Leaderboard

This was turned from a single piece of cocobolo 8 ½” square by 17/4. The surface is sanded to P1200, but with no coatings, just au naturale. With successive convolved designs I have been looking at what happens when the contour lines of the upright and basin are altered. With Sedona the upright and basin are both formed from straight lines. In many ways this shape was the most difficult convolved form to design, engineer and make that I have done so far. For one thing I had to be very particular about the acute angle in the corners. It’s about 40 degrees reflecting the fact that my diamond detail tool is 36 degrees, so about as tight a space as I could work in. Access for hollowing also narrowly limits the possible positions for the upright and basin walls. And quite honestly it is a lot more difficult to make a surface straight rather than curved.

This took 7 months to get to me.

I started a new project/adventure yesterday. Of the four, my 10 year old grand daughter is the grand kid that has always shown the desire to learn woodworking, she is also the youngest. The intelligent questions that come out of her mouth can stun a college professor. So I decided to ask her what she would like to build, you know bird house, napkin holder, those kind of things. Nope, that wasn't going to work, she said with no hesitation I want to build a coffee table for my mom and dad. So that is the project. We spent some time looking at pictures of coffee tables on the internet, after we got some ideas we drew up a design and I showed her how to make a cut list. Then off to the lumber yard. Yesterday in the shop we rough cut all the pieces, jointed and planned them and then stickered them for a couple of days. She is a quick learner and understands the process of being safe so when I took each of these pictures I had her turn the tool off so I could take the picture with out worrying about her safety at the same time. When she was putting pieces through the planer, my wife took the pictures because I was catching for her. The only thing my grand daughter didn't want to do was running the pieces through the jointer so I did that for her and I was glad that she was willing to make a decision like that instead of thinking she "had to" do everything. Laying out parts with a her tape measure and caulk. Rough cut to length with the jig saw. Ripping to rough width at the band saw. Running things through the planer. And Stickering.

Sandy listens to Ray Comfort and Kirk Cameron (www.livingwaters.com) sharing the Gospel every Saturday morning on YouTube while she makes our salads for the week so I made a passive speaker for her iPhone (and for her birthday). Curly Maple, Gaboon Ebony, and Curly Redwood, French polish finish. The difference in sound is very obvious - it’s richer, more balanced, and a little louder. Cold bending the Curly Redwood; I resawed to the point I needed and then soaked it in hot water. After three times and bending successfully more each time I cut the pieces I needed and then glued them together. Fitting the curved deflector; the square is just a prop to hold the deflector in place for the photo. Gaboon Ebony phone support - Finished passive speaker - Enjoy! David

I posted a few photos of this project in progress in the What did you do today thread, but thought I'd post a few of the finished piece here. The table top is a veneered (shop sawn) mesquite breadboard with ebony accents. I made it first so that the finish could have a long cure time while I built the base. Once that was done I started on the base while I waited for the leather straps to come. I did all the M&T joinery on the PantoRouter - made very quick work of it and very accurate. Then it was on to the drawer box and assembly. Again, dovetails and box joints were done on the PantoRouter. Once the leather came in I did the mortises for the straps to pass through and mounted the drawer box with a single spreader bar spanning between the two top stretchers right in the center to keep the sides from collapsing inward from the weight of the drawer box. The superb leatherwork is by Jason at Texas Heritage @txheritage to match the leather on the Roorkee chair I made last year. I did a little ebony stringing on the drawer fronts to tie everything together. The ¼" solid ebony drawbore dowels were made on the PantoRouter. Have I mentioned how much I like that thing? The finish is Osmo PolyX. I don't know about others, but every time I begin a new project I have in the back of my mind the idea of really trying to make zero mistakes, which never happens, of course. On this project I believe I cut enough wood to make three coffee tables. But in the end, I'm happy with it!

