Mary Ostler

The Long an plodding road continues with Emily’s Highchair. I am getting tired. I will be glad when I finally get to finishing this chair. I am actually rather excited about doing the reed seat on the chair. The arms are shape kind of like an exclamation point. I walked around the house menacing people with the [...]

A little more done on the Highchair. It would have been more, but I was so cold I realized I was starting to shake while using the lathe. Not good. I cut a board down to squared spindles. The four spindles that will have the reed seating strung over are boring 3/4″ dowels. The lower spindles that [...]

Got a bit more done on the highchair. The barley twist and fluting is finally finished. Its a pretty good match, although the foot profile is different from the front to back legs. Once they are not so close to each other, it will hardly be noticeable. This was the most difficult part so far. Trying [...]

The front legs are almost done.Some light sanding and cutting the pivot waste down and its time to move on to the longer back legs. The hardest part was making sure it was dead center even. If it was off even a little the squared section would be out of wack.

The project I am currently working on has some decorative elements that require breaking the rounded spindle into evenly measured segments. The lathe I own did not have a built in indexing system, and neither does any of my chucks. It is possible to wrap the spindle in paper and then try folding the paper [...]

With Christmas sneaking up fast, I have been forced to start working on presents. First up is Emily’s first birthday/christmas present. I had originally wanted to make her a rocking animal. Leland got a super cool rocking goat for his first birthday, but the idea kind of got nixed on me. I was told that [...]

I entered the Tir Righ A&S competition this year. I had originally wanted to enter a set of conjecturally accurate trestle table. Everything was going swimmingly until disaster happened.  While rushing from one theatre at the Vancouver International Film Festival to another, I fell and broke my ribs. The pain associated in trying to mortise holes into hard aged oak was [...]

I am thrilled to announce the formation of Woodcrafters guild based in Tir Righ, An Tir. I have been wanting to start something like this for quite a while now, but have held back. I have a habit of sabotaging everything I start with my sense of humor. Now two individuals from Danscombe have stepped [...]

Baroness’ Birthday tourney took place yesterday. It was a smallish event, but still covered all the basics. Rapier, and Heavy fighting, A&S contests, dancing, feasting, drinking, court, and merchant row. I ran a small merchanting booth selling wooden goodes (turned stuff and furniture). Since I spent most of my time merchanting, and hanging out with [...]

Tir Righ A&S Championship is over for this year. We had three full competitors, and three single entry entrants. I was a varied lot of items to judge this year. Polychrome leather work to Astronomical Navigation, to bone carving. It takes a lot of gumption to enter these contest and I appauld them all… I know what its like [...]