Ramblings of a geek with a few hobbies…
A few weeks ago I was looking for a small project to work on and Ana requested a small organizer for some of her Cricut supplies. After some time in Fusion 360, I had a plan for a small organizer to hang on the wall to accommodate 10 vinyl rolls, a few file folders, and pegboard for other bits.
That was a fun little project.
This weekend I completed my third end grain cutting board.
Unlike the first two, this one features a juice groove and finger grips on the sides. These were new techniques for me, so it was a tad stressful making cuts into an otherwise perfectly good cutting board. But I must say, now that it’s done, this board looks and feels like a store bought piece of kitchen equipment. I’m very happy with it.
While it looks like several species of wood, it’s actually only walnut (the dark brown) and cherry (the light, reddish brown). I got lucky with some color variations in the boards I was working with.
I’ve learned a few things from the prior boards. Notably when sanding, after the 220 grit I sprayed it lightly with water to raise the grain before hand sanding it down to 320 grit and finishing it with food grade mineral oil. After the mineral oil I topped it off with food grade wood wax.
They say these things last for years and years with proper care. I guess we’ll start that clock now!
Another style of box I’ve made from the Basic Box Making book by Doug Stowe features a leather hinge. This was the second kind of box I made from the book and was the first time working with another material. They’re pretty handy, we’ve got several of them put to use in the house – holding things ranging from cat medicine to COVID masks.
Another box from the Basic Box Making book which I’ve built in the past 6 months is the pencil box. My sister is using one for crochet needles, another is just sitting on my desk, and I honestly couldn’t tell you what the others are holding. These were the first box joints I’ve done.
These are cherry, finished with a few coats of tung oil finish.
In an effort to learn some new woodworking skills, I’ve been working through a book, Basic Box Making by Doug Stowe, on small box making. I’ve made several different types now, each one better than those before it.
Here’s some of the first set, made with a mix of oak, cherry, and walnut. In one I embedded a pair of small magnets so Ana can use it to hold pins and needles at her sewing table.
They’re a big hit with my kids, and I’m sure my relatives will tire soon of receiving boxes I don’t have a use for 🙂
Plenty more where these came from.
A couple years ago I built a chuck box for food and cooking while camping. It worked out so well I decided to make one for my dad as gift this past Christmas.
He has a smaller stove and doesn’t need food or cooking space for 4 people, so I was able to make it quite a bit smaller and lighter.
It’s birch plywood, trimmed with solid walnut. Finished with several coats (5 maybe? I can’t remember) of Helmsman Spar Urethane.
Funny story, I actually had to make this one twice. The first one I screwed up by making the top too shallow, so it has since been repurposed and tweaked to be a rock-tumbler-case for Claire’s rock tumbling hobby. I’ll post photos of that soon.
Looking back, it was 2007 when I built my first workbench. While it has served me well in the 13 years since, I have spent many more hours working on it than I have in the past and I’ve started to feel some of its shortcomings. Not wanting to spend a small fortune on a good Sjoberg’s woodworker’s bench, I spent the holidays doing a few worthwhile upgrades.
First up is to replace the always-on casters. They’re great for easily moving it around but not so great when trying to do something like plane a board. Even with the brakes, the bench would slide.
These are Spacekeeper Workbench Casters which can support 660lbs. Since they’re replacing much larger casters and mount differently, the overall bench height was lowered approximately 6″. Not ideal, and I gain some back with the next upgrades, but it’s so nice to be able to completely lower it and it doesn’t budge.
This was the main reason for the upgrades – a new work surface. After the recent work building my kids’ desks, I’ve been envious of benches with bench dog holes. Much of that work would have been simpler if I could have used bench dogs and holdfasts.
Following Rob Cosman’s plans, I decided to make my new top using 4 layers of 3/4″ thick MDF. I’ve never used so much glue in my life.
I didn’t ever want to deal with any sag from the MDF so I decided to keep the original bench top (OSB), just placing the newly laminated 3″ hunk of MDF on top. It’s safe to say this adds quite a bit of heft to the whole table, it’s going nowhere.
Following Rob Cosman’s recommendations, I rounded over everything with a 3/16″ roundover bit, coated the dog holes with superglue for strength, and soaked the top with 8 coats of tung oil. He wasn’t kidding when he said it would just soak up the oil, I’ve used almost 32 ounces. It’s still curing, 2 weeks later.
Next up was the purchase of a new vise and creating jaws to span the entire end of the bench – to create a decent tail vise. I went with just an inexpensive, medium duty Pony. The jaws were just some junk “value wood” from Menards so I could try out my new jointer.
For those unfamiliar, dog holes are used to hold various accessories – usually for clamping things down. Small pegs, called bench dogs, often go in them to grip wood between them and a mating dog on the vise (see the blue piece above).
I used a 3/4″ spade/paddle bit and a Portable Drill Guide to make the holes all the way through the bench top. Using a sheet of pegboard, I got the spacing how I wanted, and went to town.
This turned out to be more work than I expected. That thick MDF not only dulled my bits very quickly (had to hand sharpen them every 4 holes), but quickly had me switching to a corded drill I haven’t used in 10 years.
While I was at it, I figured I may as well just give myself even more hold-down options. So I installed a T-Track down the center.
