This weekend has been crazy for me (annual weapon qualification for the PD – I shot 110 out of 120 :) ), but I still managed to get a fair amount of shop time in. My main goal over the next month or so is to completely revamp my shop and add a number of improvements.

Most of my work in the past has been with hand tools, but my wife bought me a new table saw and I quickly learned that dust collection was a must. Not having the extra cash for a dedicated DC, I picked up a mini dust separator and some hose to attach to my shop vac; works great. The difference is night and day. (picture 5)

I also needed to move my chop saw to an “out of the way” area. I pretty much only use it for home improvement type work and not my general wood working projects. I have a decent-sized area free underneath where my attic ladder lowers down from, but I can’t put anything there permanently. So, I used a sheet of 3/4” CDX to build a simple rolling cart / cabinet. Eventually, I’m going to build some fold-away side supports for cutting longer stock. The case joinery is tongue / dado or locking rabbet; not sure what the proper name for the joint is. The finish is barn red Old Fashioned Milk Paint. (picture 1)

I didn’t have a “proper” scrap bin in the past and my plywood cut offs were literally stacked / piled next to the front door of the shop. Finding anything in it was a real pain. So, I used some scrap 1/2” CDX to make a simple scrap bin; simple dado joinery all-around. (picture 2)

I also needed some place to put my glasses, iPod, etc to keep them dust free and safe from damage. I used some scrap Poplar (salvaged from a paper goods pallet). To provide a good dust seal, the lid and box have mating rabbets. The box joinery is simple miters cut with a chisel and cleaned up with a block plane using a jig on my shooting board. The finish is barn red Old Fashioned Milk Paint. (pictures 3 and 4)

One of the first rules I learned about wood working is to avoid the shop when tired. I’m usually pretty good about this, but the momentum I had this weekend got the best of me and I worked this evening when I got back from the range anyway.

Thankfully, the damage was to my bench only.

When breaking down large sheets of plywood, I use a simple shop-made straight-edge guide with a circular saw. My usual method is to clamp the guide in line with the cut line, open up my end vise, line up the cut line in the center open area between the end of the bench and the vise chop, clamp the sheet to the bench, support the off-cut with saw horses, and make the cut.

Some how, on my 3rd cut of breaking down sheet goods, I misaligned my cut line and sawed a 1/2” deep cut right across the back of my bench. After I realized what I’d done, I drew square lines across the bench 3/4” apart, and used my guide and circular saw; defining the outer edges of a dado. After another two cuts down the center, I used a large chisel to break out the bulk of the waste and followed that up with my router plane to clean up the bottom of the dado. One evening this week, I’m going to cut some scrap to glue into the dado. :) (picture 6).

Wanting some new cabinets for our laundry room, my wife bought me a new table saw and dado stack for my birthday last month. I mostly work with hand tools and my shop isn’t very big. That meant leaving the new saw sitting on it’s stand in the middle of my shop just wasn’t an option.

So, I took some measurements, grabbed some graph paper and a pencil, and got work on a cart / cabinet that I can roll out of the way when not in use. It’s a simple design. It’s built from a single sheet of 1/2” CDX with a couple of pieces of 2x scrap. The pine wasn’t used so much for structural strength as much as it was for making it easier to attach the door and back panel.

The main carcase was made by laminated the plywood pieces to make the top, bottom, and sides 15/16” thick. It is SOLID and has some good weight to it which handles any possible vibration from the saw much better than the flimsy stand that came with it did.

The carcase sides are glued into dado’s in the top and bottom of the case. To eliminate any sharp edges, I cut a 3/4” radius curve on all the top / bottom corners on the bandsaw, then cleaned them up with a spokeshave, rasp, and cabinet file.

The casters are monster 5” casters that have a dual locking mechanism that prohibits rolling and rotation when locked. The finish is 2 coats of Old Fashioned Milk Paint; soldier blue. The inside of the cabinet hasn’t been painted yet; waiting for my order of white milk paint to come in from Woodcraft some time next week.

The pictures are:
1 – Front view the saw and cart.
2 – Dry fit of the carcase.
3 – The first coat of milk paint.
4 – Side view of the saw and cart.
5 – Close-up of the casters.
6 – Inside of the cabinet which houses my goggles, dust mask, push stick, dado gauge test board, zero clearance inserts for different dado sizes, dado stack set, etc.

My current main project is a tool chest similar to the one students at NBSS make; inspired by Tommy Mac's free video series and an article Steve Brown wrote in FWW last year.

Tommy and Steve used their table saws to dimension their tool chests, but I’m building mine with hand tools only. So, I needed to make a panel gauge to get the final size marked out for the panels I glued up to make the case.

