This is the second of five G&G frames I am making for the Yoshiko Yamamoto prints that will adorn the walls of our powder room. As with nearly all of the things I make, this is cherry with walnut pins and accent bars. It is finished with several coats of satin poly wipe, wet sanded with 800 grit between coats, and finished with watco satin wax.

In this iteration I tried the double cloud lift on top and a single cloud lift on the bottom. The accent bars are 1/8 wide and stand proud by about 1/16”. The pins are 1/4” and stand proud by 1/8”. The rails extend beyond the side by 1/8” and are rounded over. They provide a nice subtle detail.

As I refine my design sense I realized the pins are too tall. Darrell Peart recommends more like 1/16” and I certainly can see why. I also think the top rail would look better without the cloud notch on top. A straight edge does a better job of finishing the look. Lastly, the accent bars on the bottom needed to be 1/8” further up to give a better sense of balance to the bottom rail. I also need to learn how to take pictures that don’t crop the top and bottom of the picture when they are uploaded to LJ.

The next iteration will include some curved sides and probably pick up walnut as the primary wood. Ultimately, I want to get to a point where I can accurately replicate the John Hall frame in Darrell Peart’s book on G&G. As always any thoughts, suggestions, or critiques are greatly appreciated.

After endless hours of sketching, drawing, and general design tweaks my Greene & Greene picture frame is complete. First the basics – The print is a Yoshiko Yamamoto block print entitled “Apple Blossoms” and the frame is cherry with walnut plugs and highlights. The pins are maple. The frame is finished with poly-urethane. It measures 13X22.

This was my first attempt at joinery with curves. Initially I had lofty aspirations to make curved half lap joints on the sides but a few attempts showed me my folly. So I made a little white lie by making the top piece 1/4” thicker than the sides. That way I could take the entire cut for the half lap appearance out of the top and avoid cutting the curves out of the sides. It worked so well I used the idea on the bottom as well. The pins were added for function as well as appearance. Now that I had that little problem solved I moved on to the other G&G ideas I wanted to incorporate into the design.

Darrell Peart offered a number of suggestions on the “how to” for these details in his book on Greene & Greene design which I tried out to very nice effect.

The frame turned out very well and now my wife wants me to make a new mirror and a couple of more frames for the powder room. Now that I have the basics worked out I can fine tune some of the proportions. The top rail cloud lift should be 1/4 – 3/8 narrowed to provide a better ratio. Similarly, the lower rail should also have 1/4 – 3/8 cut off the top edge to reduce the clunkly look. All in all, though, a successul piece. Now I just need to speed up the process a bit.

This is the first version of the Craftsman Taboret Plant Stand that I found in “Craftsman Furniture Projects” from the “Best of Woodworker’s Journal” series.

It is black walnut and soft maple with a couple of coats of Watco natural danish oil followed by a couple of coats of poly-wipe and finished with a couple coats of satin wax, buffed to a satin finish. Dimensions are 14×14x18. I added a few embelishments to the basic plans. The top is tapered and wrapped with a 1/8” strip of walnut. I also added walnut splines (although I don’t think that is an accurate description) to the top and bottom of each leg. A Mowtawi tile was set into the top and framed with walnut making the top look like a frame for the tile.

Now that it is finished I think it looks more art-nouveau than craftsman. I’m not sure where it will go in our Craftsman style house. I have 2 more versions I am still working on. Hopefully one of them will work in the corner that my wife asked me to build this for.

I’ve been working on a series of craftsman taboret tables. The main problem I ran into was the angled tapered aprons. They are cut at a 5 degree taper with a 45 degree angle which will result in one face of the legs to face out while the base tapers from the bottom to the top.

Because the legs are on a 45 degree angle, clamping them was a real challenge. Add to the the taper and I needed something that would allow me to clamp the aprons and legs. The solution was to rip a piece of 3/4 mdf with the table saw at a 45 degrees then flip it over and use my taper sled to make the 5 degree taper on the other edge. The two pieces were then stacked up so the 45 degree cuts were match together to make a 90 degree notch (see picture 3). I made a two sets.

The legs fit perfectly and the taper allowed me to clamp the legs squarely. A block and clamp provided downward pressure on the apron to keep the apron tight against the legs. Two leg sections were glued up this way, then the tapered blocks were flipped over and used to glue up the other two sides (see pictures 4 & 5).

I will be posting the finished taboret tables as I finish them.

I finally finished the cubbies my wife has been hounding me to finsh since we moved into the house almost 5 years ago.

This isn’t my usual kind of project but I managed to come up with a decent design after looking at lots of pictures in magazines and on LJ. I used maple for the face framing and birch plywood for the boxes and panels. Since I didn’t want to try to lift the entire unit, I built each box, painted it and then put a couple of coats of poly acrylic over the latex for duability. Then I screwed them into the wall and tied them together with the face framing. A bit of crown molding, some paint and poly for the face frame and the cubbies were finished. The wainscotting panels were built as one unit finished then installed. I added a coupl of corbels I picked up at the big box store for accent, installed the hooks and the project was finished.

As with every project there were a couple of things that could have been done better. My design skills are still a bit lacking on the little details. All in all though, my wife is happy so I am happy

Several years ago I had some scrap 1/2” pieces of cherry and I saw an article in Woodsmith on making magazine boxes to store a years’ worth of magazines. Well, one thing led to another and we moved 5 times. They were carefully packed at the bottom of a storage box that never was unpacked until this spring.

I finished the box joints, cut the curves, assembled them and finished them with polyurethane. I have 6 cherry and one oak storage boxes. Now that they are finished they are all full of the magazines I accumulated over the past 7 years since I started the project. Guess I’ll have to make some more.

