The Best Yet

Here's the trickiest bit of joinery I've ever done. It started off as a set of kauri doors that Dad had kept for 50 years, plus an old badly-painted china cabinet from the Palmside Street kitchen that turned out to be kauri too. Sacrilege! The back is 5cm thick solid kauri, all doweled together and the mitred corners of the drawer casing took a while. The whole casing is secret-rebated into the back piece for strength.

There's four panel pins in the whole thing; the rest is all joined and glued. The construction I made up as I went, as usual, and at one point I realised my brain was full and had run out of ideas. So I stopped, put it to one side and made a bed instead. After the bed was done I'd garnered enough courage so finished this off.

As you can tell, I'm very pleased with myself. Since then I've also made the drawer but cut the sides too low, so the drawer tips forward a bit much when it's opened. No, I won't be making another one!

I oiled it with my favourite Liberon finishing oil. Five coats rubbed with steel wool brings out the gorgeous honey colour of kauri. Really, really satisfying. Now it's in the container and about to head for Canada. Along the way, the whole thing will fall overboard and never been seen again.

Hilarious.