About 4 years ago, maybe longer, I saw a show on TV–one of those non-network stations–where a woodworker made a piece of furniture that looked nothing like the “Norm”. In fact, the show made the execution appear simple, elegant, and mindless. I immediately wanted to make the coffee table. Alas, I lived in a 1850s era home that was in constant need of TLC and all spare time was dedicated to repair and maintenance.

Just under 2 years ago my wife and I moved to the country, to a 150 year younger home. I suddenly realized that I had time to build something superfluous (well by my previous standards). I started looking around for projects and advice on the internet and stumbled upon “The Wood Whisperer”. As a side note, its a great site, maybe you’ve heard of it, if not, it’s worth checking out. This site had a ton of links to David Marks’ website which, at the time still had links to the DIY network clips.

I realized David Marks was the woodworker I had seen on TV. His approach seemed simple and straight forward: mill, bandsaw, rout, sand, glue, and finish. With all those jigs he used, how could one go wrong? David made it seem as if the project practically built itself.

Before I could blink, all the Woodworks’ videos were removed from the internet, but at least I could still look through DJM’s website at the finished project photos. I found the photos of his Contemporary Cocktail Table and loved it! I taught myself the steps by reading (TWW site and FWW), listening to podcasts and watching videos. Well, that and constant home repair helps to familiarize one with tools.

Armed with a bit of knowledge, DJM’s awesome project and Sketch-up, I jumped right in. This is my first piece of fine furniture. It took almost 3 weeks to build plus sketch-up planning. I did the rough milling at a friend’s house and the band-saw and router work in my basement. The legs and aprons are cherry. The edges of the rough board went to the legs (rift) and the rest went to the aprons. The joinery is hand cut mortise and tenons. The top is 3 pieces of lacewood veneer. The back side is cherry veneer. I edge banded the top with thin strips of Wenge cut on the table saw and mitered on my chop saw. I sanded to 320 and finished with a 1/1/1 oil, mineral spirits and varnish basement blend.

The Table was presented to my sister as a house warming gift and she loved it! Now that the whole family has seen it…well let’s just say the requests are still coming in.

I sure have learned a lot. A lot more than expected! As can be seen in some of the photos:
1) Always glue up the legs before chisel work for the top begins. I had blow out on one corner of a leg where the inset is because the grain was unsupported.
2) The inside shaping of the legs should have started 2/3 the way up instead of only 1/2 way up for more elegant curves.
3) Veneers are impossibly thin and leave nothing to sand. I just barely exposed the plywood substrate on one corner and was unable to completely flatten/clean up the veneered top.
4) Sap wood – Come on man! Always popping up where I didn’t expect it. There must be an art to board selection that only experience brings.
4) What the heck is up with snipe? Getting rid of it is the equivalent to snipe hunting in boy scouts. I wasted a ton of time futzing and in the end had nothing to show for it. I learned to make my pieces longer than needed and just cut the snipe off.

Thanks for all the information. I couldn’t have done this without the online community!

A few months ago I decided to build our family of 5 a new dining table with reference to the Ana White’s Farmhouse Table plans. We knew we wanted to make the table out of some red oak that I had gotten for free, so I intended to deviate from the plans a bit. Long story short, I deviated from the plans quite a bit. The plan was to make the table essentially with free materials I was given when I began woodworking last year, but that changed when I spent several days squaring up the rough stock and realized with the tools I had, I would be squaring stock for weeks!

The first major mistake I made: jointing a crowned plank in the center of the table-top…whoops! After gluing, Kreg jig screwing, and sanding, I realized there would be no way to get the crown out of the top. So…the first table-top became the bench seat and the other half is going to be used for a computer desk in another room. After a trip to the local lumber yard, I had about $220 worth of red oak: Four 1x4x14ft planks for the legs and Seven 1x6x6ft planks for the table top.

I began by cutting the 14′ 1×4′s to length and then jointing them with lots of glue and clamps to form the legs. Next I set up the table saw to notch out the tops of the legs to receive the box. I prefer this method over using a circular saw or jig-saw as indicated in the plans. My wood-chisel cleaned things up and then I sanded, scraped using a card scraper after following Marc’s podcast on sharpening them, applied two coats of stain, and finished with two coats of wipe-on poly.

I followed Ana’s plans to construct the 2×4 base, modifying it to fit the size of my table and the specific overhang I sought. I also simply used 2×4 scraps to span the width of the box, and then Kreg jigged them to the box and table-top for support. I jointed the table-top planks using a Kreg Jig and glue. Lots of sanding and scraping again, and then I flipped the top, attached the box, and attached the legs. I used more of the 1×4′s for the skirts to hide the 2×4 box.

We decided we also wanted a built-in bench for storage instead of a free standing one to accompany the table. I followed the plan at the following site, modifying it as necessary to match the length of our table. I only built the bench and not the wall unit (http://www.thisoldhouse.com/toh/how-to/intro/0,,20301255,00.html). My mistake with the first table-top ended up being a blessing of sorts when we were looking for a sturdy bench-top.

All in all, we love it! It took a good deal of time to finish the table in part because I’m a horrible perfectionist and I’m fairly new to woodworking. The bench, on the other hand, was finished in a day.

The table is constructed entirely out of red oak and measures 6′x38.5″. The bench-top is also red oak. The bench is birch plywood and pine.

On future projects, I’d like to try mortise and tenon joinery to be truer to the Arts & Crafts movement and style. Total cost for table: $220 for wood; we already had all other supplies. Bench: $25; again, we already had most of the materials needed.

I thought the style of the custom leaded glass panel my wife designed and made would be complemented by a Greene & Greene style frame. I have framed many of her pieces and designed them to be hung in a window. This time I wanted to do something a little different and designed the piece to act as a divider between our entryway and dining room.

I made this hanging room divider from genuine mahogany. The finish is a mixture of sedona red and rich mahogany oil based stain topped with three coats of oil/varnish blend hand rubbed in. The hanging hardware is forged from 3/8″ bar stock, it is twisted in the center and a hook formed at each end. The eye hooks attached to the frame and ceiling support were formed around a 3/4″ pipe and welded closed. 16GA copper wire was wrapped around the bar and tarnished green with patina.

The triple relief in the ceiling piece was inspired by a detail from the Thorsen House dining room as shown in Darrel Peart’s book and the hidden mitered mortise & tenon corners came from Tage Frid. The pillowed buttons are made from Caco de Negro instead of Ebony.

This dining table is Arts and Crafts Prairie style to mate with a set of 6 dining chairs completed prior and also posted on Marc’s viewer projects. The table is 84″ by 43″ at standard height and seats 6 spaciously with room for at least two more diners. It replaces a smaller round table that matched the Copenhagen style teak buffet in the photo background.

I wanted to keep the buffet so I selected Canarywood for the table top since it has a bold grain and coloring that is complimentary to teak that has aged a bit. I stayed with Cherry for the table frame since it matches the Rodel design chair set and other nearby pieces. I expect the cherry frame to darken with time and improve in contrast to the top relative to the new table photos.

I used 4/4 Canarywood available locally and built up to 8/4 for the breadboard ends and for the tabletop edges to provide the massive look of Prairie style without the weight and expense of thicker material. The breadboard ends were installed with both a long base tenon and six extended tenons using a combination of techniques from Rodel and Garrett Hack. The Wenge plugs cover the screws used to anchor the breadboard to the top tenons. The legs and apron pieces are solid cherry with mortise and tenons that can be disassembled on the long aprons.

The finish is Watco Natural followed by 4 good coats of Minwax Poly wipe-on. I did just a little testing with water and wine drops and this seemed to be the best choice for me for a bit of protection.

I only have a few months under my belt in woodworking. It is something I always wanted to do but the presumed barrier to entry in tool cost kept me out of it. Of course in my head, I needed a “dream shop” full of every large power tool known to man to even consider the prospect of being a woodworker. Once I got that misconception out of my head, I was able to get started with a borrowed table saw and a few hand tools.

I’m sure like other new woodworkers, my first project was a very simple recipe box with mitered joints and I was positive that it was the most perfect recipe box ever made! OK, so it was far from perfect, but making it was enough fun that a new woodworker was born. I just kept expanding on that simple box idea and before I knew it, I was convinced I could build anything I saw. However, despite countless “oh, I could build that” conversations with my fiancé, what I continued to build were little “box-like” projects. The inspiration for this particular project came from a game I bought awhile back for my office called, “Shut the Box”. It was made of cheap materials and not particularly well done, but it looked like it would be fun to make so I gave it a shot.

To start with, the wood used in this project is Bolivian Rosewood and Wenge. I’ve found a big part of the enjoyment in my projects is the wood selection. I like finding interesting wood combinations and with exotic woods a simple clear finish lets the natural color and beauty of the wood speak for itself. Speaking of finishing, I’m even more of a novice at that than I am in basic woodworking (the more I learn the less I know kind of situation), so to keep it simple, I used Lasco semi-gloss aerosol lacquer.

Part of the challenge in a project like this is the assembly order and keeping things straight, more so than the actual cutting and joinery. For example, I used simple miter joinery but if you aren’t paying attention when you make the flippers, the wood grain will not flow together across the individual pieces. Another example would be if you glue in the sides that hold the flipper rod without actually putting in the flipper rod and flippers first, you just did a dumb thing. I may or may not know that from experience! What I am willing to admit from experience is Titebond III glue takes longer than a minute or so to dry. *wink, wink*

In addition to the visible Bolivian Rosewood and Wenge, the bottom that can’t be seen is made from a scrap piece of maple-covered MDF. The bottom side is covered with black felt. The flippers are on a brass rod and are separated by brass washers. The self-adhesive numbers are from a small clock kit. The dice rolling area is covered with kid’s crafting foam (2mm thick). It can be found at any craft store in the kid section. I first used that stuff on a dice tower and it does a great job of softening the sound of dice hitting wood. The dice tower is a pretty cool project too but if you don’t know what that is (most don’t), here is a very short video of a dice tower I made in action:

I suppose this project write up would be lacking without an explanation of how to play “Shut the Box”. The premise of the game is simple, you roll the dice and “shut” out the number you roll or any two numbers that add up to the number you rolled. An example would be if you roll a 5, you can shut out 5, 4+1, or 3+2. The goal is to “shut the box” by closing out all numbers. If you can’t close out all numbers (you roll a number that no combination of remaining numbers adds up to), you add up the numbers left showing for a final score. The lower the score the better.

This project started as a rectangular Ash coffee table to be given as a wedding present (only a year late–I had to build my workshop first! This is the first project from my new garage workshop). The original plan called for Ash with a walnut spline, but after I cut the dado for the spline and fitted the walnut in, I saw a different design. I decided to angle the walnut to give a spread wing look. The Ash is 1 3/4″ thick and the walnut is 5/8″ thick, so the two woods contrast beautifully in color and size. I routed a V groove in the ash wing to give a feeling of separation and lightness. The dado is 1″ deep, so I used oak dowels to strengthen the glue and to to give a little design to the wings.

I used reclaimed redwood for the legs, which I won’t do again. The wood is much softer than I expected and worried me, in terms of strength. Because of the disparity in size between the walnut and ash I didn’t want to use a full apron with 4 legs, so I made each leg assembly with a separate apron and 2 legs. Each of these are joined to the wings and are joined using pocket holes. I also wanted to make sure that the center was strong enough for someone to sit on, so I added support beams across the bottom that are dadoed into the leg apron. The top is finished with some boiled linseed oil and then several coats of Arm-R-Seal. The legs have many coats of poly.

Sometimes inspiration comes from broken things. My sister gave me the glass from a broken clock and said that she would like to have a lamp like the one she saw in a magazine a while ago. The only condition was that it had to be made out of birch.

After searching for the electrical parts at Home Depot, I found one of these new LED-light bulbs which matched the glass.

Up to the workbench:
First I made the base at the router table. Two stripes of wenge for a decorative touch crossing the center. For the post I made four grooves at the table saw at an 60° angle a little deeper than half the with of the blank. These grooves where filled with strips of wenge. At the lathe I turned it to the round post. The strips of wenge turned out just as amazing as I thought. For the cord I drilled a small hole into the back of the base, reaching the center of the base. After drilling the hole for the bulb fitting, I glued the post into the hole which I had previously made inside the top of the base. The finish was a few coats of linseed oil an a final touch with beeswax. It was hard for me to hand it to my sister, but it turned out to be the best birthday present she got.

As I used a LED-bulb for the lamp there is no concern about heat, it stays pretty cool although the light efficiency is a little too high for a bedside lamp. Next time I´ll use a dimmable LED.

As a student at NBSS I needed a project for my first summer off. I work part time for one of the New Hampshire furniture masters, but I still needed something interesting to keep my skills up, other then what I am doing at work.

I chose this clock as my first project. It is 100 percent my own design. The inspiration is drawn from my love for period furniture and also from details I saw in Richard Oedel (My boss) and Garret Hacks work. The hole case is hand dovetailed construction with a shiplap back. The door is wrapped in Holly and the banding is Ebony and Holly. I finished it with around 80 coats of padded super blonde Shellac to help seal and shine the piece. I then added 3 coats of Waterlox original to help protect it. It was rubbed out with deluxing compound.

While searching for a curtain or door for our bedroom walk-in closet we concluded that a Japanese sliding door, called a Shoji would be the best solution. I began drawing the first plans with Sketchup in October 2011. Since I travel a lot and could only work on the project on the weekends, it took about a year to complete.

So what is a Shoji and how is it constructed? A Shoji is the Japanese word for a paper wall or door. In many cases it consists of 4 doors that slide in a bottom rail at the floor, and a top rail. Above the top rail a non-movable blending completes the project.

Each of the doors is constructed of an inner grid of pine strings (10 x 20 mm or about 1/2″ x 1″) which are connected to each other by a half lap. 3 strings vertically and 6 strings horizontally. The grid is surrounded by a frame of bigger strings (20 x 26 mm or about 1 x 1 1/2″). The joints for the frame are mortise and tenon joints and so are the connections between the inner grid and the outer frame. Each string had to be planed by hand on all four sides and therefore needed no finish. The upper blind was constructed the same way only the grid is smaller.

The challenge with the doors and the blind is that your work has to be extremely precise because it’s a geometrical form. So exact 90° angles, exact height and width of the grids and the frames.

The bottom rail is constructed of two 20 x 60 mm (about 1″ x 3″) beams, connected horizontally by a half lap as one wasn’t long enough. The bottom rail was constructed the same way with two 60 x 60 mm (about 3″ x 3″) beams. The sliding rails were the only parts I didn’t do by hand but with a router. Planing the beams was hand work again.

Another challenge I was confronted with was how to manage the doors to slide effortlessly and smoothly in the bottom rail. The traditional way is to notch a part of the frame so that it fits into the rail. For me that seemed to have too much friction, so I tried some polished wooden balls of beech. To my surprise the friction was similar as with the notch. So I constructed metal rollers made of aluminum brackets and ball bearings usually used with roller skates. This worked extremely well. As the guidance at the upper rail doesn’t carry any weight, friction here is no matter and the notch does well.

Last challenge was that the doors had to slide parallel behind each other when opening and closing, so the rails had to be routed with high precision as well.

What worked with nearly no effort was gluing the Shoji paper to the back of the doors. The process consists of three steps. First fixing the paper at one end of the door with some tape, than applying the rice glue (it’s actually made from rice) to the grid strings and the frame. Next was covering the glued door with the paper and waiting until the glue was nearly dry. And last was to cut the overlaying paper away with a sharp knife and sprinkle the paper with water. When everything dries the paper has the right tension.

The tools I used where of very different quality. Best of all was my Kataba, a Japanese pull saw with a very thin blade. In conjunction with the suitable saw guide, I was able to produce very precise cuts which was especially helpful for the half laps of the grids and for the tenons of the frames. The chisels worked fine as well including sharpening.

The plane, one of the new Stanley’s, was really crappy. Although it has some adjusting wheels (!) to adjust the blade, I’ve never been able to get it to work with these. Eventually I adjusted the metal plane like a wooden plane with a metal hammer (ouch!). But never try this at home, it might damage the sole of the plane. From time to time I have to smooth the sole with a file. My next plane will be a wooden Japanese one (which has to be pulled and not pushed like normal).

Despite the different challenges I had to master, this project was fun and I’m really proud that I can present the results to you.

I have been creating art most of my life. I have studied with, and been influenced by artists from many different fields. Tapping into this knowledge and experience, has enabled me to create wonderful and unique works of art.

This Mirror is all hand carved from solid walnut and measures 52″w x 44″h. The ravens are all fully detailed, as are the clouds, and the foliage on the bottom. I gave the birds movement by carving “wind” around them, and bringing them more fully out of the wood itself.

I wanted to create a project that could be enjoyed in any home or office, and that enabled the viewer to feel the magic in the wood.

This is a build I did for my wife’s friend who was having twins. She had asked me to build a changing table on commission, but after many years of attempting to have a baby with IVF medical help, I told her that if she got pregnant, my wife and I would GIVE her a crib as a present. So that is what I did. On the last two months of the pregnancy, when I knew for sure that she would have her long awaited newborns, I completed her crib. The changing table commission paid for the build, which I finished a month before hand.

I didn’t have anything to really go off of except for mental images of cribs I have seen on Lumberjocks.com. I found regulations for crib slat spacing and made sure that I was well under that regulation. I used my daughter, who is now 2 but 1 at the time, as a guide for the mattress height when fully dropped to the bottom. In order to avoid making so many slats, like my very first crib, I increased the width of the main slats and added a decorative center slat that is a raised panel. This also made the slats way stronger than I had hoped. I’ve included a photo of the first crib (my daughters) that I built.

The crib is a sleigh style, my first one, that is of my own look and design. I wanted the crib to break down for easy moving and storage, and convert to a full size bed when the time comes, so I used threaded inserts with hex head bolts to hold it all together. There are four bolts per side and when the time comes for the bed to convert, they will easily remove so the footboard will extend out for a mattress.

The slats are inset in the rails, not with mortises, but with a long dado. This made construction easier and insured proper spacing with my filling pieces for the dado. It also prevented me from having to put a tongue on all the slats. It works like a charm and is a great time saver. Scrapes nice and flush with a card scraper.

I did have a slight challenge in the raising and lowering of the mattress and instead of spending a good deal of money on the metal gadget sold on the internet that has many different settings, I opted to make my own platform which has two settings. One for when they are little and down all the way for when they start standing. Simple and easy! It sits on two cleats that are attached to the side rails and the riser on the platform remove for the lowering of the mattress.

Another challenge was the sleigh style beveled tops. I had no idea how I was going to make the curve. After deciding to bevel one board at 20 degrees, it left a lot of sanding to fine tune the curve since I had increased the mating surface of the beveled board. What I should have done was bevel both boards 10 degrees (20 degrees total) which would have made the mating surfaces equal. (Learned that from TWW’s Headboard Video)

All in all, I am very happy the way this crib turned out and the red oak looks great with it’s natural hand-rubbed poly finish. Our friend wants a second crib so when the twins start to move around more they won’t wake one another. That is my spring project since it must be done by July.

This table represents the culmination of my skills thus far. When the weather changed in the north east, my un-climate controlled shop wound down to a close. I started woodworking last March. Before that I have only tinkered and never really made anything out of wood. My goal, albeit lofty, was to create a table in this style. I am quite pleased with it, but as always it is far from perfect and there is a lot I would change. I feel I utilized the really curly wood as best as I could. However if I had to do it over, I would have cut the top into 3/4 strips and used the side grain. The randomness of the grain in all three pieces is interesting, but there is no rhyme or reason to it and I find it distracting.

Materials – Ash (a lot of it curly) and Walnut accents

Dimensions – 21” tall, top is 21” wide and 24” long

Construction – Mostly mortise and tenon, the top is attached with figure 8’s

Details: Over-sized breadboard ends, edges chamfered, pinned with walnut dowels; Shallow V grooves cut into the vertical slats; Legs are tapered to a point toward the bottom and inlayed with walnut

I wanted to keep the piece “light” looking, so I added a 3 piece shelf accented with walnut. I finished it with 2 coats of danish oil, 5 coats of GF Arm-R-Seal semi gloss, sprayed. The top is buffed out with Minwax furniture paste wax applied with 0000 steel wool.

I had a lot of trouble with the top warping. It had to be cut and re-glued 3 times. This also represented a lot of firsts for me: my first time with arts and crafts anything; my first inlay of any kind; my first breadboard ends; and my first time spraying finish. I am never going back to brushing or wiping. There are no runs, sags, or brush marks at all. A very quick pass with some 600 grit was all that was required for the next coat.

The corbels were the worst for me. I don’t have a bandsaw and I’m TERRIBLE with a jig saw. About 75% of the shaping was done with some 60 grit on a spindle sander.

Overall I don’t think this is that bad. From not owning any woodworking tools at all to this in 7 months is an accomplishment for me! I also have many of you guys to thank! I can’t wait to see what I can do by this time next year!

My wife and I have been married for just over a year now, and we recently moved in to a new rental property. With a lot more space than before the place looks a bit bare, but a few pieces of furniture should sort that out. My wife, Kata, had been complaining that she had nowhere to sit while using the computer, writing, drawing or whatever else she would use a desk for. As her birthday was coming up I suggested making a desk for her.

With some inspiration from Google, a few scribbles on a piece of paper, and finally a Sketchup model, I was ready to buy the timber. This was my first experience to a timber yard. A bit scary at first but I knew what I wanted and the guys down at McGregor & Sons in Belfast where pretty helpful. I wanted to use at least two contrasting woods, two drawers and legs that were a bit ‘out of the ordinary’. I think you can see from the pictures I kept to this through out.

The legs are made of two 1″ pieces glued together. I made one and then used the pattern bit on the router to make the others identical. Once glued, I tapered them on all four sides with my jack plane. The joints for the main structure are all mortise and tenon apart from the front top rail, it was dovetailed to the top of the legs.
The drawers are hand-cut half blind dovetails at the front. (Thanks Marc for the informative video! They are anything but perfect. Some practice needed I think.) The table top is made of MDF pre-veneered with oak,framed in walnut. I felt that making this from solid wood was just a little bit out of my skill set. I don’t think it’s too bad for my first attempt at something so substantial.

This is a log bed that was requested by a friend for a Christmas gift for his wife. We hand fitted all joints, no round joints were used. The joints were cut using square mortise and tenon style joints and then hand fitted as tight as possible. It was requested that I not make a standard ladder style bed as they are common.

The actual procurement and hunt for the logs for this head board proved to be more of a challenge than anticipated. We logged nearly 100 miles of dirt roads looking for something that fit our size range and was still usable. We saw LOTS of arched trees but for numerous reasons had to keep looking. This one is actually hollow over the left side of the arch as you face the bed, which is why we had to trip the upright slightly to get it into a solid area to glue and secure it.

This is my latest carving. I start with an angle grinder and hand sand from there. This was a donation to the Memphis Child Advocacy Center for their yearly silent auctions. The size of this leaf is 14″ x 48″.

I have been carving boxes and art vessels for a while, but about 4 years ago, I started carving leaves, larger than life. This Ginkgo leaf was especially challenging, as the leaf is one I have always loved for 2 reasons: The shape of the leaf and usually the curl that comes in from the edges and the length of the stem, so delicate.

Usually, when I carve wood, I make a clay model, but this time, I really relied on nature (and will do the same in the future). I had collected many Ginkgo leaves this past fall in a baggie and whenever I got “stuck”, I would refer to the real deal.

To craft the sculpture, I needed to use a close, but straight grained wood. Yellow heart seemed to fit the bill perfectly both in color and grain. I even looked for a bit of a curve in the long straight grain of the wood so the curl of the stem would stay strong. I cut the leaf with a much longer stem, in case I had to shorten it or if it broke during the grinding and sanding process. I bought a 5.5 ft board and cut the bottom 1.5 ft off and attached it to the top. This was my “leaf”. The remaining 4 ft was the stem. I cut the shape out with my band saw, cut a hole in the “leaf” to imply where I was going to cut the curl (this clean drill process allows less sanding inside the curl) and started grinding away the yellow heart. I wear a Air Shield Full Face Mask with Filters when I pick up the grinder to work. It’s a very safe and comfortable solution. I use a very aggressive concave bit on my angle grinder. When finished, the entire shop was covered in yellow heart, about 1/8 inch everywhere.

I waited to round and lighten the stem until I was almost finished making the leaf. This way, the leaf kept it’s strength while most of the grinding was taking place. A hard lesson learned, with lots of broken stems.

After the leaf is rough carved, I start by hand with 60 grit sandpaper to smooth out the grinder marks. Power tools usually don’t come into play with the sanding, as my work is always so curvy. Air grinders and small round air sanders help with shaping the stem from square to round, then more gentle hand sanding.

At first the weight of the wood was so heavy, it was hard to mange. By completion time, it is very light. I always sand my sculptures to 2,000 grit sand paper/fabric and one of the nice benefits of this yellow heart, it allowed me to skip some grits of this process, yet yielded the same quality finish. All my pieces are meant to be touched.

I also learned that presentation is everything! By placing it on a black surface, the contrast of the wood and the boldness of the Ginkgo just made it POP!

I’m working in a 2-car garage with a need to have one car parked in the garage, so I’m always in need of space and mobile equipment. This project allowed me to have a router table and some extra storage space for my feather boards, router bits/accessories, etc. As you can see from the tabletop, I still don’t have enough storage space.

The workstation was built in 3 stages.

1st Stage: Table Saw Base
Built the mobile base for the table saw unit. I figured I would have gotten more than 1 drawer out of the unit but after building the dust collection chute, I had very little space left for more storage.

2nd Stage: Extension Base for Router Table and Drawers
I added this for more storage and created a double door to keep access for the table saw internals. I also needed this base so I could create the enclosure for the router table.

3rd Stage: Router Enclosure
As you know the router table can create a lot of saw dust so this was built and seems to work pretty well. I have a 4-1/2″ dust collection port for the enclosure and a aux 2-1/2″ dust collection port for above the table.

This is a Learning Tower that I built for my 2 year old son. He can climb up the side and hop onto the platform, which allows him to be at counter height so he can help prepare food or watch what we’re doing in the kitchen. He’s gotten pretty good at putting toppings on home-made pizza. The platform has 4 positions it can be in so as he grows we can adjust the height to minimize risk of him bending over the top side and flipping out.

The design is an exact copy of a commercial product. My wife’s friend let us borrow their Learning Tower for a few months while they got ready to move to a new house and didn’t have room for it. My wife and son really liked it so I took it apart and used it as a template to build my own using a tablesaw, jigsaw, bandsaw, and my router. Joinery is screws.

I finished it with clear shellac mixed with a few drops of tint to darken it a bit. For the most part, the project was completed with about 9 hours of effort – half of which was sanding up to 220 grit and then applying the shellac.

My wife isn’t that tall and I like to sit and chat. To accommodate these two things we had to have a stool and a small step stool kicking around in our small kitchen. I saw this plan in Woodworker’s Journal for a Hoosier Step Stool a few years ago and finally had enough confidence to try to build it.

The construction was actually pretty straight forward, a couple of mortise and tenon ladder frames that the steps got mortised and tenoned into. The seat is attached with a couple of screws through each of the top rails and with the four braces. The wood braces are further reinforced with metal angle brackets set into routed out grooves. The light color of the maple with the clear wipe on poly finish goes well with the natural hickory cabinets of the kitchen. Each time I do a project I learn something new and this project was no exception. I really like the look and feel of the maple, but you sure have to have really sharp tools to work it.

In spring 2012, Tri-Lox was invited to participate in the 12 x 12 NYC, a furniture design exhibition that paired twelve contemporary designers with reclaimed wood from twelve historic New York City sites. We were honored to be part of the exhibition, which was in conjunction with Design Week 2012. Our materials were salvaged from 131-137 Emerson Place, a storage building in historical Fort Greene, Brooklyn that saw the neighborhood’s population explore over the course of the 19th century. Fort Greene has been home to artists and writers from Walt Whitman to Robert Maplethorpe and we wanted to create a piece that paid tribute to the area’s rich literary and artistic history: hence the writing and drawing table. The wood was donated by Sawkill Lumber and delivered to our workshop as massive beams. We had the beams milled to fit the parameters of our design, though we chose to build our table around a loose tenon and lap joints, which pay homage to the materials. The tabletop itself features a live edge, displaying the natural characteristics of the wood. The piece is adjustable, hinged on two brass slides attached to the back legs of the table. We created a matching stool, but the stool’s seat is made not of the Long Leaf Yellow Pine, but instead of an Alaskan Yellow Cedar salvaged from a New York City water tower; the dark color of the seat is its natural patina, a result of its years of exposure to the elements.

We were thrilled to take part in this exhibition because it encapsulated everything we at Tri-Lox stand for: reclaiming and repurposing materials from our environment that the world would have otherwise overlooked.

I’ve been fairly active in the online woodworking community for a while but have never really produced anything I would classify as furniture. I began working on this table about 7 months ago but got sidetracked with priority shift of renovating 6 rooms in our house. A few weeks ago, I was finally able to dive back into the project and managed to finish it.

It’s clearly influenced by much of Darrel Peart’s Greene & Greene styled work as well as work by Marc Spagnuolo, Timothy Rousseau and looking at other random Asian tables builds. I do sincerely apologize to all of the above for my poor bastardized attempt to be influenced by them.

The table is crafted out of solid cherry and ebony and finished with shellac and satin Arm-R-Seal. It’s a bit orange right now, but should mellow and darken as the cherry ages over the next few years.

This was a challenging project for me as it was my first real attempt to incorporate curves into any of my woodworking. Almost every edge in this entire piece has some form of curve to it.

As much as I love Greene and Greene styled work, I think my next couple projects need to focus on a style that is slightly more efficient to build. :)

This was my first attempt at a Maloof style piece of furniture. As with many woodworkers, this was on my “must-build” list. This one is for my wife and is a petite size. The overall chair is cherry and the back braces are walnut faced and ash inside for flexibility. I am now building numbers 2 & 3. Overall this was a fun project to build and I think using Hal’s book and video, places it within most average woodworkers’ ability to complete successfully.

Hal has a unique interpretation of the Maloof rocker which is what attracted me to this design. The coopered headrest which is molded into the back legs and the flexible back braces are departures from Maloof tradition, but in my view makes a more appealing look.

From a build perspective, Hal’s approach is to do much of the carving and shaping before assembly which is FAR easier than lots of grinding on a finished chair. This helps in case you butcher a piece. You can always remake the piece, rather than ruin the whole chair.

I would encourage everyone that has this on their “must-build” list to give it a try!

I recently finished my 7th banjo. The last time I built one was over 30 years ago. Since I recently retired, I decided that a new one would be a good way to spend some of my newly found spare time.

Several years ago I picked up some very nice mahogany at our local flea market. It was lumber salvaged from the interior cabinetry of a 100 year old sailboat, which had been dismantled. The color had oxidized under the varnish to a beautiful dark red color–almost black in places, with lots of glow and figure. The boards were a full inch thick, so I picked up several planks. The wood was rift sawn, so I was reluctant to use it for a banjo, but the planks were dead flat, and if they were going to move, it probably would have happened by now.

I planed the lumber down to about 7/8″ thickness to remove the surfaces and was surprised to find the mahogany was still quite dark in color. I don’t know if oxidation can penetrate an entire plank, but I doubt it. I have some suspicion that this might be Cuban mahogany rather than Honduran. Maybe someone reading this has an opinion. In any case, the wood was finer-grained, darker, harder and heavier than any Honduran I have worked with.

The peghead and inlay is of my own design. I’m an amateur astronomer, so I included Saturn, Jupiter with three of it’s moons, a shooting star, a smiling man-in-the-moon, a double-star on the octave fret, and a rising sun on the heel plate.

I suppose the most unique design feature is the carved heel. I’ve done unicorns on the last three banjos I made. They are all slightly different, but the design seems to fit the banjo heel quite well, both structurally and esthetically. The “horn” is carved from antique ivory taken from the handle of an old table knife. It’s inset into the neck and the forehead of the beast. It was a tricky fitting job, but will never come loose. I had a scrap piece of Brazilian mahogany kicking around my shop for years. It was too small for a fingerboard or guitar bridge. I ripped it on the bandsaw into three pieces of 1/16″ veneer and bookmatched it to laminate a facing on the back of the peghead. With the left-over veneer, I carefully grain matched it and glued pieces around the back edge of the rim. The result looks like a solid piece of veneer. Not much of that nice rosewood went to waste, I am pleased to say.

I made the rim from the same wood as the neck. It was made without the use of a lathe. It’s basically a block rim, with a veneer on the outside to hide the block pattern. Fitting the veneer was a bit of work. I re-sawed a piece of figured mahogany veneer from one of the planks, double-stick taped it to a flat board and ran it through my planer to get it nice and flat and 1/8″ thick. I made a quick and dirty steamer from a piece of 3″ PVC pipe and a pressure cooker, and steamed the wood until it was pliable. I then clamped it around the block rim with hose clamps for a day, took it off and re-clamped it with glue. Then I trued the rim with a sanding drum on my drill press–using the tone-ring clamped to the rim as a guide, spinning it against a couple of clamped boards. This brought it down to the exact diameter of the tone-ring. The last photo shows my setup. A quick pass on the router table, using the same clamped-board technique allowed me to cut a perfect rabbet to fit the ring skirt.

I finished the banjo with three coats of de-waxed shellac, sanded down to bare wood to seal and fill the pores. Then I gave the banjo five coats of Behlen’s Rock Hard Table Top oil varnish, wet sanded with 600 grit wet/dry paper between coats. Finally, I rubbed it all down with a felt block, pumice and water, followed by polishing compound. The resulting finish is very nice. The pictures don’t quite do it justice. Varnish has a unique warm glow, and is remarkably durable.

The banjo sounds most excellent. Lots of ring and snap. I plan to play it open-backed for a while, but will eventually make a resonator for it. I kept enough of the boat mahogany to do the job. I play both bluegrass and frailing styles, so the banjo will do double duty.

Hello from San Diego–I set out to design “The Neptune” with some simple goals: hold the i Pad securely in all orientations, look great on the wall, and keep all i Pad functionality. I wanted to use minimal materials and create a “floating” effect by gripping only two corners. I named it “The Neptune” because it makes the i Pad appear to float on the wall, and nobody floats more stuff than Neptune, god of the sea. And because I like to say, “The Neptune.”

The Neptune comes in two pieces: the Neptune itself, which holds the i Pad, and the Neptune Mount, which is anchored to the wall. There are two brass rods in one end of the Neptune, which allows the smaller piece of the Neptune to slide out, then a heavy duty elastic cord retracts to hold the i Pad securely in place. The Neptune then has a back peg screw that slides in to a T-slot style groove in the Neptune Mount, which allows it to spin 360 degrees on the wall. This was my friend Russ’ great idea, who said, “Do it like the back of the dartboard.” The design leaves a lot of flexibility to expand on the types of mounts, so I have a lot of ideas for other mounts to do next.

I make the end pieces and the Neptune Mount using custom router templates that I designed over several months. I chose glue-and-screw for joinery, because any other type of joint I considered would have led to unnecessary waste, and I like the look of the brass screws with the brass rods. I cut the brass rods by hand, then file and polish by hand. I sand the wood with a machine and then by hand. I found a local piano shop and they do a beautiful job on the stain and finish. Then I have number of very precise finishing steps to ensure all the pieces fit together around the i Pad like a glove. For instance, the back peg screw does not exist in the right size, so I have to cut it to the right size with a hacksaw and then make very minute adjustments to fit snug in the groove of the mount.

It’s been a great learning experience, I really enjoy my new woodworking hobby and am hoping to make it in to a profession. Thanks to The Wood Whisperer for the all the great info on the website!

In 2011 my wife and I embarked on changing our wet room and bathrooms as they hadn’t been touched for a number of years. We decided to tile them from floor to ceiling and the look we were after was an expensive designer bathroom in a hotel. We did the wet room first and then set about remodeling the bathroom.

In the wet room we mounted the sink directly to the wall but in the bathroom we had decided upon a free standing bowl. I then needed to mount it on something. Then it suddenly occurred to me. I was in the middle of the Chest of Drawers Guild Build from summer 2010 (yes it was a year late!) and I could make something that used a similar frame and panel construction technique. We had already booked the builder for January 2012, three months away so if I was to make it, I needed to put everything on hold including the half built chest of drawers. Normally I would say that was plenty of time but, as always, work got in the way of woodworking and I had to limit my time to occasional weekends and 2 or 3 hours in the evening time when I could.

I got out Trimble (ex Google) Sketchup and set about designing a piece that would fit in this location. I intended building it using oak, sapele legs and a nicely figured sapele top. This was the same stock that I was using for the chest of drawers and I had plenty in reserve.

The 2 car garage shop was sharing space with gardening tools, a lot of the bathroom white goods and the half built chest of drawers, including boxes of tiles (to the ceiling), toilets, bidet, radiators, electrics, sinks and a huge tub in it’s shipping container. Fortunately I could use that container (the world’s biggest cardboard box!) as an assembly table of sorts when I put a few sheets of ply on top.

The construction is frame and panel the legs are sapele and web frames. There are two banks of 3 drawers separated by a compartment with a door. The compartment was sized so that it could store toilet paper above and below a shelf. The front area was to be tall enough to take items like bleach bottles, shampoo and the usual containers used in a bathroom. The drawers were to incorporate a centre guide similar to the chest of drawers. However, in practice I found that as the drawers were relatively small in width, they would slide easily between the web frames, making the guides essentially redundant. I kept them in purely as they also worked as end stops to keep the drawers from going in too far.

The drawers themselves are conventional hand cut blind dovetails with a ply base. I made the clearances a little wider as they have to cope with high humidity swings in the bathroom.
All the plywood is 1/4″ thick with a thin veneer of oak on just one face.

The top is made from two boards of 10″ wide sapele jointed in the centre. I left the edge square but did route an ogee along two of the edges. The other two faces were intended to be against two walls. The top is fixed on with shop made wooden clips that are free run in slots to account for seasonal variations.

When it came to making the door, I didn’t have any figured wood in stock so I decided just to put a sapele faced piece of plywood in. I plan to make another door with a nice raised panel of solid wood in the near future but the ply door is okay “for now” (so my wife tells me!)

I asked General Finishes’ advice as to which water-based finish they recommend for use in a bathroom. They no longer supply oil based varnishes in Europe due to VOC restrictions. I think that is the same in California. The finish they recommended is called General Finishes Exterior 450. At the time I didn’t have any HVLP equipment so I decided to wipe it on and was really surprised by the results. It was very similar to Arm-R-Seal in viscosity, dried quickly and had the added benefit of being very waterproof. It also has a light amber tint and brought out the grain of all the woods.

I made the drawer-pulls from some 1″ square bubinga with a very simple, but modern design to echo the pattern of some of the wall tiles. I used the table saw blade over on an angle to cut the finger slots. I then ran it over a round over bit in the router table and cut them all to length. I finished the ends again with the round over bit.

The only thing left to do was cut the slot in the base to pass the waste and water supply pipes and I was done. The drawer guides and web frame guides are lubed with wax and I had the piece finished and ready to be installed with 2 weeks to spare. The piece is free standing in the bathroom and is fixed to the wall with a line of flexible sealant. The taps are plumbed in with flexible tube couplings as is the waste pipe.

I now have to make a similar piece to go into the wetroom underneath the wall mounted bowl. I have already designed it but that is for a future post. Hope you like this one!

I have to admit, I am a bit uneasy about sharing my project with this particular group of people. I absolutely love building boats and to that end, craftsmanship can often take a back seat to eagerness to get on the water. Living in the North East section of the US, there is a limited window of opportunity to actually see your project in action and absolutely nothing is more disappointing than watching your new boat sit in a cradle for 5 months waiting for the first thaw because you put one too many coats of finish on your boat last Fall. That said, I submit myself to your mercy and share this project which has been a goal of mine for many years.

Some of you may recognize this boat as being a Whitehall style boat. I read countless old boat building books and most references on classic American craft will all have a section on these beautiful boats once relegated to hauling cargo and passengers around the harbors of Boston and New York.

This particular boat is a 14’ New York style Whitehall which I thought would make for a great day out with my 9 year old daughter. The original lines for this boat were published 75 years ago based on a design originating in the mid 1800’s. These boats were originally designed to haul heavy loads in the harbors so I softened up on the lines a bit to accommodate more typical loads of 150 to 400 lbs figuring I wouldn’t be ferrying any cargo other than human. There were a number of other minor changes to better accommodate advances in techniques and materials in the last 150 years, however I did everything I could to maintain the spirit of the original craft.

The most amazing part of this journey was the revelation that even though I have been rowing boats since the day my dad handed over the oars of the 14′ aluminum boat some 40 years ago, I had no idea what a pleasure it could be to row a boat until I pulled the oars on this Whitehall. She rides stable, fast and pulls with almost no effort at all.

So I submit these pictures and a brief detail of how this boat (affectionately named “The Blue Berry” by my daughter) was built for your review and maybe to offer some inspiration to others to build that project that has been nagging you for some time now.

The wood on this boat for the most part is only two species, Western Red Cedar for the hull and Ash for the floor boards, decks gunwales and so forth. The boat is stripped with ¼” cedar strips which are bead and coved and covered with fiberglass cloth and epoxy both inside and out. The skeg and deadwood are laminated Ash and a keel is laid from skeg to stem.

The boat is trimmed out simply with care to keep to the original spirit of the boat. Interestingly enough the trim which required the most thought in this build was the design of the floorboards. Doing the math to make sure that they are wide enough to not flex, end at the right spots so that there is no points to stub your toes on and land so that there isn’t a big gap around the edges yet still be able to get your keys if they fall between the boats was a bit more thinking than I thought it would be.

Although some seem to think it heresy to put paint over a wooden boat, I am not one of those people. Traditionally these boats were painted white with a colored stripe at the gunwale to identify the boat shop they came from. However, this is where I broke with tradition. White boats drive me nuts. Every little ding is a new touch up project. So my daughter thought this Midnight Blue paint was simply perfect to offset the Cedar hull. I have to say, I liked it more and more as each coat went on.

Well there it is. That’s my project and I hope you enjoy the pictures.

This table took me a year from start to finish. I did not work on it everyday, just when I had time.

There are 750 pieces of veneer in this table. The design for the top came from my wife and daughter. Each piece was cut by hand and placed into the walnut burl veneer field piece. The top is a torsion box construction with a 1/4 MDF piece on the top and bottom with structural pieces between them. We wanted something really different that could seat 10-12 people. Legs were constructed with frame and panel. Both of the leg assemblies have casters underneath that allow the table to be moved. The table weighs in at approximately 250 pounds. The different veneer pieces are made up of a combination of Satinwood, black dyed Pear, Amboyna burl, and Holly.

Twenty-two coats of Polyurethane were applied to the top, and then it was wet sanded to 1200 grit. There are two removable leaves at 18 inches wide. The table is 124 inches long with the leaves installed. The trim pieces that run along the edge are Walnut. I cut a side groove in them to accommodate the banding pieces into the side and made a relief cut in the top portion of them to hold the Satinwood veneer.

This double rocking chair was built for my best friend and his future wife. His parents commissioned the chair for a wedding gift along with his brothers who commissioned a matching foot stool.

Even though this chair is about as unique as you get, we personalized the foot stool and bottom of the chair seat with an engraving of his wedding invitation and wedding date. We had the engraving done on a cnc then filled it with colored epoxy using padauk and ebony sawdust.

The chair took about 150 hours, created using 8/4 Canadian Black Walnut and Brazilian Lacewood. The seat was created by laminating walnut on the top and bottom of the seat blank then after carving the beautiful lacewood grain is revealed. Other unique features include a coopered headrest, flexible back braces, and a mixture of style from the great Sam Maloof and Hal Taylor.

I made this crib about 2 years ago for my daughter to be at the time. A labor of love to say the least. (I know Marc can empathize with me here) The whole thing took about a month, but would take MUCH longer now as I used to have nothing but free time (again…Marc).

I spent most of my time designing the crib, there are all kinds of safety regulations that I wanted to stick close to for obvious reasons. I ordered a mattress frame online and decided to make the crib so that it will convert into a toddler bed and full size bed one day. I used bed frame hardware from Rockler on both sides (top and bottom) and also on what will be the foot board.

I used Sapele as my main species and all the construction is mortise and tenon. MAN, that was A LOT of M+Ts!!! I am a HUGE G & G fan and incorporate some aspect of their design in almost all my work. I used a variation of the cloud lift on all sides, which made the slats many sizes. A lot of hand sanding and fitting on this one.

Ebony plugs throughout. I designed a “tree like structure” on the foot board to add some visual interest, which has some exposed ebony dowels holding it in place. This was kind of a happy accident.

In what will be the headboard, I inlayed a tile from Motawi Tileworks, who do absolutely excellent work. I surrounded the tile with a half lapped cocobolo frame to give the appearance of…well, a frame. Glue up I remember having a challenging time keeping all of the slats square as I was clamping and ended up making what I’m sure now was a way too elaborate jig to solve the problem.

Everything was sanded to 220 grit and then a washcoat of shellac with trans tint brown mahogany for color matching was applied. I followed with 5 coats of amber shellac and 2 coats of wax to keep the whole thing non-toxic.

The crib came out beautiful and is admired by all that see it. The only thing more beautiful is what we ended up putting in it!

The inspiration for this project was my wife. I’d been playing around with a few jewelry cabinet designs and sketches for her for a while. I knew I wanted to use bubinga and maple, but for the functional design, I tried to think of what would work for my wife. She definitely prefers not to open (or at least close) little doors and drawers, so I figured it had to be primarily open for use. In the end, I wound up adding a few drawers anyway, but I think they will be more for storage of rarely used items. Her every day stuff would be stored in the open.

Necklaces hang from the eight hooks at the top, and earrings (stud and hook) can be stored just below them using the exposed slotted bar and the black ring bar. The two top boxes will likely hold the less used pieces, the empty space under the mirror is for pictures or perhaps other small jewelry or ring boxes. The bottom three drawers were basically needed to complete the look I wanted for the piece and we all know that a few more drawers for storage is always good. There is an integrated french cleat that makes up part of the back when the piece is sitting on a table or dresser, but can be removed and mounted on the wall if you want to hang the cabinet.

I was going for a bit of an asian/arts and crafts blend and think that comes across. There is a slight curve in the top rail and the sides. In hindsight, I wish I had made the curve a little more obvious.

The cabinet measures about 20″x 20″x 6″ and is definitely my most detailed piece yet, comprised of 16 sliding dovetail joints, dozens of pieces, and dozens of mortise and tenon joints. The two top boxes with the lift lids are all made with 1/8″ dados, rabbets and tenons (finicky router table work). I’m not sure of the actual time spent on this. I started sketching on paper at least three years ago and finally got started with real sketchup designs about a year ago. If I had to guess, I’d say over a hundred hours, but hopefully less then two hundred :).

I was just waiting for the arrival of our first granddaughter to build a cradle. I’ve had this pent up desire to do this for years, and when the news came of the pending addition, I had to get serious about a design decision. I knew the basic shape that I wanted included a swinging pivot, but it took a while to decide on the rail style. I was either going to turn spindles or go with a mission style. Ultimately I chose the mission style, as the wood I choose was white oak. Instead of mortising the rails I choose to use a groove and filler pieces. The construction was easier and I went with the spacers cut just a bit proud, a simple sanding brought them level with the top and bottom rail.

The final two tests were “mom’s” approval–which was a breeze. As you can see, Maggie is a tougher inspector; perhaps it’s her angle of view?

A good friend gifted me an antique pie crust table. With laminated legs separated, blistered veneer, and failed joinery, it was a complete re-do. Once the finish was stripped complete, I re-assembled and made all necessary structural repairs. The blistered veneer and getting it to look good, which was my biggest concern, was all that remained.

After cruising the inter-web for helpful tips and tricks, I came across a video titled “Router-Based Inlay” introducing me to The Wood Whisperer himself. Thanks to Marc, I was able to endeavor into this as a solution with sky high confidence, minimal trial and error, and an overall understanding of this technique.

Carefully considering the location of the damage and shape of the table, I laid out my rose. Then I chose several species that best fit the design. Bloodwood Rose pedals and thorns, Walnut stems, and Maple leaves. Keeping track of so many pieces can be hectic. I found it useful to create a highly overly-complicated hieroglyphic systematic process (Which I won’t go into) to coordinate each part into the design. And to top it all off, I found a reason to get a cool pair of magnifying goggles and a really tiny bit!

Greetings from Europe! For the regular TWW-Readers all over the world, here I want to show you a project from good old Europe. From Austria to be precise.

This desk I built for my wife and it’s meant to be a sewing desk. It’s made from beech, out from rough lumber. The design is a mixture of traditional styles you don’t see very often in these modern times in furniture stores, except maybe as cheap imitations made somewhere in China out of “wood” durable as pressed paper. Originals you only find in historical buildings or if you had the luck to inherit it from past generations. Sure, you can order it from a professional cabinet maker, but not for reasonable prices I guess. A long story short: I like this style and so does my wife and it was attractive to build.

All the joints are classic, traditional wood joints: mainly mortise and tenon joints, dovetails, and sliding dovetails. Some of them I made with hand tools only, others with additional machinery help. The finish is two layers of oil and a final coat of wax, rubbed in by hand. If you are interested in the process of making the desk, you can find a bunch of pictures on my website. Although the text is in German–again, I’m Austrian– there are so many pictures you’re sure to get an impression.

Ever since I read Chris Schwarz’s book, The Anarchist Tool Chest, I became obsessed with hand tools. Just over a year ago I purchased my first Lie Nielsen and now have several more. I have been scouring EBay and a few other tool sites picking up vintage tools. During the spring of 2012 I knew it was time to build a storage cabinet for my collection. I thought about a tool chest but after watching the Marc Spagnuolo series on the wall hanging tool cabinet, I decided this was the best option for me.

I basically followed Marc’s plans with a few changes of my own. The cabinet and door frames are made from red oak purchased from Sweetwater Lumber in Austell, GA. I used dovetails for the joinery on the corners. I picked up some ¾ inch ply for the back panel and ½ inch ply for the door panels. I also made my doors a bit thicker in order to hold tools on the back of the door panels. I used oak scraps to make holders for each tool, along with a few dowels and magnets. Piano hinges connect the door to the cabinet. I applied a coat of BLO/shellac/alcohol and then 2 coats of straight shellac.

