Wednesday, July 29, 2009

One Day-$40 Bookcase

Here's an example of how your woodworking skills can help even if you're not, strictly speaking, woodworking.
WoodNet Forums member BandMan built this bookcase for his daughter in a day. It's made from pre-finished, maple particleboard that's sold as shelving at his local home center. It looks terrific and is better built than the flat-pack bookshelves you can buy (and cheaper, too).
Here's a link to the post on WoodNet where he explains what he used and how he did it.

Monday, July 27, 2009

Make Your Own File for Tight Spots

When smoothing curved profiles, you'll need a fine-cutting file to get into the inside corners that your sanding drum can’t reach. But the thick square edges of the file can get in the way and sometimes even damage the workpiece. So rather than abandon this method, Woodsmith's Ted Raife simply modified the tool to fit the job.

As you can see in the drawings above, he ground a bevel on both edges of the file to get more clearance in tight corners. You can make this modification with just a few minutes work at the bench grinder. But you want to be careful to not let the file get so hot that it loses its temper. Keep a container of water close by to quench it and this won't be a problem.

You can get e-tips like this esent to your email address each week. Sign-up here, they're free.

Friday, July 24, 2009

Best Use of Used Stir-Sticks Ever


Paint-Stick Table from the Flickr Photo Stream of matangi.esty. Terrific!

Tuesday, July 21, 2009

Earthquake Safe Wooden Buildings

Over at Treehugger.com, they've got a terrific article and video about using wood to build earthquake safe buildings. And wood also has some environmental benefits too. From the website:
Wood construction has some tremendous advantages. Wood is strong, light, flexible and fast. Unlike concrete, which adds a ton of CO2 to the atmosphere for every ton of cement made, wood is renewable and sequesters carbon dioxide for the life of the building.
Definitely worth a look.
Click the photo for a larger view.

Tuesday, July 14, 2009

Vanity of Vanities

As in most things, in wood-working the devil is in the details. Here's a beautiful bathroom vanity just built by Twitter user @davewest1. In this case, the devil and the beauty are in the careful attention to the grain of the black walnut. The whole front of the cabinet and the side are from one piece. Click photo for a larger view.
Dave also has a beautiful website which you'll especially appreciate if you're looking for inspiration for new bathrooms and kitchens in your home.

Lazer-cut Keyboard Desk

Interesting idea, beautifully executed. From the MoCo Loco website:
For Marlies Romberg, a recent grad of the Utrecht School of Arts, her goal is to "to materialize the ungraspable fast digital world and create an opportunity for nostalgia in this future world." The result is Dear diary 1.0, above, the fusion of the real world and the digital world...

Click image for larger view or click through to the website for more photos and comments.

Update: The goofy guys at Woot.com went straight for once and did an interesting interview with the artist, Marlies Romberg. Read it here.

Tuesday, July 7, 2009

Two Ebony Box

Twitter user @oh2dovetail posted a link to this beautiful ebony dovetail box he just completed. Click on photo for a larger view.

Finished the Mun Ebony and Gaboon Ebony handcut dovetail box. Very happy!
Lots of woodworkers on Twitter. This is the first good project photo I've found there.

Dogs that Don't Bite

I think we've all had this happen: You clamp a workpiece onto your bench for a little sanding or planning and then discover the faces of your metal bench dogs left their marks. There are lots of work arounds to avoid this happening, and this is one of the simplest and handiest.
See how to build these simple "dogs that don't bite" here. They're from the editors at Woodsmith magazine. You can get tips like these delivered to you computer each week. Sign up here.

Monday, July 6, 2009

More Things to Do with Cutoffs

Over in the WoodNet Woodworking Forums, member TomFromStLouis has posted photos of an interesting and unusual box he just built:

I made this box using a number of different samples of maple: curly, spalted (with and without ambrosia beetle stains), straight ambrosia, and burl. I made veneers and laminated both sides of some 1/4" MDF. Then I assembled sized pieces with the katalox frame elements. Katalox is a Mexican timber that is hard and close grained with a tendency to tear out. There were lots of glue-ups. To unify the colors a bit and deepen both woods I used garnet shellac for the finish.
It's just a bit larger than a cigar box. Cool.
For more photos and info, visit WoodNet.net.