A good friend of mine, who happens to be a fly fisherman, had commented on some of the beautiful fly tying cabinets, boxes and stations he had seen on the Internet. So I decided that I would build one for him. The cabinet stores the fly tying vise, all of the tools and includes a wall of thread storage. I also added plenty of drawers to store feathers, hackels, fur and fish hooks.

I think if I were to make another however, I would make it using 2/4 material instead of 4/4.

I am currently in the process of moving my shop to a larger commercial location across town. This is where it all started for my business though…a 470 sq ft. shop in the detached 2 car garage of my house. When we moved to this house 4 years ago, it was nothing more than a run down garage with a rotten wooden door and exposed framing. I re-roofed the garage before I got started on the inside. The entire space was insulated and dry walled. After that I ran 60 amps from the house to a sub panel and a 1 inch gas line for a heater.

The shop has evolved over the last 4 years like most shops do. Shortly after moving in, I replaced my Delta contractor’s saw with a Uni-saw and my 6 inch Craftsman jointer with an 8 inch Delta. The shop is fairly well equipped and for the most part, met all of my needs. While working in this shop, I out sourced my finishing and many completed projects ended up living in the dining room for a few days awaiting delivery, due to the lack of space. My new shop has a spray booth, large air compressor to power the shop, a drum sander, and lots more space for finishing, assembly, and storage.

I plan on keeping the same idea of layout and efficiency that I currently have in the new shop. The cabinets along the back wall are all from sam’s club and are great for hiding away all my hand and power tools. I will post a new shop tour when I get all set up in the new space. Hope you all enjoy!

I am just now working out the details but you can expect this project to be released early this summer. It should be a fun little project with a few unexpected challenges here and there including curves, angles, and angled tenons.

The class is almost full and there are only a few spots left so if you’re in the Southern California area and you’d like to take the class,

By the way, if you’ve never been to a class like this, it’s an absolute blast. Nothing like taking an entire week and devoting it to a single project in a fun and positive learning environment. I hope to see you there!!

My grandson wanted a locking toy box to keep his little sister out of his treasures. After viewing several photos of potential designs he settled on a mission style blanket chest he found on the internet but wanted drawers. I decided to do raised panels rather than the flat panel design so there would be some detail to carry over to the drawer faces. The joinery was done with a Festool Domino on all the panel glue ups. Battens were added to the lid to insure it stays flat and the hinges are Rockler’s new torsion hinges which are a dream to install and work great. The face, ends, and back are classic panel construction. The legs are 6 quarter so provide a nice masculine feel the to overall chest. The drawer joinery is through dovetails and the drawer boxes have quarter inch Baltic birch bottoms. The two drawers on the back of the chest have gravity toggles that latch into mortises when the drawer is pushed into the cabinet. The latches are released with a special key that is inserted into a release hole inside the main compartment of the chest and the drawer pops open with the assistance of springs behind it.

This poll was created by Tom Iovino of TomsWorkbench.com.

With traditional wood carving, there is no modern technology needed. All that is needed to begin is a piece of paper and a pencil. While I’m drawing the design on paper, I visualize the finished product in three dimensions. This ability to think in 3-D allows me to pay attention to the various depths, sizes and movements in the carving. To begin on the carving, the drawing that was done on paper was transferred to the Lime Wood. I then utilized chisels of various sizes to carve the design. This sculpture is 36″ and 4″ deep carved in the style of Grinling Gibbons. Designed by myself. All work done with hand tools except for a scroll saw. The piece was left unfinished.

Carving by hand is only limited by the imaginations of the of the wood carver! Woodcarving is a form of art that only a handful around the world know how to do. There are millions of painters around the world, but not many can carve exquisite pieces of art out of wood.

If you are one of those folks who wants to begin detaching from the tablesaw, you’re going to need to find alternative methods for doing the things that we typically use the tablesaw for, such as cutting tenons. Fortunately, the bandsaw is a very good alternative.

