Woodworking

It's a little scratch and dent given it's made out of offcuts, scraps and extras from other projects but I think it came out okay. Three coats of fake "tung oil" finish and it came up to a nice warm semi-gloss, and ambered up the pine enough to take the edge off the grain.

Detail shot of the side hung, center guided drawer and its rabbeted dovetail front and shop made handle.

Yeah I'm going on a bit of a victory lap here, I'm pretty happy with how this one turned out.

We've got our very first beautiful crying 1.5 month monster in our house now. We went bare bones with the preparations, only getting a crib, changing table and stroller. As the toys, books, play things from family start to come in, I want to start designing and building a storage area.

I'm thinking of an interactive storage area which grows along with my little girl and her play things. Interactive in the sense that the storage skeleton itself perhaps can be moved/ expanded/ collapsible, ala a treehouse or a fort.

I've dedicated an area in my house where the piano and wine rack used to be, it's a 1.2m x 1.2m corner next to a window in the living room.

Other things that came to mind is if one edge of the storage can be a hand painted vertical height marker (instead of being on the wall)

Open to any ideas and suggestions. I'm just trying to avoid the boring plastic storage containers and stacking them up.

This sign hangs on my basement shop door. I didn't know Don personally. I think he was the first husband of the lady we bought our house from before he passed away. I've never seriously considered removing it. I don't know why exactly. I guess it feels sort of symbolic.

My shop was once his shop. Even though he's long gone, there's still at least one piece of evidence that he was here. One day it will be someone elses shop. Even though I'll be gone, there will still be evidence of my work. The labor of past generations that went into making a house "home."

Who would have thought woodworking could be so philosophical.

My woodworking shop lives in my 2 car garage. I have several large-ish machines, like a sawstop PCS, a 12" jointer and a dust extraction system.

I'm in the US. I'm currently in the process of selling my house and moving to a different state 2000 miles away. I'm dreading having to move my woodshop. My main concern is those large machines getting damaged in transit. I plan to use pods for the move.

So, people who have gone through a similar move, do you have any tips? How did you pack large/heavy machines?

Ain't she a beauty...

I'm slapping together a night stand for my cousin out of crap I have lying around the shop, and I'm using the project as an excuse to try out some stuff.

Carcass is "hardwood" mystery meat 7-ply from Lowe's. Joinery is all dovetails; lower shelf and mid frame are sliding dovetails, upper frame is half-blinds. I did that to see if I could. Answer: Barely. The sliding dovetails were fine but the half-blinds wanted to blow the plywood apart.

Face frame is rift sawn traumatized pine. That's what I managed to salvage from a damaged section of 8:4, and judging by the growth rings that tree had been through at least one divorce. The curve on the bottom I laid out with a bowed spline. First time I've actually done that. It's attached to the carcass Norm style, with Tite-bond and #10 biscuits.

Tomorrow I'll build the drawer.

I have a Porter Cable dovetail jig. It works reasonably well when it's properly aligned, but properly aligning it a hilariously clumsy process of guess and check. The alignment lines on the templates are on the top surface, so there's a quarter inch of parallax error, and the brass adjustment nuts aren't graduated in any meaningful way. The instructions say things like "If the joint is too loose, move the jig away from you." How far? Depends on where you hold your head. It results in a guess-and-check, guess and check mentality. There is no try, measure how far off it is, and adjust it based on that measurement.

I solved both of these problems with a knife.

I printed out a little wagon wheel looking thing to use as a guide so I could put some graduation marks around the brass thumb screws. They run on a 16TPI threaded rod, so 1 full turn drives it 1/16th inch, 1/2 turn 1/32", 1/4 turn 1/64", and 1/8 turn 1/128". I stopped there because that's about the limits of my ability or need to measure. It's not on an absolute scale, but now I can move both sides of the template with some precision, if not accuracy.

I also scribed an alignment line on the back of the template, and then down each side of each template tooth. The factory alignment lines are like 1/16" wide or better, so I just scribed the location of the center. That should eliminate parallax error.

I'll give it a test run tomorrow and see if I helped it any.

I'm making my own white oak door jambs. So far I did one set. I milled some rough cut oak, made two passes through the table saw to roughly remove a rabbet for the integrated door stop.

Then I ran it through the table saw again with a dado stack to get the rabbet to the final dimensions. The problem is, it's difficult to apply even pressure as the wood passes over the dado stack. I already have a featherboard pushing against the fence, but I'm thinking I could use another pushing against the saw top.

I know I can put one on my fence, but that would apply pressure to the part of the board closest to the fence only. Do they make any contraptions that can apply even pressure downwards, but over a larger surface area? Like multiple featherboards extended out over the work piece.

Can anyone tell me how can I flatten a Minecraft heart please? I've put this together:

https://www.instructables.com/MineCraft-Heart-wood/

but I've noticed that it bows slightly. I've managed to get the ends to raise slightly when I've screwed it together. The top needs to be smoothed too, as there are some small differences between the pieces. Both sides are only off by a millimetre or two, but it's enough to be noticeable.