I got the plans for the panel gauge from Charles Hayward’s “How To Make Woodwork Tools” book; hosted as a free PDF file at Toolmera.

The beam is hard maple. The fence and wedge are red alder, with a wear-plate of hard maple glued on to the bottom of the fence.

Right now, I only have a hole drilled to fit a pencil, but I’m thinking about adding a pin (probably a sharpened nail) to the opposite side of the beam.

The pictures are:

#1 – The panel gauge in use.

#2 – The panel gauge taken apart.

#3 – The printed page from Hayward’s book.

Nothing too fancy here, but a couple pieces of 1×4 scraps and some poplar dowels go a long way to making my workflow SO much smoother.

Working primarily with hand tools, I absolutely love my all my bench hooks. Top left is my thin-stock planing board, top right is shooting board, bottom left is my crosscut bench hook, and the bottom middle is my edge-planing stop. The bottom rack is rounded out by my crosscut and rip panel saws; still need to make a new wooden handle to replace the stock plastic one on my rip saw.

The racks are attached with 3”-#12 screws into the wall studs. The bench hooks / saws are mounted on dowels. I used a brace to drill halfway through the racks; using blue tape as a depth gauge on the auger bit. Then, I glued the dowels in place. After the glue dried, I finished it with a couple coats of shellac mixed from bysahki buttons. It was the first time I’ve ever used buttonlac and it took almost 2 days for it to fully dissolve; whereas when I use flakes it dissolves in about 6 hours.

Before building this simple rack, my panel saws were hanging from a couple of drywall screws and my bench hooks were all over the place; usually leaning against my bandsaw or workbench.

My son needed a new bed and asked me to build one for him.

I’d never built anything that big before. Everything in my shop is sized for medium-to-small projects; my bench is only 62” long. The side rails of his bed (including the length of the tenons) is over 80”. That made for a few challenges, but it was a fun project, none the less.

I built this without plans. My son searched the web for a style that he liked and he decided on a Japanese low-stance bed frame. I printed one of the pictures he chose, made a few sketched, measured his mattress, and got to work.

I wanted it to join with all-wood joint; no screws, nails, or bolts were used. For the record, I have nothing against mechanical fasteners, but I wanted the challenge of tackling the design he chose with just wood to wood knock-down joinery.

I had a big delay midway through the project dealing with bilateral hernias (from exercise, not related to building this).

It was built 99% with hand tools. I used my bandsaw for two long rips (rough cutting the side rails).

The wood is yellow pine (longleaf). I ripped it from the outsides of 2×12s to get the desired grain orientation. The joinery is bridle joints that overlap between the footboard / headboard and side rails. There is a mating notch at each intersection of the tenons. The finish is two coats of a milk paint wash (thinned 2-to-1) with a few coats of shellac on top (2lb cut of dewaxed orange).

There were a lot of first in this project for me. It was the first time I’ve ever used bridle joints, milk paint, and shellac in a project. The milk paint was mixed fresh from Old Fashioned Milk Paint powder and the shellac was mixed fresh from flakes bought from Shellac.net.

The pictures are:

#1 – the bed installed in his room

#2 – jointing an edge on one of the side rails

#3 – cutting one of the side rail tenons

#4 – a quick dry fit outside of my shop (there wasn’t enough room in my shop to put it together. lol)

#5 – close up of the joinery

#6 – close up of the finish; showing the overlapped bridle joints

Sorry that some of the pics are blurry. They were taken with my phone.

In “A Cabinetmaker’s Notebook”, James Krenov talks about starting projects with just a few preliminary sketches / ballpark measurements, then allowing the project to take shape from that basic idea as it proceeds. When I first read that a year ago, I though to myself, “sure, that might work for you, but I’d never be able to pull something off without detailed plans for every step of the project”.

Well, I finally got up the courage to jump into the deep end of the pool head first. I needed a small cabinet to hold my joinery saws and marking & measuring tools. The project was made entirely with hand tools, all the ripping was done with a $10 Stanley saw with a plastic handle (proof that you don’t always need expensive tools to get the job done). I plan to blog about the build process and post in-progress pics later (maybe tomorrow if I have time), but a few tidbits about this project:

- first time that I’ve ever used hand-cut dovetails in a project (carcass)
- first time that I’ve ever used hand-cut half lap joints (door frame)
- first time that I’ve ever used a glass panel in a project

Lessons learned:
- hand-cut through dovetails are much easier than I thought
- hand-cut half lap joints to make a frame are much harder than I thought
- working with glass makes me nervous :)

The first picture shows the cabinet hung on my shop’s French cleat system.
The second picture shows the magnetic catch that I made (screw + flat washer + rare earth magnet).
The third picture shows most of the tool holder that I made from yellow pine scraps. They are sitting on my newly-made shooting board; which makes dimensioning small pieces SO much easier.
The fourth picture shows the cabinet before being hung; just wanted to show a pic with a side view to show the dovetails.