Preparation and Stuff

To cut tenons at the bandsaw, you’ll need a few simple things:

• Realiable Bandsaw Fence – A good fence is a must for this operation. It needs to be rock solid and adjustable for the blade drift calibration. The fence should also be perfectly perpendicular to the table surface.
• Simple Miter Gauge – You really don’t need a fancy schmancy miter gauge for this. The stock unit that comes with your bandsaw should suffice. If your workpieces are really wide though, you might consider adding a tall fence to the gauge.
• Stop Block and Clamp – A stop block made from scrap wood will allow us to make multiple cuts of a consistent depth. This is crucial for getting good results. It’s also a good idea to chamfer the bottom of the stop block so that dust can escape and wont interfere with workpiece registration.
• Featherboard – A featherboard will hold the workpiece securely against the fence. Not absolutely necessary but highly recommended.

The last thing you need to do, and perhaps the most important, is to make sure your bandsaw is fully calibrated and tuned up. If you haven’t tuned your bandsaw yet, watch this video!

The Process

1. Layout the tenons using a fine pencil and a marking gauge.
2. Set up the stop block for the appropriate depth of cut, using the shoulder line as a guide. Clamp the stop block securely to the fence.
3. To cut the cheeks, set the fence so that you are cutting just outside the pencil line that is closest to the fence, keeping the blade in the waste. Remember, you can always do a little cleanup later with hand tools.
4. With a featherboard in place, make the first cut. Once you make contact with the stop block, wait a second or two before retracting the workpiece. This allows the blade to come back to its “home” position giving you the full depth of cut.
5. Flip the piece and make the second cut.
6. To cut the tenon sides, adjust your fence to the appropriate position and make both cuts. If your shoulder is the same on all four sides, you won’t need to move your fence at all.
7. To cut the shoulders, set up the stop block as a “stopped” fence. In other words, clamp it to the fence BEFORE the blade. This will allow us to make our shoulder cuts while safely releasing the off-cut into an open area. Using the fence directly would result in the off-cut being trapped between the blade and the fence, which is never a great idea. Set the fence so that the blade is cutting just inside the shoulder line, again with the blade in the waste. Using the miter gauge, cut the shoulders on all four sides of the board. You might even consider clamping the workpiece to the miter gauge for even better results. Keep in mind there is no stop being used during this step because when you see a piece fall off the board, you know you’ve gone far enough.

Your results could very well be perfect right off the saw, but you want to inspect the joint just to be sure. Using a shoulder plane and/or a rabbeting block plane, you can clean up the shoulders and the cheeks. A chisel should help you easily fine tune the tenon sides.

I recommend running a couple of test pieces to get the feel for the process. Once set up, cut all of your tenons at once for the most consistency possible. All told, this process is arguably just as fast as the tablesaw method. So if you’re looking for a high quality substitute for tablesaw tenons (that still involves power tools), give your bandsaw a shot!

Thanks everyone for making a solid effort toward improves shop safety!

Stu’s Shed – Dust, Guards/Kickbacks, PPE, Misc. Shop Safety, Safety Costs
Woodworker’s Guide – Safety Tips for the Wood Turner Part 1 & Part 2
Julien Lecomte’s Blog – Safety Week 2012
Renaissance Woodworker – Safety Week 2012 Kickoff
Tom’s Workbench – Overlooked Safety Tips
Matt’s Basement Workshop – The Accident

We often talk about workbenches as being “lifetime” projects, meaning they will likely be with us for the duration of our careers. So by nature, this is a very meaningful project. But for me, it goes well beyond that. I simply can’t look at my bench without thinking of my wife and son. Every saw cut, every plane stroke, and every hole drilled has Nicole and Mateo all over it.

Now don’t get the wrong idea. I sure as heck didn’t slack off when it came to the educational side of this project. In spite of being short on sleep and a little loco en la cabeza, I was focused like a laser beam on getting these videos completed and in the hand of Guild members each and every Friday. The end result is over 10.5 hrs of high quality instructional videos!! This is our largest Guild Build to date! The short video above is just a promotional video that we plan to use on our sales pages, but I thought I would post it on the site for all to see. If you are interested in seeing this build, as well as all of the other Guild Builds available in the Wood Whisperer Guild archive, sign up for a membership today!