Going through the pile

Will you look at this? I spent some time sorting the koa sets I have on hand, and found 17 of them! A couple are big enough for concerts, the rest sopranos. I had real trouble matching tops and backs with sides. And I found that some bookmatched pieces actually weren't bookmatched; they came from the same board but there had clearly been a couple of slices taken out between them. 

I got them fairly cheap and a couple of sets are really good so I won't moan too much. 

Building a frame saw

After seeing the video by Tom Fidgen I ordered the saw blades from Bad Axe toolworks, and after a certain amount of pratting around I put a frame together yesterday. Here are some pics of the later stages. 

The frame is made with double tenon joints. 

I still haven't finalized the shape of the handles, everything is still square and rough. 

The blade is held under tension and the idea is that the saw will enable me to rip or resaw larger pieces of wood than my bandsaw normally lets me. But this is only half of the equipment for doing that - I'm also working on a kerfing plane with a movable fence. That's also the work of Tom Fidgen. If you haven't seen his stuff on youtube you need to check it out. 

And now, our pizza oven: