I gave myself 3 days to build this since our Doc wants to get the baby born earlier than we thought. We needed a changing/diaper station/holder of misc baby things table for the nursery and being short on cash and time I bought some “Espresso” shelves from the bargin bin of HD and used some cut offs from my workbench build to get this done with.

It aint the finest thing ever built but She loves it and that’s all that matters.

I have been happy with this cheap little saw and it does a good job as a dovetail saw yet the Gents style handle has always felt awkward to use.

Yesterday I decided to do something about that and make a new handle for it.

Made from cherry and finished with BLO and paste wax.

More “In Progress” Pics can be found in My Blog

I started cleaning up a bit in the shop so I can get back to work on my bench build. Job #1 was to find a temporary home for my growing hand plane collection. It’s not pretty but it works pretty good. Made from some scrap Red Oak and Hemp Rope.

Just a simple awl/center punch and marking knife. The point on the awl is made from a tapered set pin sharpened to a point and the handle is Oak and Padouk.

The marking knife is Padouk and a piece of a cheap hand plane blade. Nothing fancy but they get the job done.

Thanks for looking :-)

I just finished up my Moxon build. I am in the middle of building a workbench and needed something to help hold things still during the build. I decided to build the Moxon first so it could help me out on the rest of the bench.

The hand wheels are made of Oak and Padauk drilled and tapped. They work great and no need for me to buy any 1” acme nuts!

Thanks for looking!

I am in the process of building a Roubo style workbench and needed a leg vise assembly. I really liked the function of the wheel style crank that the Benchcrafted vise has but didn’t want to spend more on it than the wood on the bench.

I did some searching and found some 1” acme #5 threaded rod from my local Fastenal. Then I searched online for some hand wheels and found some at Reid Supply for less than $20 if you get the cast iron un-drilled ones. All that was left was a flange bearing (again from Reid) and a lock ring.

I then drilled a 1” hole in the center of the wheel hub and also drilled a set screw hole which I then threaded to hold the rod into the wheel.

All that was left after that was to make a crank handle for it. I don;t have a lathe but I do have a drill press which works in a pinch.

So there it is.. my vise hardware ready to be installed on my bench once it gets to that point. It runs real smooth and cost around $80 if you only count 1/4 of the the cost of the rod (which is only sold in 6’ lengths for $100). I plan to make a second setup similar to this for a wagon end vise and have plenty of threaded rod left over for that plus a couple more vises if I wanted. All in all I am very happy with how this came out.

Thanks for looking!

I was sitting here thinking and it dawned on me that my drill press table wasn’t actually my first wood working project. Last July my Squadron at work was in the middle of transitioning from the EA-6B to the EA-18G platforms which meant we were getting an entirely new set of tools. This new set of tools added an extra box to our arsenal and seeing that space is at a premium we needed a way to store them that didn’t add another piece of furniture to the shop.

We already had this workbench and my boss asked me and one of my junior sailors to “Just box it in and make it lock so we can use that”.

Well, the day after that he went on leave and me and my buddy couldn’t just box it in lol. We had a very used and abused Snap On tool chest that was getting tossed that we robbed a couple drawers from and all the drawer glides. Bought the best wood the Gov would pay for (as you can see it is the cheapest available) and with a Dremel and a Hacksaw we cobbled this together.

That bottom sliding tray holds over 250 pounds worth of torque wrenches and total this holds close to 60 tools. The theme for the entire build which took an entire work week of 18 hour days plus the weekend was “Meh.. it that might work lets try that”.

The box has been in use since Aug and has withstood the abuse that a Navy metal/hydraulic/tire shop can throw at it. Now if only we can figure out how to carry it up and down some ladder wells we can take it to the boat with us otherwise it looks like I might have another project on my hands.

BTW.. the last pic of of me working hard on my back… pretty par for the course :D

Wood project number 3. I keep learning juust a bit more with each and every project and each one goes a bit smoother than the last.

I needed a way to keep all my drilling and aluminum finishing supplies right at hand so I built this simple wall cabinet/shelf/pegboard thing to sit behind my drill press.

It is made from some very cheap .99 scrap wood from HD and a piece of pegboard for the backing. I used 1/4 dowels to hold the shelves.

Thanks for looking. I am still learning so any comments/suggestions are always welcome.

This was my second wood working project. I learned a lot from my drill press table build and I am happy with how this turned out.

I’m going to post a build blog about this but basically it is 4 8’ construction grade 2×4’s and 2 pine stair treads for the top.

Cost around $30 and a few hours of work. Finish is just a quick coat of poly on the top to seal it up some.

I have needed a drill press for a while and my wife finally bought me one this Christmas. I was quickly apparent that the table that came with it was too small and I needed to build a bigger one.

Now, I am an aviation mechanic by trade and an electronics geek in my spare time. Neither of those have anything to do with wood working but I am willing to try and do anything and had some scrap wood on hand so I figured I could build one for next to nothing.

I had only a hack saw and a Dremel to do the long cuts with which meant it was going to take a lot of sanding to get the edges square(ish). The bulk of it is made from a scrap of chip board doubled up with the shape of the stock table cut out of the bottom layer.

I then cut out a pair of channels for the fence to ride along. Framed that in angle aluminum then covered the whole thing in a piece of linoleum I had laying around to give me a tougher top tot he table.

I then cut a square with my Dremels router bit and filled it with a square of oak flush with the top. Then trimed it out with more oak trim.

Being that I had limited wood working tools and even less knowledge of how to actually work with wood I am happy with how it turned out and it functions wonderfully!