Yes I am full of admiration for Max’s skills and abilities. About 18 months back, a couple of us helped him put the roof on his new workshop for a few days. He is a genuinely really nice guy, who would go out of his way to help anyone. He works long & hard & deserves every success.

You know you could have a large framed sign made up with:- “Swan Valley Machine Shop” Maybe in burgundy background and shadowed gold leaf lettering to go along the front so that is the first thing anyone sees as they walk in the door maybe? Just a suggestion, been trying to figure out what would look best to match & set off the top. Up to you. 👍 Flag Pole out front of the building. 🇦🇺 Plenty of time to work it all out. Should be a good spot to have a beer fridge underneath and a row of bar stools maybe? 😜😂👍👍

Thank you for that. Always nice to watch the grain appear when you apply the Orange Oil. It’s the most satisfying part of the entire building process.

Yes the product range is expanding greatly I noticed just recently. I made my missus a blackbutt cutting board recently & went looking for more orange oil, but discovered a new lemon oil product food safe made for chopping / cutting boards so bought one of those as well, and it worked a treat. 👍

Thanks Ted, I’m glad you like it, it has come along a bit since you were here last, thankfully. Look forward to a catch up in the new year. Can you believe we were helping Max put the roof on his new workshop this time last year? Where do the days and weeks go eh?

Hi Mike. The grey table that I’m working on top of is an old electric height adjustable computer desk, and the two “hydraulic ram” looking supports are just a pair of height adjustable roller stands that I bought a few years back from “Beyond Tools” out in the Malaga Industrial Estate here in northern suburbs of Perth Western Australia. They weren’t cheap, around $200 each from memory. I tend to use them either end of the Robland X31 as extra support for longer lengths of wood passing over the Infeed & outfeed table of the jointer. It prevents the timber wanting to drop at either end as it cantilevers out past the support of the jointer tables, meaning I don’t have to push down & forwards as hard on the tail end to stop it lifting, while the tail end passes over the cutter head. It’s real easy to slip & end up with palm in the cutter head if something goes wrong, so I don’t like working over a jointer that way these days. As I’ve got older and muscles waste away I just don’t have the strength I had as a younger man to get away with that sort of work without making a slip up - so supports with roller tops like that relieve me of a lot of the workload. Same reason I have a power feed on the X31, it’s like a extra pair of hands in the shop that I don’t have to pay wages to make them show up and put in a decent effort, and I’m not having to use physical strength to hold down and push hardwoods through saws when ripping etc. As I’m getting older I’m just finding ways to work smarter not harder. The roller stands aren’t hydraulically adjustable, they are just 3 legged beefy friction adjust round rams that clamp tight in the centre with a collar and set screw once you have them at the desired height. They tend to then find themselves getting other uses like supporting the ends of this long bench for eg as the ends cantilever out past the ends of my computer table work bench, so as not to over stress the Mason mitre clamps & dowels underneath joining all 3 sections together. I tend to make a top like this in smaller sections and join them rather than one continuous length, because most hardwoods and this local Jarrah one, there’s different shrinkage & expansion rates in the blocks from edge to edge, end to end, between summer and winter, & even depending whether the block comes out of a quarter sawn, radial or tangential grain, so 3 smaller panels means that the amount of variation within each panel is hopefully less than what the “Megapoxy” epoxy resin can resist. To get the blocks to half bond into the Parquetry pattern, my set up on the saw, has to be accurate to within thousandths of an inch for length and widths through the jointer likewise for consistency & accuracy, because any variation, and gaps in a half bond Parquetry pattern would grow exponentially (& appearance will suffer) the longer you repeat the pattern. Keeping it in 3 shorter panels helps prevent this from occurring over time with seasonal moisture content changes in the air. You really can’t rely on the strength of PVA glues for Parquetry work in timber, they can’t handle the internal stresses that are exerted. Aussie is such an old continent that all of our souls are acidic, (no active volcanoes spewing lava and ash which are basic and neutralise the soils that the trees grow in, so the sap in our Timbers is acidic & even tho we might dry / season the timber down to 12% EMC here on the Swan Coastal Plain in Perth Western Australia, that remaining moisture being acidic, over time attacks the PVA glues and breaks them down. Epoxy resin I’ve have found is the only successful adhesives long term that are inert to attack by the acid sap & with the strength to resist variations in shrinkage & expansion across the length / width & different grain direction depending how the lumber was sawn out of the log. Hardwoods don’t have medullary rays like softwoods do so the shrinkage expansion rates in hardwoods without epoxy resin adhesives, a Parquetry pattern like this will likely tear itself apart over time with the differing shrinkage & expansion rates trying to tear themselves apart and with acidic sap attacking PVA glues - it wouldn’t last 3 years at most, before glue failure. The expoxy resin should be stronger than the timber it’s joining, and hopefully last maybe 50-100 years hopefully. If the matrix of blocks is going to fail due to varying rates of internal stresses from different grain directions / varying rates of shrinkage & expansion, it should be the blocks themselves that split fail first before the glue fails if that makes sense.

I could send you photos of the glue up / cramp up if you give me your email address please. I didn’t video any of the glue up & cramp up unfortunately, only still photos. But I’m happy to share with you. Sadly I got to visit with Max just a week ago after an extensive heat wave here in Perth over several weeks. Some places in the top the expansion was more than 72 hour cure Megapoxy could withstand and a few cracks appeared between some of the blocks. I did warn Max of the possibility ahead of the heat and begged him to liberally oil the top before hand with the bottle of orange oil I left with him - to try and avoid just this very situation. Temps (ambient) reached around 44c for weeks on end and inside a tin shed it was amplified beyond that. Sadly the oil application didn’t occur and the top cracked in places. I wouldn’t personally recommend this type of glue up again. If you study timber technology and shrinkage expansion rates of Aussie eucalypts, you will see that the variations between length and radial & tangential sawn grain direction are just too large for a parquetry joined top like this to remain stable unless it’s in a 24/7/365 refrigerated air conditioned environment like a houses or office tower. In a tin shed it just won’t hold up unfortunately is the experience lesson.

​@@ianmoone2359 thanks for the response, that's some good advice. I think I might have to opt for a different design then

Mostly I try hard to stay out of trouble, but not always successfully. 😜😂 I’ve had a varied career from 10 years in railway engineering, 8 years in Forestry & Wildlife Conservation. Now some 30 odd years in timber work (sawmilling, kiln drying, joinery, cabinets and furniture making. Environmental Consulting. Charter Skipper, Fisheries Research. About 10 odd years volunteer work in missing persons. Now I’m having a crack at machining metal. Your never too old to learn & better to wear out than rust out. Last few years, alongside working in my shed, I’ve been a full time carer for my now 91 year old mother who has senile dementia, so that curtails a lot of my shed work time. Then there’s my secret part time work as a hit man for the mob. 😜😂😂😉 Dad to 3, grandad to 5. That about sums it up.👍

@@ianmoone2359 Wow, it sounds like you've had a very interesting and diverse career! It's great that you're always looking to learn and try new things, even with your responsibilities as a carer for your mother. It's also wonderful to hear that you're a father and grandfather. Can't imagine how do you manage to balance all of these different aspects of your life!

I was using a rag. 🙄 Been doing it about 45 odd years, you’d think I’d have worked it out by now. 😉