Woodworking Projects
Quick Index: twin beds, chopping block, stereo chest, turnbuckles, workbench, bowsaws, sideboard, barrister bookcase, kitchen totes, jewelry boxes, computer cabinet, cradles, kitchen remodeling, sewing machine cabinet, machinist's toolboxes, shadow box, snakes and whales, player piano roll cabinet, parts cabinet, Pens, Unusual Music Box, Yuppie Workbench, Chute Board, Roll-around Workbenches, Schnitzelbank, Finger-jointed boxes, Shepherd Planes, Wooden Spokeshaves,

I've built, rebuilt, and repaired a lot of things over the years. I had one bout with rebuilding an old BMW years ago. But other than that one episode, my inclination has been more towards wood and sawdust than grease and oil (easier to clean up and other reasons). I'd like to think my skills have improved a little over time.

In 1972 we had gone to Michigan on a two-week temporary assignment. The assignment went on and on, two weeks at a time for nearly a year. At some point in there I got incredibly stir crazy and decided to buy a Sears Radial Arm Saw. Back then you could make anything if you had a Radial Arm Saw! The girls were still in cribs but were ready for "big girl beds". I set the saw up in the basement of the apartment, bought some oak stair treads and hacked out little head and foot boards to be used with the springs and mattresses from the girl's cribs.

These little twin beds were my first woodworking project. I don't remember what kind of finish I used on them, but it would be 20 years before I finally got a finish I liked. Pretty cute, huh? No, the girls, not the beds!
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The bulk of my woodworking efforts for the next 10 years or so ran mostly to home improvement or home building. This chopping block was built quite a while ago. It is maple with a tung oil finish. It has been lightly sanded and re-coated a few times, but has held up fairly well. The top has all-thread rods running through it ostensibly to help hold it together. I don't recommend this. When you tighten the rods on dry wood, the wood will get crushed when it expands in the summer, crushing the wood fibers and then the clamps are loose when it dries out again. Better to properly glue up the top and skip the rods. The tap handle in front of the scale was made for the local pub. I got two free pitchers of beer for it. (That doesn't count as "getting paid", does it?) We found the scale in a junk pile and I rebuilt it. It had been painted green when we got it. I put it in the strip tank and I remember seeing the words "Honest weight, No springs" appear and disappear as the green paint turned to gold and then to bare metal. The scale was fun. Made about 1920 by the Toledo Scale Company, it has nice brass hardware and a bubble vial to level it. It's quite accurate, too. (You should have seen the look on the postmaster's face when I asked him to weigh a bag of piano tuning pins I'd adopted as a weight standard... but that is another story)
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Most folks spend time trying to hide stereo equipment and the wiring. This little chest was my solution. It is made of cherry and finished with one of the early Bartley wipe-on products. Small Aiwa stereo components hang inside. The bottom of the cabinet is a perforated panel for cooling and wiring access.
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A while back the travelling Woodworkers Shows were a new and wonderful idea. It was at one of these shows that I became fascinated with the Beall Wood Threader. If you have been to any of these shows you'll know what I mean. The Beall sales area was usually covered with an assortment of wooden nuts and bolts. I remember they had made a big wooden Stilsen wrench one time. Anyway, I bought one of these threading gadgets. I bought the full-up model for both right and left hand threads. With this gadget external threads are cut using a jig and a router, while the internal threads are cut with a large conventional-looking tap. So I get this thing home and I need to make something with it but I don't want to make another handful of nuts and bolts like on the salesman's counter, so I came up with these turnbuckles. They're made of Walnut and finished with a spray lacquer from a can. The barrels were hollowed out using a horizontal mortiser and then turned on a lathe. The eyebolts were turned on the lathe to get the shape of the eye and the dimension for the threads. They were bored out in the center and finished with a round over bit in a router. These turnbuckles may have been the first of many projects that have absolutely no value whatsoever... except entertainment. (The brace is a Stanley 813G with a 1/2-inch RJ bit and a Stanley #49 nickel-plated depth stop).
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This is the first fancy workbench I made. I thought it would be cool to make a workbench with wooden vises all around since I had the equipment to make 1 inch wood screws. This is the design I came up with. Here's another view. It is made of Maple and finished with Hydrocote lacquer. The lacquer was put on by hand. There are tapped holes all around the bench; sides, ends, and top. Each vise worked with a pair of screws and they could be put most anywhere. About the time I decided to make the bench a friend approached me and said he had a piece of real heavy wood, and since I was a woodworker I might like to have it. He said he'd been using it to block up his car when he changed the oil. Well, it turned out the wood was Rosewood, the first I'd ever seen. I used it for a lot of small projects including the inlay in the vise screw handles on the bench and for the original bench dogs. The basic center tray design was driven by the size of the old Belsaw 12-inch planer I had then. After I glued up the 2 bench sections, I ran them through the planer and then joined them together with the tray and end caps. It is assembled with bolts through the stringers and clamps to hold the top on the leg assembly. Once assembled, all the screw holes were plugged with Rosewood. The bench breaks down quite completely.

