Woodworking

A month had passed. The football team was still undefeated. Teddy, Vikram and Wendy sat together in the student section and mostly ignored the games. For Teddy, it was as if they had fallen into a secret world that held vast mysteries he couldn’t wait to uncover. The wind was cold and Vikram went to buy hot chocolate for them. Teddy and Wendy promised not to continue the discussion without him. Wendy changed the subject. “How did you do on the algebra test?” “I did fine.” “I only missed the second to last question. I completely misread it.” “It was a tricky one.” “Did you miss any?” Teddy paused, he considered lying, but said, “No.” “Do you ever miss any?” “Well, not really.” “Seriously?! When was the last time you got a math question wrong?” “In school?” “What do you mean? Of course, in school.” “Then no, I haven’t missed any questions.” “Even last year? In Mr. Wester’s class?” “Math is my favorite, but I suppose I’ll get something wrong eventually.” “Are you saying you haven’t ever missed a math question?” “I got a history question wrong in fifth grade,” Teddy said, though he was lying. He liked being smart, but he didn’t want to seem like he was bragging. “What about in English?” Teddy just shrugged. “You’re awesome,” She said and gave him a fist bump. They talked about her cat for a while. It’s name was Professor Fluffy McMittens. The band had taken the field when Vikram returned with the drinks. Teddy liked cats, but not as much as he did Mr. Chompers. Vikram loved cats. Wendy promised to bring a picture to school on Monday. The band was playing “Let it Be” by the Beatles and Wendy said, “Hey, isn’t that Seth?” Vikram said, “Where?” “In the section with all the trumpets.” Teddy said, “It is him!” Vikram said, “How did we not know that about him?” Wendy said, “I can’t believe it. I’m so giving him crap about it.” Teddy laughed. He liked Wendy’s enthusiasm. He had to admit, though, he did like the song. His dad like the Beatles. The rest of the game was more exciting than the first half. Both the opponents on the field and the opposing mascot, a silly looking bear, seemed to be getting the upper hand. They scored twice in the third and added a field goal in the fourth. On the last drive, down by four, the Bears ran off a thirty yard pass play that got them across mid-field. Teddy and his Vikram got caught up in the excitement and forgot about computers and coding for a little while. Wendy rolled her eyes on more than one occasion. When a tipped ball at the line of scrimmage was intercepted, securing the win, even Wendy was yelling. When the final seconds ticked off the clock, most of the students stormed onto the field. Teddy, Vikram and Wendy decided to pass and choose to head to the diner on 5th. Teddy had gotten permission to stay out until eleven. He was pretty excited and it was cool having a friend with a car, such that it was. Wendy drove a beat-up 1976 blue Plymouth Duster. It ran well, didn’t look great, but to Teddy and Vikram, it was a Rolls Royce. Wendy hadn’t had her license for long, but had just been granted friend ride along privileges by her parents. Fall Friday nights were now Teddy’s favorite day of the week.

We're talking about Marples blades, Sweetheart vs Bailey, storing hand planes, high end sanders, protecting your assembly table, and pressure treated wood.

I am looking for advice on marketing and selling my woodworking. I absolutly love making things and figuring out how to do new projects. Im always learning something. Lumber jocks has helped me and given me that push again that ive not been able to find!Thank you all! A little about me. Im 32 yrs old and i worked a factory job for 10 years. Ive had severe chrones since i was about 17 and have had surgery for it and have been on many differant meds for it. My dad passed away from cancer/chrones 7 years ago. I would love to have a 8 to 5 job but its not realistic due to my chrones. After my dad passed i have looked at life differantly. Anyways enough about me and back to my issues! My wife and i have gone to craft fairs, flee markets and everywhere you could imagine to sell woodworking. We have done well and we have done horrible! I dont mark my stuff up very high. In reality im probly not making a profit when i do sell something. I have been trying to find stores in wisconsin that would buy at a discount and then they would sell at a profit. I have my woodworking in one store as of now. Am i missing something here? Im not trying to make a million dollars but it would be nice to at least pay some bills. Im just frustrated i guess. I am just wondering if anyone out there sees what im missing! For example i have made some cutting boards up and i am very happy with them and there quality. I have put the highest price being 50$ on my best one and people think im crazy. I was looking on the web and found one that was poorly put together with shooty craftsmanship and it sold for 130$. I know every place you go will have differnt dollar amounts on things. I have an etsy account and i can raise the price up 40% and sell it there but even that is only one or two thing here and there. If anyone has any advice that can help me please comment! It is greatly appreciated and i will hopefully be in the position to hand it down and help someone else down the road. Thanks Ron