All comments / critiques are welcome. Thanks for taking the time to look / read.

I’ve got a bunch of small pieces of red oak and hard maple scrap from past projects and I’m always looking for little projects to use them. I was flipping through an old issue of ShopNotes and found a cool little project: scraper shaves.

It didn’t take long to make and it was a lot of fun. The only thing I did differently from the article was to use a backsaw and coping saw instead of table saw and bandsaw to make the major cuts. The rest of the shaping was done with a paring chisel, spokeshave, rasp, and file.

The blade was cut from an old handsaw blade. I smoothed the blade progressing through 3 waterstones (220, 1000, and 8000); then, shaped a 45-deg bevel on one side using a file. I cleaned up and polished the bevel on my waterstones and finally formed a burr on the edge with a burnisher.

My new Roubo workbench built with hand tools out of southern yellow pine. I started milling the lumber in the last week of November and 3 months later, it’s finished. I blogged about the build here at LJ and you can read it starting here

When I first set my shop up last year, I installed a French cleat system around the room. It’s a simple system using 1x pine with a 45 degree bevel cut on the top. Each of the racks has a mating piece of 1x pine with the 45 degree bevel reversed from the strip on the wall. It’s easy to create, allows me to move things around as needed, and very solid as far as hanging strength is concerned.

These pictures include a pipe clamp rack, a hand screw clamp rack, and a chisel rack. I got the original idea for the French cleat from a issue of Wood magazine last year.

My crosscut backsaw is an inexpensive Stanley miter saw. It cuts well enough, but I wasn’t crazy about the plastic handle. I took some measurements, sketched a new design up, got a piece of 4/4 red oak out of my scrap bin, and got to work.

The first pic is the finished handle, sitting overnight to let the BLO I finished it with dry. The second piece is a test fit of the blade slot after it was rough cut, but before I chamfered the edges and smoothed it over. The shaping / smoothing was done with a paring chisel, a gouge, and two rasps (1 rough cut, 1 fine cut).

Late last night, I realized I was getting tired and didn’t want to keep working on my customer’s job (custom alder cabinets) for fear of making a mistake while half asleep. But I was “in the zone” and didn’t want to stop working. I grabbed a handful of maple and red oak scraps and decided to make a new mallet.

The highlight of this project was that my son walked into the shop right as I was getting started and he and I got to hang out while making it. I let him make about half the cross cuts to get the pieces into their initial dimensioned sizes. He’d never used a backsaw or a bench hook before, so he had a lot of fun.

I started woodworking about 8 months ago and early on recognized that I needed a mallet since I primarily work with hand tools only. Using some maple and red oak scraps at the time, I built a small mallet which has served me well, but doesn’t have the heft I’d like for certain jobs. So, I grabbed some more scraps and got to work at around midnight last night.

My first mallet has a wedge in the handle’s through tenon at the top of the mallet head’s mortise. For this one, I wanted to try something different: the same through tenon, but pegged with a hand-made dowel instead of the wedge. To make the dowel, I cut a 3” long piece of red oak about 7/8” square. Then, I hand-planed it down to 3/4” square.

I drew intersecting lines on the end grain of each side to find the center and used a compass to draw a 3/4” circle around each end. I used these circles on each side of end grain as guides as I planed it down in a series of overlapping chamfers with my block plane. Planing such a small piece was a challenge. I held the plane in my right hand and drug the piece across it with my left hand. Doing this while tired was NOT a good idea, as I planed off a nice chunk (about 1/8” sq) out of my left pinky fingernail. Lesson learned! :)

Glue / clamped everything up and left it alone for about an hour. I planed the sides / top / faces of the head and dowel flat with my jack plane and chamfered the edges of the head and bottom of the handle with my block plane. I chamfered and rounded the sides of the handle with a paring chisel. Finally, I finished it with a coat of boiled linseed oil.

The 2nd picture is the tools I used to make the mallet and dowel; including my shop-made bench hook and the first mallet I made a few months ago. The 3rd picture (which unfortunately isn’t very clear thanks to the flash) shows the chunk missing out of the right side of my pinky fingernail.

I’m realize that I’m a VERY novice woodworker and welcome any and all critiques; good or bad that can help me in my journey. Thanks for reading.