I had to remove a 4×4 foot section of my pegboard, use concrete screws to attach a 2×6 to the block wall for support and then reattach the pegboard. A French cleat system went through the pegboard into the support. This was the first time I have used the cleat and I am very impressed with the strength. I am very happy with my tool cabinet. It has a little room to add a few more tools in the future. I filmed a 3 part video series on the project, the first one is here.

My friend had some small pieces of exotic wood that were too small to use for anything by themselves. So I gathered up all the pieces and mixed and matched as best I could and came up with some Palm Boxes to be given out as small gifts when we are out visiting during the holidays. I did this last year and it was very warmly received. I counted over 12 species of wood that I could identify and some I couldn’t. When they were paired in contrasting colors and in varying shades, the result was some very nice looking pieces.

Once the proper dimensions are cut (approximately 3″ x 6″ finished), the joinery is nothing more than careful butt joint glue ups. The stock used was 1/2″ and 3/8′s thick. The lids are pinned in by 1/8th brass rod which seems to do the trick nicely. A careful sanding, working my way up through the grits to 220, then two or three coats of water based spray polyurethane. After the pieces dry, I use steel wool to smooth out the surface and apply a couple of coats of wax. They are all very soft to the touch, which everyone comments on. The box bottoms are then lined with some felt, filled with candy and wrapped in a ribbon and the piece is complete.

This is an excellent way to use wood that is just too beautiful to throw out, and too small for anything else. Plus, it is a fun way to justify some shop time around the holidays. I hope you like them.

Credit for the main design must go to Marc S. and his Gadget Station Project which was such a balanced design that is hard to come by these days, amazing legs!
I saw the pictures and videos of the gadget station and I was a few months away from my final project. I decided to recreate Marc’s “masterpiece” with my own ideas for change. So I scaled it up, but made it much larger (more like a liquor cabinet) and drew it in sketch up. The handles I changed to curve the same as the legs and the door construction is a bit different as well as the interior which has only one shelf with a fixed divider on the bottom, but all in all very much the same.

Anyway, I could ramble on about how much Marc’s work inspired me to recreate this but I will cut this short…Thank you Marc S. for all your great work and sharing of passion and knowledge!

We first had to get the 2×4′s and cabinets level in ALL directions, (Refer Marc’s podcast #18 & 19). Take your time here this is the most important part of the build. We used hot glue on the shims once it was all set up so nothing moved.

Once the grid was finished I added 3/4 plywood (3 deep) to each grid pocket so my assembly table/bench can have dogs, be hammered on, and it added a lot of weight (about 500 lb.), you don’t need to do this, but I’m very glad I did.

Added sides and 1/4 hard board; NO GLUE so this top can be replaced in the future once it gets worn.

The top was built where it was easy to get around all four sides and when it was ready to be put into place I had a party to move it…remember its a 500 lb. top!

Applied 3 coats 50/50 wipe on polyurethane/mineral spirits, 2 coats straight wipe on polyurethane, 2 or 3 coats of wax, makes some draws, vice and have fun.

I do wax it whenever…I just put it in rotation along with my other tools for maintenance.

The inspiration for my project was Chris Schwarz’s Tool Cabinet / Dec. 2004 Issue #145 / Chapter 41 “Arts & Crafts Tool Cabinet” from Hand Tool Essentials book. The problem with Chris Schwarz projects is that they remind you that you are not Chris Schwarz; I can’t even grow a beard. This project took me forever, not just because I am slow and a novice, but because I gave up woodworking no less than 3 times during the process. This project has a difficulty level of intermediate, and as it turns out, I’m not an intermediate level woodworker. I bit off way more than I can chew. Who knew? I kept seeing this cabinet turn up in books and magazines and just fell in love with it.

This is the first time I tried something anywhere close to this and ran into trouble every step of the way. I really had a hard time getting everything lined up properly. Those dadoes that hold the shelves weren’t all that on, and I got a bit of a bow in the carcass. If you look close, you may see that the vertical openings lean a tad to the left.

Other problems: I was disappointed with the color contrast between the maple and cherry. The shellac turned the panels orange, so I sanded them down and used a water-based finish, thanks Marc! But still what I wanted. The door panels were put inside-out, so there’s a small gap on the outside vs. the inside. Because the shelves weren’t exactly straight and even, fitting the drawers was murder. You can see they stick out a bit, and the reveal is sloppy all around. The right door doesn’t close all the way. The left door sits in from the side of the carcass.

I machined the dovetails for the bottom and the 2 larger drawers. I tried my first hand-cut dovetail and cried from shame. I decided to use a trick I saw in a magazine where I used a 14 degree router bit and cut the 2 tails. Then I laid out the pins and used the cheat guide from Veritas, pictured, and it helped a bunch. I still plan on learning how to do it without the guide, but I really needed the training wheels for this one.

There are small gaps where I notched the sides of the shelves, so I just shoved a wood chip in and hope no one notices. The backing strips used to hold in the glass panes I used were too large and kind of stick out.-oops.

Things I learned: My workbench that I was so proud of must be burned. It is completely inadequate. I now know where the phrase, “blood, sweat, and tears” came from. I am not as patient as I thought/need to be.

I plan on making the additional chisel holder and saw holder when I get a set of bench chisels and a western saw. My next project should be simpler. I could really use a “win”, if you know what I mean.

This is a wooden rack and snail striking grandfather clock of my own design. The clock was inspired by Clayton Boyer, a fabulous wooden clock designer in Hawaii. After building several of his designs, I was determined to build and design my own clock. The clock uses a rack and snail chiming mechanism to count and chime the hours. Everything except the shafts and weights are made of wood. The solid wood pieces are mahogany, and the gears are aircraft-grade mahogany plywood.

I have a toddler at home, so the time I had to work on this project was rather sporadic. The rough design took about seven months, and it took another eight months to build. I went through three design iterations before I had one that worked reliably. The clock runs for about 28-hours per wind, and although it is still settling in, it keeps pretty good time.

The clock frame is finished with two coats of dewaxed shellac, followed by two coats of brushed-on General Finishes Enduro-Var Water Based Urethane. (I am extremely happy with the results of the finish!) The gear faces are finished with four coats of dewaxed shellac. The gear profiles are left unfinished.

Once the prints are refined, I’ll most likely make them available for free if anyone is interested.

We had a metal set of stocking holders we bought when our first daughter was born. With our second daughter here, I was not able to find the same style that we had to add another holder. But then I have wanted to build something for a while. I looked online for ideas and surprisingly, I could not find much of anything for stocking holders made of wood.

I had some leftover Jatoba from a rocking horse I had built for my first daughter and a PC dovetail jig I bought new a couple years ago and had never used. I had never made a dovetail joint before.

The decorations on top are from ideas I saw on line and are made of poplar. My wife and kids helped decorate the tree and presents. The hook for the stocking is just some stuff from my father’s collection. They worked great, but I do need to add the weight to them, just never got around to it. If I were to do it over again, I would definitely use maple for one piece and Jatoba for the other to get the contrast in the dovetails. Otherwise, I am very happy with the results. These are heirlooms I hope to be around for generations.

These were my holiday gifts for 2011. I believe they made the hit parade with everyone! The unpainted objects you see are for future gifts, that is if my wife will let me give them away. The large cat carving in the background of one of the pictures is not mine. The height of these range from 2″ tall up to 6″.

I also included a couple other previous carvings. I enjoy carving as well as other types of woodworking. My shop size is a small, a 16′x 16′ converted shed. No electric service except running a couple heavy duty extension cords from the house. One for my lights, TV and radio and one cord to run my power tools. I have to make sure that I don’t turn two things on at the same time. I have to turn off my heater when I run a tool. But that does not discourage me, I know someday I will connect service to my panel. The main tool I have is a “Shopsmith” Mark V. It seems to be more of a hobby type tool, but it has served me well. I have used it for building my kitchen cabinets and many other furniture projects around the house.

First, the quick back story. I was married in 1984 and divorced in 1988. Honestly, I never stopped loving her. So imagine my surprise when, about 2-1/2 years ago, I got a friend request on Facebook from her. We started talking on the phone and the next thing I know, I’ve moved up north and things are going fantastic! Her name is Dawn (which one meaning is sun goddess) and she loves boxes, sun’s, and the color purple.

My first plan was to build her a “memory box” for Christmas, but then decided to make it a “blanket chest” instead. I messed around with designs and came up with one I liked. When I asked TWW, Marc, a question about my design he mentioned a major flaw that I had not noticed. This caused a complete redesign which is when I decided to inlay purpleheart in the shape of a sun in the lid. Why not? After all I had all the time in the world… Christmas was still 2-3 weeks out and I have done…well…zero inlay work ever! In fact, I hadn’t done a woodworking project like this since high school. But hey, since the design was done it will fly. That was the second flaw in my design.

So many hours, curse words, cuts and scrapes and a couple of visits to the TWW chat rooms (Many thanks to those there who helped me. Sorry I don’t remember names but I was in a major panic by the time I got to the chat rooms), I managed to get it done by Christmas morning. Well, almost done. It was assembled, the sanding almost complete, but no finish.

I wanted the finish to be special and I wanted the grain to really stand out. so I decided on french polishing. And why not, just like everything else on this project, I had lots…some…a little…OK, again zero experience with it! Many hours of research led me to Vijay Velji and I bought his DVD which I highly recommend. It answered almost all my questions in a straight forward way. I can honestly say that it turned out flawless, well OK not exactly flawless, but pretty darn good!

Overall I’m very pleased with the finished product and more importantly, my girlfriend absolutely loves it. There are more than a beginners’ share of mistakes in it, but all in all it looks very nice. I learned a ton and look forward to undertaking more projects in the future. I’m also continuing to work on my french polishing technique as the finish is amazing looking. Thank you Marc, and again to the people on the chat lines.

Here are a few pictures. Rails and stiles are cherry and the center stile in front is purpleheart. Panels are African mahogany and the lid is mahogany and purple heart. Corners are mitered with 4 biscuits on each. The panels as well as the aromatic cedar bottom float. The inlay work was all free hand with a router. I resawed the purpleheart to 1/4″ for the inlay and followed Marc’s procedure from his inlay video. This was especially valuable and saved me from making major mistakes. For the finish I went with blonde shellac. Light on the inside with none on the bottom. I went heavier on the outside and crazy heavy on the lid. Many hours of burnishing later, it actually started to look like I knew what I was doing. The torsion hinges are from Rockler and they are nothing short of amazing. They hold the lid in any position so no smashed fingers around here. I did have to do a small mortise for them since I made the frames 7/8″ and the hinges are for 3/4″.

As usual, I tend to get in over my head and this project was no different. Read on…

The Mariner’s Compass is a pattern well know in the quilting community. My wife made a beautiful quilt with this pattern as the highlight and I have always liked it. So I thought, why not try it out of wood?

The frame (4 sides) of the base is made like cabinet frame using Kreg blind screws. Yeah, I know it’s not real joinery, but I’m on a learning curve. The table is 21″ x 35″ x 18″. All of the wood is finished to 3/4″ thick. The sides of the base are connected to the 45 degree corner pieces with glue. Setting up a gluing jig (which looked more like a jungle of clamps and pieces of wood) was a challenge. Since I am limited by my 6″ jointer, the bottom shelf is 3 pieces of Peruvian walnut glued together with a splined joint. The bottom shelf is supported by dadoes in the 4 legs and is free to float. The main part of the table top is clear alder with a Peruvian walnut border. The pieces of alder are glued with a tongue and groove joint (I was experimenting) and the walnut frame is tongue and groove attached to the alder. The frame is mitered at the corners and then rounded. The alder ribbon inlay in the top was done with a 1/8″ router bit and the inlay pieces were done on my table saw.

Now to the interesting part. The inlay pieces are maple and Peruvian walnut and started out 1/8″. I cut them on my table saw using my home made sled with 400 grit sandpaper fastened to the surface with double sided tape so that the small pieces (and my fingers) would not slip while cutting. I started with the big pieces, glued them together and worked my way out. There was a lot of trimming and re-cutting each piece until they fit well. I am really glad that all the inlay are straight lines. Once the compass was all glued together, I traced the outline on the alder with a scribe and used a router to roughly cut out most of the area to a depth of 3/32″. Then it was just hammer and chisel work. I was delighted with the initial fit. I had very little trimming to do. Now I had to sand the surface of the compass down to the level of the table. I am embarrassed to admit this, but the first table top was ruined at this point. While using my orbital sander on the compass, starting with the tips of the compass and moving in, I did not realize that a part of the sander was always over the center of the compass. Without realizing it, the center of the compass was being dished out (concave). I sanded right through the center of my inlay.

Back to the lumber yard. This time I made the inlay a little thicker and did the inlay after gluing the top together and before sanding. I then found a local woodworking group with a time saver sander and for a couple dozen doughnuts, I sanded the top and the inlay at the same time. I love that machine! The entire table is finished with 5 coats of water based polyurethane. First time I ever used it, but I am happy with the finish. That’s my project. Thanks for the chance to share my experience.

This is a project that I have wanted to do for a very long time. It is a Live Edge dining room table made of Black Walnut. You will notice in some of the pictures that starting from the time of loading the rough cut wood into the trailer, that this was not your ordinary project. I have never worked with pieces of wood that took a tractor to load. Nevertheless, it has been THE project I have always wanted to do.

When I first got the load home, it took me and a neighbor (he did not know what he was getting himself into) to move the lumber into my shop. Once there, I found out that it is a lot harder than it looks to joint and plane 18 inch wide boards. I ended up making a router sled for them to lie in. This type of planing is the biggest mess that I have ever had in my shop. The shavings were literally up to my ankles and covered my shop table and sled.

After getting the tops close enough to flat for me, I then had to decide on how to put them together. Note that the slab in the center is a lot narrower that the outer pieces. This is because the outside 2-3 inches of the slabs is the whitish sap wood. I did not want the sap wood in the center, I wanted the same dark wood all the way to the edge. The center slab is 12” wide. This allowed me to send it through the planer and gave me a good flat reference for the two sides.

I had the hardest time deciding on the base. Of course I wanted to make it 100% out of wood; however my wife had an idea to combine the wood and steel. After spending a lot of time on Sketch-up, trying to figure out a design that worked for both of us, I came up with this design. The base is made up of 2”x2”x1/4” angle iron. I cut the steel at the predetermined 41 degrees and welded it together. Once I had the entire frame completely welded up, I got my dad to take it to his work and he had some “real” welders go over my work. They were not very impressed with my welding, but what can I say, I’m a woodworker!

Once I had it all complete and assembled, I began to finish it. I first applied about five good coats of General Finishes Seal-A-Cell to the top with a sponge brush. I then covered it with about five coats of General Finishes Arm-R-Coat. After applying so much to the top, I sort of lost track of how many times I did it. In between each coat I buffed the top with #0000 steel wool, except after the final coat.

After everything was finished, I had to invite my family over to help me move it. It weights in somewhere around the 300-400lb mark (just a guess). I do plan on getting a scale under it one day.

Anyway, I started working on this project in June of 2011 and finished it January of 2012. Of course I started and completed several other projects in that same time, so it was not continuous, but it stayed in the shop for a long time. The final dimensions are 46” wide (at the widest end), 69” long, and 30.5” tall (to the top).

I hope you enjoy this project as much as I enjoyed making it. Although, I don’t think I’ll make another one…Happy Woodworking!

This project was completed in 4 days and ended up being a lesson in “why not to settle for plywood thinking it will save you time at the jointer/planer”.

Working with purpleheart for the first time, all that I knew about it was that I had to be extra-cautious with the dust as it is a strong sensitizer. It turns out, this wood is also very dense and wears down chisels, scrapers, and planer blades almost as bad as lignum. The oil binds to router bits and saw blades and I ended up soaking the blade nightly just to deal with the buildup. It also oxidizes rapidly and develops a pasty white powder coat if left exposed for more than a minute. However, it is a beautiful wood and the grain and color that popped when I applied the first coat of finish made it all worthwhile.

In hindsight, it would have been better to have used solid maple instead of the birch ply so that it could have all been planed down together, making the surfaces more flush.

Our granddaughter fell in love with G-Ma’s dressing table and HAD to have one. The picture she sent from the internet was nothing like the one I had built for my wife….hmmmmm!

Anyway, the table is built of solid poplar and painted with milk paint and top coated with General Finishes’ High Performance Poly. Sanded out with 600 grit then with 0000 steel wool.

This was my first (possibly last) attempt at cabriole legs. I did a prototype prior to settling on the final forms. The stool is a shortened version of the table legs with the same contours. The drawers are jointed with half blind dovetails and the drawer bottoms are the only plywood in the piece. The table top drawer cases are aligned with Dominoes and attached from the bottom with screws. The table drawers have wooden dovetail center drawer slides that I fabricated myself rather than trying to find pre-made metal ones to fit. The legs use standard corner saw kerf positioned braces and hanger bolts to affix them to the table skirt. The table skirt has an antique bead detail and the table edge is a round over with a 1/8″ reveal. Interestingly, the edge of the reveal caused the shellac seal coat to hump up and when I was sanding the milk paint between coats, I got burn through. Lesson learned there on sanding after you seal coat…need to knock down the edge hump or be prepared to deal with thin finish on your sharp edges.