Today this flew into the shop

Made this one out of Red Gum for the granddaughter, hidden behind the drawer is a musical movement that starts and stops when the drawer is opened, the movement is from http://www.themusichouse.com , if you haven't had a chance to make a music box these are the best people to deal with, awesome folks and a wide selection of movements. not continuous grain all around just 3 corners, the wood is a little thick for my taste but this stuff warps pretty easy and i was getting some bad chip out on the planer so i quit while i was ahead. the drawer box is Sapele, finish is ARS, 3 coats, as always thanks for looking folks, comments-questions are welcome, a special thanks to @Coop for setting me straight on the hinges, these look much better than what i had been doing, just messing with you coop but thanks, i re-learned how to cut mortices with a chisel

A super bandsaw box tutorial, watched this and was making boxes in a flash. Great technique if you haven't seen it before. https://www.finewoodworking.com/2016/06/07/episode-1-introduction-make-beautiful-bandsawn-boxes I grabbed a few chunks of wood and instant boxes; Thanks for looking.

Couple of LV packages came in mail today- My first Dovetail saw. A much better flush cut saw than my crappy Dewalt one. And, to add to the 3/8, 1/2 and 3/4 chisels I bought a month ago, finishing out the upgrade from my old Narex set. These are the PM-V11s.

I didn't intend to journal this build, so this is more of an 'after action' report. The construction is nothing extrordinary. Materials (poplar, pine, and plywood) are certainly nothing to get excited about. The design offered a small challenge to make form fit function. Thanks to all who contributed advice. The work table / desk, sans paint and pulls (those are Sister's problem): The three "drawers" hide the real storage compartment: The front of the big drawer attaches with these interlocking brackets: With a simple lift, the front comes off so the drawer becomes a tray, allowing unobstructed access to the musical contents: Thanks for looking. I plan to add a finished shot after Sis does her thing with the paint. Now you know the REST of the story.... Good Day!

Since switching coasts, i haven’t been doing a ton of woodworking aside from some small outdoor projects and a couple random things. Since I finally finished my workbench a year or so ago, I’ve been doing a little more. With the enforced home time here in the Seattle area recently, I finally got around to making an end table using the last of the hickory I brought out from NJ.

