Ratka's Sewing caddy finished

Gratuitous photos








A gap exists between the frame and the base of the sewing machine on the right there to allow for the power cord.










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

Getting a handle of it

More head scratching; surely there is a better way to center some holes in this carcass than my half arsed hairy eyeballing.

here are the reinforcment bearings out of mahogany for the handle arm pivots. There's a pair on the inside of the sarcofagus, too. Oak pegs drilled and tapped into the assembly reinforce


Now rotating the hadle and arm assembly clamped together through the arc of the bearings. Just want to test to see how out of coplanar the opposing sides are. Seems I can compromise to a certain extent at a consistent width, give or take.




Tapped some bubinga wedges into the oak doweling shaft when I finally glued the arms to the shaft. Should help lock it into place and look kinda cool, too.



Testing fitment of the handle with the arms again, this time with tenons cut into the handle. I think I'll drive another pin through the tenon on the outside of the arm to lock it into place when I finally glue this part up. For now, just testing. And I'll have a 3/8" washer on the interior backed by a cotter key going through the shaft to keep the arms in place when it's all said and done...


...On second thought, I can secure the arms from the inside just using a wood screw like so

strong arm

More time spent shaping the mahogany arms for the handle. Yep, another test in precision. First getting orthogonal holes drilled into the arms for the axle without a drill press! Dowling jig to the (approximate) rescue. And again with drilling pilot holes for tenon of handle. Now! How to make sure these bearings through the hull are collinear? Hmmm.. will have to think on this one...

sussing out a handle

A simple but sturdy handle for Ratka's sewing caddy. I tested 1/2" thick mahogany with a 3/8" oak dowel for sheer strength by holding onto the mahogany piece suspended while the protruding dowel hooked the edge of a stud in the garage wall. Should be sturdy enough for the pivoting arms. Then through-tennons holding the horizontal member to the pivoting arms, probably made of this fine old doug-fir i resawed here a while ago. Cardboard mockup of pivot arms below to test proportions...





I got these nice cast-off pieces of African Mahogany from the local hardwood place. Very handsome and a true joy to work with. These will be the "arms" connecting the handle to the carcass

Now the Fun Part

Planing the contours into the top of Ratka's sewing caddy was a joy.



Just roughing out the lines here for final glueup. Will continue shaping until I'm happy and there is no more tear-out in the wood.

lateralized capstone

As expected, this was the most challenging facet to arrange in the top. The side piece wedges will then be the last hard part in this roof.

Handy Bits

My favorite part has been repurposing the mahogany from Ratka's old sewing machine bench legs into small details of the new piece. It's a very well behaved wood and has a scent that I've taken a liking to.

E.g. the "daggers" securing the undercarriage to the sarcophagus needed some sort of tab for easier handling. To wit, I resawed some of this nice old wood and made a pair of little doo-dads for easy grabby:

more on sewing caddy hat

There is the plan, and then there is the object, and the former is a vague rudder pushing me towards the latter, but in the end I always end up somewhere in the mud. That's okay. Not all facets terminate to points in the same origin!





I Kind of knew this would be a reality of the caddy's top for this piece: coopering the top side and then expecting every wedge adjoining to the lateral sides to end up directly towards some ideal geometric point we call "origin" was something to scoff at. As long as the seams hold, it's good enough for me tho!

Now, onto sections 3 and 4 (in the works, but being glued up...

sewing caddy hat

now to focus on the top of the sarcophagus for ratka's sewing machine.

I had originally planned a coopered top, with an even radius, attaching the lengthwise facets to the end via dovetailed "wedges". I'll still try to achieve this, but due to the sewing machine's thread spools being offset towards one side, I decided to make it a bit eccentric:



Planing all this rough old wood and then making gapless jointed edges using a powered jointer might have saved a bit of time. Hand tools give me that tiny fragment of wiggle-room for adjustments, though.

