Housebuilding in Finland

[His Divine Shadow]

Welp I did it, cut their hair over the weekend:


Much harder to tell apart now.

In other news I'm clearing junk of the yard and trying to prep as much as possible until the earth mover guy gets here. Also making some lawn chairs, material prep for two chairs (a variant of an adirondack chair but with 4 normal feet) took two days of resawing and planing, resuing a lot of old wood, grey ugly wood that turned out quite pretty once planed.





Going to make a dusthood for the jointer/planer so I can hook up the vacuum to it (the blue-green thingy)

[His Divine Shadow]

1st chair assembled and ready for an oil treatment, keeping it inside to let the glue dry properly.

[His Divine Shadow]

Stained (well I used an oil with brown pigment anyway) the 1st chair:


Then I made a 2nd chair:

[Raesene]

very pretty - If I had a place to put one, I'd buy one from you

[Borgholio]

very pretty - If I had a place to put one, I'd buy one from you

If I didn't live 6 freaking thousand miles away, I'd buy one too. It looks really nice.

[His Divine Shadow]

Well there are plans online for those chairs so you can make your own
https://woodgears.ca/lawn_chairs/plans/index.html

[Elheru Aran]

Not bad. Did you use what's called a Danish oil here?

[His Divine Shadow]

No I looked into danish oil but it's not rated for use on outdoors furniture. So I got a can of something called Teknos Woodex oil, it's an outdoors oil sold by my company for use on the hot tubs and saunas we make so I figured it would do here too, and I got a discount (purchase price+vat). The wood did take the stain unevenly, I should have sealed it first with shellac and sanded it to get a more even stain, but I had not the shellac or the patience. I think it should mellow out with time as the sun bleaches it. I probably need to make at least 2 more, and I am contemplating making a couple of 3/4 size ones for the kids.

[Lord Revan]

if your kids are anything like my niece and nephew they'll grow so fast that by time you've gotten the chairs done they'll be too large for them. granted it seems like my brother's kids took after their father (aka my brother) when it comes to size as I think both them are tall for their age (or at least that's what my mom told me).

[His Divine Shadow]

I dunno if they'll grow that fast, but yes I might still just make two more regular sized ones. Also going to make a little table for these chairs. Also plans for a table so we can eat outdoors. That might require a set of different chairs, or I will make a picnic table with integrated benches. I think separate chairs are better though.

[fnord]

Dumb question here, but is that finished chair supposed to be that brightly orange, or will that fade with time?

[His Divine Shadow]

It will fade, and it looks brighter than it is. I have some stain I think would darken them more, my fiance wants me to make them much darker but I like the 2nd chair, which I have so far only put one coat on and it's a shade lighter than the 1st one. I have no pictures of it with the oil on it though. I need to leave them alone for now to try because this weekend they will be in use as extra indoors chairs

[His Divine Shadow]

Figured I should post some pictures of the building process for these chairs.

Here's the 1:1 printouts I used:


For the 2nd chair I turned it into a template:


After one side is halfway done I take it out and use it to make the other side, with the jig I shouldn't need todo this anymore though:


Two finished sides:


I needed to cut dadoes in the back pieces for the arches, I did this on my table saw using a flat topped rip blade (I use this blade 99% of the time for cross cuts too), I set the fence to the proper distance and then just hog out the bits by moving the sliding table back and forth. I don't miss not having a dado blade the least, this is probably faster even:


Using a spokeshave on the back piece of the seat so reduce the gap, I added this step myself

[Elheru Aran]

Nice leg vise. Where did you get the screw?

[His Divine Shadow]

There's a small company near here that specialized in bolts and screws, I went there and asked for a thread and nut, the thread was cheap, like under 10 euros for more than I needed, but the nut was 14 euros. The rest I built myself

[Elheru Aran]

Oh, is that a metal screw then? I've got a thread-box and tap for a 1-1/2 inch screw. Cutting the screw was fun, putting the vise together was less fun as I had to tap 8" of wood... next time I'm just going to cut a chunk out and thread a large wooden nut instead.

[His Divine Shadow]

Yeah I don't have any wood suitable to make threads with and the humidity changes from winter to summer would be problematic, wooden screws in this climate always tend to stick due to that.

[LadyTevar]

I love the chairs, and the stain. It gave the chair a nice warm glow. Very rustic and welcoming.
As for the twins, I'd make 1/2-size chairs, so they grow into them and can use them longer. My nephews used to compete over who got to sit in my dad's old wooden chair from when he was little -- now only the 10yr old can. Not bad for a chair 70yrs old.

[His Divine Shadow]

Thanks, as for the size of the chairs, they seem to like these


I was thinking half size but 3/4 would be slightly bigger wouldn't it? I.e. 75%? Half size would make changing the plans easier.

[Jub]

They look kind of like a pair of explorers just after reaching the summit on the chairs like that.

[His Divine Shadow]

That's probably how they feel about it, they've learned to climb recently and last week I found daniel on the kitchen counter. He'd taken this kitchen step stool and pushed it against the counter and climbed up, David was right there behind him, halfway up. They both thought it was the most awesome thing in the world, we both thought "fuck don't fall & break your neck".

Anyway the earth mover got here on friday and started working and the retaining wall around the garage is mostly done:




Got more of these big flat rocks and I'm gonna put them over the smaller ones I made so the wall doesn't go from big rocks to little rocks so suddenly. But the bigger rocks looks better, and the rocks behind it make an excellent drainage system.

A few them have too much incline so we'll have to correct that yet.

Also made a table, needs some lengthwise rails as it looks weird from certain angles:


Good for grilling too:


Need to stain the legs to match.

[His Divine Shadow]

More stuff has happened, now that the weather got a bit better, pretty close to being done now.

Some gravel, more of the smaller wall is in place as well as topsoil.


Making this a link since it's a panorama
https://farm6.staticflickr.com/5446/176 ... db2c_k.jpg

Making a step and a little path there that we can cut across when getting the mail


Not much to see elsewhere yet and I really wish I had something but a 35mm fixed lens. Unfortunately the kids broke my kit lens which took wide angle pictures.

[Sea Skimmer]

I like your standard of 'some' gravel. What is that, four or five tonnes of it?

[Borgholio]

I'm still jealous of your neighborhood. I would love to live amongst all that green.

[His Divine Shadow]

It's okay, too bad about all the boring finnish trees, pine and birch! Nothing but! I've decided to plant a pear tree, plum tree and cherry tree so we'll get some free fruits (in 10-20 years). And I'd love some proper southern "noble trees" like Oak, Ash, Elm and whatnot. Rowan trees are nice too, though they grow here naturally. I've found you can buy plants for most of these locally and they can handle the climate. I want my yard to look like it belongs somewhere else when I am done.

I'd like to plant some Ash and Elm and hopefully they get to live undisturbed here without falling to the ravages that threaten both species elsewhere where they grow naturally (Dutch Elm disease and the Ash borer). There's a small ash forest somewhere around here, planted in 1937 by a local botanist and I think it's doing well.