Next project I’m working at is a small dovetailed box, the kind that can hold candles or act as a pencil box for a kid’s art pencils. Its an opportunity to work on my hand-cut dovetails, putting grooves in and doing some additional hand work for the project. Starting with five pieces of quality pine: …
One of the challenges in doing hand tool work is that for some processes (planning, sawing) you need a lower bench height, and for others (cutting joinery, carving) you need a higher bench height. Folks get around this in a variety of ways. Some build smaller “bench on bench” items, which sit on their normal …
Thought I”d give you an idea of the shop, from 1993 to now. Its been an interesting ride, as I slowly built up my woodworking skills and tools, and built the shop up. My wife and I moved into our house in 1993, a bit of a fixer-upper, with lots to do, and not enough …
Well, finally got back to the joinery bench, after working on some other projects. The idea for this is to create a taller bench for doing detailed work (dovetailing, carving, etc.). It will also be somewhat “portable” so I could take it to craft shows/farmer’s markets to demo on. Here its shown upside down, with …
Found this plan in a box making book and thought it was pretty ingenious. The box is setup to store a bottle of wine securely, but it has a tray/lid that can then be “flipped” and used as a tray on top. It can then be used for jewelry or odds & ends. A great …
In trying to build the joinery workbench, I chose to use drawbores to help reinforce the mortise & tenon joints. Drawboring is a very old technique for joinery, used in the age when glues were expensive or non-existent. The idea is to drill a hole in the wood holding the mortise, and then drill an …
So I’ve been continuing my work on the joinery bench. The idea of the bench is to get a smaller bench which sits taller, so doing careful furniture joinery work (dovetails, carving, etc.) It’s higher up, with better visibility, especially for someone whose eyesight isn’t as good. Like most workbenches, the joinery here is large. …
One of the challenges of working in a small shop is the need to apply finish to a project in an area that is covered with dust. Every time you walk, you stir it up, and it ends up on your finish. Large shops typically have a s completely separate room for finishing, and often …
In making mortise and tenon joints, one of the challenges is to make sure the tenon fit into the mortise so that its tight, but not too tight. There are all sorts of jigs and methods to do this on the tablesaw, with a router table, with hand tools, etc. In this case, I’ve got …
Several months ago, I redid the storage setup for my wife. We pulled out the old setup, and installed a corner cabinet for shelf storage, which helped solve that pesky “what do you do with a corner of the closet” problem. It was a fun little project, and it helped to save money vs. having …
