Magazines

Maggie’s at the Robert Parfett Building - winner of the Arnold Laver Gold Award & Structural Award

Welcome to our first issue of 2017, and what a great load of content we have in store for you! In an exclusive feature, we unveil all the winners of the 2016 Wood Awards across all 12 categories, which were recently announced at a special ceremony held at Carpenters’ Hall in London. Shown here, the winner of winners was Maggie’s at the Robert Parfett Building - winner of the Arnold Laver Gold Award & Structural Award. The voting for Maggie’s was unanimous with the judges commenting that the remarkable structure “has brought together the best in engineering, fabrication and architecture.” We also take a look at the winners of the Production Made furniture category and the two winners of the Student Designer category. We absolutely love Jan Waterston’s ‘Velo’ chair, the winner of the People’s Choice Award, which features hand sculpted surfaces and connects body and object by seamlessly wrapping itself around the user. Congratulations to all the winners and all those who entered.

Les Thorne’s stunning textured and airbrushed bowl incorporates the greens and blues found in cenote lakes n Mexico to simulate the effect of deep water

Our cover star for this month is Shaun Newman, with the first part of his fantastic medieval fiddle article. You can learn how to make your very own version, thanks to this expert guide - a great New Year project and one that will test your skills as well as help you develop many new ones. In terms of other projects, we also find out how Aleksei Sebastiani turned disaster into triumph as he experiments with kerf cutting techniques to produce a stunning dead-edge end table, and in a simple beginners’ project, Thomas de Bos shows you how to make a fun wooden aeroplane with a working propeller, which would be ideal for a child with a love of flying. Also, Phil Davy makes an attractive symmetrically patterned table lamp using offcuts, and Les Thorne returns with a fantastic turning project, which sees him being inspired by the vivid colours of the cenote lakes in Mexico.

Amazing results achieved by Peter Sefton’s students using different veneer combinations

In our ’Technical’ section, Peter Sefton’s Long Course students move on to working with veneers, which they use to make a veneered tray, and John Bullar discusses mortise & tenon joints and how they are traditionally used in furniture making, beginning with hand tool methods, before looking at a few powered techniques. And lastly, in his beginners’ guide to power tool series, Peter Bishop looks at the various powered plane options available – both hand-held and static.

Chris Tribe demonstrating planing techniques to his students

In ‘People and Places’ as well as our fantastic six-page Wood Awards Centrefold special, we also find out more about Chris Tribe, who shares the story of how he made the transition from office worker to professional furniture maker, and most recently, a teacher of the craft.

Easing and fitting doors are bread and butter work for the Bosch GHO 26-82 D Professional planer

Andy King and Phil Davy both have a whole raft of kit and tool recommendations for 2017, including the clever iVAC Switch Box, which turns an ordinary vacuum into a slave unit. Andy also puts the new Axminster Trade Series Precision Pro Lathe through its paces, which is ideal for turning small projects and pen kits, as well as the Bosch GHO 26-82 D Professional planer, before discovering a versatile clamping solution from Woodworkers Workshop. Phil Davy is a fan of the Pinie scrub plane, which he considers to represent fantastic value for money, and the Stubai mitre square is a well-finished tool with spot-on accuracy.

The first prize for Felder’s 60th anniversary competition is a A3-26 with silent-power spiral cutterblock - worth over £3,000!

The deadline is also looming for the Felder competition - please remember to send in your entries before the closing date (17 February) to ensure they will be judged in time. This is not only a great opportunity for you to win some wonderful prizes, but also the chance for you to have your pieces potentially judged by some expert furniture makers. Three people have got to win, and there’s no reason why it couldn’t be any one of you reading this. All you have to do is send in some photos of a piece you’ve made recently, or a piece made especially for the competition, along with a short amount of text explaining your making process - simple! Who knows, you may even be the lucky recipient of an A3-26 planer/thicknesser worth over £3,000 - what a great start to 2017 that would be!

All this and much more in GW314, which hits the shelves on 6 January.

Enjoy!

Tegan Foley, Editor