I've reached a tipping point with living with my 6" jointer and an upgrade has moved to the top of the tool priority list. I'm in a small basement shop so getting a big jointer in there is not realistic. A combo machine doesn't suit my workflow. So really the only option I have would be to build one myself, ala Matthias Wandel and John Heisz. Their builds used a cutterhead from a lunchbox planer. Matthias also used the motor from the planer, John used an induction motor. They both made the tables out of plywood skinned with thick sheet metal. That's the part that I really had misgivings about. I was thinking I wish I could just order something like a 12" x 24" cast iron table from somewhere and then it hit me: table saw extension wings! My Ridgid TS3650 has cast iron wings but with a partial open web. Looking online, Sawstop sells cast iron wings separately for $270. I think that's a reasonable expense for the jointer beds, but I didn't feel great about spending that kind of money just to immediately take an angle grinder to them to make them fit over the cutterhead without being sure what would happen. Maybe they would warp if I cut the end off? Then I got to looking at spiral cutterheads. I put a Byrd head in my 6" and I'm not going back to straight knives. One thing to note about the cutterheads from lunchbox planers is they all seem to have the drive pulley on the same side, which ends up being on the front side of a jointer. Because the cutterheads are a small diameter the pulley ends up limiting your ability to joint anything wider than the cutterhead and I didn't want that. Then in looking at various options it turned out that the cutterheads for 15" planers are about the same cost as the 12" jointer cutterheads. Reason being the planer cutterheads are 3" diameter with 4-5 rows and the jointer cutterheads are 4" diameter with 8 rows. Now I didn't want to get greedy about the size of my jointer, but I may very well upgrade to a 15" planer someday so a 15" jointer would be swell. However those cutterheads have what looks to be at least a 2" extension from the cutters to where the bearing goes on the drive side. This is to get to the other side of the posts on the planer. So this makes the whole thing effectively much larger than just the extra 3" of the cutterhead. Also this rules out using the tables saw wings. Grizzly does sell some cast iron wings for their 15" planers, but they are way too short. So I settled on a 4" diameter 12" jointer cutterhead and getting the Sawstop wings. Can't afford to do that right now, so I'll set this aside. Right after I take a peek at Craigslist just to see if maybe there's a table saw with cast wings I could nab on the cheap and maybe pick up the wings and a motor at the same time. Well, wouldn't you know it. There's a TS3650 in REALLY rough shape for $100. It followed me home. You should see the blade that was on it. I think it was the factory blade. It has maybe 10 teeth left on it that aren't broken. I'm not cleaning it to get an exact count. From the rust on the arbor I don't think that blade was ever taken off. There's four notches in the blade insert from kickbacks. The other side of the cabinet where the tilt wheel mounts is bent and buckled. Like I said, ROUGH shape. He said it needed a new motor but after asking a couple questions I was pretty confident it was a wiring/switch issue, and it did turn out to be the switch. However it's spinning the wrong way and not reversible. There's a bunch of potentially useful parts in the saw though. I may be able to use the pulleys and belt, swapping them around will get close to the right speed. Don't know what the shaft size on the cutterhead is yet though. They are poly-v belt pulleys which seem to just be unobtainable so it looks like it's all or nothing with those. The tilt mechanism could be used for adjusting the infeed table. Good long cord. The base has casters, though for the time being I'm just using the main part of the saw as a tool stand for my spindle sander. There's a few round bars and other assorted stuff that may come in handy. The first order of business was to get those wings in some Evaporust. I didn't get enough to submerge the whole wing so I tried covering the rest with paper towels. This kind of worked on the first one but it missed some spots so the second time I tried using a million little spring clips to ensure better contact. That failed miserably. It's just 10 times more effective to have it submerged. The second one didn't get as long to soak because some idiot thought it would be a good idea to use nails to prop up the wing in the solution a little to make sure it got underneath everywhere and then worried that maybe the spot under the nail wouldn't get treated so he should shift it over a bit. He got away with this idea on the first wing but the second one it sprung a leak and peed black fluid all over the end of his workbench. Hopefully he learned a good lesson from that. At least he was in the room at the time and noticed before the whole gallon leaked out. In any case, the rust is mostly gone but it's not a magic pit and stain remover. They aren't beautiful, but they are very flat. One has a .003" dip in the middle and the other is as flat as I can measure. Being pitted makes me a lot less concerned if this isn't going to work out, so let's mark out the cutterhead and break out the grinder. Note here I am marking the wrong end of the outfeed table, after having already marked it in the wrong spot. But I figured it out before the sparks flew, thankfully. Started by cutting the sides. And then along the edge of the bevel. I clamped the bar of the miter gauge on the top just to protect it in case I slipped. Side note: the metal Ridgid uses in their fasteners, at least in that miter gauge, is complete garbage. Stripped out the phillips head just with a screwdriver and it drilled out like it was putty. Then it was kind of like taking out a nick in a very wide chisel. Grind it square then establish a bevel. I put a piece of plywood under the bench to give me a light background behind it and shined a light on the bevel to be able to see better. Then I used my mock cutterhead as a go-no-go gauge to see how I did. It's not pretty and I may go back and refine it a bit but pretty pleased with everything besides the whole shop being covered in iron dust. I have thought about bolting on a bar at the cutterhead end to give it back some strength across the width that I took away but I don't think it's wise to remove the webbing there to make a flat area to bolt to so it would have to be quite deep and notched around all the webbing. The open web complicates it as well. It doesn't seem to need it so I'm just going to leave it the way it is. I should work on filling in the open web soon and I may fool around with a parallelogram mechanism for the infeed but I may not be able to afford to buy the cutterhead for a while and I can't do much of anything beyond that without it. Waiting on some important news on that front, maybe this week.

I recently ordered and installed a Shelix for my jointer. Holy mackerel, believe the hype! My jointer is about 20 years old and I was going to replace it, only I couldn't afford a new one with a helical head and I didn't want straight blades again, so I compromised. This thing has transformed my jointer. That's the simplest way I can put it. Every I put through it comes back glass smooth and dead flat. Simple as that. Install was pretty straightforward. I had to use a gear puller to separate the old cutterhead from the to mounts that afixes the cutterhead to the machine. Aside from that, I just fumbled my way through it and it took about an hour. After a quick adjustment of the outfeed table, I was in business and that machine is now a joy to use. There is no downside that I've come across, except maybe cost. I elected to have them include bearings and I think it wasA little over $400 delivered. If you're on the fence, I can't recommend strongly enough. I'm already saving up to do my planer.