I watch a lot of Adam Savage’s Tested YouTube Channel. His use of a leather pad to protect his benches from glue and accidents was the inspiration for me to scour the internet for a good piece of leather. I succeeded with a wonderful piece of sole bends (I had never heard of that term before looking for this) leather from Brettuns Village Leather Supplies & Trunk Shop. This thing is a monster and should provide plenty of protection for years to come.
Ok, this one isn’t new. It’s an Adam Savage one-day-build which Ana purchased components for me for Father’s day. So I got it re-attached, with a French cleat so it can be moved around fairly easily.
Here’s what the final product looks like, complete with 8″ holdfasts from MLCS Woodworking.
A quick note on those holdfasts – at first they were not holding at all. Some troubleshooting led me to the problem that the bench was too thick. To fix this, I counterbored the holes from the bottom so that the depth of the holes was around 2.5″ instead of the nearly 4″ original depth. Once that was done, they’re working great.
In late July we learned the kids were going to be starting the school year from home. We made-do in the spring when everything shut down and they spent the 4th quarter of the school year from home. Claire used a folding table in our office, and David ended up doing most of his schoolwork from the couch or floor even though he did have an old desk of ours at his disposal. With the prospect of long-term schooling at home staring us in the face, we realized spring’s study arrangement just wasn’t going to cut it.
Back in March I upgraded to a good table saw with the intentions of really advancing my skills. In the back of my mind for years has been the thought of making a desk, but I just never felt ready to try. Well, it was either put up or shut up; either make a desk now or buy one and just forget the idea of making one for good.
So I made a desk.
I ran across plans for a good looking, yet approachable desk from Wood magazine. It uses lots of solid wood and relies on some new techniques that would push me forward (re-sawing on a table saw, edge joining and panel glue-ups, and a large desktop that isn’t plywood, among others). I purchased the plans and the next day was at the store buying the wood.
Start to finish, it took one day short of a month. I finished it exactly 12:01 in the morning just a couple days before it was going to be needed for school. I made a couple small changes from the plans: got rid of the “crest” on the top, in favor of more working space; put the drawers on the other side since Claire is left-handed.
Almost every morning I showed Claire the progress from the prior night. I let he pick the stain color from a sample board I made with 8 different stains. As the pile of wood slowly turned into a desk before her eyes, she got more and more excited. With the exception of one weekend for camping, I worked on it a few hours each evening and 4-5 hours per day on the weekends.
The mistakes I made weren’t too big, all recoverable. I found good ways to achieve certain cuts. And I found bad ways to fail others. I was nervous when I started some of the parts but, for the first time in memory, I had a lot of fun building it. Usually I get enjoyment out of having built something; but here I was having fun during the build.
To say I’m happy with the results is an understatement.
I have one very happy customer.
As I mentioned, Claire picked the stain. She really wanted to see the wood grain, and have a lighter color, so she chose Minwax Golden Pecan. I used the Minwax pre-stain wood conditioner even though it’s oak and probably isn’t necessary. The majority of the build received two coats of Minwax Clear Satin Polyurethane, with the top getting three. After the final top coat, it was sanded with #0000 steel wool. After this, I applied paste wax and buffed it to it’s shine.
Sitting around in the evenings after it was completed felt very strange. Combine that with my poor son having a hard time studying on his old hand-me-down desk (yes, that’s sarcasm), and I convinced myself to start a second desk a week later.
Here we are, two days shy of one month after Claire received hers, David’s is done and he has it all setup and ready for school tomorrow morning.
It took only two months, but my kids now have two great desks which should last them a lifetime. It’s so very satisfying to transform a stack of wood into something of substance, I highly recommend it 😉
A quick follow-up about the camp oven I built.
We went on our first camping trip of the year this weekend, thanks to Illinois state campgrounds and recreation areas finally being opened back up. We spent the weekend at New Salem and used the oven three times – twice for cinnamon rolls and once for biscuits.
We had it up to 450 degrees fahrenheit, and it retained baking-level heat for hours.
The test runs today confirmed that I need to learn how to braze aluminum so I can properly affix the baking rack wires to the rails, but other than that, everything went well. Success!
In early March I finally felt worthy to upgrade from an inexpensive Hitachi jobsite table saw to a real one. The inability to consistently create accurate and repeatable cuts on my little Hitachi was causing so much frustration that I was finding myself avoiding projects. The fence was garbage, the entire thing wobbled, and I had had enough.
I placed an order for a SawStop, the contractor model with upgraded fence system, cast iron extension wings, and a 36″ extension table. It arrived a little over a week later, and took 7 hours to assemble, but I have been completely satisfied with every aspect of the tool.
It took me a while to finally make the purchase of a SawStop. The increased cost of this over other really good saws is not insignificant. That said, I hate to call those other saws competitors because the SawStop technology is available nowhere else. Being a software developer who makes a living on a keyboard, the technology is invaluable. For the uninitiated, this saw detects when flesh touches the blade and instantaneously drops the running blade below the table – giving the operator a vastly improved chance of having no life altering injuries.
The purchase was timely. Shortly after delivery Illinois enacted their stay-at-home order, so I’ve had plenty of time to putz around the basement, learn, and put it to good use. I have spent several ours in the basement in each of the 7 weeks or so that we’ve been confined to the house. Projects abound!
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