I had a lot of fun making this, but you may never see a more UN-safe, anywhere! It could be called theft RESISTANT, and has about a 15 SECOND fire rating. It is also made entirely of wood….almost.

I patterned the lock mechanism after one I found online. It uses a standard three number combination. Making the lock mechanism is not rocket science, but getting the slots in the discs, in the right position, was a bit of a challenge.

The box (a 12” cube) is 3/4” birch shop ply, tongue & dado joined. For the lock, I used 3/4” birch shop ply, 3/4” oak, 1/4”, 1/2”, and 3/4” oak dowels, 1/4” tempered hardboard, 1” Delrin and 1/8” brass rod. The hinges and handle are jatoba, and the dial knob is birch. The finish is Silver – Rustoleum Hammered Finish spray paint. The hinges, handle and knob have a couple of coats of oil-based poly on them.

The drawing is a partial cutaway of the lock mechanism.

As always, my SketchUp model is available for the asking.

Enjoy,

Tim

P.S. Don’t ask why the handle isn’t vertical when the safe is locked. It just isn’t, okay? :)

This is the first project out of my new shop in Portland, OR. I wanted something other than the usual clothes tree, and came up with this design. So far it’s working quite well.

The ‘footprint’ is only 16×16, and it is not attached to the wall in any way. Useful when you live in an apartment, and want to get your deposit back. I also put small silicone bumpers on the back of the wings to protect the wall.

This one is white oak. I am in the process of making another one, using dark red meranti this time. Most any species will do though.

A few details:

1) The piece knocks down via a half-lap joint where the rail meets the wall ‘wings’, for easy moving.

2) Because the tenons on the pegs are 5/8” long, and the rail is only 3/4” thick, I half-lapped the tenons inside the through holes. More glue surface, and much stronger than cutting them back to 3/8”.

3) The only embellishment is a small chamfer on the rail and wing edges.

4) The finish is 3 coats of oil-based satin poly.

As always, the SketchUp model is available, just ask.

Tim

I’ve been needing a router table for quite a while, so I finally bit the bullet and bought the basic Rockler router table package. It works great right out of the box, but I wanted to be able to use my IncraJig fence with it, as well. Because the plate is centered in the 24” x 32” Rockler table, this wasn’t possible without sacrificing most of the IncraJig’s travel. However, after a bit of pondering and a few hours in SketchUp, I came up with an extension wing that solves the problem.

The wing is made from a 12” x 32” piece of 1 1/4” MDF. It is supported by two pieces of 1 1/2” x 1 1/2” x 1/4” aluminum angle. Total cost ~$20.

The MDF is a little thicker than the table top, so I cut a couple of shallow dados on the bottom to bring the two surfaces flush. I drilled and counterbored holes in the table top and wing for 3/8” bolts and washers to hold it in place. I added a couple of T-tracks in the top for mounting the IncraJig and it was ready to use.

As I was drawing it in SketchUp, I realized that by adding a third dado on the wing, and a couple more holes in the table top, I could also mount it on the left side of the table, for use as an outfeed extension.

If anybody’s interested, I can e-mail the SketchUp file, which includes the table and stand, in addition to the wing in both positions.

I had some leftovers after a small tiling project in my Mom’s kitchen and decided to put the remaining tiles and some off-cuts from my scrap bin to work. The ‘blue’ one is poplar, stained to match a paper towel holder that I made for her, years ago. The ‘natural’ one is western red cedar, pulled from my ‘maybe box’. They’re finished with a couple of coats of satin poly, rubbed out with 0000 steel wool.

The frame corners are simple half-laps. They have 1/4” plywood bottoms, and the tiles are contact cemented in place, ~1/16” proud of the frame. They are slate, from a 4” x 12” strip. I removed the woven backing and sanded the adhesive off before ‘setting’ them. I also had to do a little bit of sanding to get them to fit the frame correctly. I didn’t grout them, as I felt that they would dissipate heat better without it.

Total cost: $0.00

This is my version of the drill press cabinet from ShopNotes Vol.14 Issue 84 (Nov./Dec. 2005). The case (14” x 24” x 6”) is 3/4” baltic birch plywood w/1/2” baltic birch plywood front and back panels. Tongue and dado joints all around.

