I promised my wonderful wife, Helen, that I would build her a reading table to place alongside our rocking chair in our upstairs bedroom. She fantasizes about sitting alone, gently rocking, and quietly reading while having a comfortable place to set her drink and reading lamp. Nevermind that “peace and quiet” is an impossibility in our house with our 3 young kids, she finally got tired of waiting and laid down the ultimatum…

“If I don’t have my table by December 26th, I will go to Target and buy one,” she threatened.

If you consider yourself a woodworker, and if that doesn’t get your attention, well…looks like I had a new project to start! But at least I didn’t have to decide what I needed to buy her for Christmas!

I didn’t quite make the deadline – which is okay because we agreed that she didn’t have to get me anything – but there was enough of it finished to stave off Helen’s threats and buy me a few weeks more. This is the result of my efforts.

Wood for the project began here, amid controversy of allegedly endangering the life of my daughters on this infamous Mini Cooper shot (I only drove one very SLOW block with the girls)...

8/4 Quartersawn White Oak makes for excellent Arts and Craft style furniture. But I had to be careful…if I made it Mission style, like my wife wanted, then I’d have to make it match our existing bedroom furniture (also Mission) which is finished in a dark cherry color. Ironically, my wife says she hates cherry but she loves our bedroom set. I guess I’m the wrong gender to figure that one out. ;)

But I had two things going for me. First, my wife didn’t know about Greene & Greene (which I kinda wanted to build) and I knew would complement our existing furniture, yet also stand-out from it. Second, my wife’s gliding rocking chair is mahogany wood with light colored upholstery. Because I bought the QSWO before I decided on a Greene & Greene piece, I eventually decided to use the oak and keep it natural, complementing the upholstery. But as I started the finishing process, it became more mahogany in tone and, therefore, became more of a color match to the wood of the rocker.

Design for the table is my own, though it pays homage to Darrell Peart’s Aurora table in some aspects. The size of the table top is approximately 22” by 18”, which utilizes a floating panel and bridle joints (instead of breadboard ends) left proud at the edges as G&G joints often are. All horizontal members except the back have cloud lift shapes created by jig saw, router template, and spindle sander. These are joined to the legs with mortise and tenon.

The legs are very slightly splayed, 1/4” wider at the bottom than at the top, which is by design. The legs have the Blacker leg indents on all sides, made with hand-held router and jig.

The top apron panels are joined to the legs with sliding dovetails. The bottom shelf, also shaped with cloud lifts, mounts to the bottom rails with through tenons. Table top is secured to the actual table with wooden brackets, recessed loosely into the apron and tightened with screws to the frame of the top.

There are 20 ebony plugs in the base, 6 in the drawer sides, and 8 larger plugs in the top bridle joints…all of which are purely decorative. All joints are pillowed and proud, except the drawer plugs which are flush.

The drawer uses box joints, again left proud and pillowed in the front. An extra board is glued to the table top rail to cover the gap above the drawer (this board is milled to size last). This also serves as an alignment aid should I ever need to remove the top, which is easily done. The drawer back and sides are actually 1/2” red oak, which I had laying around, and the bottom panel is 1/4” oak plywood, which slides in a rabbet and is held firm with some countersunk brass screws into the back board from underneath. The back board of the drawer is recessed toward the drawer front 2”, using sliding dovetail construction. Because the drawer uses wooden runners with side grooves, this technique allows the drawer to be fully open without falling out of the table. There are stops on both sides to achieve proper drawer closing.

The handle of the drawer is 3/8” oak dowel through two chunks of ebony, shaped myself, and then rabbeted, sunk, and glued into the drawer face. It turned out nice.

The table is finished first with a wiped-on dewaxed shellac (tinted mildly with Brown Mahogany TransTint dye). I did this to unify the color of the wood, as there was some variance in that regard once milled. It also pops the figure in the gorgeous QSWO. Then, I sprayed the same dye mix to bring it to the right shade, as well as to subtly tone some areas of the work, mostly around the leg/apron joints and within the leg indents (to make them a little more visible). To finish, I sprayed 3 coats of semi-gloss GF Endurovar, rubbed out to satin, and then topped with some paste wax for feel.

I signed the back of the drawer with a special message for my wife as a final, personal touch.

I hope you enjoy the result as much as my wife does!

I was very excited to find out about the mallet swap for this Christmas. 22 guys making mallets and then swapping them Chinese Christmas-style was just too good of an idea. Part of me was intimidated, not so much because I didn’t have confidence to produce something worthy of a fellow Lumberjock, but rather that this mallet would only be the 2nd such mallet I’d ever made.

To make matters worse, I drew “Bertha” as my recipient. Now, as any LJ knows, that’s equal parts fun and intimidating all on its own. In over the three years of being an LJ, Al is one of the guys I’ve truly enjoyed reading and following. You never know what to expect from Al, and I certainly wanted to make sure he was surprised by what he expected from me. I think I succeeded with this mallet.

The mallet head is two piece, QS white oak, with the handle mortise slot cut with dado blade on the TS and widened at the top with chisel once glued up. Handle is also white oak, with quartersawn direction inline with mallet faces for more strength. I cut the handle with jigsaw and brought to final dimension with the spindle sander, followed by sandpaper/scraper.

Rebates for the ebony were obviously done prior to attaching the head to the handle. That was the hardest part, making sure they were all consistently sized and in line for seamless transition between head and handle.