The mirror frame is assembled with Dominoes for corner joinery. The mirror can be replaced by removing the back panel which is attached with screws. My granddaughter picked out the “jeweled” knobs at Target.

The best part of the project was her reaction when we unpacked, assembled and placed it in her bedroom. She put her hands on her hips and looked at it as she exclaimed, “This is the best day of my whole life!” Big statement for a 6 year old to be sure. Being a grandparent is the best job in the Whole World. :)

After buying a few tools (my 10 yr anniversary present) and as a newbie hobbyist woodworker, I figured I needed a good workbench (the folding table just wasn’t cutting it). Like many of you, I have a very limited amount of space (12’ section of garage wall to be exact) and with that limited space, I needed to design a workbench that would serve many needs: bench, assembly table, storage, etc. It had to be mobile and very sturdy since I work out on the sloped driveway. The idea behind it was not only to be functional, but also to utilize as many new (new to me) techniques as I could. I figured practicing those techniques on ‘shop’ furniture was the best option. After looking at many designs, this is what I came up with.

The bench is 39.5” tall, 32.5” deep, and 60” wide. It is a roughly estimated at 600 pounds when loaded (OK, so I went a bit overboard). The vises are old Wilton woodworking vises I bought from Craigslist for $30 each. They are 10” wide with 12” travel (9.5” after installed).

The base is two layers of Baltic birch with a support grid underneath. The posts are just 4×4 pine posts from Lowe’s. As a newbie, the joinery here was probably my most difficult task. Design wise, I didn’t want the bottom to stick out beyond the posts, or the sides to be just tacked to the inside taking up more valuable space. Matching up multiple rabbets and drawbore mortise & tenons with long heavy pieces and keeping it square proved very humbling. Not having perfectly planed posts didn’t help.

The interior is all 3/4 plywood joined with dadoes and all edged with 1/4″ oak. I do not have a good setup for routing out dadoes or an out-feed table, so I had to build a second crosscut sled specifically to cut the dadoes for the larger pieces on my table saw.

The top is two more sheets of Baltic birch, then a top layer of MDF & hardboard puzzled with oak runners (for the dogs). The surrounding trim is oak. Also, the entire top layer is designed to be able to lift out and be replaced if I ever need to. I didn’t want to waste the space underneath the two vises (which I got for $30 ea off CL!), so I made pass-through shelves for each. That way I could still have storage beneath.

Doors and drawer faces were put on the front for appearance since my garage is also the kids’ rec room. The back is left open with additional shelving. The front posts have removable plugs for board jack holes and the dog holes were made with a 3/4” Forstner bit. The whole bench is mobile riding on 4” lockable casters. I base coated everything with a 1lb cut of shellac, then two coats of Minwax Red Mahogany 225. I finished with multiple coats of General Finishes EF High Performance Polyurethane.

This is step one of a 3 step project for my shop. Next will be to build some wall mounted cabinets and a pegboard cabinet. Then I want to build a mobile base to join my table saw and router table together.

Pen turning has to be my new favorite wood working project. You can work with few tools and any type of wood, or in some cases, no wood at all! Pens have quickly become a favorite Christmas item and have begun to sell quite well.

I started woodworking at a very young age, playing in my dad’s basement workshop. That grew into the shop class in high school which is when “the bug” really bit! Although it has always been a passion of mine, it has always remained a hobby, until recently. The more I build, the more I seem to get noticed. I started turning pens about two years ago. I was looking for something small that had a faster turnaround time than the larger pieces I wanted to build. With very limited shop time, the pens were something I was able to go from start to finish in an evening.

The kits I use are available through various suppliers and the turning material choices are endless. I turn wood, acrylic, custom cast epoxy, and perhaps my favorite, deer antler.

Much like a sculptor, you never really know what is going to come out of the blank until it is turned. You are really only limited to the diameters of the ends of the pen. My favorite by far are the fountain pens. I find that I lean toward making them the most. Fountain pens tend to garner the most attention and therefore, sell at a higher price point.

Finishing the pens can be the trickiest part. I use between 3 to 13 costs of ca glue on all my pens. If you know how fast that stuff dries, you can imagine the challenge. The finish is then sanded starting with a 600 grit then micro-meshed through 12000 grit. I follow up with automotive scratch remover and a coat of wax before they are carefully assembled.

My favorite piece by far, and the prize of my collection is the Bluenose II pen made from a piece of the original Bluenose II that was re-launched in September 2012.

My friend wanted a cedar cabinet for her sweaters and it had to fit in a particular spot in her house. She wanted a simple design and at a specific height. Since I had the overall measurements, I thought it would be simple enough. I was wrong. This is the first furniture project I’ve done from scratch. Quite the learning curve. I usually at least start with someone else’s plans. Thanks to Marc and all the information I have gathered from here over the years, it was fun pulling out the blank piece of paper and pencil along with sketch-up and laying out the entire project before I even thought of cutting any wood. “Thanks Marc”, I highly recommend to all out there in designing your own project.

Another thing I ran into is the finish. I didn’t want to use an oil base stain because of the smell that sticks around. Not good for sweaters! I looked for a water based, dark stain, but couldn’t find one I liked so I tried the Oil/Poly gel stain from general finishes. Georgian cherry. I loved it. Because the stain only sits on top of the wood, the smell was gone in about a day and that was after 3 coats. I liked it so much I’m going to use it again asap. Well, I liked the way it all turned out. Any feedback would be appreciated, I’m always willing to improve my skills. Thanks again for your web site Marc. IT ROCKS!

This quick little project was perfect to fill in the dead time while watching varnish dry on another big project. I have been collecting corks for some time now and using scrap 1/2″ ply, created a backer board of appropriate size. I built a little jig for my miter sled to SAFELY rip the corks to the same thickness (in hindsight, I should have also done it for again for width so they lined up perfectly). Then it was simply a matter of gluing them down, trimming off the overhang, and making a simple frame from some 3/4″x4″ red oak scrap. I used a tung oil-like wiping finish (the pictures were taken before the wipe-off so it may look a little uneven, but it turned out perfect). Marc’s tip on the use of painters tape hinge when gluing up a frame was invaluable!

I used to shape surfboards while in college at my apartment in southern California with my brother, who is also an avid surfer. So when I started getting into woodworking, I figured I would try my hand at making a hollow wooden longboard as a gift for him. I bought the frame from a company specializing in wooden surfboards, and is made from 1/4″ Mahogany ply, but for my next board I will cut these out myself. It was just a bit easier to do it this way for a first attempt at a board.

The ribs and spar of the frame were first assembled in the correct order, adjusted to make sure they were straight and at 90 degree angels to each other, then hot glued to a sacrificial table. The deck and base of the board are composed of ~3/8″ x 1 1/2″ strips of Redwood and Paulownia, with each strip glued to ribs and the adjacent strip. The board was then rough cut into the general final shape, and the rails of the surfboard were attached by bending and gluing long thin strips of Redwood and Paulownia to the outside of the rough cut shape. This gives a large, thick piece of solid wood surrounding the whole board, which was later shaped by hand using chisels and a belt sander, into the proper shape for surfboard rails. Nose and tail blocks of layered balsa and redwood were then attached and shaped by hand to blend into the rest of the board. It was finished with 2 layers of 6 oz fiberglass on the top and 1 layer of 6 oz on the base, and several coats of glassing and polishing resin.
Took it out in San Diego and it rides great!

This was my first harpsichord to build, but not my first musical instrument. The harpsichord was a wonderful project that I thoroughly enjoyed building. It was sold a couple of years ago but I wanted to share it.

It is is a small, lightweight, and very portable single manual harpsichord. Custom wooden jacks and figured naturals with Corian tops on sharps. The dimensions of the harpsichord are: 64-1/2″ long, 29-1/2″ wide, and7-1/2″ high.

Whenever I tried to do rip cuts (by hand) on my Schwarz/ Pop Woodworking style Saw Bench, the saw would hit the splayed legs, so I would try to move the wood out further from the Bench Top and it always felt awkward and unbalanced. I got to thinkin…what if we could have a split top Saw Bench with no top connectors to have to avoid? This is what I came up with.
It’s made from milled HD construction grade mystery wood and some scraps of poplar. The key to the rigidity of the bench is the Draw Bored joints to the two bases. I did also add some holdfast holes in the top and blocks under the holes for a little added thickness where needed. This thing is rock solid and both rip and cross cuts are now a lot easier to control.

A friend of mine wanted a cutting board he would always leave on his brand-new stone counter top. He wanted it BIG : 26″ x 18″. And he wanted it to stay in place on the edge of the counter. So I built the board as I usually do (using Marc’s method) but I framed it in walnut, with the front lip wider so it would act as a stopper. I also made the rest of the frame 1/4″ wider than the board thickness to hide the small rubber feet I always use under my cutting boards to keep them from sliding around. As usual, I finished it with Naturoil that I mixed with bees wax for the last coat. That way I can buff them to shine a bit!

My project is a tool chest and it’s a present for my brother-in-law. He’s a pattern maker by trade and has a bunch of hand tools he uses in his job, so I hope he finds the chest useful. At his shop he has opportunities to buy used tools that retired pattern makers or other people are selling. Sometimes he has to buy whole sets of tools and if he gets a tool he already has, he’ll give it to me. He also helped me get my used lathe and scroll saw at a very good price from his shop’s repairman. So I thought I would try and make him something special by hand carving his name and the plane into the lid panel. After I got it together and painted, I noticed that I didn’t get the carving and the lettering straight and square with the rest of the case. Oh well, when you screw up carving something you can always get away with it by calling it “Folk Art”.
I got the plans for the tool chest from Woodsmith magazine. The case is made with through dovetails and I used my router and router jig to cut the dovetails. However, my router jig is much smaller than the case, I have the Porter-Cable 4212, 12 inch jig and the case is 16 inches high. To cut the dovetails I followed the article that was in Wood magazine. It describes how to remove the template from the jig base and attach it to some spacers so you can cut through dovetails of any length. There is also a video on their web site that shows this technique. It was a lot easier to do than I thought it would be. I didn’t spend a whole lot of time on the tool trays because I’m not sure what he’ll put in it and or how he will want it organized. I did make the small chest of drawers with the thought that he can take it out and place it on his bench for access.

I painted the case with Milk Paint to try and give it that old fashion look. I decided to paint it after I got it together and realized I didn’t do a good job in matching the wood grain when I glued up the boards to make the sides. Thanks for the web site. I really enjoy it and I’ve learned a lot from it.

I needed a classy place to store my growing collection of hand tools. My project was entirely inspired by the tool cabinet made by Joseph Zeh. I looked at his on his website, tweaked it for what I wanted size wise, and put some of my own personal touches on it. I have been fascinated with hand cut dovetails; I think the subtle differences between hand cut dovetails make the piece look much better than if they were machine cut. That being said, I wasn’t sure I could pull off all those hand cut joints. I quickly figured out that the most important things were to keep your tools sharp, and to take your time doing it (or else you end up doing it twice). Now I am going through tool placement, and look forward to many years of woodworking with this cabinet in my shop.

I had been interested and involved in woodworking for about a year or so, when I started making end grain cutting boards and chopping blocks. I searched the web for some videos on the topic and found The Wood Whisperer video on making an end grain cutting board. Since then I have found Marc’s website to be a very, very useful resource. The site is really setting the gold standard for educational, interactive woodworking websites.

As I gained skills (and tools!), I became interested in making furniture. Last year my partner and I traveled to our family cottage which has not had a coffee table for years. So, I decided that I would make one for the cottage. I really like the mission style – the simplicity of the lines and form, with the emphasis on the wood itself.

This table is made with quartersawn white oak, which I really like. The flecks and pores really appeal to me, especially with a mission style, old fashioned look. The joinery is dowels, courtesy of the Dowelmax doweling jig. I have to say that it was very easy to use and the joints appear to be plenty strong for this table. The tabletop is attached to the base via z brackets, which use screws and fit into a kerf in the table skirt.

I ran into some bumps along the way, specifically with sanding. After doing this project with a poor quality belt sander and finish sander, I decided to invest in the Festool 150 dual action sander, which I think will be a huge step up in terms of power sanding. I tried to use the belt sander with high grit (220) sandpaper to smooth out the table top, but it just left marks all over the top. I was being a little too hopeful, thinking that a belt sander would be okay in this case. I ended up sanding it all by hand, which achieved very good results, but was a LOT of work.

I wanted to make a table with breadboard ends, and again the joinery I used was dowels. There are 4 dowels in the center which are glued, then another 2 or 3 on each side of the breadboard that are glued to the table top, but not to the breadboard end. The holes in the breadboard for those dowels are actually wider, so the top can expand and contract, but is still held from vertical motion by the breadboard end. I did this by sliding the doweling jig over from the original hole and drilling another hole, then repeating until I had what looked more like a mortise with rounded ends.

I did lots of research on how to finish QSWO and came up with this process. It is a little different than most that I found, in that I applied pigment stain first, then dye. Most of what I read said to apply dye, then shellac, then pigment stain as a glaze (or something along those lines), but I did some experimentation and it seemed to work well. After sanding to 150 grit, I raised the grain and sanded to 220 grit. I applied General Finishes water based pigment stain in walnut color. After it dried, I did a light sanding with 400 grit paper. It removed some of the brown color on the flecks, but left the pores quite dark. After that, I applied a mixture of General Finishes water based dyes: Amber, Cinnamon and Medium Brown in a ratio of 2:2:1. I actually applied this twice to ensure even color, as the first coat was a little blotchy. I did not sand after this step, as I found in earlier experimentation that it removed too much of the color for my liking. I then applied 5 coats of Tried & True Varnish Oil (polymerized linseed oil mixed with pine resin). The varnish oil is applied liberally with a rag, let soak for one hour, then excess is wiped off. Cure time is 24 hours between coats. Between each application of the VO, I would simply rub (hard) with a clean cloth. The table top got an additional 2 coats of VO with a quick rub of steel wool followed by a polishing with a clean cloth.

I had immense fun with this project and learned a heck of a lot – not to mention a table I am quite proud of!

Design and production process:
-starting from a basic design in plywood, found on Finewoodworking, I customized the sizes, changed the materials and added plenty of features.
-hand drawing on scale 1/1 in pencil
-3D design in Sketchup
-turning the pieces for the vice (done by local turner) and adding the in and outside thread with a simple device found on www.mehr-als-werkzeug.de /
-planing and thicknessing the beech wood
-cutting the dovetails with Japanese Z-saws and Narex chisels (Czech brand)
Legs have a complex cut-out joint to the bench top, as the work vices need space to slide and turn without obstruction.
-double groove for making it possible to slide the drawer to both sides of the bench and have a stop (the drawer can not fall out). Drawer opens max. 120mm both sides for safety reasons so the bench cannot tip over when a child steps or hangs on the drawer nor will the drawer or slider crack.
There is 140mm gap between under side top of the bench top and the top side of the drawer. It is always easy to access tools and the fast hold will not hit into the drawer.
-legs are extendable but the extensions are not ready yet…something my son can help me with when he is a bit taller :)

Design specifications:
-2 work vices in beech wood, can be mounted for left or right handed
vices are placed on the short sides, to have more stability and less shaking during cutting–vices’ thread diameter 30mm
-holes in bench top for wooden bench dogs (19mm) and iron fast holds (18mm). Holes are tapered from 19mm top to 18mm down
-bench top 80mm thick solid wood
-legs under 7° angle for more stability
-all connections are hand dovetailed: corner bench top, ruler and stretchers, half blind dovetails on drawer
-size: Height 600mm, Length top 800mm, Width 360mm
-finishing: fine sanding P240 and bee wax finish applied with a cloth

Materials
Every single piece is in local Slovakian solid beech wood. Beech is relatively cheap: cca 500€/m3

Cradle to cradle design:
I think this is a nice example of C2C design .

It is entirely recyclable, will probably have a long live span and maybe some more fantastic C2C furniture will be produced on it in the future! The hand work and complexity of the joints made it a long term project (+-150 hours spread over 3 months), but the next bench will be quicker!

This was probably my first real solid wood design and production with love for loved ones :) More pics and precise sketchup drawings are available.

Well over two years ago my lovely wife asked me to build a cabinet to store kitchen appliances and excess stuff. It took me awhile to get this done since most of my previous projects are of the Mission/Craftsman genre and I wanted to do something with a new challenge for me personally. This 74” X 30” X 18” cabinet was the result.

The main challenge was the mitered bracket feet with an ogee curve. All my previous projects have generally been straight sided or with simple legs tapered on the table saw. The bracket feet are my favorite feature of this project and I’m pleased with how they turned out. They allow the cabinet to be something other than my usual carcass with doors.

