The title says it all. Red oak and walnut, rubbed with BLO. Nice and hefty.

This is what happens when I don’t have pressing projects to work on and I feel compelled to make shavings, regardless of the outcome. In any case, it’s good “me” time, and it’s been great practice using planes for freehand shaping, rather than mere flattening and smoothing. I’ve always been something of a sword nut, so when boredom struck it didn’t take me long to decide what to do.

The large one was inspired by the German bastard swords seen in the late Medieval period and early Renaissance. (They were called “bastard” swords because they were neither true one-handed or two-handed swords, but more of a mix between the two.) This one was finished with boiled linseed oil, and I kind of wish I hadn’t. It yellowed the maple too much.

The smaller one which will be a gift for my nephew’s 9th birthday was inspired by the ubiquitous one-handed Norman sword of the early Medieval period. On this one, I’m pretty happy with how the octagonal sections of the cross guard and pommel turned out. Could be better, but planing free hand can be tricky. I did use boiled linseed oil on the hilt in order to darken it, but the rest of it will be waxed only to preserve the contrast between the maple and mahogany. This one is also built at roughly 3/4 scale. He’s only 9 after all. Swords of this type had a blade length around 30-32 inches, whereas this is closer to 24 inches. The hilt is also appropriately smaller to fit his hand.

There are lots of fun steps that go into shaping these, so I included some process pictures. There are a lot more of the larger sword since I had to really stop and think in between steps. I was totally winging it. Plans are massively overrated, anyway. Working on the smaller one felt much more automatic, having done the larger one already. The few pictures that I did take, it required a lot for me to slow down long enough to pull my phone out. On both swords, the hilts are mahogany and all other components are maple.

Here is the rough maple blank that forms both the blade and the tang.

Roughing the tip into a point.

At this point the blade has been shaped into a diamond cross section, and the homemade scratch stock has been used to carve out the fullers. (Scholarly nitpicking: The proper term is fullers, not blood grooves. The idea that the human body creates a suction when stabbed, requiring grooves to let blood flow and relieve said suction, is an old wives’ tale. The fullers are there to lighten the blade by removing mass, while simultaneously stiffening its cross section.)

The ugly little scratch stock that could. All I used was an old hacksaw blade. It was little flimsy and I had to bend it back into shape more than once, but I was able to rough up the edge enough to get the job done.

Here the lower edge of the blade has had a distal taper applied to it. Very seldom did sword blades have perfectly parallel edges. It was much more common to see very subtle narrowing towards the tip to help balance the blade.

Both edges with distal taper now.

The cross section of the mahogany hilt was done with my table saw.

Mortise for the cross guard has been chiseled out and fit onto the tang.

Here the pieces for the hilt have been cut and sandwiched together, forming a hexagonal cross section.

Now the cross guard has been shaped. The tight radii were done using a Forstner bit on my drill press, all other curves were roughed out on a band saw.

Just wanted to see what it looks like in my hand at this point.

The maple spacers were cut by hand and beveled with a smoothing plane.

Test fit of the hilt with the spacers. The table saw kind of got away from me when I was roughing out the blank along the tang, so I had to fudge a little bit and use a shim to tighten things up.

The hilt was profiled with some curves. Then the pommel was mortised, shaped, then glued into place.

EDIT: Almost forgot to include these two pictures of the smaller sword in the works. Like I said, I didn’t take many process pictures this time!

Here the blade has been roughed out along with the cross guard. The octagonal pommel is yet to be cut and shaped.

This pommel is secured with a mahogany wedge that fits into the end of the tang. You should be able to make it out in picture #5 up top. Trust me, it’s there!

Thus concludes the great wooden sword making adventure (for now).

EDIT: Added a picture of the birthday boy. Needless to say, it’s a hit.

Challenge accepted.

I’ve seen this gag elsewhere so I can’t claim originality. But hopefully you get a laugh out of it.

My parents’ house was robbed a while back by a jewelry thief, so they have since installed a security system and I built a cabinet for a safe in their garage. I know it isn’t exactly Fort Knox, but it will at least slow anyone down if they try to get into it.

The safe is bolted to runners that are lag bolted into concrete, and I built a frame around that as well. It’s framed with pine 2×4s and the outer shell is maple plywood. The face frame is done with pocket screws, and lots of other countersunk screws all over the place to tighten things up. Once it’s painted it’ll look just like a garage cabinet for storing tools or whatnot. The most exacting part was definitely the door, and making sure that there’s enough room for the interior drawer to pull out.

Following instructions from a recent issue of Fine Woodworking, I finally knocked out a basic sled for myself. The construction method in the article made it pretty simple. Instead of attaching two runners to the underside of the sled at the same time and then raising the blade through, this method attaches one runner to one side, then trims off the excess as you run it past the blade. Repeat the same process on the same side. Make sure the runners are pulled tight toward the center, then attach your fences. Pretty easy. It’s made from maple plywood, with solid maple for the fences.

For a while I used it as is, without waxing the underside. Once I did though, wow! Now this thing flies, and it’s so easy to make fine movements that take more control.

Like my other recently posted project, it’s nothing glamorous, but it sure is progress for my little garage shop. I finished this about a month ago and I use it all the time now!

EDIT:

Forgot to mention the method for attaching the rear fence, which I thought was quite brilliant. Apply your glue to the underside of the rear fence, then drill a countersunk screw up into one far corner. Here’s the important part – Get the fence as close to square as you can relative to the saw kerf running down the middle of the sled. Then drive a thin nail (I used my air nail gun for this) into the other corner. Then immediately cut a wide board (10 to 12 inches or so) on your sled. Flip one end of the newly cut board over and press the freshly cut surfaces together. If there is no gap whatsoever, you’re dead square so go ahead and clamp the fence down and let it dry. If there is a gap though, you can use a hammer to lightly knock the nailed end of the fence. this bends the nail in infinitesimal increments, which allows you to make extremely fine adjustments. You can’t make those fine tweaks once the glue is dry, so you’ve got to work quick. Keep repeating and creeping up on it until your wide boards don’t have a gap after you cut and flip one, then clamp it all down and call it a day.

Nothing terribly fancy here. This was a gift to my Mother-in-law. She requested a simple side table that was the same height as the top of her stove, since it’s on a wall by itself and there are no nearby counter tops to set trivets or utensils on. It also fits around a small trash can that goes underneath the table. Those two requirements explain why the legs are so tall relative to the top.

It’s made of red oak finished with Minwax stain and satin poly. For such a simple project, it exacted more than its fair share of blood, sweat, and tears. Well, no tears, but a fair amount of sweat and more actual blood than I would care to lose in another project. I have since acquired a decent starter bench from Grizzly. Makes planing a lot easier, and certainly more safe.

I threw together an ugly but functional taper jig for my tablesaw in order to shape the legs. At the time, the big box stores near me didn’t have oak 2×2 stock in the length I needed, so I had to laminate two 1×2 oak pieces together for each leg. The top of made from 1×6, sawed in two and joined at the center. The top is secured with metal table top fasteners that ride in a kerf in the aprons that are only visible if you flip the table upside down. The legs are joined to the aprons using pocket screws.

Like I said, nothing terribly fancy. But for what the project requires, it works.

First off, credit must be given where it is due. My sole influence in building this was Ben's Jewelry Box. Thanks to Ben for such a captivating design, I chose this as my first serious project. The decor in our bedroom is Asian styled, so I knew this design would be right at home.

One obvious departure I took from the original is a different selection of wood. The reddish wood is Paduak and the dark wood is Wenge. No stain was used. It’s finished with three coats of a wipe-on mixture of satin polyurethane, boiled linseed oil, and mineral spirits. The box, drawers, and legs are constructed with interlocking glue joints, and the only metal in the entire piece is three tiny screws that attach to the drawer pulls.

The outer curves on the legs were rough cut with a bandsaw and finished by hand. A spindle sander would’ve been really handy here. Perhaps that should be my next investment. Everything else was done with my tablesaw.

I included my original hand sketch, slight errors and all. Dimensions were approximate only. The other shots highlight the glue joints that were cut on my table saw. The legs are held onto the box by glue alone. The last few pictures illustrate the Wenge drawer runners that are inserted into a series of kerfs along the sides and back of the box. The drawer dividers help to strengthen the front of the box and create some visual contrast with the Paduak drawer fronts, which have matching grain orientation, since they are cut from the same board. I also attached felt pads with some strong spray adhesive to the back of the box. This allows the drawers to close softly, and to a uniform depth.

I was working down the wire to get this done (remotely presentable!) before Christmas. I still want to flock the drawers with black velvet and install dividers in the top drawer. Apart from that, I felt good enough about it to post here as my first project. Sorry about the picture quality, all shots are taken with my phone and some turned out better than others.

Any comments and criticisms are welcome.

Brian
Arlington, TX