Not quite 4 weeks ago, a good friend, Rita, brought along an entrance hall table she wanted me to fit a drawer into ... (Note that these photos were taken in my entrance hall, not Rita's). It was really a boring ... okay, ugly table. I thought that the proportions were completely ugh, and the legs reminded me of detention in a classroom. The table had been a kerbside salvage by her late husband, a close friend of mine, and a very good woodworker in his own right. It had been used as a work table. Rita had just moved into a new home, and the table was used because the width of the top fitted an alcove in the entrance hall. I said to Rita that I would re-build the table. "But I must have a drawer", Rita emphasised. The wood was good Jarrah. The first step was to pull it apart. This was not so easy as simply unscrewing the clips for the top ... Some evil tablemaker had used a nail gun to attach the corner blocks. Pulling them out left holes in the legs. The legs were attached with dowels. I would never have guessed as the construction was very strong. Pulling them away caused some of the wood to tear along with it. No way to remove them other than saw the ends away. Deconstructed ... Let's begin again .. I thought that I would do something different with this write-up. Turn it around and start with the finished piece. That's right ... the table rebuild is complete. This will provide a picture of the end result, and we can then look at how certain parts were built. This way around might create a better understanding of where the build was going, and how it got there. In particular, the drawer. The drawer is a little beauty. I did scratch my head over the construction. No doubt it has been done before, but I could not find any pictures of another like it. I am sure there will be interest in the design. I am chuffed with the efficiency of it. More on this in the next article. For now, here is the completed table. The legs have been brought inward, tapered, and a 3 degree splay added to the sides. The top retained its width (I was threatened with death, or worse, if it was shortened) but was made shallower. A slight camber was added front-and-back to soften the outline ... The apron was also made shallower. The original was 100mm (4") high. It is now 65mm (2 1/2") high. Oy .. where's the drawer gone?! I could have sworn it was there yesterday. Aah ... there it is ... This is the drawer case ... With drawer inserted - you need to get close up to see the joins .. It opens with a pull under the drawer .. The drawer is shallow, of course, it is just for house keys and the odd remote control. It is just 45mm (1 3/4") high on the outside and 26mm (1") deep inside. The full dimensions are 230mm (9") wide and 280mm (11") deep ... The sides are 7mm thick. The drawer front is 18mm (roughly 3/4"). To maximise the internal height, the drawer bottom was attached with a groove into the drawer sides rather than using slips. Slips would have used a precious extra 3mm (1/8"). So they 6mm (1/4") drawer bottom has a 3mm rebate, fitting a 3mm groove. The sides and bottom are quartersawn Tasmanian Oak, which is very stable and tough. One screw at the rear, with an expansion slot, to hold it firmly. A nice, tight drawer ... It slides in-and-out smoothly. I love that it disappears and is hidden. More on the construction next time, but feel free to ask questions. Regards from Perth Derek

I had a request for a mountain scene cutting board, laser engraved with names and wedding date. I've done a few of these and they come out looking nice but I doubt one ever gets used for anything exception kitchen art! I drew the original design in CorelDraw where I exported it as an svg to bring into Fusion 360. From there I did the CAD/CAM work to cut the Maple, Walnut, and Cherry. These pieces are about 3/8" thick and the backer board is about 7/8" thick. Everything is glued with TB III and the feet are silicone with SS screws and washers, so everything is FDA approved. After cutting the mountain scene and gluing it to the backer board it goes to the table saw for trimming to size and then to the router table for rounding the edge. I do the names and date in CorelDraw and take that file to the laser shop for engraving. That way they don't have to do anything except load the file and start the laser machine. It's finished in mineral oil with Beeswax (our own mix), even though it'll probably just be eye candy for the kitchen. Sky, mountain, foreground blanks; I picked Walnut with some sapwood to look like snowcapped and some in the foreground - Blanks glued - Blanks glued to backer board - Engraving in the laser - Finished cutting board - Enjoy! David

Those who know me know I’m pretty frugal when it comes to tools, I have to really need it and going to use it before I lay out any cash but these from Harry Epstein are earning their keep already. The Veritas wheel marking gauge is a joy to use and the 4”, 6” and 12” squares are right on, couldn’t resist making boxes for the 4 and 6, one all butternut and one quarter sawn sycamore and walnut, the butternut one is a gift for my son

This is for grandson #2, butternut and walnut, box joints, sliding tray in the top. It’s been a long time since I mortised in hinges by hand but I think they came out ok, 95 degree stop hinges from Rockler, lightweight and not much money but they worked well. As always thanks for looking and comments are welcome as usual. Now on to #4, Red Gum wood with a bottom drawer that has a hidden musical movement behind it that plays when she opens the drawer.