The ebony “brackets” from below the faces are one piece on each side, again cut with jig saw, sanded to a line on the spindle sander, and hand-sanded/scraped to give a pillowed look. Ebony for the faces are 1/4” deep, separate from the brackets. In retrospect, I would not do this again, as I had forgotten how brittle ebony is and it’s probably not that durable if its pounded. We shall see, but the good part about it is that Al will be able to remove 1/4” from the face and get back down to flat oak faces in the event that the ebony explodes…and he has my permission to do that if needed. The ebony in the face already has some hairline cracks, so I’m leery about it.

The wedges are simple…4 pieces of ebony, left proud of the mallet head. It’s not the prettiest job, but it works.

The “tsuba” ebony inlay in the side of the mallet head is shaped by hand, the outline for which was cut with trim router and small up-cut spiral bit. It is purely cosmetic, not hiding a pin or dowel of any kind, though it certainly could have…I didn’t see it as necessary.

Finish is simple natural Watco Danish Oil and wax. I did some sanding/filling of the ebony after glued, the dust of which clogged the pores of the oak slightly. I’d prevent that from happening if I did it again, but it gave the oak a pickled look, darker than I originally intended.

As I mentioned in the letter I sent Al that was packaged with the gift, the elements of the mallet are all Greene and Greene. The tsuba is obvious, as is the pillowed ebony, but not so obvious is probably all of the cloud-lifts, both in the handle and in the head. But the synergy of the elements makes it look more like a Norse war hammer than anything resembling G&G. And that’s fine. I’m currently building my wife a G&G table, so it made sense to mill up some of the same wood I already was using.

Again, it’s a really fun thing to be a part of…and I look forward to doing more LJ swaps in the future.

When I use cutting boards in the kitchen, I always go with the smallest board to do the job. I just don’t enjoy moving around big heavy boards. Not that huge cutting boards do not have their place, but I think the majority of my usage of cutting boards is for smaller jobs…a single onion or a few carrots.

So, when both of my young nephews recently moved into new places, my wife put together a large mixing bowl full of kitchen goodies. I made these for their Christmas bundles.

These measure approximately 8” x 10” each, 5/8” thick, both with bottom bevels to make them easy to pick up off a countertop and a slight round over on the top to ease the edge. I finished both with mineral oil.

The checkerboard is obviously end grain, which took the longest of the two boards. It is made of walnut and pecan. I allowed some of the dark burnishing of the pecan to remain because I liked the look. The other board, an Incra-design from my projects book, was actually completed in about 3 hours. It is side grain made of walnut and red oak. The Incra TS fence and my big thickness sander make really quick work out of projects like this.

I’m pleased with these. I haven’t done many cutting boards during my lifetime because I never enjoyed sanding them down. But since I now have the right tools, I think I’ll have to start building a few here and there.

I thought I’d add this as a project, just in case people need ideas.

This is a simple circle cutting jig to fit my DeWalt trim router. Is made of simple 1/2” birch plywood stock. There are a few varieties of jigs out there, but such designs allow a pivot pin to be placed underneath the base itself so that you can cut smaller radius circles with it. The hole in the first image above is 1/4” and holds the pivot pin, which is precisely sized at 1/4”.

The existing jig uses two hex bolts, but only because I didn’t have some hand/thumb screws handy. But for cutting just the occasional circle, the design is great.

This is actually a prototype for me. I will be making one out of clear acrylic to be used for cutting rosette channels in acoustic guitars. It will also have a push/pin adjustment for fine setting the radius.

Continuing to add some of the fast projects I’ve done, this one is a calculator caddy for the TI-84 calculators in my math classroom. You did know I teach high school math, right?

I’ll spare you my anti-calculator rant…that Texas schools force our kids to use this 20 year old technology because somebody at the state level is probably pocketing monies to use them…that they are nothing but a crutch to learning math…that they are left in the dust by smartphone apps that are totally free. :)

I’m not crazy about the design, as some pockets on the wall work better. If this caddy isn’t full, then the calculators slide and won’t stand up straight. So, I’d build smaller partitions/slots if I were to do it again. However, that complicates things too unnecessarily.

This project was more about just working the wood, red oak in this case. A simple topless box with grooved hardboard bottom, dovetailed corners (using the Incra system) and simple hand-worked mortises for the two dividers.

Finish is walnut Watco danish oil followed by many coats of water-borne GF Enduro-Var urethane semi-gloss. It’s really a beautiful finish that isn’t at all obvious. Very durable as well. The kids can be a bit hard on things like this and only a few nicks on the dividers are evident after a couple of years of use.

For my son, William, on his first day of 6th grade in a Middle School! He’s certainly worth an couple of hours of my shop time. The only problem is that the horseshoes are upside down. Apparently, our Colts have better luck with them opening up!

This is a plaque approximately 7×9 inches made of 3/4” red oak. The routing is done with the DeWalt DW611 trim router, rounded bit, and the Rockler letter templates. I’m not a big Comic Sans guy, but oh well! Profiled with a Freud bit that I use for the rails and stiles of my kitchen cabinet doors.

Sprayed with Transtint-dyed shellac over blue acrylic painted letters (with blue Sharpie touch-ups). Finished with some GF water-borne Enduro-Var.

Definitely do one for your kid! 6th grade lockers are kinda a rite of passage and the kids go to great lengths to decorate them!

BTW, thanks to LJ’s and iPad OS 6, I’ll actually be able to easily add some projects!