The design worked fairly well. You do need a fair amount of time to secure the work. And, you can really build up your wrists and forearms adjusting the vises. They are certainly not quick release, either! A while back I added a Veritas twin-screw end vise. Adding the new vise was fairly easy since the bench was designed to be taken apart. All I had to do was drill out the rosewood plugs and remove the nuts to free the old bench end cap. Notice the nice nearly-NIB Stanley #703 bench dogs which, very conveniently, fit the 5/8th inch round dog holes.

In 2002 I built my Yuppie Workbench. The Yuppie Workbench replaced this one on the clean side and this first effort got moved into the real work area. I added a nice German side vise and I gets used a lot more now. The new side vise is one of the few that was big enough to suit my needs yet not so long as to limit closing by the edge of the center tool tray. I changed all the vise handles to make them match. The only thing I don't like about the new side vise is the hole for the handle is kinda puny. Oh well.

At some point someone gave me a bow saw kit. It came with three blades, a pair of pins to put in the handles, the pattern and a piece of string. Since I almost never make only 1 of anything, I fabricated some more hardware out of stove bolts and was able to come up with four saws. (Hacksaw blade for the fourth one.) I finished one with a wipe on product that I wasn't particularly satisfied with and the others remain unfinished. I haven't though of a use for these things except as wall ornaments, as you can see. (The brace is a Miller Falls #732 with a 3/8th inch RJ bit and a Stanley #49 japanned depth stop...).
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This sideboard is the biggest piece of furniture I have built. The basic size and shape came from a Bartley catalog. They had something like this in a Queen Anne style. I scaled it from the catalog and gave it more of a shaker flavor. This was made during my "dovetail" period. The shelves are dovetailed into the vertical pieces. The vertical pieces are dovetailed into the carrier blocks and the carrier blocks are dovetailed into the top of the base unit. The legs are dovetailed into the sidepieces where mortise and tenons would normally be used. The front face pieces of the lower cabinet have dovetails connecting the horizontal and vertical pieces. The sideboard is made from Maple and stained, somewhat (big mistake). This was the last of the brush-on Hydrocote projects. Did I tell you the drawers are dovetailed, too? But, of course!
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This barrister bookcase was made to complement a file cabinet that was set next to it. Then we rearranged the furniture! Not much to say about it, really. I made it because I wanted this special size. It is oak, with a little stain and finished with Fornby's tung oil. I like Fornby's tung oil, but this project is on the extreme end of large, for a multi-coat wipe-on finish. The old tools are pretty, too, don't you think?
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These little totes were made mostly for Christmas presents. They are made of ash with hydrocoate water based stain, no filler. I think this was my first project using the HVLP sprayer. The dovetails are a little tricky here since both sides are angled outwards. The pieces must be tipped a little when they are put into the Leigh Dovetail Jig. Something the jig does not have provision for.
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Every woodworker makes jewelry boxes at least once. I made one batch of them, 13 to be exact. There are only a few left. This is probably the only project I've made in multiples where the end result was not expected to be all the same size. The construction details are alike but the dimensions are different based on the best use of the wood I had. The boxes are made of Walnut and the interior trays are Maple. I used Hydrocote Water Based Lacquer for these, too. This may have been my last try with water based finishes. The boxes have mitered and grain-matched corners. The feet are all the same. There are several kinds of hardware (I bought most of what the store had to meet a Christmas deadline). The interior trays have box/finger joint sides and a simple glued on bottom. The trays were flocked with one of those Donjer flocking gadget; works well. In making multiples of small projects like this, there is always one that is smaller than the rest. This might be because of test cuts, or screw-ups, or whatever. I've found the smallest one is usually thought of as 'cute' and the most desirable. I usually keep that one for my wife! Here's another picture of one with a red interior. Note the gadget on the right. Some folks call it a smoke grinder. When you turn the handle it gets rid of smoke in the air. Don't see any do you? Some folks call it a BS grinder for the same reason. The biggest problem with these jewelry boxes is in the lid. It is fairly large on the bigger boxes. As a minimum the lock tends to be difficult in one season or the other and some of the lids will bow a little throughout the year. Got any nice quarter sawn cherry? Maybe I'll make another batch!
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When we got a new computer I decided I didn't want to put it in a separate sanctum sanctorum. I made this computer cabinet to be as compact as possible to use in the family room. One side is open for necessary cooling but the other side looks nice! The keyboard can be put inside and the whole thing put up against a wall you want to get it out of the way. The bottom shelf swivels out for access to the drives, and the keyboard shelf slides out and can be used for short sessions (not very comfortable, but it was made more for storage, anyway). I find the small extension will carry the mouse pad and a glass of wine while I run the keyboard from my lap. It is made of ash with a sprayed Deft lacquer finish.
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The cradles were made for our first grandson. We found an antique cradle in a shop that we liked. I took some basic dimensions from it and noted some of the details and eventually came up with the pattern for these. I made five altogether; optimism perhaps! These were made of oak salvaged from a barn or out-building from Bruceton, West Virginia.

