Well I never thought I’d be working with a handgun!

A friend of mine purchased this gun about a year ago now but was not happy with the factory composite grips. These are made from what I’m 90% sure is Brazilian Rosewood. I used the previous handles as templates and rough cut them on the bandsaw. After that it was pretty much all rasp! I sanded them down to 600 grit and they came out super smooth. I didn’t want to polish them in any way because they might get a bit too slick which my friend wanted to avoid.

Despite not being all that familiar with firearms this project was a lot of fun. It reminded me of the work I used to do as a patternmarker at my Dad’s shop (alot of radius blending and irregular shaping). Anyways, they turned out great and my friend is happy so that’s all that matters.

As always, thanks for reading!

Well, finally I found the time to post this project. It was a big one.

It’s basically a reproduction of a cabinet that my Grandfather made in the early 60’s. It’s made from high quality walnut plywood, soild walnut and some birch for the the drawers and shelves. The finish is Watco Danish Oil (natural) and Bees Wax polish.

Overall, it went fairly well with very few mistakes. I could go into a lot more detail but I’m not really in the writing mood. Anyways, hope you enjoy and feel free to ask lots of questions if you have any.

Thanks for listening!

P.S. I’ll post some better final pics once I have them. Sorry for the crappy finished shot.

This is a built-in bookcase I made for my sister and her husband. The material is just painted MDF to keep the cost down and shelf sleeves and pins from Lee Valley. It was a fairly simple job but a bit huge for my tiny basement workshop. Sorry, no progress pictures, maybe for the next one.

Thanks for reading!

This one is nothing fancy but probably one of the most functional pieces I’ve made.

I built this bench for more storage as well as a place to have a seat or put a few things down while opening the door. It’s made using spruce 2X4’s and T&G Pine. I also wrapped the entire structure in vapour barrier to help protect it against moisture since the room isn’t insulated at all. All together including lunber and hardware the bench cost about $100 and only took about 3-4 days to build. It was very much worth it for the use that we’ll get out of it. Thanks for reading.

NOTE: The hinges I used for the four lids were from Lee Valley Tools. They’re called concealed lid hinges and worked very well for this application. That being said, I wouldn’t recomend them for projects that need to be more precise, they have a fair bit of play.

A few months ago I received some strange exotic wood from a friend. It was very dark and very dense but I wasn’t 100% sure what it was. After doing some searching, I figure it’s some type of Rosewood. My grandfather told we it might be Palisander. Anyway, I wasn’t sure what to do with because there wasn’t much of it, at least not enough for a decent sized box. So, I figured I’d try my hand at wooded jewelry.

I started with a couple rings. They came out okay, but I did a lot of it by hand so they were pretty rough. For the next two, I spent more time on the initial shaping and used power sander this time. I then attached it to a 3/4” drum sanding bit and put it on my drill press. With the ring spinning I was able to sand it very well starting with 80 grit all the way to 600. I also applied the finish on the drill press and buffed it while it was spinning. Needless to say these came out a lot better and it was much easier and enjoyable.

After a couple rings I was left with some cut-offs that were a little too small for rings. I decided to make a pendant (shown in pic.1). This was done almost entirely by hand and designed on the fly. I’m really happy with it.

Anyway, that was a lot longer than I expected, sorry for blabbing on. Thanks for reading!

This jewelry box was my first commissioned piece as well as my first venture into solid-wood, woodworking. In spite of this, the project went very well, aside from a few set backs and mistakes.

The box was made for a friend, and fellow designer’s, wife. I was given complete design control so I started with some rough sketches and eventually completed a digital rendering. After that was approved we discussed price. Since this was my first piece and I couldn’t give the customer much of a guarantee on the quality we started fairly low. This was fine with me since I figured he was taking a bit of a chance.

I started with approx. 9’ of walnut and a half sheet of 1/8” baltic birch. I rough cut all of the pieces and milled them to their final thickness. I then moved on to the joinery using keyed mitres for the back corners and mortise and tennons for the front. The drawer was made with simple rabbets on the back and stopped dadoes on the front.

I sanded the whole box down to 180 grit and finished with Tung Oil, rubbing with fine steel wool between coats.

Both my friend and his wife couldn’t be happier with the box, so I guess it was a success. Thanks for reading!

P.S. I’d just like to thank James for taking a chance on me with this project and I hope it lasts for years.

This is yet another attempt at getting some much needed storage in a small house.

I recently purchased a medicine cabinet from IKEA and decided to make an adjoining cabinet to match for some extra storage space. The basic cabinet was fairly easy because I just used MDF and painted it. The sliding doors were a little more challenging though. I was unsuccessful in finding the 1/8” white Plexiglas I wanted so I tried applying an adhesive-backed film to clear plexi. That ended up looking a little crafty so I took that off and simply painted the back of the plexi with a few coats of white primer. It seemed to work really well and gives the same effect as the solid white material would have. The handles are made from some aluminum U channel and are fixed to the doors with auto trim adhesive strips. I also added a floating shelf below the cabinet for some decorative storage.

All in all it turned out pretty well and I’m looking forward to utilizing the painted plexi technique to some future projects including a headboard with shelving and maybe an entertainment unit.

My wife and I recently moved into our first home. Our biggest problem right now is storage.
Hence… the Window Seat.

With no linen closet, a suitable place for blankets and towels had to be made. Also, there was a lot of wasted space under the window.

I started with some scrap 1/2 plywood and made the inner structure including two dividing walls. I then skinned the outside with 3/4 and 1/4 MDF and lined the inside with some old paneling that the previous homeowners left behind. I had to use overlay hinges because of the MDF’s weak end grain. As for finishing, I just patched it with drywall compound and painted it.

After a month or two I started to get a little cracking along the edges. I’m assume that happened because of the movement of the house and I made the bench a friction fit between the wall and half wall. In retrospect that probably wasn’t the smartest thing to do but, live and learn. It’s still very functional and looks pretty good.

This toy chest, made from red oak plywood, was a present for my nephew’s first Christmas. I started with a full sheet or 3/4 oak ply, dadoed the front and back panels and decided to try a sort of “cheater” through mortise and tenon joint (first pic). This proved to be difficult due to the splintery nature of the plywood. I ended up getting a pretty tight joint with almost no nails, which was what I wanted. I then capped the exposed plywood tenons with solid oak and used banding for the top edge and sides of the lid. For the corners (second pic), I decided to use solid oak instead of edge banding because I had a little more control and could make it look a little cleaner. For the finish i used Miniwax walnut stain and 2 coats of low luster poly. Three would have be much better but I ran out of time. The hinges are simple butt hinges and I’ve added a soft-down flap stay for safety.

There are definitely a few things I would do differently next time but I’m still pretty happy with it. No complaints from my nephew… so far.