During a recent move, a bookcase was terminally damaged. Now, this wasn’t the fault of the movers. They did a good job trying to prevent a particle board disaster, but Walmart’s special couldn’t survive the move. As a result, a number of photographs lost their display home. The way to solve this wasn’t a trip to the store for more particleboard destined to collapse. Instead, I took the opportunity to pick up some lumber and have a go at the…
Apologies in advance as this will be a photo-heavy post. My First Workbench Since moving into our current house about five years ago, I have been working on a small workbench built out of 2x4s and OSB. The work surface measured 4 feet by 30 inches. It also had four casters fixed to the feet. This had started out as a general workbench, not something woodworking focused. Eventually, I lopped off the pegboard back and added a face vise. This…
As mentioned in an earlier post, it was suggested to me that I should build a carrier for beer growlers. That design, incorporating a number of different curves, proved to be a time suck in the shop. I may return to it later, after having made proper templates for routing the various curved parts. However, I wanted to simplify the project to make it easier to run a batch of ten to twenty at a time for sale. A few…
I’ve been a bit neglectful updating here recently. Most of the past month has been spent on a number of small projects, including turning about a dozen pens, a small box, Christmas ornaments, and some other odds and ends. Additionally, I finished a red oak candle stand based on the shaker table at Hancock village. The table is finished with garnet shellac and black wax. This was my first time mixing shellac from flakes. The process was straightforward and produced…
I’ve been down with a cold all week which limited my shop time. There is nothing worse than breathing sawdust in when you’re sinuses are already clogged. Instead, I was inspired to learn some new design tools by Tim Celeski’s blog posts over at Popular Woodworking on what he calls digital woodworking. I decided to sit down and spend some quality time with SketchUp. For anyone unfamiliar with this, it is a piece of software that allows 3D modeling and…