This is a Pennsylvania style Spice Box built from Steve Latta’s plan. The main body is walnut. The drawers are aromatic cedar and the drawer fronts are Santos Rosewood. The back is cherry. The inlay is holly. The main part of the chest is oiled with light walnut Danish oil then covered with several coats of clear wax and buffed.

It’s all pretty straightforward cabinetry but on a smaller scale than I’m used to so there are some compromises that I’m not going to tell anyone about. The most difficult part was the inlay. Lee Valley has a great set of tools that make the process a little easier. At first I was disappointed with the inlay until I scraped and sanded the surface level. Then it really stands out.

The hanging pulls were difficult to find. They have to be sticking out a maximum of only about 1/2” to allow the door to close and have to be sized proportionally to the drawers. Horton Brasses came to the rescue here.

Apart from the obvious drawers in front, the back slides out to reveal two hidden drawers. One is at top for flat documents. A hidden box holds valuables.

I had originally planned on giving this to my daughter as a Christmas present. According to lore the inside of the door has spaces to inlay the initials of her and her husband. However, since she’s not even engaged I guessed I had some extra time. It took me until a few weeks ago. Maybe in a few years it’ll come back and I’ll be able to add the initials.

This is my version of the T&J Lattice Boom Crane. It’s the most time consuming and complicated toy I’ve built to date. The complications come not from the many pieces required but the lack of detail and sometimes errors in the T&J drawings. Some trial and error was involved but I’m happy with the final product.

The boom is made of purpleheart and most of the body is sapele. I used Morado for the track pieces because it has some interesting character and is hard as rock. There are a few other species for decoration.

Thanks for looking.

Here are some construction toys I’ve built recently. They are all built from Toy and Joys plans. I used leftover wood from other projects. You might see some red oak, maple and sapele with some lacewood, bubinga and others thown in for contrast. I painted the truck wheels with paint but everything else just has a few coats of polyurethane.
I’m used to building furniture so when it came to these some of the very small parts were a real challenge. When I couldn’t figure out how to make a piece without my fingers coming dangerously close to the tool, I’d take a break and think about it for a while. In the end maybe I’m learning some new skills. Now what to do with them?

After 20 years with the same router table and with umpteen accumulated accessories and router bits, I decided I needed something with more drawers. I used spalted and figured maple and built on the heavy side. The frame is made of 2”x3” members. The sides and back are 3/16” hardboard. The drawers fronts are also figured maple. I have two large drawers on bottom then two medium and four small at the top.

The top and fence are made by Pinnacle. I bought them a few years back from Woodcraft to help me with the roll top desk. The insert is from Woodpeckers. My dedicated router is a Hitachi M12V.

The top is a bit unusual in that the fence is oriented from the back. What I like most about the Pinnacle table top is its size. With the fence off and the router lowered it can be used as an assembly table.

The front panel you can see in the first photo is mostly decorative and is mainly there to hold the switch. One of the other pictures shows the router box from the back. I decided not to use an under-table vacuum because I really don’t get that much sawdust in there.

As I said it’s heavily built and when I lock the caster there’s no movement at all. This has all the storage I’ll need for a long time.

I was flying somewhere and had nothing to read but the Skymall magazine. I saw a little bookcase like this but it was $200. I thought, hey I could make that out of a small piece of plywood and some scraps I had laying around the workshop. It was a weekend project. Puttting it on a lazy susan bearing allows it to sit in a corner. Another Christmas present.

I used to make a project every Christmas for my contribution to our family’s secret Santa present. This is a folding step ladder I made for my mother-in-law. It’s suprsingly sturdy. The hardest part about making it is the angles rip-cut in the seat and making sure the piano hinge is installed straight.

I built this set for my son when he was 2 or 3. Needless to say the first thing he did was drop it breaking the smokestacks and tearing a wheel off. Then he smashed the bulldozer into the baseboard. The baseboard won. I’m not proud of it but it disappeared soon after and now sits on a display shelf good as new.

This red oak dining room table was my first major project and I’ve since been building other dining room pieces to match. I didn’t do the columns. I had a friend who had a lathe and he offered to do them for $25 and a beer.

I made this desk for my wife as an birthday present. I love hickory. It has great variations in color and is very hard and dense. It’s also plentiful here in North Carolina.