This project also had a lot of personal “firsts.” Besides the previously mentioned bracket feet, it is the first time I have used a cabinet door bit set for constructing doors. It’s also the first time I have used veneer (paperbacked) material on a project. The veneer materials made it very easy to book match the door panels. I gave pocket screw technology a try when I built the face frame and for attaching it to the carcass. This is also the first project I designed myself rather than using someone else’s or from a magazine. I used SketchUp to visualize my design ideas and needs.

The carcass and shelves are cherry veneered plywood. The face frame, door frames, bracket feet and moldings are solid cherry and the door panels are paperbacked cherry veneer on ½” birch plywood. Four of the shelves are adjustable. The center shelf is stationary to add integrity to the structure.

The finish is oil based poly. I wiped on four thin coats using the method described in Marc’s, “A Simple Varnish Finish” DVD. I have yet to build a perfect project but this is certainly the best finish I have ever applied.

These links are to my final project at Stanford’s Graduate Design Program (an interdisciplinary program between Mechanical Engineering and Fine Art). It was a stop-motion animation designed to capture the complex beauty of wood. Essentially, I made something like 1200 cuts on a radial arm saw of four pieces of wood, treating and taking an end grain photo after each cut. I then tiled them (think kaleidoscope) and stitched them together into a video.

I was trained as an evolutionary biologist and ecologist, so the notion of turning these beautiful pieces into dust was a tough pill to swallow. But I was able to immortalize them in a new way. Just to elaborate on the process a bit: 1) I glued the workpieces into an L-shaped plywood jig to make cutting easier/safer with the sliding compound miter saw. 2) I set up a somewhat arbitrary stop, somewhere around 1/30 of an inch so I could capture 30 frames per inch. Since the video is 30 fps, that supports one inch per second. In reality, though, I hold each picture for three frames, so the video is actually one inch per three seconds. 3) I made a tabletop jig into which the L-shaped plywood jig fits. That tabletop jig is flush with the front of the table and there is a stop to ensure that the L-shaped jig (and therefore workpiece end grain) are in the same place every time. 4) Manfrotto carbon fiber tripod with geared motorhead, Canon XSi dSLR with crazy macro lens set-up with a fixed focal length and focus. 5) MacBookPro with Dragon Stop Motion Animation Software. 6) Three point front lighting.

Post processing took about 100 hours and necessitated writing a program to process and tile the images. Then I had to sync it to the music.

Final Video:

Learn more about the production of this video here.

Bocote Prototype:

Learn more about the production of this video here.

First off, thank you Marc for your videos and website. Everything I know about woodworking, I have learned from your videos and website. This is a walnut entertainment console for my ginormous TV in the basement. This project is the most complex I have built to date, and a culmination of skills I have developed from the previous five serious woodworking projects I attempted. The start of the process was sitting in front of my Mac and creating the project on sketch up. I had found a picture of a similar console in a Fine Woodworking issue and wanted to create the project for myself. I knew many of the skills I had learned would come to good use, but had to try some new things. Honestly, the day that I stop trying new things will be the day I stop woodworking.

There was a lot of veneering with this project. This gave me the opportunity to book-match and control the direction of the grain to maximize visual appeal which was one of my original goals of the project. I wanted the flow of the grain to be smooth and move naturally through the project. I used heavily figured bees-wing walnut. I made sure all the figure curved up, as if the project was smiling at me. Sure it sounds lame, but it looks nice! This was the first time I made full sized templates for project parts. I would seriously recommend to anyone,take the time to make templates. I was able to use a flush trim router bit in combination with the templates to make perfectly proportioned parts that were consistent throughout the project. All of the curves match and flow evenly in the console. The style is Greene and Greene inspired. It’s not totally authentic, because I didn’t think the real thing would match the rest of my furnishings, but the contemporary hybrid works very nice.

Finishing proved to be trickier than I expected. Because this was a combination of solid wood, sheet goods and veneer, I had various different shades of color to work with and even out. I wanted the walnut to be dark in color, so I used Watco walnut colored Danish Oil. Depending on the color of the the wood, I used medium walnut color and dark walnut color to make sure the sheet material matched the darker solid wood components. Some parts required one coat while others needed two. The process took time, but eventually the color was even enough to my satisfaction. The original plan was to top coat with my tried and true Arm-R-Seal wiping oil varnish blend, but I thought the color was still a little too bland. In a last minute finish change, I went with 3 coats of amber shellac. The amber gave the walnut the warm glow I wanted to achieve. I am very happy with the results.

This was a Father’s Day gift for my Dad who collects cane fly rods. It was my first attempt at dovetails. The inside is lined with vegetable tanned cow hide that my wife dyed.

The top has Maple banding and the rim of the case is lined in Maple as well. This was more of an accident than an intentional design element. Once I decided to inset the case lid, I realized there was not enough clearance for the fly fishing reel so I improvised by adding two 1/8″ strips of maple to increase the clearance.

I used 3 coats of Danish Oil and wax for the finish.

I needed a folding workbench since I only have a small garage and there is not enough room for everything. I rejected the rule ‘Folding=Weak’, so I opted for a 2.5″ laminated top (Beech) and 2 cheaper folding legs (Fir). The top is 60″L x 25.5″W x 2.5″T and the height is 36″. I used wide steel hinges (top) and brass hinges (legs). Glue used was Titebond II.

I ripped the beech boards with a hand circular saw and then on the bandsaw in order to get as many pieces as possible 65″ long. I then jointed and planed all the smaller boards. I then ripped again into 2-3/4″ strips (2 1/2″ + extra material), totaling 20 pieces. I glued 4 pieces at a time, getting 5 larger laminated boards, then jointed and planed the boards again.

I used biscuits for the final gluing of the 5 boards into a 20 piece laminated top. This helped me achieve a flat surface, which is helpful since the only way to flatten the surface after this point is hand planing. I added two border pieces on the end grain, not glued, only tongue & groove and then screwed.

Then, many, many hours of hand planing, starting from #6 to #4 and then machine sanding, hand sanding and the finish process. I drilled 3/4″ holes for brass dogs.

I added 2 crossing fir pieces under the top, where the hinges will be attached, to distribute the stress of the hinges action equally on the top. The wooden part of vices has been taken from the same beech boards.

Legs are simple pieces of fir, hinged on the wall. They would have looked better closing toward the inside, but I preferred to make them wider, and they would not fit behind the folded top, so they move to the outside when the bench is closed.

About the oil finishing, here’s the Old Italian Woodworker’s rule: “Once a day for a week, once a week for a month, once a month for a year, and once a year for a lifetime.”

So, first 5 coats of Tung Oil were wiped on and then wiped off after 30 minutes. Sanding with 600 grit between every coat. Then the other 7 coats were applied with a clean rag (very thin damping coats, without extra removal). No wax, no other finishes, only Tung oil. It’s a long process, but it’s renewable at every moment.

UPDATE: If you’re interested, here is a link to my website.

When I bought my first tool I decided to do my first piece of furniture. My father-in-law gave me two bits of oak, which he had for years. I decided to make a table. The main idea I had was maximum simplicity with minimal variety of materials. The combination of massive, solid oak legs and a thick, polished, tempered glass gave the expected effect. Deep jam legs attach the table top in a reliable and powerful way. There is no fear that the table will move or overturn. Fixing the jam does not require any adhesives or other mechanical joints. Total weight is quite hefty and two adults are required to move the table.

Dimensions: 1200 x 700 x 550mm. Tempered glass table top with a thickness of 10mm. This project is simple and easy to make – try it yourself!

Inspired by The Wood Whisperer Episode #63 (Gadget Station pt 6) where Marc uses a one time use jig for installing a SOSS Invisible Hinge (something I’ve done before, only I did it the hard way!), this jig has stops for positioning it on the work pieces and stops to control the router travel for the mortise length. It only takes an hour or two to build. I recently used it for the leg joinery on the Adirondack chair and it worked great. Plus there is a sketchup model and a video on how to make it!

For material, this jig requires:
•3 – 1/4″ x 1 3/4″ T-Bolts
•2 – 24″ Long T-Track Sections
•3 – 1/4″ Winged Knob
•3/4″ Shop grade plywood

Download the SketchUp File

This was my summer project in my un-air-conditioned garage shop in central Virginia. Judy requested a sewing cabinet for her quilting work. She liked the basic idea of the plan from Rockler, but the leg room space seemed too cramped. Instead of building the two plywood boxes for the base per plan, I built a base of legs, mortise and tenoned stretchers and plywood panels. I also added a back leaf to expand the work area. The one plywood box for storing a serger and the drawers is just screwed into the base. The Hohn lift is solidly built and works as advertised. I finished it with 4-5 coats of Arm-R-Seal Oil and Varnish Topcoat.

In the end, it all came together well although I would do a few things differently (and correct a few errors) if I ever reprise this project. The important thing is that Judy loves the look of the piece, appreciates the customized work height, and enjoys having the extra space. And best of all, our dining table no longer has to do double duty as a sewing station!

This was a particularly interesting djembe build for me. There were some steps involved that I had not done before and the project as a whole was pretty involved.
This djembe is 5 separate sections and each section is made up of a number of staves. I used Hard Maple as the main wood and Bloodwood as an accent. The customer wanted a big drum with a lot of bass so I made the bowl of the drum a bit over-sized which really enhances the bass frequencies.

The customer also wanted his band’s logo on the drum, and I had just finished up a friend’s drum using some Inlace (resin inlay) for accent. The hardest part of that process was mixing the right colors to match the Bloodwood, but I finally got something I was happy with…now if only I can remember what I did! It stunk and was a pain to work with. Luckily I have a good respirator with the cartridges so I couldn’t smell it. I made a mess mixing the stuff and getting the right color, but the final process was worth it. I also found out when sanding, that this stuff doesn’t like heat. A little too much time and it would start to curl and pop out of the recess. I ended up picking some out and reapplying more resin. The instructions suggest a minimum of 1/8″ deep and 1/8″ wide, but I had some sections that were closer to 1/16 deep and wide, but it held the detail fine.

There is a lot of math that goes into building a drum like this, and to make sure your slats glue up tight, your angles have to be right on. I know some guys who like to use the table saw to cut the bevel angle. I’ve got a 3hp sawstop and still won’t use it to cut the bevel. I get a much more accurate cut by throwing a tilt box on the jointer fence and making my bevel there. Each section has a different number of staves (slats) so the angle is different for each. Each section is connected by dowels to the next, and the final djembe drum feels super solid.

BTW, I have an excel spreadsheet with all the formulas on it, so I just plug in what size I want the drum and the computer does the rest. I’d love to learn SketchUp better and virtually build the drums…I just haven’t taken the time to learn it yet.

The glue-up is tricky with a cylinder and even more so for a cone shape. I’ve seen it done with all sorts of jigs and rigs, the most intricate being a custom wheel with screws that would finely adjust each stave in place in a perfect circle…WOW…I can’t imagine using that thing. As long as your staves are the same size and the bevel is the same angle, you’ve got a round form. I lay it out flat on the ground with the exterior facing up, tape it up with 2″ strong tape, flip it and roll it…ta-da! :) I use to use ratchet clamps like in hardware stores, but now use large SS wormgear band claps and it gives me much more even pressure.

No lathe on this project. I used a plane to knock down the edges and a belt sander to sand it smooth. Then I hit it with different grits on the random orbit up to about 400. I do anything over 400 by hand.

One issue I ran into with sanding was the Bloodwood ‘leaked’ into the maple. I just made sure that I sanded the maple sections last and that seemed to clean up the problem.

Heading the drum with African goatskin and tuning it properly is a huge post all on it’s own, and not really relevant to woodworking…but if anyone is interested, I’ve written an article with lots of detail and photos on how to head up a djembe or ashiko that I am happy to share. The full write up and photos can be found here: Rhythm House Drums – Blog

Here is a short (crappy) video I took of me playing this djembe:

I was at a store that sells exotic hardwoods just looking around and came across this amazing grained African mahogany that I just HAD to buy (I’m sure some people can relate to that feeling). I had no idea what I was going to make with it but I just “knew” it would be a good idea to have it for when the inspiration hit me.

I’ve needed a coffee table for some time but didn’t know what I wanted it to look like so I thought I’d just wing it and make one using the lumber I bought. I thought my girlfriend’s coffee table was kind of nice because it had glass in the center which spawned the idea of having a glass centered piece.

The legs and aprons were all mortised and tenoned by hand and I made corner braces to reinforce the joints. Being new at woodworking and only knowing what I’ve read and a little correspondence with my dad, it was dreadful to produce good looking mortises. I was humbled by learning that regardless of how much I read about woodworking, practice and experience will always produce better results.

I decided to make the table top mortise and tenon as well so I ended up buying a bench top mortiser instead of doing them by hand. On the underside of the table I locked the mortises in with dowels and made the drill holes on the outer part of the tenons slotted to compensate for movement. Before I assembled and drove the dowels home, I rabbeted the inside of the boards for the glass to sink into.

I think I was getting a little impatient by the time I got to attaching the legs and aprons to the table top which is why I made the blocks that are holding them together. They won’t compensate for movement so I don’t know how they’ll hold up in the long run.

I made a test board for the finish and I was torn between one coat of transfast brown mahogany dye and two coats. I went with two coats because for some reason in my head, dark wood looks more rich to me. I brushed on the boiled linseed oil and wiped the excess off. I tried padding on the shellac and didn’t end wiping with the grain so I had pad swirls all over so to fix that I just brushed on the same cut of shellac and all those swirl marks were gone. I then topped the table top with three coats of poly, measured for the beveled glass and ordered it, and then let everything cure for a week while the glass was being made. I’m really happy with how it turned out (which was exponentially better than I ever thought it would have). I just hope that it’s not destroyed by the blocks holding the top and bottom together.

My niece had been begging me for a mancala board for years, so I decided to make her one for her high school graduation.

After drawing the board out full size on several pieces of printer paper taped together, I transferred the design to a story stick and then transferred it to the work piece. I had a slab of Michigan black walnut that a friend had given me, and I thought that the color variations in the piece would make for an interesting game board.

I routed out the dishes with a 1-1/4″ round nose bit with a bearing, using a jig that I made out of an old piece of 2×12 pine that I had laying around.

The difficult part was sanding inside the dishes, and I had to make a mini sanding disk for my drill to smooth out the bottoms. There was also a lot of hand sanding involved. I sanded to 120 grit, then applied 2 coats of Danish oil, and three coats of wipe-on polyurethane.

It was a fun project and I learned a lot, especially about the importance of a router speed control with heavier bits. My niece was thrilled, and wanted to play it all weekend!

My girlfriend wanted a new clock to be hung in the living room and I couldn’t have another Ikea item going in it’s place! I took on the challenge and this is what we came up with.

The clock face is quadmatched burl veneers applied to a MDF core. I put strips of maple in the frame and beveled them to bring attention to the face as well as break up the color between the walnut frame and walnut face. I am sure you can tell where the inspiration came from on the splines as well as the french cleats on the back.

Overall the project was fun and I learned a lot. Thanks Marc for all the help and the opportunity to share my project!

The floating case idea was developed from creating a danish modern credenza (to match 1950s desk) with that feature. I was also influenced by student projects at College of the Redwoods. A friend had recently attended and he would send pix of his own and other’s projects.

Lots going on in this concept piece of Hickory, Honduras Mahogany (horizontal lines), Ash (legs) and Wenge for the Buhl diamond inlay (underside of top). Ash was chosen for the legs as I was unable to locate straight-grained Hickory in suitable lengths. I had strongly hoped to use hickory for the legs, but made due with material available to me.

Two dovetailed cases float between the six legs. Cleats rest in leg notches and are pinned (fixed in front, slotted in rear) and slide into stopped, housed dovetail sockets routed in the underside of the top. None of these elements are glued to allow wood movement front to back. Horizontal and small vertical divider in large case also used housed dovetails. Cases attach to legs with stub and floating tenons.

I spent quite a bit of time pondering the mechanics of attaching the top to the cleats. During most of the build, I expected to use counter bored screws up through the cleats into the top. Clearance issues would dictate driving the screw before placing the cleats into leg notches. That approach also did not give me cleat to top preferred cupping resistance towards edges and I’d have the counter bored holes or plugs, both of which were negatives to my expectations.

For a brief moment late in the process, I considered making shallow grooves and just letting the top rest on the cleats with no “locking”. Being a concept piece for myself I almost went that direction, but then my inner wood whisperer said, “that top is gonna potato chip during one of our Santa Ana, low humidity evenings.” So the housed sliding dovetail was finally chosen.

The case to leg with back panel glue ups took some heavy pondering. Number of interlocking at perpendicular planes elements created a sequencing and balancing challenge. Great to have an assistant, clamps and deep breathing exercises.

For the finish I wiped on poly/boiled linseed oil, mineral spirits blend (4:1:3) wet sanded up to 600 grit. Six to nine coats depending on anticipated exposure of the element. Interiors and door panels were finished before glue up. A number of other elements were finished as I went along.