Witholding comments on this piece's rather severe proportions until I can round off the edges with a plane; hopefully that will make it a bit more inviting to the touch.

sewing caddy undercarriage attachment

My next step was to cut some grooves into the lateral sides of the undercarriage to receive the interior edge of a long "tennon" used to hold the piece together inside of the outer carcass:



I used a chisel to beaver out most of the material between the saw kerfs, but resorted to fabbing up a 1/4" sanding stick to smooth out the bottom surface



Here, you see a few cleats I glued up to the interior of the carcass. These will be reinforced with oak doweling



Here are all the parts: undercarriage, carcass, and two "tennons" that I hacked out of a piece of bubinga from a local hardwood store's cast-off bin



Everything together:


Here's a vid of how it works

sewing caddy outer carcass

OK, few more tentative steps towards a sewing caddy to put forth. now that the interior carriage is sort of done, it's time to build the "husk" that will nest directly outside of it. This involved rescussitation of a few old doug fir/redwood siding boards harvested from the throes of my rotting garage's rafters from an earlier post, jointed forth.

The vertical sides will be 9" tall so had to glue up a panel, making sure to note grain direction in the boards



One old trick about jointing mating surfaces is to fold them over and plane them thus:



glue-up and wait. wish I had more large mouth clamps to apply the pressure:



Now the tricky blocking out of the panels to length. That strut of wood interior to the xacto knife and outer carcass piece will be glued to the inside of the carcass and form the opposing cleat surface for the wedge which holds this entire piece together. Need to take it's width into consideration when measuring out the pieces and almost forgot this morning:



Chopping the tails for the carcass joints. Using a J. Krenov influenced layout where the tails are narrower towards the edges:



A lot of cautious sawing, and a few hours later and every joint is chopped out and fitment is tested. Looking actually pretty okay for my level of accuracy. Next step is glue up

sewing caddy undercarriage

OK! spent some more time on the gutz of this assembly: the undercarriage for the sewing machine. This is just a simple frame of hard wood that the sewing machine will rest upon. I have no present intention to affix the frame to the sewing machine; its main purpose will be to be the interior support of a pair of lateral rods which hold the lower frame into the external "shell" cover. I'm sure this doesn't make any sense in words, but imagine a horizontal grove on the outside of the below frame, and an interior grove on the shell at the same place, and a long rod shoved down the middle to hold 'em together.

Anyway, the frame wood I saved from the happy destruction of an old lounge chair that Sarah had mercifully allowed me to architecturally reconfigure with my handy 10 pound hammer. we wanted it out of the house, and I wanted the material since it was made mostly of oak and maple. the maple seems okay, but punky in spots. The oak has a few worm holes but is harder than hell mostly. Had to rehone my POS 1/2" chisel a few times before I could punch it through these dovetail chops:



Testing fitment of the joints



How she rests right now

Ratka's Sewing Caddy Part 1

Here's the Sewing Machine, gorgeous old iron. Ratka wanted something to house it other than the janky veneered particle board desk that it was attached to:



I'm going to go for a sort of "lunch pail" assembly. I'll make an undercarriage which will support the sewing machine from the underside of it's perimeter frame. This carriage will then have a sort of cleat which will connect to the exterior "shell". I have not diagrammed this well below, but should be apparent in later posts!





Job starts with wood, and I'm using some old panels that were up in the rafters of the garage when we bought the place. Really beautiful wood. Tight, tight grain, probably fir, but it could be redwood, I don't know. The key is how fine the rings are, which to me says: "Old" and Old Wood Is Beautiful:



My "Table Saw" is kind of Barbaric, but get's me close, and I thank my mate Peter Sutherland for hooking me up with an extra circular saw for the job!



Typical of wood siding, it has a bit of a cup to it so you plane out the bowed side, before you flatten out the cup here:



The tight tight grain of this wood made planing a real joy. I'm used to old, salvaged wood being kind of temperamental, and prone to tear out, but this behaved really nicely. The 14" Jack Plane from Lee Valley helps