Saturday, February 28, 2015

Trestle table legs

A friend of mine has a lovely trestle table for medieval cooking demos but it rests on modern sawhorses. So she thought it would be nice to have proper trestle legs for it. She showed me a few pictures and so I am making these. Old sawn lumber, planed down, shaped and pierced.

The making of holes is said to be boring, so brace yourself.













A box for two goblets

Requested of me was a box for two glass goblets, to protect them while they were on the wagons to and from events.

I had a rough sawn plank of sufficient width which I planed smooth. Then cut to size and rebated for the corners. Then they are trimmed up for final fitting with a chisel.

Several extant small coffrets have square feet in the corners. As there was a bit left of the plank I thought that this box too should have them as well. As the remaining piece was 6 13/16 the math for that would be difficult at best. Here then a medieval technique to the rescue! They aren't called dividers for nothing.

Gimlet then for the pilot holes, that the nails don't split the timbers.




Friday, February 20, 2015

World’s oldest gardening manual to go on display 

14th-century Ruralia commoda

http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/jan/23/oldest-gardening-manual-ruralia-commoda-henry-viii?CMP=share_btn_fb