Anyway, the cradles were made from some of this salvaged oak. It was a lot of work to get usable pieces of wood from this pile of mostly trash. I found some 18-inch wide boards, very old, very tight grain. Some boards had three layers of wallpaper with newspaper over that. The newspaper dated from 1922. I figure this stuff must have been growing before Columbus landed. This is me with one of the cleaned-up boards. I modified the design of the cradle in several ways. I used a frame and panel (panel is in the form of slats) arrangement for the bottom so the bottom would not split as the original one-board bottom had done. I dovetailed the corners of the sides and smoothed out the scrollwork some. The sides are simply screwed to the bottom; they should move together ok. The rockers can be removed. They have a tenon that fits a mortise formed by the bottom slats and they are held in place with a screw and fender washer. As with the little totes, the dovetails had to be cut with the pieces oriented slightly away from vertical in the Leigh jig, but I was ready for that this time. The wood for the sides of cradles was originally 1 inch thick barn siding and I planed it down to about 1/2 inch. The rockers were originally floor joists. This old wood is pretty nasty to work with, but instant antiques don't come easy. Of course, they look a lot nicer when occupied by a pretty baby! Quick Index

I did finally get the kitchen redone. I refinished all the original cabinets and put in new counter tops. This is the new cabinet that carries the microwave. When I made the original cabinets, I didn't have a good way to make consistent wide panels for the cabinet doors. I just used a joiner to bevel the edges and made clips to hold the panels in the doors. That scheme worked well enough for 20 years so I made the new ones the same way. Carolyn wanted hardwood flooring in the kitchen to match what we had in the family room. The family room floor was store bought'n Bruce flooring. It is random length 3,5,7-inch width with plugged ends. The area in the kitchen was so small, I made the new flooring from my recently acquired woodpile, and installed it by hand. Since each piece I made was straight and flat, installing the new floor was like laying tile. I simply set the board in place, drilled a few pilot holes and drove in some screw nails. The color match is not perfect even though I used the same 'color' stain. Different material manufacturers and 20 years difference was too much to over come. The seam between the old and new floor is (conveniently) under the kitty.
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Some projects are part rebuild and part refinish. This sewing machine cabinet is mostly new work. The original veneered top was pretty well shot on this sewing cabinet. I kept the drawers and made a new top, flip lid, and sewing machine surround. The cabinet now houses a modern machine. The sewing box in the foreground is a refinish/repair effort.
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These little machinist's toolboxes were started a long time ago, before the cradles, and before we thought of re-doing the kitchen. But, I finally finished them. Each has five drawers. They are made of ash and finished with sprayed on Chemcraft Pre-catalyzed Lacquer. The basic dimensions were, again, lifted from an antique in a store. I made the back with a raised panel rather than using a nailed-on board as on the original. I had an idea for hardware that would keep the draw from being easily pulled out of the carcass. I was going to put a bullet catch in the back corners of each drawer. When the draw was pulled out the ball would drop into the little divot on the slide. This arrangement worked pretty well, but it was a little stiff. With the hard rubber feet I put on the bottom, the chests tend to walk around as the drawers are pulled out, so I didn't bother installing them. You can see some of the construction details. The front panel is made with three boards. Made like a bread-board end table, the center board is dovetailed into the two end pieces. You can see the dovetailed assembly on the right side of the picture. The dovetails are glued only at the top so the panel can move around. Making the cutouts for the little escutcheon for the lock was a little tricky and each one was ever so slightly different. The most satisfying phase of a project, or at least the time I like my work best, is when all the machine works is done but the project is still unfinished.