Hey LJ’s! Here’s my latest project. I built this from Steve Ramsey’s chess board build over at Mere Mortals. It’s made from walnut and maple, and inlaid with black epoxy. I originally inlaid it with a black and white inlay strip I purchased, but blew a chunk out of it while sanding, so I ran the board through the table saw a few times to get rid of it, as repairing it would have been almost impossible. I was going to leave the grooves empty at my wifes request, but I thought it looked incomplete, so I filled them with black epoxy. I’d never worked with it before, and I don’t know why I thought it would work, but it did and ended up quite nice. It always seems to be the biggest errors that turn out the nicest. I added drawers on both sides for the pieces to go in, and it was my first time making my own custom pulls. I finished it with about 5 coats of Daly’s Seafin Teak Oil, and Liberon Black Bison paste wax. I had a blast making it, and have already 3 requests for more. Thanks for the inspiration!

As of late, I have been helping a local cabinet maker get caught up on some work. Nothing fantastic, basic kitchen and bath cabinetry. Spending a few hours a week, building boxes in my shop while he works on the doors/drawers down the hill. Perfect opportunity for extra income to help get the planes flying. It’s also an excellent opportunity to document where old technology still wins in some parts of the modern shop. Let me show you two of the bigger steps in basic cabinetry and where “plane over power” produces a better end product, faster. First place I choose to fly a plane, the faceframe. Pocket screwing wood together, even with the best technique, will at some point lead to an unflush joint. Large cabinet shops will build the faceframes and then send them through large, wide belt sanders, flattening both sides. Smaller shops rely on orbital sanding or belt sanding. Both stir up a bit of dust and when you factor in sanding out the scratches left from courser grits, it proves to be a time killer. Grab a block plane, I find them to be faster and more accurate at flattening than their tailed options. Also, the surface left needs little extra attention. Even if your just OK with a plane, final sanding will hide your practice. Do I even need to mention you aren’t making dust or fighting a cord? I will make the argument that a wooden soled plane is a better choice here, simply by the fact that when flushing up joints, the heal and toe of a wood plane is less likely to chip or mar the edges of surrounding openings. On drawer stacks and cabinets with lots going on, I find a plane long enough to span the smallest opening works best. Next stop, flushing up the frame on a finished end. Power tool option is a router with a flush trim bit. Works great and is a solid go to method. It is however loud, dusty and if you tip the router, well, don’t tip the router. Once again, this is a spot to consider a plane. Almost as quick but with minimal chance for disaster and next to zero chance for finger amputation. Those are the two steps anyone building basic cabinetry has done or will do, and proof that hand planes still have a spot in the modern woodworking shop. Hope you either learned something or are motivated to make shop time. Thanks for reading. Be GoodRhett

These are just a couple more cutting boards that ive come up with. The one with straight grain on each end with the diagonal peices in center was all made up of cut offs from other cutting boards. I attempted to do an inlay on the one for a friend. It didnt turn out bad but it was far from good! I endend up routing a thin strip out on the border of the inlay and poured it with a 2 part epoxy. Still cant say im impessed with it at all but i guess you have to start some where!

