A day in the life of the Benchmark Fixperts Resident

This article was published 11 years

This week, British furniture manufacturer Benchmark‘s Resident Fixpert Maya Alvarado continues work on Mrs Ellis’ tray, learns from her mistakes and finds inspiration from some more fellow Fixperts…

06:20: I wake up and the house feels cold! I make a camomile tea to warm me up and get ready for work.

07:10: As I arrive at Benchmark, the sky looks so beautiful and full of colour.

07:15: I assemble the parts of Mrs Ellis’ food tray that I have been working on this week. Unfortunately I realise that I have routed the handle in the wrong place! This is so annoying and feels like such a silly mistake. It should have been on the opposite side of the side panel. The base and side panel have already been biscuited (joined by an edge with flat pegs) together, meaning I will have to saw them apart and make the side panel again. I unscrew the hinges to remove the top panel.

07:30: Pete helps me to safely saw the side panel off. I leave excess material on the base panel to ensure that I can sand it back to its original state to reuse.

07:45: I ask for another piece of ash from the mill to remake the side panel and Mickey helps me to get it ready. Rob shows me how to use the large sanding machine to get it down to the right thickness.

08:30: I spend over an hour remaking the side panel and as I am finishing off the grooves for the hinges the jig moves out of place and the router cuts through the edge of the panel. Mistake number two! It is a shame to be so close to completing and having to start again – again! This would be a messy hole to fill perfectly, so it is worth starting over.

09:30: I begin making the side panel again. I usually believe in third time lucky, but today it doesn’t seem to believe in me! The side panel is going well and I clamp it down under the jig to route the hole for the handle, but as I am working my way around the jig the router catches the grain in the wood and tears a large chunk off. The jig is still in perfect condition afterwards so it appears that it has happened underneath – I am not having the best luck today!

10:00: Teatime – I pester Pete about why the tear in the wood happened. He says, “these things just happen sometimes”, but I do want to improve my skills with a router and be able to spot such occurrences as they happen.

10:15: Pete suggests that I cut just above the cut and below the handle to remove most of the tear and then join the pieces back together. We glue and clamp the pieces back together.

10:45: The join has worked really well and the remainder of the tear is minimal. I use an orbital sander to blend the seam where the two panels join.

11:15: With the radius router cutter, I blend the handle hole and the tear in the wood becomes almost invisible. With a bit of wax to fill the gap, the tear will be hard to see.

12:00: Using an engineer’s square and an extra block of wood to make sure the panels are glued at a right angle, I clamp the base panel to the side panel with glue along the biscuit edge.

13:00: Lunchtime – Jo makes us all a panade, which I had never heard of before – it is a wonderful bake with bread and roasted garlic vegetables.

13:30: I take the work out of the clamps and gently blend the overhang of the joined edge using a scraper and sandpaper.

14:30: I sand the panels with a sanding block and work through different grits going up from 120 to 240 grit.

15:30: I use the wood wax to fill in small gaps. First I heat it up with a gas pen and spread the molten wax along the split in the wood. Once the wax has cooled and hardened, I use a scraper to remove the unnecessary wax sitting on the top surface. Using sandpaper, I even the surface until the wax blends in to the wood. It is such a good product – it is so hard to spot the difference!

16:15: I use Benchmark’s whitened Osmo oil to treat the ash panels. I apply one coat with a brush, using a circular motion to work the oil into the grain of the wood. Then I use a clean cloth to remove the excess oil and a dry brush to take away the build up in the corners. Having elevated them for air to pass through, I leave them to dry overnight. I will follow this up with a topcoat of clear oil.

17:00: I re-watch the brilliant FixFilm that Daniel showed me earlier in the week. ‘Armore hairbrush holder for Ellen’ is by students Ruthie Byrne, Tadhg Murray, Suzanna Crawford, Vlad Suhov and Tony O’Donnell, from the National College of Art and Design, Dublin. This was a fantastic example of how a really simple fix, partly constructed from ready-mades, can save a user a lot of time. Ellen is a part-time swimmer and only has one arm. To dry her hair after training, Ellen must switch between hairdryer and hairbrush in her right hand, taking all of 45 minutes! This intelligent hairbrush holder is formed from the top of a plastic bottle lined with a silicon mould of Ellen’s residual limb. Now Ellen can hold a hairbrush and hairdryer at the same time, allowing her to easily style her hair and saving her many hours each week. Feeling inspired, I head home thinking about possible developments for my projects.