All of the tools are in removable ‘palettes’. Finally, I can find the drill (etc.) that I need, when I need it!

I made several modifications of their design, to better suit my needs.

1) I did not build it in separate halves, as they describe. Instead, I made the sides, top, and bottom 1/8” deeper, assembled a closed box, and cut it in half (actually, more like 3/8 front – 5/8 back) on the table saw.

2) I extended the dados in the sides into the front half of the cabinet, so that all of the palettes would be removable/adjustable. I also made them stopped dados, rather than running them out the back.

3) For the back half (right side in the picture), I doubled the 3/4” MDF in the palettes, making them deeper. The palettes in the front half have a single MDF layer.

4) I discovered that my drill index fit the front perfectly. All I had to do was cut a ‘keyhole’ in the lid and round the back corners a bit so it would open smoothly. It hangs on a screw (in the keyhole) in the cabinet, and can be easily removed as needed. More drills in less area than their design.

5) I drilled the spade and forstner bit palettes a little differently too. Same reason.

I need to layout and drill one of the ‘blank’ palettes (top right) for the stuff in the lower right. For some reason, the collection keeps growing…

I don’t know whether I blindly stumbled onto an old technique here or came up with a genuine idea. You tell me…

I came up with this while building my drill press table (18” x 24”), but it applies to many other types of laminated ‘slabs’ for table tops, jigs, etc.

In my case, the table top is a piece of 3/4” melamine particle board, laminated to 3/4” baltic birch plywood. Since there were cutouts that needed to be made in both pieces, prior to laminating, I wanted to be able to accurately, repeatably, and quickly dry fit the two pieces before gluing. After finding a good square corner on each piece, and aligning the square edges, I clamped the parts together. Then I turned the assembly over (melamine ‘top face’ down) and drilled a 3/8” x 1 3/16” deep hole (forstner bit)—through the plywood and halfway through the melamine particle board, in diagonally opposite corners of the assembly. The holes in mine are ~2” in from each edge, but can be placed wherever it is convenient (think about avoiding where other ‘features’ are going to be, e.g. the grooves for the t-tracks on the top face).

Finally, I separated the pieces and glued a 3/8” hardwood dowel into the plywood underlayer, leaving it ~3/8” proud on the inside (glue) face (make sure it doesn’t bottom out in the ‘blind’ hole in the melamine particle board). Now I can assemble and disassemble the two layers, at will. A few strategically placed screws through the plywood (again, placed to avoid machining) held everything together when I needed to work on both pieces at the same time. The dowels also kept everything perfectly aligned, when I finally glued it up.

It works great, so far. A fence is in the design phase. For now, I clamp the fence that came with my table saw to this table, as needed. I knew there was a reason I didn’t toss that thing. :)

I wish I had taken a picture before I glued it, but…

The other thing that the picture would have showed is how I attached the table to the drill press’s metal table.

This was also done prior to gluing the layers together. With the two layers screwed together, I laid out the location of my mounting holes (4 – 1/2” bolts), and drilled small pilot holes through the plywood (from the bottom) and just into the melamine particle board at each location. Then, I separated the layers. In the plywood layer, I drilled a 1 1/2” dia. x 1/8” deep counterbore for a 1/2” flat washer into the inside (to be glued) face, followed by a 1/2” hole through. On the inside (to be glued) face of the top layer (melamine), I routed hexagonal ‘pockets’ centered on my pilot holes, deep enough to bury a 1/2” nut, flush with the surface.

At final assembly, I put the nuts and washers in place and then ‘sandwiched’ them between the two layers. 1/2” bolts, cut to length so they don’t go too deep and try to push the layers apart, go through the metal table and the plywood layer, and catch the ‘captive nuts’. It works great!

This fun little guy is what convinced me that I needed a stacked dado set. I got the plans from a book on making toys. This is actually my ‘prototype’ and was made with a single blade. 13 pieces in all.

It’s unfinished poplar. I’ve made a few others (walnut, maple, HDPE) using the new dado set, which makes the job MUCH easier, but they seem to disappear before I can get a picture.

For reference, it’s roughly 5” tall x 4 1/2” wide x 7 3/4” long. I’ve got plans drawn for a double sized version…