The last time I used a vacuum bag for veneering the cheap Vevor pump I acquired smoked like a man with a cancer wish, and my tiny tin box took on the atmosphere of a jazz club rather than a furniture workshop (that doesn't sound too bad now that I read it back to myself, but I assure you, the aroma of burning machine oil is even worse than tobacco smoke).

The desk top is done — rebated panel, dovetailed battens, ready for wax. Which means the ancient joinery is behind me and the modern furniture making has started. The stretchers on this desk are I-beams: hardwood ply substrate at the cool price $280 a sheet, lipped and soon to be veneered, and if I'm lucky I'll get two perfectly sized strips off the one sheet to become the web of each beam. I've been veneering with clamps and cauls for years because the proper bag-and-pump setup was never worth the faffing, but the desk has enough parts that the scales have finally tipped. So I spent a day building a vacuum press instead of furniture.

A "proper" Vacupress pump runs north of two grand for the model I'd need. Inside that stylish box is an electric pump and a vacuum pressure switch. That's it. Two grand! So I built my own auto-cycling system instead — the pressure switch cuts the pump at 500 bar, then kicks it back on when the system bleeds air and the pressure drops. The switch came from Mum in the UK. Thirty-two dollars. It retails here for $290, which is the steepest Straya tax I've encountered yet, and I've encountered a few. The switch will eventually die from the electrical inrush every time the pump starts — the contacts will weld or burn out — so I wired in a four-dollar relay as a sacrificial part. It takes the hit, protects the switch, and when it goes I'll swap it for another four-dollar part in far less time than it takes to find the tape-measure.

I made a new vacuum bag too. The last quote I got for an off-the-shelf poly bag was $2,915 plus GST plus shipping. Mine cost sixty dollars in clear plastic from Clark Rubber, twenty-two dollars in high-tack acrylic tape from Bunnings, and fifteen minutes. Sealed hard on the first go. The last bag I made with PVC weld was a terrible mess and didn't even hold a vacuum. This one holds fine.

A couple of joinery display pieces went together for next month's exhibition at Hive Gallery, too — pass-around samples so people can hold a joint, turn it over, and get some sense of why a custom piece costs what it does. Hands teach faster than labels is my hope.

Next week: veneering. And possibly a drawer construction that doesn't need any glue.

—Jake