Open workshop weekend 10th and 11th Dec

Open workshop weekend this weekend at Paparwark! Sat 9-5 sun 11-3! Come alang! 10% off stock and orders!

Enjoy mulled wine, mince meat pies and a chat in our festive workshop

One hard design brief

sculptural music stand, a photo by Paparwark on Flickr.

For most of the work that we do the commissions are not that hard to get to a point were you feel that it will be really good. This commission was a bit different. A stretch would be a good word to describe it!
The music stand had to be able to function like a steel stand but still look sculptural and light, so it took me nearly 6 months waiting for several brain wave moments. The result is a piece that I am really satisfied with and am looking forward to the next really stretching commission.

HI-Arts maker of the month

A BIG thanks to HI-arts for selecting paparwark as maker of the month

http://hi-arts.co.uk/2011/07/hi-arts-craft-newsletter-july-2011/

The art of gluing 2

The art of gluing 2, a photo by Paparwark on Flickr.

Gluing up chairs can be a nightmare!! This style of Shetland chair takes 12 clamps to do the job successfully. Because it takes so many clamps it is quite time consuming. Most glues start to hard within 30 mins so you need to know what you are doing and work really fast if the gluing up will be to a high standard.

You also find that quite often everything fits really well before the glue is applied and then its not quite the same when you are tightening the clamps. This is probably the most stress part of the process. If it was to go wrong here you would have to start from scratch!!!!

The art of gluing up

This is a post for all the woodworking geeks out there!!

The are so many things you start to take for granted once you have practised them many times. One of which is gluing up. There are so many small things which can go wrong. The picture above shows the posh clamps which we now use for gluing up panels. They are really good at keeping the panels flat which can be a problem with traditional sash clamps.

We also have a certain way that we machine the edges before gluing to insure that even if the machine is slightly off the square the boards will still lie flat together.

Biscuit joints are also used to help increase strength but mostly to line up the boards so there are no steps which saves time when sanding the board afterwards. To increase gluing speed you can use a glue pot with a special end that fits into the biscuit slot saving a lot of time.

All that detail from a boring picture of panels gluing!!!!!!!

Playing with nature

sandwick school's driftwood log, a photo by Paparwark on Flickr.

This large tree trunk was washed ashore near to Mousa broch. It was moved by boat and crane to the local school. After lying for several years the outside was starting to rot in places. The school commissioned us to turn it into a suitable log for the children to play on. The big kids got to play first as we were able to use our sculpting tools which is always a lot of fun!!

A sense of mission