So today I got to give Megan's grandfather Dave a great father's day present. He spent his working life driving truck and farming neither jobs are very easy and it took a toll on him. Dave is in his late 70s and has COPD that basically keeps him in a chair all day every day as a result he doesn't have the ability to maintain his house as well as he may well like. So yesterday I went over and replaced their sliding glass door. The old door was rotten through, there were leaks to the inside and it was about to fall apart. It indeed did break apart when we removed it. I, with some help from my soon to be father-in-law, installed a new vinyl slider in just a few hours. The fun part was getting to answer Dave's questions about my battery powered track saw. He'd never seen anything like it in the world and "how does that cut siding when there is no blade in it?" were his exact words. I brought the saw over to him showed him how it worked with the plunge action retracting the blade for safety and other reasons. I also showed him how the track works to get perfectly strait cuts with easy layout. It was interesting how he immediately grasped the benefits of the system and was excited at how some small changes made a simple circular saw better. Hope everyone has a good Father's day.

Counter tops: For the lower top I used plastic template material to make a full size template. The curved wall made this more difficult but necessary. You just mark off the wall and then cut the material to fit fine tuning with a sanding block where necessary. I started with a pencil but switched to a fine point sharpie so I could see it better. To glue the pieces together just a couple drops of acetone out of a custom made glue bottle (just put a really really small hole in the cap) hold together for a couple of seconds and viola One word of caution if you hold to tight the acetone will soften the material to much and you will crack it Quick patch and you're good to go Once its done it can be rolled up and taken to the counter material in my case MDF. It holds surprisingly well actually. The work paid off, fit the first time. I need to clean up the front edge, add a couple domino's for alignment, and the first layer of the lower counter is done. For the upper counter I marked out some tick marks so that I could cut both sides of the curve to rough shape making it easier to mark the final shape and handle the pieces. I did make quick templates for both ends around the walls Here is the initial rough fit Then I made a marking tool for both the inside and outside (same tool different holes) and marked them off, cut with a jig saw, and sanded the edges with a long flexible sanding board Now I need to figure out what to do with the ends, fix the little gouge I put in the upper counter, and they will be ready to glue to the top layer of 1/2" MDF. Once glued together I will use a bearing guided straight bit to match this layer.

Touring around near Cades Cove the other day.

A couple of things in the shop are really gonna suck....................Like my belt sander, and router table.

Just the spray gun, not the power unit, came in the mail today. I'm pretty inexperienced when it comes to spraying finish having only used a conversion gun and air compressor in the past which- so so results, with a HUGE mess and huge waste of finishing product. So I'm excited to try this out. I brushed in two coats of poly onto a recent project and am going to spray the final coat.

None of them are worth preserving. As long as you are having fun, just put in as much effort as you see fit. With a view to make them usable, just get them clean so rust and dirt does not transfer to your work. You may also find the standard irons are just fine, especially if you plan to use normal timber. If you add up your time spent restoring them, along with the sundries required it may be more logical to buy new. However I find bringing life back to an old tool an enjoyable distraction. This recent saw cost me £1 and took one hour to sort out.

Only when I carry my 12" Starrett in the middle pocket.

Floors are done, baseboard trim is done, cabinet cases are almost done, exercise room is done, air compressor and miter saw are out of the basement for the first time in nearly two years...its been a great day! Oh and in an added bonus we had live sports for the first time in months Next up counter tops. I need to get the sinks installed so I can get my final inspection done by 7/15 when my permit expires.

Blackberries. We picked 30 gallons off of the big row last year.. Made 2 more rows with new sprouts from that row.