For more photos including the process go to: http://tombuhl.com/Gallery/Site/Wine_Cabinet_2011.html

Thanks to all who responded to WTOR forum queries throughout the build. Great community!

We recently finished a major remodel of the master bedroom and bathroom in our house and needed some nice new furniture to accompany the new room. (To the shop!!) At first I considered just a headboard, but wanted to push my ability and do a complete freestanding bed.

The design of the bed came from the “Classic Bed” plan sold by Rockler (http://www.rockler.com/product.cfm?Offerings_ID=10721) with a few notable deviations. The first is that the plan calls for glue-ups of 3/4 stock for all of the large pieces. I wanted to use all solid wood without glue lines, so that meant working with a big slab of 12/4 hard maple for the posts which was quite a strain on both my tools and my back. I also had to devise a router jig (pictured) to make mortises for the slats into the 6/4 curved upper rails in the headboard and footboard. Once the rail was clamped into the jig, I was able to use a 1/2″ spiral bit in the plunge router with an edge guide to produce smooth-edged mortises that were square to the rail. To match the mortises, I milled the slats to just over 1/2″ thickness and gave them a full round-over using a 1/4″ bit on each side. I could then finesse the fit of each slat with sandpaper to get a good tight fit. A big thanks to Marc for his advice during that part of the construction!

I used Marc’s Simple Varnish Finish process, including watching the “review” section of the DVD the day before I started to apply varnish. There are three build coats of GF Arm-R-Seal gloss with a final thin top coat in satin. Once the top coat had cured for a couple days, I lightly rubbed the surface with #0000 steel wool, mild soapy water and buffed with a cotton towel to a mild sheen.

I’m proud to say this bed was a family project. The quilt shown in the final picture was designed and made specifically for this bed by my talented wife Sarah http://hiptopiecesquares.avenueb.org/.

I designed and built this baby bed for our first son, Hank. My wife and I didn’t see anything we liked at the big box stores, and a friend of mine had made his daughter’s bed, so we decided to give it a shot. Given the fact that I’ve never built any furniture, this took a lot of planning, some rough 50 year old lumber from craigslist, and some tooling up.

I’ve held John Browning’s mechanical genius in high regard for most of my adult life. So for the design, I thought it would be great to implement components of some of my favorite John Browning designed firearms. They all didn’t carry his name in production, but each of them came from his hands.

The front rail was built with the Winchester lever action in mind. Two stocks that meet in the middle. Each one is hand checkered at the forearm. I chose the best board of walnut I had for this piece. It had a completely different figure and grain pattern that really stood out.

On the back of the bed under the buckmark logo are cutouts in the shape of the Browning Auto 5. The famous hump back Auto 5 is one of the most recognizable shotguns in history. My grandpa loved his 20 ga Auto 5. While I don’t have grandpa’s, I look forward to passing mine on to Hank.

The top cap on the two front legs have grooves cut in them like the slide on a 1911 .45. Not only did Mr. Browning invent the Colt 1911, he created the 45 ACP cartridge. The connection with the famous .45 ACP goes a little further, as each hole that contains a connecting bolt is capped with a .45 shell casing.

We didn’t want the bed to scream “Hey look, I’m a gun!”, but we still wanted the theme to come across. We chose walnut for the wood, and the railing was made of steel. Before installation, the railing was sent to a local gunsmith for a hot blueing. I used both mortise and tenon joinery and pocket screws. This project also brought about my first experience with bent lamination. Wish I could do that one over again.

To top off the whole thing, I hand carved the Browning buckmark logo into the back of the bed.

It took a year to design, learn, build, and finish this bed. In no way is it perfect. There are mistakes from one side of it to the other. But, I enjoyed every bit of it, and we hope to see Hank’s son sleeping in it many years from now!

Finish Used: Danish Oil, Satin Poly, Paste Wax

Well, after many a month of enjoying other people’s projects, I finally did one I thought some of you might enjoy. This is yet another piece for our flat ordered by the boss. We had some nasty Ikea business before and I’m happy to get this as a replacement! I’ve been getting into some dovetail boxes (Leigh jig) and this was the culmination of an idea which was possible thanks to some really nice 500 mm wide quarter sawn boards I tripped over the other day.

I had wanted to do some sliding doors for a while and after finding the materials, I made a few scale models to aid me in design. You can see the version I was thinking about doing, possibly with a maple frame to suspend the boxes from. But,in the end simplicity won out and I went for the version you see here.

The whole process took about 6 days. I had just finished an art project making flight cases which inspired the black doors and recessed back panels. (The doors are made from 9 mm flight case ply). It’s a bit different and had loads of off cuts which I was happy to get rid of! At first I considered just drilling a hole in the doors, but happily I decided some nice stainless handles looked more professional. I routed 2×10 mm channels all around the interior front edge and planed all the edges of the doors so they slide nice and don’t jam in their fully closed positions. I finished with three coats of danish oil rubbed down in between with 0000 grade steel wool.

This Masterpiece Entertainment Center was inspired by a local furniture retail outlet. I had seen a lot of pictures in magazines and finally drew up my own plans. There are no 45 degree miter cuts, (which makes it a little easier for the beginner.) I custom made all raised panel doors, including the stile and rails.

Teardrop glass was purchased from a local glass company. The lighting across the top is 3” recessed. This unit is actually five pieces that are stacked together and measures 76” x 21” x 85”. The top and shelf are 1” thick; the remainder of the unit is ¾” oak.

I pretreated all exterior surfaces with Minwax Pre-Stain Conditioner, and then applied two coats of Minwax oil stain. I then followed with seven coats of Minwax Oil Based Polyurethane ending with two coats of Minwax Paste Finishing Wax. About a ten day process!

After graduating from my medical residency my gift to myself was a pool table. Every pool table needs a pub table and I love playing chess so I tried to find one that would accommodate both. Couldn’t find what I wanted and I always wanted to learn how to make sawdust, so I bought a few cheap tools (have since upgraded immensely) and went to work.

This was my first project but I figured if I could cut a baby out of a mommies belly surely I could cut wood correctly. (By-the-way, a C-section is easier!)

There is no metal in the joinery. I cut the cross support profiles on my tiny band saw and the joined them with half laps and seated the cross supports into the pedestal. The legs are corbels which are doweled into place. I bought a pre-cut circle piece from Home Depot. I have since built a circle jig for my stationary router. I hollowed out the recess for the Travertine tiles by hand saying at the time it was therapeutic, not willing to admit to myself I didn’t know how to do it with a router!

The chess pieces are part of a collection. This set is from Prague. I have since learned a whole lot and look forward to a lifetime of woodworking.

I built this to house my modest collection of planes (at the time), which has now grown out of hand. I routed out a spot for each plane that was to go on the till section. I like contrasting woods so I trimmed the oak with walnut and plugged the screw holes with contrasting plugs. I recently added an oak french cleat to the back and hung it on the wall of my partially remodeled shop.

A few minor mistakes and one big one that I was lucky enough to hide. Finish Used: A few coats of shellac straight out of the can topped off with a wax protectant.

This mandolin was my sixth instrument, having previously made 5 fiddles. I finished it in October 2002. It took me about 1.5 months working on it every day. I built it for myself, as I play all kinds of stringed instruments and wanted to try something challenging but fun…and it was! I got a book on mandolin making and chose the F style, popular for bluegrass. The materials cost about $600. Back and sides are Quilted Maple, the neck is Curly Maple and the top is Sitka Spruce. I bought a plastic trust-rod cap (top of the finger board) but it didn’t look right so I made one out of Rosewood. The Mother of Pearl inlay was very tricky.

I had to make my own jigs, a lot of finger planes and it took a lot of time to to get the carving right on the back and top. I was very pleased with the outcome. The finishing was very time consuming. 3 coats of poly, sand it down until it was almost gone and do it again over 20 coats in all!

This project is an idea I took from WOOD magazine and modified it to suit my needs. Since I share the garage with my wife, I have to set up shop in our drive way. I wanted something that I could combine several working operations into one mobile unit, and store the tools I most frequently use. This tablesaw work station accomplishes all those needs.

The tablesaw is a Ridgid TS3650 upgraded with a Biesemeyer fence and Bench Dog router table extension. The worktop is made of a solid core door, banded with walnut and outfitted with a 9″ Rockler vise. The edge banding and drawer fronts are maple. The drawer pulls are walnut. The cabinet cases are constructed of MDO plywood. I used Watco Danish Oil to finish the project.

I bought the natural slab of maple at a local lumberjack show and couldn’t figure out what to do with it for the longest time. It was rough sawn on a portable mill (not too often I get to see the log that my stock came from) and wasn’t anything close to parallel/square/coplanar. I used a bunch of videos on TWW site (The Jointer’s Jumpin’, How to Fix a Knot) and created a router sled since it was too wide for my planer; then used a variety of hand planes, scrapers, and tons of sanding to get it smooth. The legs are made from walnut and the shape was inspired by Marc’s trestle table series. I pretty much used that series as my guide in both the design and construction. The only deviations were integral tenons instead of dominos and 8/4 stock since the table is only 5 ft long. It’s got a few nicks/checks/mistakes in it, but it’s my first non-”planned” furniture project and I’m pretty excited about it. I used Marc’s “A Simple Varnish Finish” as my guide. Four coats of Arm-R-Seal later and I couldn’t be more pleased. The final coat was rubbed out with 8000 grit after it completely cured.

Thank you for your site Marc, it’s what got me into woodworking and keeps me wanting to improve with each project!

When we remodeled our kitchen, my wife wisely decided that I would not be building the kitchen cabinets, largely because she wanted her new kitchen in a timely fashion. However, we agreed that I would build the island. We went with IKEA cabinets and in order to make the island tie in with the rest of the kitchen, I incorporated an additional cabinet into my design.

From the start, I knew this was going to be a wacky project just based on the design. I spent about a month searching for just the right Douglas Fir log that I could use as a support. I finally found one on a friend’s property on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula. I took it down to the local saw mill and had it sawed vertically. Total cost – $10! The bugs stopped crawling out of it after a couple of months. I soaked it for about a week in “Wood Juice” and the checking stopped.

In the meantime, I had an arborist come to the property to trim my trees. He told me that he had a band saw mill and a barn full of wood that I should come look at. I picked out some Elm and brought it home to acclimate to my shop. The trouble with buying wood from your arborist is that they often remove trees that aren’t healthy. After I glued up the table top and took it to my cousin’s mill-work shop for a drum sanding, I discovered that the Elm tree was probably removed because it had yellow Elm disease. Based on the pictures, I will let you guess where the soft spots were.

I thought about all kinds of things to solve the problem, but in the end I went to The Wood Whisper website for inspiration. I watched the video on Router Inlay and I must say my initial response was…”yeah, right”. In my experience, good things do not happen when the router gets away from the table on which it is mounted. However, I didn’t have any other ideas, so I did a trial run on a test piece. The results weren’t stellar, but they were close enough that I figured I had a chance.

We chose the fish theme as a nod to my grandfather who had a fly fishing business. The fish are stylized versions of his marketing materials. I couldn’t be more happy with the results.

With the inlay step accomplished, I went on to finish the project. The Padauk breadboard ends are mortise and tenon with Walnut pins. The Padauk bar top has an Elm “sea rail” with live ends. The remainder of the carcass is Philippine Mahogany. I used General Finishes Satin–way too many coats!

And my wife is happy! So, thank you Marc, for a really great tutorial that sent me in a direction I never would have found on my own. I appreciate all you do!

I am a recreational luthier who specializes in oldtime banjos (a predecessor of the now more common bluegrass banjo). I’m relatively new to luthiery and wood working, and I stumbled upon The Wood Whisperer website a couple years ago. I’ve really enjoyed learning from Marc and really appreciate everything that he (and so many other woodworkers) do for us enthusiasts. One of my more recent builds turned out so well that I thought I’d share it with all of you. It is a Fretless Oldtime Banjo with an Internal Resonator.

The Pot

The inspiration for the banjo pot (the rim assembly) came from the Bacon Banjo Company, which developed the internal resonator in the 1910s. The pot is designed with two rims (one is 12″, with a 3 1/4″ depth and the other is 8″ with a 2 1/2″ depth) and a 2″ back to create a hollow sound chamber. While the internal resonator gives the banjo added volume, its main function is to balance the tone of the banjo – the bass notes definitely pop on this instrument.

Materials used to build the pot were: exterior rim – walnut with a cap of wormy maple; interior rim – maple; and sound chamber back – curly wormy maple. I added some wood insert nuts to the bottom of the rim so the internal resonator could be easily removed with 6 brass screws, giving the banjo player a choice of having the resonator on or off.

The Neck

The neck of the banjo is in no way a Bacon replica–in fact, it references the fat beefy necks on banjos of the Civil War era. It was made of hard maple and has a simple carving where the fifth string picks up. The fretless fingerboard is ebony and the peghead veneer overlay is ebony with a strip of wormy maple down the middle.

Appointments

The tuners, though look like friction fiddle tuners, are actually mechanical tuners call Pegheds. All the raw brass hardware came from Bill Rickard in Canada. The strings are a special nylon called Nylguts, which come the closest in sounding like the gut strings used on oldtime banjos, except no animals were injured.

For the finish I hand rubbed 9 coats of shellac. Enjoy! And thanks again Marc.

I thought this project might be of interest to the WWing community for its approach to flexible storage of hand tools at a workspace (and certainly not as an exercise in exemplary joinery). The project began as a hasty shelf or two to hold daily users over my woodworking bench. I had been putting off on fabricating a proper hand tool cabinet but needed something to get the tool clutter off the bench. Like many things in life, opportunities started to present themselves as I researched best practices for tool suite storage. I decided to approach this build as an exercise in modular storage employing bins and french cleats. With two main units serving as facilitators, configurations could then evolve and change with bench demands.

After a few Sketchup sessions, I commenced the build in red oak and oak plywood with bits of poplar, primarily using hand tools. Joinery was a combination of biscuit, finger, and butt joints with glue. Lee Valley aluminum sliders were used for the three main drawers and proved useful for maximizing space. I introduced curves into the lower cleat mounts to soften the harshness of the lines and used 1/8 edge roundovers throughout to achieve a pleasing tactile quality. My design aesthetic went out the window when I began fabrication of the final piece-–the large lower shelf rack. Not only did I violate the flexible, small-size dictum, I also discovered that ergonomics would not allow it to sit on the recessed lower cleat as intended. After some modification, the result is satisfactory, but not optimal. Looking back on this incremental build, I am sure I could have made much better use of the space, but the final result allows visual access and tool maintenance and upkeep in an orderly fashion.

After looking at some toddler beds on the internet I figured I could build something better than what I was seeing for about the same cost.

I bought the wood from Timber Woodworking in Mesa, AZ. They had rustic cherry there that was really mostly free of knots and was priced about half as much as the clear cherry was going for. Great stuff!

All of my joints were done using a DowelMax doweling jig. This worked out fast and easy.

I’m only a few projects deep in my woodworking career, so I wanted to keep the design simple. For the curves on the top rails, I wasn’t sure exactly what I wanted or how to do the layout. I used some of Marc’s tips and started with some things I did know. I knew I wanted to start the rail 2 inches wide and end it 3 inches wide. I then decided where the curves would start. After that it was easy to try a few ways to hook the 2 ends together with the little curve in the middle.

The finish is simply 2 coats of clear shellac to bring out the figure in the wood topped off with 3 coats of gloss lacquer. I do not have a sprayer and have had bad luck with brushing lacquer, so I opted for a can of Deft spray lacquer. I have to say that I really like the finish I got with this product.

I call this project Skeletons In Your Cupboard, but it is a jewelry cabinet. The design developed once I had made the drawers. The drawers had started to look like ribs to me, so Mr. skeleton was born. The cabinet is walnut with spalted beech panels and drawer fronts.

There is a watch winder compartment behind the mirror which locks and grins at you when you open the cupboard and the led lights switch on. The whole box sits on oak legs with a secret compartment.

Pity I didn’t have it finished for Halloween!

Some of you may have seen my shop that Marc featured a while back on TWW shop tours. I have oak tool boxes, two steel tool boxes in the wings of my table saw and a great parts cabinet from Grizzly, but I was missing hand tool storage on the walls.

I got my inspiration from Marc’s wall mounted tool boards, but decided that I wanted mine to be mobile so I could move it to my various work locations around the shop.

The “A” frame is made of 5/8 by 3 inch wide birch plywood and has four shelves of varying widths.

The front has a “current” 5 foot wide by 31 inch high tool board (1/2 inch thick) with seven French cleats that is meant for frequently used hand tools and tools that can be moved there for current projects (that’s the beauty of French cleats).

Underneath there is a 5 foot wide by 6 inch high shelf for frequently used hand power tools. At the bottom is a 5 foot wide by 2 foot deep shelf to store the myriad hand power tool boxes that we all collect.