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This shadow box is one of three. They were made to hold a salt shaker collection and Sandra has two of them. I think I've finally gotten rid of most of the ash.
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Most recently I've been intrigued with these snake and whale puzzles I've come up with. A fellow named Chapman in Virginia has been making them and selling them for years. I first saw them in a gift shop in Williamsburg many years ago. Chapman contributed an article detailing the process and his products to Wood magazine. The article had plans for a little fish key-chain thingy and I made a couple of those out of some rosewood scraps. (Remember my friend's board, I'm still getting projects out of it.) The little fish were not very exciting but I also made a handful out of walnut and maple. The kids like those. (Yes, I know, I need to work on the focus, not much depth of field on this one.)

I ordered a box of scrap exotic woods from a place in Grafton, Vermont. The box contained about 20 pieces of 1 x 1 x 12 inch chunks of mostly cocobolo. I made these little snakes out of the cocobolo. They were roughed out on a bandsaw, shaped on drum sander, hand sanded to 320 grit, and then polished on a buffing wheel. After they were polished they were cut out with a scroll saw and then each piece polished up again before being put back together.

After my first efforts were so soundly trounced, I decided to spend some big bucks on real pieces of wood and see what I could do using a bandsawn puzzle rather than the tiny scroll saw. I made these 9 big snakes from various woods. They come from a basic 2 x 2 x 30 inch blank. All of them are made from various exotic hardwoods, except the bottom one, which is made from cherry. The exotic wood can be polished to a high shine and doesn't need any kind of finish. The one in cherry has a lacquer finish. The woods are, from top to bottom. Ziricote, Bocote, Comotillo, Granadillo, Cocobolo, Honduran Rosewood, Snakewood, Purpleheart, and Cherry. Oh, one of the whales is Walnut and the other is Purpleheart.

Here are three walnut whales before they were puzzled out. The walnut whales had to be finished with lacquer and then carefully cut out to prevent damaging the finish. Here's another snake and whale picture. These things were kinda fun to make.
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This is a player piano roll cabinet. The cabinet is a copy of an original pre-1920's cabinet we have. The original is in Mahogany. It was a junker that I repaired and refinished. I had picked up a piano, a bench, a roll cabinet and 200+ plus piano rolls for $500. The piano was in too sad shape to rebuild, but I did make it work and sold it for $600. I kept the rest of the stuff, hence the need for the additional roll cabinet. The new cabinet is made from some of the hundred-year-old salvage oak I've been fooling with. Here's another unfinished picture. I had a piece of plywood that I thought I would use for the back, but it turned out to be too small. I stretched it a little by making this paneled back. See the little plane on the set-up table? It is a Stanley #278 from about 1920. I figure I'm the youngest part of this project! Here's the finished cabinet. It easily holds 120 rolls, more if you pack them in tight.
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I made a pair of these stack cabinets. They took ten months to complete. They were started in July of 1999. We've taken to calling them 'parts' cabinets. That's a very generic name for something that took so long to complete, eh? We have been fascinated with the various forms of 1930's office furniture. There were many 'stack-it-your-way' manufacturers. You could buy assemblies consisting of the common barrister's bookcase units, legal and letter size file cabinets, card files, invoice drawers, etc. We've seen a lot of different configurations in the antique malls, but they were never in a configuration that was really useable for my purposes. For example, the card file drawers have a big slot cut in the bottom. The invoice drawers were really neat but were actually too thin to use for anything other than paper.