Picked up some more Dubuque clamps

I finished this base for a patio umbrella. There's a great huge chunk of concrete in there to keep things from blowing away. Made it from some left over ipe that has been kicking around for years.

this makes it all worth it

The drawer - part 1 It was my intention from the outset to hide the drawer as best as possible. This required that the drawer not have a pull or handle visible on the outside. To achieve this end, the drawer would need to be opened from the underside. Issue: Opening from the underside meant that the drawer would need to rest in a case which was open from below. Without a case bottom (i.e. drawer blades) on which the drawer could rest, the common method for a drawer would be a form of side hang. There are two methods for a side hung drawer that I know of, and I dislike both of them intensely! Partly because they require thick drawer sides, which lack aesthetic appeal for me. The first is a wooden slide (ugh!) which requires grooving the outside of the drawer sides ... The second method involves a metal slide (double ugh!!), which is ugly and belongs in a kitchen ... In the end I decided that I could build a drawer case with drawer blades open at the front. I have not seen anything like this before, but I live a sheltered life. I doubt this is original ... just re-inventing the wheel. There are four parts to the drawer build: the drawer size and design, the drawer case, fitting the drawer case, and the drawer. The drawer size and design The drawer is 230mm (9") wide and 280mm (11") deep. The width represents one third of the length of the apron. This works well since the depth of the drawer needs to be greater than the width to avoid racking. Racking would not be an issue if there were side slides (ugh!), but we are avoiding those thingies. Note the lip on the underside of the drawer front ... See the drawer lining up with the apron ... going ... going .. ... gone ... That lip is the drawer pull, and it doubles as the drawer stop. The drawer case Let's make the face of the drawer case. The original aprons were 100mm high. The new apron was to be 65mm, which was the height I calculated (with a life size drawing on a MDF sheet). The 65mm height included the drawer front, which would be 45mm high. That would leave a 20mm rail above the drawer. The first step here is to rip away 45mm from the original apron ... These two sections are jointed so that they may be perfectly flush once glued back together, and no join evident. The jointing was done on my large shooting board ... The drawer front is marked off - with a knife, not a pencil - from the centre of the 45mm wide board ... And then the drawer front is crosscut on the table saw. The cut area is covered in blue tape to minimise spelching ... We are now left with four sections - the wide top, the two lower side sections, and the middle drawer front. The sections are glued back (taking care not to glue the drawer front back!) ... Once the glue has dried, plane the board flat ... Did you see it before? Now the board is ripped down to 65mm, leaving a 20mm rail above the drawer front. Here you can see the front and rear aprons. They have also been cut to length, given a tenon at each end. The apron tenons are angled 3 degrees for the splayed legs ... Part 2 will complete the drawer. Regards from Perth Derek

Marcy discovered that she doesn't need a ladder to trim the tall bush. I discovered that it costs $15 to have a hard drive destroyed, but it's more than $15 worth of fun to take one apart.

More experiments in tablesaw turning: Seems to have come out OK. Definitely better to use the outer plates of my dado stack, stiffness resists side loading. Last time, someone suggested that spinning the work from the central pivot would be safer. I tried just turning the wing nut that holds the rotating parts together when I cut the outside. After losing the feeling in my thumb for a week, I made this Q&D tee handle for doing the inside. Much better!

Pressure washed the deck. My wife WE should pressure wash the deck Me ok I'll get it out for you while I clean your pool filters... Wife OK I just finished pressure washing the deck ... apparently this is my wife's idea of WE cleaning the deck. I'm really glad she looks comfortable reading her book

A lot depends on the type of glue. Different glues adhere to different materials. I would recommend doing what you said re testing. You can also tape off the exposed areas prior to glue up if you're still unsure. I would highly recommend taping.

I always try to achieve a high degree of precision. That way my mistakes are more accurate.

Tiny waterfall at Banning Mills in Georgia

And here are a few shots of it in place. Amazing how quickly mesquite darkens in such a short time. The Roorkee chair and the table are both from the same batch of mesquite with the same finish. I could not find my white buffing compound stick anywhere, think I left it at school prepandemic. Just got a new one from Amazon today so I can break out the Dremel and go to town on the ebony! Here you can see a little better that the leatherwork matches the Roorkee chair. And one last one with 3 of my projects in the same shot - coffee table, Roorkee chair and bookcase.