On the back there is a 5 foot wide by 5 foot high tool board with 15 French cleats that is meant to store tools of one particular type. It can be quickly exchanged with another identically sized tool board for another type of project. For example, I intend to have tool boards for cabinet making, carving and furniture making, etc. I intend to install pulley systems from the roof to store the tool boards above my fixed power tools (I have a 12 foot ceiling). The cart has 4 four inch swivel wheels and one on each end has a brake.

This is a modified version of Marc’s Assembly Table Workbench.

I used the torsion box design for the top and built two cabinets and held them together with stretchers. I made the base much longer but not as deep. Mine resides up against a wall. Once I put the top on, I realized that I needed to brace the back. I used some spare pegboard for this. Rock solid now!!!

The base is 88″ x 24″. The top is 96″ x 30″. The middle section with the two doors is 39″ x 28″. The drawers are massive…22″ x 22″ by 8 5/8″, 8″, 6″, and 6″. Made from 3/4″ Birch w/ 1/2″ bottoms. On the top I keep my CNC Mill and my drill press with some space between for whatever.

I started working on this desk with a goal as a budding woodworker, to replace my entire bedroom with new homemade furniture. I decided my new desk needed three smaller drawers. The top was simple 3/4″ plywood laminated with plastic trimmed by router with a flush trim bit. The edge banding is maple mitered treated with a 45 degree bevel on the top edges and 1/8″ roundover on the bottom edges. The bottom of the table top was sealed off only with dewaxed shellac. The legs are tapered on two sides, long tapers on one side of the desk and short tapers for where the drawers where planned. Most of the carcass is joined using dowels and pocket screws cleaning up the pockets with oak plugs. The top was mounted using metal clips that look like the number 8. The body is all oak, the legs are two face glued 1.5″ x 3/4″ to make the 1.5″x1.5″ legs. The legs were connected to make the leg assemblies first then those came together using 1.5″x 3/4″ stretchers to make the basic frame. The basic draw up gave me the width of my drawers so I made an L shaped piece to glue and screw into the left side with the short tapers. Once in place, it made the space where the drawers would be placed. I made wooden slides out of poplar and cut walnut to the dimensions of the three drawer openings. With that I made three identical pieces of poplar for the drawer backs. Less 1.5″ the length of the drawer space used a half-blind dovetail jig to join the drawer fronts to the sides. I wanted to do something different with the keyboard tray, so instead of edge gluing an extra piece of oak, so I added a strip of walnut then edge glued a narrower piece of oak to fill out the dimensions of the tray. To finish off the keyboard tray, I used a pair of drawer slides from Rockler that have tilt able brackets on the end so I could attach a piece of walnut to act as a false front for the tray.

My computer sits on a box I made (my very first project). So my desk’s top was set during the draw up at the height of the box and computer case so that the bottom of the desk’s top will clear the case by 2+ inches. The tower’s extra USB ports are located on top of the case, so I need a way to hook up my USB devices to the computer through the desk.

The one feature I didn’t find in any desk is the maple USB box I made for the corner of the desk. I didn’t want to reach behind the computer to connect any thumb drives, cameras, or even to recharge my wireless mouse. The holes were measured for the USB female connectors and drilled a little undersized then filed to final size before epoxying the connectors in place. The box has an open bottom so I used a spade bit to open a channel for the cables, then screwed the box in place flush with the desk’s top.

The oak and maple were stained with Minwax’s Golden Oak; the walnut was stained Minwax’s Dark Walnut. The entire desk was finished with Minwax’s water based semi-gloss poly.

Just dropping a line from the other side of the water. Don’t hear much from Holland in the woodworking scene. I have been watching The WoodWhisperer since the start and enjoying it very much. I decided that I wanted to do some woodworking. First I had to build a workshop, the wall hanging tool cabinet and bench before I could start, not to mention all the tools! In January 2011 I was ready to start, so I joined the Guild. My wife wanted the chest of drawers so of course I went and built the seven up storage. I really enjoyed making drawers with slips and all. Squareness and precision is everything. I do have some difficulties with this as the humidity varies from less than 20% to 100%. I find that I have to loosen up the fits.

In the future I want to build some drawers with a bow front or even in a S wave form. I would love seeing this included in a future project. I have the book Chest of Drawers- Bill Hylton. In this book it shows laminating in the thickness of the front, I am thinking about laminating in the high of the front with one of the laminates incorporating the draw pull, any ideas anyone?

This was my first piece of furniture! My wife requested it since our kitchen space is limited. Luckily she was patient because it took over a year to complete. The wood is cherry that grew at my parent’s house. Poplar was used as a secondary wood.

I took aspects from many magazine articles for the design. However, I learned a lot about designing not just for appearance, but also for ease of construction/joint fitting/glue up. The joinery is mainly tenon and mortise. The drawers are hand cut half dovetails.

The Finish process was a little involved. I mixed hand planing, card scraping and sandpaper (220 grit). I wanted to minimize blotching so I started with a shellac wash coat and sanded that with 320 grit, then a thin coat of BLO. However, I wanted the piece to match a mirror I had already made, so I followed up with several coats of garnet Shellac. Mostly this was padded on, but the top I did a french polish for depth. Since this is for the kitchen, I wiped 4 coats of thinned polyurethane.

Overall it was a great project. I was very pleased with the joinery, especially the dovetails. I had never attempted to do them before. Of coarse I practiced on scrap before hand.

Although it took over a year to make, I finished just in time. I completed it a few days before my wife gave birth to our first child.

I have built many things over the years, but this is my first crack at a rocker. I have a new Granddaughter and thought Mom would need a good rocker to hold her in. I was inspired by Sam Maloof and thought this would be a great start to learning his methods. He definitely brings a different style to woodworking with his shaping. My next rocker will be more to his style so I can’t wait to get started.

For the finish I used 3 coats of a poly/oil with 3 coats of oil/wax on top of that. I sanded lightly between coats, but the last 2 coats of oil/wax, I would put the finish on and then use a fine sand pad to go over the entire chair before wiping away the excess. Made the finish super smooth!

Note from Marc:
I regret having to moderate user comments, but sometimes, it is necessary. If the comments in this post seem a little disjointed, the reason is because several comments from one particular person (and subsequent comments from others) were pulled out to maintain the quality level of the site. What pains me about this is the fact that the original offender’s goal was to provide a design critique. While critiques can sometimes be painful to hear, they can also be a great opportunity for us to grow as individual woodworkers and as a community. When the critique is wrapped in vitriol, bad things happen and no one wins.

So what I’ve done here is summed up this person’s critique, subtracting out the needless anger and putting it into my own words. If we are going to get anything out of this, let’s at least debate the points in question. I guess we’ll just be doing it without the help of the original commenter, which is certainly a shame.

Most Maloof-inspired pieces try to emulate Sam’s ability to make one piece blend seamlessly into the next. Shaun’s interpretation takes a different path including many straight lines. One might identify Shaun’s interpretation as “the missing link” along the path to a Maloof chair, lying somewhere between the standard rocking chair found on many a country porch, and the milky-smooth organic creation that is a Maloof chair.

Based on this, I do have a question for Shaun. Since this is your first chair, was it a conscious decision to go with a more square design versus something more Maloof-like? Or was this one of those skill-building projects where perhaps next time, you’ll try to create more curves and rounded elements?

Either way, judging this piece on its own design merits, I would go so far as to say this chair reminds me of what would happen if Maloff and Nakashima had a baby. Is there room for imrovement and refinement? Sure. But for a first attempt at a chair, I think Shaun has much to be proud of! But that’s just my personal opinion. Well done Shaun and I look forward to seeing what you come up with next.

My wife has been bugging me to make a table for the entryway of our home. So I went out to the mill, and picked out some Walnut and Goncala. However, when I went over the design (which was originally to be 1′ deep by 3′ wide) with the “Boss”, she said it was too long. So I had to do a quick redesign and build.

The bad part of this is I spent way too much on extra lumber. The good part is I have a ton of extra Goncala and walnut, which the “Boss” now wants me to get started on a matching T.V. stand. This is my second furniture piece, and the first time I used both Shellac flakes and breadboard joinery. The Orange shellac really made the walnut pop, and the Goncala almost glow. And learning how breadboards work and allow for movement was both an informative and rewarding experience.

These two display cases are 36w x 84h x 14 deep with separate (but matched wood) stacked lower and upper sections.

Material is all solid cherry with exception of 1/4 ply back panels and 3/4 ply book shelves in the base. Joinery is mortise and tenon with some through tenons having wedged features. Interior adjustable shelves have narrow cherry frames and 1/4 inch glass.

The lighting elements are 110V 3 level light sets that I picked up from Lowes. The Deco plugs are made of walnut. For the finish I used Watco natural, 4 coats of General Gel Topcoat Poly and one coat of Antiquax.

Here is my version of Marc’s jig with a few modifications. I occasionally need to make blind and stop dadoes so I add stops for these jobs.

Thought you may be interested in checking it out. I really enjoy The Wood Whisperer website.

A one board walnut ‘box’ desk with custom steel legs and hardware. It’s the latest entry in our ‘bethlehem steel’ series. This one I designed with one of my favorite clients, famous for her support of our art and for her patience. She had seen a number of our wood and steel pieces, including the bureau, so metal legs were part of the early discussions. Next to find a one piece top 26″ wide and long enough to ‘fold’ the sides over to become the dovetailed case ends with continuous grain. We found a piece of 5/4 about 28″ wide that we milled on a cnc to flatten it, and sanded it with a 37″ wide belt sander nice and flat. We cut and marked the ends and made the half width sample with the last little cracked end of the board. We spent sometime on the layout/design of the dovetails as it was an important part of the design. These are sometimes known in the trade as ‘houndstooth dovetails’, pins of varying depths and spacing. They are attractive, challenging, and decorative and seemed a perfect way to break the monotony of 26″ of hand cut dovetails–elegant too, I think.

For the hardware, we chose an image of a brook trout and had the 3/16ths inch stock waterjetted to shape. There was some shaping and chiseling to add the details and then we welded 7/16ths tapped square stock to the center of the backs. We then chiseled a 3/16ths deep mortise for the ends of the square stock into the drawer face to keep them from turning. In the end, a secret compartment was added, but if I told you about that, it wouldn’t be a secret anymore! Anyway, it would be tough to find if you don’t know where it is and it involves the use of a tool to open it that was made and is hidden in the case of the desk…double hidden compartments! The back of the desk has three shop made crotch veneered panels, similar to the drawer faces as you can see the backside of the case from outside on the desk.

Please visit my blog and enter ‘bethlehem steel’ in the search box. Additional information appears on my blog entry of April 17, 2011.

I’ve been interested in G&G style furniture for awhile. I saw several items such as the G&G buffet in Fine Woodworking and a sofa table in Woodsmith magazine. The buffet was too big and the sofa table wasn’t quite the right style. When I saw Thomas Stangeland’s Anderson Server in Darrell Peart’s book I knew I had my project. I worked up the details using full size cardboard models to ensure that details, sizes and spacing looked ‘correct’. I exchanged emails with Chris before and after the project. He was gracious in providing information on insert spacing and other details. He quickly picked up on my customizations and preference changes in the final pictures.

I had planned to do this project in Maple, however my lumber supplier talked me into using Alder. Alder’s advantage is that it’s very easy to work with. Making the mortises for the plugs was easy. The disadvantage is that it’s too soft. Some of the plug holes are crushed at the surface and not well defined.

Finishing was not fun, probably because I wanted it perfect! I wanted to simulate mahogany so I mixed brown pigment with shellac. I stripped and redid the finish in several problem places.

Ultimately I’m satisfied with the project. It looks good in the bedroom. I want to ‘make it again’ using walnut or mahogany next time. Comments are appreciated.

During our recent entrance way renovations, I had a lot of time to develop a hatred of the look of our doorbell. It’s a hunk of plastic covered in gaudy designs.

Having been long inspired by the Greene & Greene wall sconces I decided to embark on making my own as a cover to the doorbell hardware. I’m NOT a stained glass artist and as I looked at what went into making a piece I realized I didn’t have the time to learn (on this project, but I’ll definitely do so in the future).

The Wood: The wooden parts of the sconce are your basic Greene & Greene woodworking. It’s all just frame and panel constructions with groves, mortises and tenons. The lighter wood is my standard Cherry with liberal used of ebony plugs. I had to batch out 18 ebony plugs for this project. The video by William Ng is invaluable in speeding up this process!!!). I carved the top out of a solid block of Cherry utilizing a router, rasps and carving chisels.

The Glass: In our last house the former owner did some wonderful stained glass looking artwork on a number of windows utilizing a product called Gallery Glass. Would this product fool someone who knows stained glass? Not even close! But it really does come out nice looking, and unless someone looks really close it’s very hard to spot that it’s not the real thing. So I picked up some stained glass for my base piece and used the Gallery Glass as color gels on top of it.

As for lighting…since I’m using this as a doorbell hardware cover I didn’t have room for any kind of traditional bulb. So instead I used a LED Flexible Light Strip and a 30 Watt 12v LED Power Supply Driver. I cut a hole in the wall behind the doorbell hardware and stashed the transformer inside the wall and ran a 110v line to it from a nearby outlet. After that it was just a matter of peel and stick the LEDs to the doorbell hardware and cutting to length.

My wife runs a part-time sewing business, and she needed a new table to hold her favorite sewing machine. The old table was a flimsy Walmart thing and bounced around as she used the machine, so I knew the new table needed to be sturdy and substantial. I had recently taken a trip to the lumber mill to buy a truckload of boards for a different household project, and as I was loading up, the proprietor of the mill tossed on several gnarly boards of American elm he couldn’t sell and just wanted to get rid of. “Use it for something”, he said. “I just want it gone”. I decided this would be a great opportunity to build my wife a table and make something useful out of wood that would otherwise be junk.

I decided to go with an Arts and Crafts style including a bit of inspiration from the Greene & Greene style. The aprons and the leg design caught my eye from a picture of an extension table on page 135 of David Mathias’ book, Poems of Wood and Light. On the tabletop I wanted to play around with inlaid squares because it is a play on the name of my wife’s business (http://hiptopiecesquares.com) and fits with the style of work she does. This table is the first piece I’ve done in either Arts and Crafts or Greene & Greene style, so every step was a learning process for me. A complete photo log of the construction is on my Picasa album: https://picasaweb.google.com/113278041913331532181/SewingTable?authuser=0&feat=directlink

The aprons are joined to the legs with Dominoes for speed of construction where the joinery is not visible. The lower parts of the leg assemblies are mortises and through-tenons with contrasting draw bore dowels. I also used the draw bore dowel technique when attaching the breadboard ends onto the tabletop.

Everything was sanded to #180 and cleaned with mineral spirits. The base of the table simply has a few coats of boiled linseed oil rubbed in with a mild abrasive pad. The tabletop has four thin layers of General Finishes Arm-R-Seal satin wiped on and sanded with #400 between coats. Finally, I put on a thin coat of plain paste wax and buffed it with a cotton cloth.

I’m very pleased with how this table came out, and my wife is thrilled that she no longer has to hold her sewing machine down to a bouncy table as she works!

I call this project my invisible Dining Table with Chairs. The dining set is Arts and Crafts Prairie Style design with Greene & Greene touches.

The invisible table is my own design with a solid canarywood top, including the breadboard ends, and solid cherry frame and legs. The dining chairs were built from a Kevin Rodel plan in Fine WoodWorking and is available from Taunton. The chairs are solid cherry with some wenge accents. The upholstery is 2 inch high density foam over a webbed ash slip seat and has black cowhide covering…my first upholstery experience.

The chairs were finished with 5 plus coats of Waterlox. The table, when completed will be finished with General Finishes Arm-R-Seal.

For the past few years I’ve been mostly working on “the shop” with lots of shop projects, not the least of which was the Roubo, with the idea that making furniture for our home would be the ultimate goal.

Along the way, I managed to built a few very basic tables and re-built and re-finished an oak dining room table and chairs, made some cutting boards, some toys for the grandkids, but lacking inspiration…I put off starting any “real furniture projects” until something peaked my interest. Then I saw some Greene & Greene pieces on the internet. The style appealed to my eye and when I read about Darrell Peart’s book on the subject, it had to be added to my woodworking library…then came the plans…then the cut lists…and then came the Aurora Nightstand!

The second one has been started, and then maybe a matching style of bed to follow that.

Original design by Darrell Peart.

After seeing many Greene and Greene projects and reading Darrell Peart’s book, I was inspired to make something in the style of Greene and Greene. I chose to start simple and make a picture frame (8×10).

I began by drawing on scrap plywood and just kept on refining it until I thought it looked good. I then made patterns from my drawing. From there the project was simple–just pattern routing and cutting mortise and tenon joints. After that it was sort of a battle to make the plugs, but after a few attempts, I finally got it right.

In the true style of the Greene’s, I did not stop on the front. I also made the hanger and the turn-buttons on the back out of ebony.

I am very good friends with a local cabinet maker. So in the winter I bring my projects over there and he sprays them for me. He has a large spray room set up year round. In the summer, I just spray outside.