My thinking is to clamp it down at the centre, which seems to be mostly flat on both sides, then sand the top until it's level, then flip it over and clamp the edges to smooth the bottom.

Are there any likely problems with doing it this way, or is there a better way of doing it? Thanks in advance :)

Finished the wooden top structure for the enclosure for the soon to come land turtle.

It will get a kind of net to it (its purpose is to keep cats and birds of prey from messing with the turtle)

Made of white oak, with plenty of joinery and braces to keep it strong and stable.

Still a finishing here or there but I think I’ll leave it more or less rough sawn an untreated.

I had a plan in my head for a custom end table for quite a while, something made of local wood, a book shelf, and integrated wireless charger. This is the result.

Wood is arbutus wood, treated with tung oil just need to add a drawer. Plans are entirely unique, made in Civil3d. I took the raw wood, rough cut it, planed it, sanded and polished. It's as close to scratch as you can get.

I made a quick and dirty zero clearance plate to cut some small pieces, but realised that I needed to cut a larger piece of MDF while I was working. Ok, I thought, the saw is already set up, it won't take a minute.

Then promptly cut the zero clearance board in half...

I used walnut for the box and handcut dovetails for the joinery. I had triangular offcuts that I glued together to make the lid.

I made this a few years ago so I can't remember if I used handtools or a table saw to dimension the wood.

The finish is pure Tung Oil.

Thanks for reading!

god. dammit I have to table saw this butcher block apart.

Has anyone ever experimented with Banksia wood for woodworking? The picture used by one random seller online looks pretty interesting. I’m not in Australia, so I don’t really have the wood available and don’t want to spend $$$$ shipping something that might be awful.

What it came up with is too good not to share:

Conventional wisdom regarding finishing cutting boards and other food prep surfaces is to coat them heavily with mineral oil and/or a food safe paste wax to "seal" and/or "condition" them. Seri Robinson asserts otherwise, her research has shown that any finish applied to wood decreases its natural anti-microbial properties.

I'm still not quite happy with my current toolbox, so I’ve decided to design my own. I intend to follow the “first order retrievability” principle, meaning every tool should be accessible with one hand, without having to move anything else out of the way. I’ve made fixed tool holders from PVC pipe before - it’s a familiar, readily available material for me.

I haven’t settled on the final design yet - this sketch is just to get the idea across. My main issue is figuring out how to secure the pipes to the plywood frame. I can screw the first row into the sides and central divider, but the next row would either need to be attached to the surrounding pipes or mounted from the bottom. I’ve used screws thru the base before, and while it works, it tends to deform the pipe. I’m wondering if there’s an alternative I’m overlooking - ideally something that can also be disassembled later, since the design will probably go through several iterations.

I’m also open to any tips or ideas on what else to incorporate into the design. I’m a general handyman, so I’m carrying most of the common hand tools to jobs. For power tools, I have a separate bag.

I can try to find a picture of my current tool bag so you’ll have a better idea of the setup I’m aiming for.

Here are the parts it is built from

Took a few minutes to build, and in the end it is very stiff, light and long!

I'm making a box to store a pizza. The box itself is pretty straight forward, cherry wood, box joints and basically a groove in the bottom with a piece of plywood (cherry plywood) to act as the bottom. I'm pretty happy with how the bottom went together but for the top I'm having an issue....

So for the top I have a 3/8ths piece of roughly 10x10 with basically a dado around the edge so it insets slightly into the box. The problem I'm having is that when a pizza goes in, it bows a bit. I'm guessing it's the steam from the pizza but so far I've been able to put something heavy on it and it comes out but I want to prevent it in the future.

I'm thinking a couple strips on the underside (basically across to U that forms) might help (with some glue and a couple of screws). I've also "sealed" it with a food grade oil but I'm looking for thoughts if this will or won't help and any possible alternatives.

Could have sworn I had more 6" & 24" trigger clamps for stuff like this

I'm trying to do my very first table top out of hardwood but it proving to be quite the learning curve. I acquired a small benchtop jointer and a lunchbox type thickness planer and I've more or less successfully made my boards. What I'm struggling with now is getting a nice glue up without gaps. My first try turned out so so, and i was afraid i didn't use enough glue so I re ripped the joints with my tracksaw. I think my boards are evenly thick but they seem a bit hourglass shaped if that makes sense. They'reb about 170cm long and they join up on the ends, but there's about a 1mm gap towards the middle on some joints and its too much to squeeze all the gaps together on the panel. I first tried jointing on the benchtop jointer but got horrible results with the small bed. (Could also be lack of skill as this is all new to me). I then went with a tracksaw and parallel guides instead,which is better but still giving me a bit of a gap. So I guess im asking how more experienced woodworkers would proceed.

Would it help to glue up two boards at a time so there's maybe enough strength in the clamps to squeeze the gap shut. Or should i rip the bigger boards down so they all fit upright in the thickness planer and try to get two really parallel sides that way? I have rollers to extend the beds of both the thicknesser and the jointer but have had better results with the thicknesses. Is there something else I'm not thinking of?