Hi Lumberjocks, Here’s my first project since signing on to LJ. Made for friend Ratka who conducted the marriage ceremony for my wife and I last October. Ratka has this handsome old Singer sewing machine (Hefty) that she wanted some sort of cover for. I like working with reclaimed lumber, refining it a bit, but keeping certain features (like rusty nail holes) in place so that it’s history is suggested in the piece a bit. Knowing my penchant for this sort of thing, she was still willing to just let me “go for it”. good sport.

The cover (I call it a sarcophagus :) ) is made from this really old Fir that came from some old siding to our house that was stowed up in the rafters of the garage when we moved in. Very dense and fine growth rings. The rest of the parts came from odds and ends, reclaimed furniture lumber etc. Anyway, this was my first attempt at “coopering” a top like that. getting everything to play fair and square was probably the hardest part, especially getting all those wedges to fit together!

The way it works: I attached some runners along the inside at the bottom of the cover where you see those two tabs in the first pic. These are actually handles for some bubingawood tennons that join the interior groove of the cover with the external groove of the undercarriage. Here’s a youtube of my proof of concept on how the cover holds the undercarriage of the sewing machine:

Seems to work okay. I had some fun and learned a lot in the process. I see all the flaws but hopefully Ratka will be happy.

I included a little bubingawood letter opener attached to the roof here as a joke, we’ll see when she notices it, hehehe

I made this as an experiment after coming across some work of Jean Prouvé. The project was made with very little power tools. I think the drill was the only thing I used that was powered. Key players were an entirely pedestrian “Footprint” jack plane, and a fairly handy Japanese ryoba pull-saw.

It started with my favorite building material: gnarly reclaimed fir sourced from architectural salvage. Some of this wood was old enough to still have ceramic tubes embedded for use in “knob and tube” wiring. I reserved the ceramic tubes and replaced them in my desk when I was done. The top is a series of 2×6’s laminated together. It took a lot of planing to get them to face up and clamp together okay.

A close up of some rough joinery

Doing some layup

Here’s how the tressel came out

After a little tongue oil