So I decided to take a leap from small tables and case work and really challenge myself. We need a new table and chairs for the kitchen. The Mrs. loves mission-style furniture. I’m working with maple and staining to match the kitchen cabinets.

The table will be built starting this fall at school. Not that complicated of a project really, I just don’t have the room in my teeny garage shop to glue up a table top of that size. The chairs, on the other hand…

Phew.

I’ve finished the first one and, while it definately has some flaws, it didn’t come out too bad but Hell’s teeth, these things are difficult. So many weird angles, trying to make straight tenoned side supports meet up flush with the curve of the back legs… oy veh. That didn’t come out very well at all and I’m still trying to figure it out. Anyone have any ideas? It’s not as simple as scribing the ends of the side supports to meet the curve of the leg because I have the tenons protruding there to deal with.

Anyhow, first one is done, stained and glued up. Since I stained before assembly, which is almost a must with all of the little slats that mission furniture calls for, I made much use of blue tape to keep the stain off of my glue surfaces.

While making the first one I think I found most of the pitfalls (i.e. make the mortises for the slats in the back BEFORE you cut the curves in the upper and lower back rests so you have a square surface to reference against the fence of the mortiser), and made templates and jigs and angled auxillary “tables” to put on my mortiser to get things at the right angles so maybe the other three chairs will go faster and more easily than the first one.

Once that’s all done it’s time to challenge myself even further. The seats are cushioned, so it will be time to try my hand at some basic upholstry work.

Regards to all,
Allen

Or, as I saw in a local classified ad once, Chip and Dale Chester Drawers

This is school project from a design by Glen Huey who, at one time, taught my current instructor in the same cabinetry program in which I’m enrolled.

Primary wood is cherry, secondary wood is poplar. All fasteners used, mostly in the ship-lapped back boards, are reproduction cut nails which are a bugger to drive.

The finish is three coats of a home-made oil/varnish blend top coated with three coats of sprayed-on polyacrilic. My first attempt at spraying a finish, and with a “Critter” sprayer and a pancake compressor, and I’m really pleased with the results.

This project, completed about 3 weeks ago, was made for my wife. Our 5th wedding anniversary was this year and if you’re a traditional kind of person, which I am, the 5th anniversary is “wood.”

Over the years I’ve given her quite a few pretty shiny things, most of which lay on her bedside table where my son likes to explore so I figured it was time to make something in which to put “Mommy’s pretties” so that Sam’s curious little hands can’t get at them.

I nearly removed the tip of my left thumb while making the doors/sides (I can tell you exactly which piece of wood I was cutting when it happened) which delayed me a few weeks but I managed to complete it just in time, putting the lining in the drawers the night before our anniversary. I told my wife I hope she likes it because it quite literally has my blood, sweat and tears on it. As a little reminder, she has yet to spot it, I affixed the wrist band from my E.R. visit to the bottom of the very top drawer and wrote the date I completed the piece underneath.

Except for the drawer fronts, which are maple, the wood is all red oak with a dark mission brown dye, BLO, and three coats of satin poly. I turned the knobs out of scrap pieces of oak so they would match. The top opens, as shown in the pictures, to store jewelry (still need to add dividers) and the sides swing open and have brass hooks for necklaces, chains, etc.

This was supposed to be a Shaker-style clock when I started, but I got a bit away from the design just for the fun of playing. The case is dovetailed together and I decided to use a cove profile on the molding.

Wood is QS white oak and the finish, which I’m really tickled with and wish the pictures showed more clearly, is aniline dye in alcohol follwed by a coat of boiled linseed oil. I let the oil cure for a week and followed up with three coats of satin poly. The combination of the BLO and poly really made the grain, the rays, etc. pop. It has an almost 3-D effect.

Not going to say much since I put this one in my blog.

Mostly plywood, primed and painted. The headboard is a bookshelf, the front bumper opens and makes a small toy box. The largest, in terms of physical size, project I’ve attempted to date.

My mother wanted these. The design is more or less my own based on what I remembered of the ones in my grandmother’s house. I have them in other rooms stained and topcoated but with the paneling I decided to make them lighter and painted them with a semi-gloss enamel. The dogwood and roses were added on by an old girlfriend of mine who does some decorative painting. The little houses/buildings on top are not part of the valance, they’re part of my wife’s inability to leave any flat surface unadorned. The wood is #2 common pine picked up at the Big Orange Home Center.

