room table. Oregon with teak legs was my guess at that stage.

This is my first big woodworking commission since we have moved to Barrowfield. In order to complete it I had to do quite a lot of repairs on the machinery that would be needed in the process.

The belt sander got damaged during the move. I welded the cast iron table where it broke at the base.

Two weeks before our move down here, they broke into my workshop at Rietfontein and stole the electrical motor with its particular bracket off my table saw. It was no mean feat to replace it. In the process I got to know most of the electrical suppliers in Newcastle, drove to Alberton to get the bracket components, made adjustments to that and put in a bigger circuit breaker at the distribution box as the new motor kept tripping the previous one.

Also at Rietfontein, but about a year before the theft of the saw motor, they stole all my power tools. The new router that I got didn't fit onto my router table. I had to make a new extension to accommodate that.

Finally - back to the table. I was wrong about the Oregon. The more I worked through all the layers of old dirt and varnish I realised that the top and aprons are in actual fact Yellow wood. I still believe the legs to be teak.

So, here she is strengthened, sanded and trimmed waiting to be varnished. But first I have to finish the drawers. Isn’t she a beaut?


In addition I now have a workshop with functional machinery. I help her, she helps me.


George






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