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Project Photos (page 5)
Even more stuff! Don't forget to click on any of the images if you want to see a
larger picture.
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Simple Cylinders
Dogwood. I had a piece of pink dogwood in my collection that at the time of
purchase seemed like a great idea. After much thought, this wood was too nice
to use in anything and had to stand on it's own. I was looking for a little
lathe practice and soon enough, the idea rolled out (sorry…. bad pun).
They're as simple as they look, no tricks, no fancy stuff, just plain simple
cylinders fashioned after a picture I saw in a Betty Crocker cookbook
(hey, we were out of reading material that particular day). These were really
good lathe practice and now they reside in a couple of different kitchens where
they're in use as they were meant to be.
For a finish they were sanded smooth, a few natural voids filled with epoxy and
treated to a coat of mineral oil (otherwise known as "intestinal lubricant.
Where do they come UP with this stuff??). As I said, simple cylinders.
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Box o' maple
You know how it is. You're wandering through a wood store, you see a stick of
wood and you just have to take it home. OK, maybe you don't know how it is,
but that's how I ended up with the Birdseye maple that this box is made of.
The wood sat in the shop for some time before telling me what it wanted to be
and about an hour and a half later, here's the result (hey…sometimes things go
right too!). It's a simple box with mitered and splined corners. The base is a
piece of ¼" Baltic birch plywood and the top is a simple lift-off design with
rabbeted edges. The "handle" is a piece of black walnut covering a circular
finger relief.
For the finish on this, I tried something new. Actually, the product is old,
but I'd never played with it much so…out came the shellac (Zinsser's
Seal Coat ).
I applied coat after coat after coat, sanding with progressively finer grits
until there were 12 coats of shellac sanded to 400. I then put some 600-grit p
aper on the block and smeared it with paste wax using the wax as a lubricant
to wet sand with. It worked. I continued changing the paper until I reached
1500 grit. After letting the wax dry, I buffed it and the results were
incredible. The really cool thing is that the entire finish took about 4 hours
with all the sanding done while I was in the living room (oh oh…did I just
type that out loud? Busted!!). The box was given as a Christmas present and n
ow has a place of honor in a new home.
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Norm was here!!
No, not really, but I did build a hutch of his
design
for the workshop (see, I don't give everything away!).
This…was my first foray into cabinet making. It was also my first extensive
use of my Leigh
dovetail jig (D3 upgraded to a D4 and purchased from the Internet for about
$0.30 on the dollar). I set a $500 budget and went to work.
The case is ¾" birch plywood and the drawer sides/bottoms are all of ½" Baltic
birch. The drawer slides are rated at 150 lbs per pair and the work surface
is replaceable tempered hardboard. The frame for the top is made of half-lapped
2x4' (thanks Phil!!) and the finish on it is several coats of Zinsser's
Seal Coat
(de-waxed blonde shellac in a can). The green thing on the end is a left over
barrel from the mailbox project (I made an extra just in case) that's intact,
mounted to a couple of brackets and now houses the kids eye goggles and ear
muffs. When we moved I brought this bench with me (the lumber rack had to stay)
and it's in use once again in the new shop.
Oh, the budget? I blew it. I came in at $500.86 (seriously!)
While my cabinet making skills were far from automatic, they came a long ways
and I'm actually thinking of tackling a larger project.
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Guard your firewood pile
One thing that sucks about woodworking is I can never again walk past a f
irewood pile without eyeballing at it. I have to do this covertly as it's a
difficult action to explain. Still….it brings out something in me…for this,
I needed tooling. The result, was a firewood cutter.
Its purpose is pretty simple, it's functionality falls along the same lines
and I think the picture about sums it up. Made of white oak (I had it laying
around) and a few simple knobs and lag bolts it a very functional fixture.
The result is a first cut on a piece of non-milled wood that then allows me to
continue milling it until I get the shapes and pieces I need. This way, I have
access to "free" figured maple, madrona (arbutus) and holly to name a few.
Now…. next time you walk past a firewood pile, you're going to look at it, and
chuckle. See? Now you're beginning to get it…
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