I also have two men’s jewlery boxes that were going to be Christmas presents way back when for my dad and brother. Maybe I can get them finished for Christmas this year. I wonder what else is out there?

I decided I needed some bookends to match all of the craftsman furniture I’ve been building so I made 3 sets of them plus one extra that I used to figure out the details. As usual, they are cherry with walnut highlights and 3X Motawi tiles. They are finished with polyurethane over linseed oil.

Instead of messing around with all of the small walnut trim details I made solid pieces and then drilled a dowel hole to align all of the pieces. The sides are tapered (another chance to use the taper jig). The added twist was that both sides are tapered so I used the scrap piece from the first side to shim it out when I flipped it over to cut the second side. The tapered shim pushed all the way to the bottom provided a very accurate way to get the same angle on the taper.

The body of the book end is solid. A few scrap pieces and I had a slick jig for the router to make the openings for the tiles. I added a trio of walnut tapered plugs to finish out the look.

Of course this wouldn’t be a woodworking project without a “signature”. If you look, one set has the walnut accents flipped. I put the top accents on the bottom and didn’t realize until it was glued up. So they are my “variation” on a theme.

My wife’s plants love these plant stands. I found the basic plans in Woodsmith. The joints are all loose tenons so the only tricky part was getting the angle correct on the rail tenons. The rest of the project was window dressing to bring out the Craftsman style. The original plans called for a tile on top but I chose walnut for the contrast. I also modified the heights so it took a bit of figuring to get all of the dimensions and scale to work out.

The main wood is cherry with walnut highlights, finished with 3 coats of polyurethane.

My intention was to build the Greene and Greene clock in three different versions.

The first one was QS oak built exactly as the plans showed then stained with varathane “gunstock” and finished with semi-gloss poly.

The second version was cherry with walnut highlights and a decidedly more craftsman feel. It was finished with Maloof oil/poly and topped with Maloof oil/wax.

This version was all about the Greene and Greene look from the 1/4” square plugs to the breadboard top with accents on the ends and front, to the stepped base. It was made from walnut and finished with semi gloss poly. I also went with a clock face (from Clockprints.com) that matched the color and style of the Motawi Tile. As you can see in the second picture the craftsman and G&G versions have a totally different feel.

The basic frame is easily adaptable to the different styles. In fact I realized after I glued the last one up that I should have cut the three rails with the G&G cloud pattern to really make a statement. Maybe on the next one.

For now, I’m moving on to some tile bookends and then some different styles of clocks all leading up to a design for a wall clock for the kitchen that will go with the Stickley furniture and craftsman style of our house.

I finally finished the matching Craftsman coffee table and end table I designed for the living room. They are made from cherry with walnut slats. I also tried adding some Craftsman veneer details on the corners with a walnut accent strip on the top. That was easy. All of the joinery is pinned, thru mortise and tenons with some angled cuts on the top pieces for accents. All in all, the design and woodworking portions of the project turned out very well.

I did, however, have no end of problems getting the kind of finish on the coffee table top. The initial finish turned out dull and had lots of orange peel. That’s what I get for putting spray poly on too light. I mananged to sand through in some spots and not in others. Tried again with a brush and poly – no deal – I had antire ocean of fish eyes. Apparently my wife thought she would help by spraying furniture polish directly onto the finish just before I took it out to the shop to fix the finish. That took several tries to get all of the oil out. Then I tried the Sam Maloof finish. A dozen coats of poly and another 6 coats of wax. Looked pretty good until the dog threw his slobbery bone on the top and someone set a hot cup on it and I had stains. Back to the drawing board where I stripped the top completely down and started over with poly wipe gloss and 600 grit Abranet on the ROS. Big mistake!!! The scratch marks showed through and the top looked worse than ever. Another full strip down to raw wood and this time I started with sanding sealer and gloss poly wipe. I only used 800 grit wet paper between the 6 coats of poly wipe. I originally wanted to put 4 coats on but I wiped a bit too thin and a bit to long on the 4th coat so I got streaks. Whew – glad that is over. The end table looks great so I left it alone.

Morale of the story – keep trying until you get it right and you might learn a few things in the process.

I’m making 3 mantle clocks using the basic Greene and Greene plans available online. I posted the first one (qtr sawn oak). This version is cherry with walnut highlights finished with the Maloof finish and wax (several coats – I lost count). The tile is Mowtawi.

Since I just finished the side table I thought it might make a nice picture of two projects I’ve recently completed.

I’m also working on a walnut version that will be all Greene and Greene. After that, I want to make some other mantle clocks and a wall clock – all craftsman style. Thankfully there are lots of really good examples on here that can be used to get the creative process going. Hopefully my wife won’t mind all the clocks around the house.

I was reading the Sept/Oct issue of Fine Woodworking and I came across an article by Kevin Rodel on his version of a table made by Josef Hoffmann in 1903. I think the changes he made make the piece look even better than the original. I made the table from walnut with several coats of gloss poly wipe and lots of hand rubbing.

It was the first time I had worked with tapered legs so I also made a tapered cut jig from free plans available on the internet. Just don’t forget to make the square sides.

The grids were easy to make using a dado and ripping the pieces to width after making the dado cuts. I used a tenon instead of splines to glue the legs and grids together more as a matter of preference.

The top is 4 pieces glued end to side to accent the grain in the wood. Lastly, we added a 3X3 tile of a dog to remember our Springer that we lost just after Thanksgiving. All in all, it was a fun piece.

This is my first try at the Greene and Greene clock using the plans available on-line. I’m going to tweak the plans and make a more Craftsman style version using Cherry with Walnut highlights.