I like that idea, just might take mine with me on the next fishing trip. The older you get the harder it is to clear the side of the boat.

Here you go. I need to get some rubber crutch tips to put on the bolt heads which were needed to go below the bottom of the clamp base.

That stuff would be fine for shop projects. If you use it for a router table, be sure to have sufficient bracing underneath so the table doesn't sage over time. Use it for building shelves, table saw out feed table or anything that needs stable, flat, smooth sheet goods. It doesn't have the strength of plywood, but with the right construction techniques it will work fine.

I've been trying to get faster at building projects. I've had things that spanned 8-10 months and that is just obscene. So here is a couple of quick things I banged out in the past few weeks. Mostly while finish was curing on my desk. Raised garden bed. Very few cuts. I bought the cedar at the sizes I wanted to make it and just built it. About 5 hours of work. Landscaping done by wife. Inspection crew lead shown in picture. This footstool for my office was built out of offcuts from my desk and took about 2-3 hours. Then I waited almost 3 weeks to build the cushion part cause I dreaded it. It went ok though. Quite a few things to nitpick on this, but I needed it functional, not fine woodworking and like I said it was more of a speed drill than anything.

Got another part of my Father's Day gift from my son today. These little drop shipments are like Christmas over and over again. Veritas from Lee Valley. Seems like it will work ok. Won't win any style points, but will mark lines 

Then I came home and did a little project I've been meaning to do - gun vise. This one is a prototype based off a plan I found on the net. Has a little cam wedgie thing on the butt end to hold the rifle in place. It works, but it could be better. I got what I paid for with the plans Later, better versions are already in my head.

Banner package day. Try not to drool on the keyboard over this spalted maple. And the less exciting stuff: a whole lot of rubber feet and the screws to make sure they don't fall off for cutting boards, some small knobs, double-sided tape, and finish. Not a big fan of glossy water based poly but have to finish some curly maple drawer fronts and the flat on the rest of the piece won't do.

You will want to do breadboard ends and drawbore them so that it stays flat no matter what. This top is 115" x 40" in QSWO.

Got the first of my father's day gift from my younger son: 1/2" dowel centers, a replacement wheel for my marking gauge ( a Cub Scout dropped it when we were making pinewood derby cars) and some rust erasers. I have an old set of Freud chisels that I bought way back in the day and they have a patina on them that has built up over the years. I find these have been good chisels and still use them regularly for rough work, even though my primary set is now Lie-Nielsen. Now I just have to wait for the striking knife and coping saw blades.

Looks amazing! That inside baseboard joint reminds me of something that happened a long time ago. A friend was trying to build a house himself, never having done it before, and hired the cheapest help he could find. He wanted me to stop by, and give him some advice on a plumbing problem. I was driving a step van tool truck back then, and happened to be driving that. His helpers were putting in baseboard. They were trying to miter the corners, but that only resulted in a lot of cussing. Every time they nailed a piece in, the joint opened up. I went to the truck, and came back with a coping saw. One of them said to the other, "Look! He's done come back with a funny looking little saw. You gonna cut baseboard with That!!?" I cut the sheetrock tape out of the corner, behind where the baseboard was going, with the two rednecks watching closely. I nailed the first piece in, then used their miter saw to cut the second piece, and coped it. They were about a foot away from the saw action. I thought maybe they were near-sighted. I nailed the second piece in, and they both got down on their hands and knees, examining it with their eyes as close as they could get. One of them said, "DAYAM. It looks like it's done growed together!" I gave them the coping saw-not sure how it went past that.

Blackberry moonshine might get you some more customers and maybe even 3 meals a day...

This is an orchid from Guatamala.The botanical name is Myrmecophila tibicina. Here in Martin County Fl we have a very large population of Mayen Indians from Guatamala. I have a crew come to my place weekly for landscape maintenance. They are exceptional workers. When they noticed this orchid they pointed and said Ek. I found out that is the name in their dialect. Kew gardens in UK keeps track of the worlds plants. Been there for a few hundred years. The Mayans have been around for thousands of years. So around here we call it Ek. And we do not care what the taxonomists think! The flower looks like it is from outer space...

Now that the board is un-jammed, you need a u-channel on the ceiling to hold the other end of the board.