Anyway, my wife and I both liked the design of these old cabinets with all the little drawers and all the brass hardware, so I decided to make something in the 1930s style. Mine would be a little more practical, at least more oriented to my applications. Hence, the "parts" cabinet designation. They are general catch-all cabinets in my shop. They are made from more of the salvage oak, with the drawer parts supplied by various secondary wood. The basic appearance came from a cover on a Veritas hardware catalog.. It was a simple guide that I used to draw my basic plan.

Anyway, each pair has four stacked 'units', a base, and a top. There are 58 drawers in each stack. They are frame and panel construction; frame and panel on the ends and a modified frame and panel construction in the partitions for the drawers. The drawers have oak faces, and the sides are dovetailed in the front, mortised in the back, with a thin plywood bottom. The hardware was inexpensive. I bought it from Lee Valley. I drilled all the holes in all the drawers in advance. Imagine my disappointment when I found that the Taiwanese hardware I had bought from Lee Valley was so inconsistently manufactured that many of the holes in the hardware did not line up with the holes I had drilled. Oh well! I made some adjustments, and the remaining small misalignments will disappear with time. Right? Here's a picture of the pair.
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I made a bunch of these pens. I'm not sure how (as in how I got talked into it...) I wound up making these, but I did. I had always looked at these kits thinking it was a shame to spend $4 - 5 for kit parts to make something that can be had 20 for a dollar. Anyway these will be mostly gifts. They are made from the scraps of exotic wood left over from my snake puzzle adventure. There's cocobolo, rosewood, camatillo, bocote, zericote, snakewood, and purpleheart. I think the biggest challenge in making these was figuring out how to accurately turn them on a standard 36-inch lathe... the tolerances need to be within 1 or 2 thousandths of an inch.
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I made this unusual little music box for SWMBO. It's cut from a solid block of macassar ebony... pretty hard stuff. .
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This is my Yuppie Workbench. I got a deal on the fancy vises and made the bench out of cherry, walnut and fancy mahogany crotch veneer. The full story is here.
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This is my design for a chute board. This was really built before the workbench above and was part of my display cabinet project.There was a lot of molding to install to keep the glass in place in the display cases I built to house my old tool collection. (Pictures of the cabinets are under Old Tools..) I would usually use a power tool for most miters but there were LOTS of miters here... lots of small precision miters! The old commercial chute boards, like the Stanley #51/52 require you to flip the fence for miters left and right. Plus, you get to pay big money for one today!

My chute board provides two fences, one right and one left, seperately adjustable. Here's a view of the other side. Mine is made of cherry. I used some of that reduced friction plastic for the plane to run on. If the solid cherry base moves any, I can put paper shims under the plastic to level it up. Mr. Lie-Nielsen provided the #9 to go with it and graciously provided the high gloss matching cherry handles on the plane! I made a couple of wooden sticks to extend the bases of some plastic triangles, which can be used to set standard angles. One of the 'features' of my chute board is that as you swing the back board stops through the available cutting angles, the front edge of the stop remains aligned with the chute board plane track, right up to the edge. There's a board on the bottom that lets me secure the chute board in my bench vise. It can be removed to clamp it in other places with whatever clamps.
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I made these roll-around workbenches at the same time as the Yuppie Workbench. The bases are walnut with a cherry top. The back panels are matched walnut burl veneer. I re-jappanned the green Yugoslovian end vises. These get used for more than just woodworking. I have a piece of plexiglass sheet that bolts to a board that can be secured in the vise. It provides removeable protection from oil and other debris from non-woodworking projects.
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This is a Schnitzelbank, german for shave horse. I had this super oak plank that was part of the salvage wood I bought. It was about two inches thick and it looked like a shave horse to me. Plans are available here. You can buy them through this site. But, if you are cheap like me, all the info you need is right there on the web site. Many plans call for metal parts for holding it together or for pivots on the arm. Mine has only wood components. Most assembly is with through and wedged dowels. The pivot is a dowel that is friction fit and can be tapped out with a light mallet.
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February 2003
I've been making finger-jointed boxes. I have some turning tools and a set of bench chisel that need storage boxes. Since I rarely make just one of anything (in case something goes wrong) there are ten boxes in progress for the tools. While I am in this box making mode, I asked SWMBO if she wanted any. She offered that a walnut recipe box would be nice. So, there are three of those. She also has these little sets of salt and pepper shakers. There are 6 pairs, so each guest can have a set of their own. There are four boxes for those. Then I had all these scraps of thin wood that were leftovers from the bigger boxes. So there are eleven little boxes for some small wooden puzzles. There are four small boxes with sliding lids that SWMBO will use to give away some pens I made. How many is that? Here is the pile of boxes so far.