I knew it had been a while since I had updated my shop tour. When I checked though, I realized that I no longer even had a shop tour posted on my homepage, so it was time. Welcome to William’s Wood Shop. It is a 40×50 cinder block wall shop. I’ve moved things around a little since some of you visited last, so come on in and I’ll show you around.As you enter the shop, look to the left. You’ll notice the first thing inside the door is the coffee pot table. I have to have my coffee. It is an important part of my day if I am to be dealt with. All those bottles you see is my water supply. I do not have running water in my shop and I do not want to have to go home for water three or four times a day for water to make coffee. So my boys keep plenty of bottles full for me. Next to the coffee pot table is my boy’s entertainment center. They spend a lot of time in my shop. When they tire of playing or watching me, they have this area set up with a television and DVD player, a computer, and one of those fancy game systems. Don’t ask me what kind. I bought it but I don’t know much about that sort of thing. I have never been able to get into the games and such.Some of you who have been to my shop before may notice all my finished work is inside the shop. One of my grown children has moved back in. He is staying in the front room of the shop, where my finished work used to be. So I now have all my finished work in the shop area. It creates a dust problem. I have to vacuum everything off about once a month to keep a two inch thick layer of dust from settling on it all. However, since putting it all in here, I like it better having all my work open for all to see when they enter the shop.Look right and there are tables my boys play on and do homework on during the school year. Behind that you can see a lot of my junk. The front half of the shop is mostly filled with non-wood working items. So let’s move on towards the back of the shop where the magic happens.here almost dead center of my shop, looking towards the back right corner, here is my saw station area. I have two saws. The antique Craftsman you see to the right is set up for ripping. The Ridgid does most of the cross cutting duties. Further back is my lathe corner, we’ll get to that later. You can also see some of my wood stash in the back. I am not a wood addict. I can stop anytime I get ready.This center island is a built up long story. I have added, modified, and changed this area so many times that you never know what you may find hung here. It started as a simple junk table that used to sit in my utility room at home until my wife got tired of looking at it. I moved it to the shop and added the other table to it. It is screwed to the first table to make them both more massive. Later I added the clamp racks on top of the second table. There is two different vises attached to the mass. Mostly, the first table holds different items I grab for often, like hammer, screwdrivers, chisels, you name it. Most of it is hung from various method holders I have fabricated over time. Some things, like hammers, are just in holes I made in the old utility room table. In this photo you see the planer up front. The second table, which mostly catches cuts I make on the table saw and such while I’m preparing material for a project is here. It has the two vises attached to it too. The clamp rack is rear of that table. A 1950 Craftsman scroll saw resides here. I use it to rough cut some things coming off the saws. Under the table is my box joint jig and dovetail machine that are both built from fellow Lumberjock, Stumpy Nub’s, design.To give you a better idea, we’re going to have to go all around this area.Now, going clockwise around the island, here is the utility room table. You can see my throw together plane till on the end of it. Down the side I have attached holders for screwdrivers, nail punches, chisels, and such

A friend wanted me to make a podium for speaches at her wedding,and a friend of ours had some 200 year old barn wood she wanted it to look old,so this fit the bill perfectly for the theme. its going to be , a country style wedding so this is what I came up with,hope everyone likes.

Ok so I can’t make up my mind what would be more beneficial at the moment I need dust collection so I’ve picked out the 2hp Grizzly Cyclone DC, but my dilemma is in deciding to go with the 15” spiral head thickness planer or the 8” spiral head parallel bed jointer. I will be able to order whatever one I don’t get this year next year but don’t know what to pick for immediate needs. I only have a budget of $3000 (could be more but I have to build a shed to get all my other s* out of my garage and then heat, wire, and put up walls in the garage so I don’t cover my wife’s new car in dust) and need to decide soon. I’m hoping for a 20% off coupon in the WWJ mag in June then I can spend the extra $500 and get all three but I won’t get that lucky or it won’t cover the tools I need lol. I know the thickness planer can be used like a joiner but I have a lot of bowed 4×4 material at the moment and the jointer would be nicer for that, but I just can’t decide AHHHHHHH!!!!