Since moving out on my own I had always missed the built in bookcases of my parents’ house. I love books and over the years I had been forced to get rid of a lot that I would have kept if I had the room. When my wife and I bought our home a few years ago I looked at this lovely big blank wall of our living room and knew what I wanted to do.

The cases were built in sections, installed and the face frame styles and top and bottom mouldings attached once the cases were shimmed level and fastened down. Nothing overly ornate or involved, just pretty simple cases with dados and fixed shelves, but enough room that I shouldn’t have to dispose of books for a long time to come.

The whole thing is poplar, finish is Minwax Woodsheen wipe-on stain/topcoat “Plantation Walnut” chosen because the color on the poplar was a nearly exact match for the paneling in the room.

Apologize for the picture quality. The room is dark to begin with and I don’t have a professional photo setup.

My second “introduction to furniture construction” project and my first try at making a drawer and using a dovetail jig. Walnut frame and legs, hard maple top and drawer front.
Finish is three coats of satin wipe-on poly.

Two sort of funny stories about this table. There are four students in my class. One is my age and the other two students are college age and it feels like a world of difference between them and me. They’re nice kids, but that’s exactly what they seem like to me: kids. I have more in common with the other student who is my age, doing this as a hobby but a serious one, married with kids and a “real job” and we tend to pair up working on our projects. He made his coffee table from poplar and when it came time to assemble the drawers we found that my drawer back was a bit too short and his a bit too long. Just for s*its and giggles we swapped pieces and they fit perfectly. So my drawer is all maple except a poplar back and his is vice-versa.

The other thing… the knob. Just for the heck of it I decided to try and turn my own knob for the drawer out of a cutoff from the leg stock. I did some looking around on the basic shape of a Shaker knob and gave it a whirl. I had no problems rounding the stock between centers but once that was done it ocurred to me… I don’t have a chuck. Since my turning experiance has been limited so far to pens and pencils I only have a small ShopFox mini lathe with a #1MT. I started improvising, screwed a scrap piece of maple to the face plate, rounded it and hollowed out the middle about 1/4” deep and the same diameter as my knob stock, used CA glue to hold the stock in the recess and voila – poor man’s chuck. The knob came out pretty well for a first attempt and I was feeling really proud of myself and my inventiveness until about two days later when I was reading a new issue of Wood or PW or one of those and they had an article on making miniature goblets using a waste block to hold the stock. So I wasn’t as inventive as I thought. Harumph!

My first project from furniture construction classes at U.C. and my first foray into real joinery, learning to cut accurate mortise and tenon joints. The legs and frame are walnut, top is hard maple which replaced the original top I made from Brazillian cherry because it twisted so bad the table top resembled the roof of a pagoda. Finish is three coats of satin wipe-on poly.

One of the main reasons I decided to start the woodworking program at U.C. was that I had read enough books and watched enough video on how to do these things and really needed to have someone who knows their stuff to stand by and watch to say, “Yep, that’s right.” or “Maybe you could try it this way instead.” The first class and making this table gave me exactly what I was looking for and the small class size, while not good for the department, allows more for a mentoring feel than a teacher/class situation.

The second project I ever built, again for my son as a 1st Christmas present. He’s 2 1/2 now but still rides it every day. It was a challenge for me as I didn’t have, and still do not have, a band saw. I started out trying to cut the pieces using a scroll saw but 4/4 oak doesn’t lend itself to easy cutting with a scroll and after snapping my 4th blade cutting out one leg of the horse I switched to a jigsaw. It didn’t take long, however, to kill my dad’s 30 year old Black and Decker and I bought a new jigsaw to complete it, cutting outside the lines and sanding it the rest of the way with a drum sander chucked into my benchtop drill press.

The horse is 4/4 red oak, finish is General Finish Candlelite wipe on gel. The mane and tail are faux fur and the saddle covering is black vinyl both purchased from a fabric store. Still one of my favorites of the limited number of projects I’ve done so far.

This is what got me started with my woodworking obsession. The box itself is oak ply finished with a light oak poly gel stain. It’s meant to resemble alphabet blocks. I also made the contents of the box, but not in my workshop.