There is nothing special about making the boxes. Finger jointed boxes are pretty common. What I think is different and may be of interest to folks is the jig I use for the joints. Most folks have seen the box joint jig that consists of a fence with a little stop projecting near the blade. What you are supposed to do is cut a slot and then move the board so the slot straddles the stop and then you cut another slot, etc. I never built one of these, so I'm not sure of this. But, the design seems rather in-elegant and difficult to adjust.

My finger joint jig will cut perfect joints of any size with almost any blade combination you choose. There! Does that sound like marketing or what! I rely on 16 TPI all-thread rod as the positioning mechanism. I use a carrier which holds all the pieces for one box and cut them all at the same time. There is a dial indicator for precise movement and positioning of the carrier. The carrier holds the pieces to be cut. There is not much special about the design. My only requirement was to be able to clamp the pieces together in a carrier that slides along the fence piece. I think the most important part of the carrier is that it has arms that keep it upright and linked to the fence. This is important since you certainly don't want the assembly falling over into the saw blade while you are making adjustments. The all-thread is supported in two places, one has a nut epoxied into it and the other is simply a support sleeve.

Here are the simple directions for its use. Say you have a 1/4 inch dado blade set up to cut the slots. You would assemble your four box pieces in the jig. Clamp two sides against the stops on the carrier and two sides offset from the first by 1/4 inch. Use a replaceable backer board behind the assembly to prevent chip out. Turn the all-thread to position the carrier so the first cut is 1/4 inch into the clamped up assembly. Make the first cut. Now turn the all-thread 8 turns. 4/16ths for the uncut tab and 4/16ths more to position the assembly for the next cut. Make another cut and add 8 more turns until the whole assembly is complete.

The reality is your dado blade probably does not make a 1/4 inch cut. It can be oversize or undersize, affected by wobble and run out, hence the need for finer adjustment. My jig has a dial indicator on the end that will let you dial up something more accurate than simply 1/16th per turn. This is a little difficult to explain, but here is an example. I found that for these joints I was making with my 1/4 inch dado blade set, I got the best joints when I added 12/16ths to the slot and made the associated tongue 4 turns plus the 4/16ths. Notice that when you make proper division between the slot and the tongue, e.g., for each slot and tongue pair, you will always start the pointer at zero. Note that the dial simply rides on the all-thread and the pointer is secured to the all-thread with a pair of nuts. You can make any size joints with any size blade. Needless to say a flat bottom blade works best.

I only glue the finger joints at the bottom of the slot. I make the joint tight enough so no additional clamps are need after the joint has been securely and squarely pressed together. You need to make the fingers longer than the thickness of the sides. I go a little further in that for these boxes I made the fingers 1/2 long. This makes it easy for me to add 1-inch to inside dimensions to get the box size I'm shooting for. Here are some of the cut pieces and glued sides.

June 2003
Well, I have finally finished this little exercise. The box building effort seemed more worthwhile when I started, but done is done. This air dried walnut takes on a nice coloration when finished. Some of the boxes are for SWMBO. Here are the boxes for the salt and pepper shakers and a couple of recipe boxes. Some of the boxes hold chisel sets. Another batch hold my lathe turning tools. This walnut wood is pretty wild. Coupled with the sap wood, the boxes are, er... interesting. These left overs are too small too finish effectively. Some are puzzles. There are a series of blocks inside that are somewhat difficult to get back intop the box once removed. The long thin ones are for pens I made. SWMBO gives them away. There's a couple others. I put small turning chisels in one of them.
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