The pull that may never be

I spent about an hour fashioning this pull from a chip of swiss pear. I'm afraid that it will not work: it is too small and hard to grasp. Before I discard the piece into my bin of forgotten parts, and I thought that I'd at least take a picture. Do you often discard neat components that you like but just won't work out well?

Sophie head and her freshly milled exotic wood boards.

 A danish cord seat is born!

Der finished benchen,
 impractically on top of one's workbench.

After something like 6 months, much of which spent just walking by the bench and running my fingers along its rough parts, the bench is finally now complete!

I started with a design from FineWoodWorking.com, which was a designed made as a capstone project from a student graduating from a fine furniture making school. I should have clued in on that before I started making the joinery: I've never made joints more intricate than what is in this bench. For those of you curious, the strength in these small joints comes from the fact that the tenons split into two parallel tenons with a 3/16" space in between, and that the inner tenon is shorter than the outter one on all four legs.

Regardless, it just tool more time to get them done and certainly gave me a chance to hone my hand joinery skills (and my hand tool honing skills as well). Cherry is a great species of hardwood to work with: I'm going to get back to it for another project soon (health allowing). I dealt with a bit of heterogeneity in the heartwood/sapwood front, but I oriented the prices such that the sapwood will not be visible when the bench will be sitting where it is meant to in the lobby. Now, if this is not customizing furniture, nothing ever will.

The danish cord weave turned out well. 

Weaving was another challenge. I considered getting it done professionally, but in the end it wasn't that bad. The seat is very comfortable, and working with woven cord fibers was actually easier than I thought. Sophie, my daughter extraordinaire, helped with the second part yesterday and got her share of blisters to prove it. I'm very glad that she is interested in working with wood. I'll show her how to do relief carving as a payment for her hard work (not that I know a lot about it, but I'll share the little that I do).

It took about 7 hours to weave the whole thing.

Finishing was my simple recipe: some solvent-free boiled linseed oil and three coats of rubbed-on polyurethane to protect against wet boots and dripping jackets.

Sophie and Mr. Bandsaw.