first bowl – done on shopsmith – sycamore finished with shellawax then johnsons paste wax both burnished in on the lathe

found out that if i fill it with M&Ms the flaws become much less noticeable!

my first turnings… some pens (and 1 pencil) from the Penn State starter kit…

took 2 days to complete – although there were about 7 months between day 1 and day 2. very comfortable

It took forever, but I finally got the bed finished and up in my son’s room…

And my little helper!

Queen size colonial bed made with scrap lumber. Looks good from a distance LOL!

Poplar and clear pine, needs finishing yet.

This is a placeholder for a future project – worked on the Sketchup today – I’m not happy with the shelves above the TV opening yet… The towers on either side of the center section are tall thin cabinets for wire chasing and storing DVD’s and the like.

My home is very colonial – what do you Ljocks think? Is this too Greek looking??? I’m thinking of more molding supporting the horizontal surfaces to “colonialize” it…

Sketchup Model Here.

My daughter received a “prized” Hannah Montana calendar for Christmas and needed more than just a nail in a wall to hang it in her room.

My wife has a Lang calendar holder that this is based on.

This is made from Quarter sawn sycamore, however, I turned the two sidepieces 90 degrees, so they’re really flatsawn in this configuration. That and a couple other flaws that I see but no one else does. I’m proud that there is no metal in this, just wood, glue and 2 mini-buscuits. The bottom crosspiece is rabbited. The backing is HDF.

Here’s the Sketchup Model.

The powder room has a pedestal sink and therefore no room to store such essentials as woodworking magazines, toilet paper and air freshener!

Body will be painted clear pine. Top some quarter-sawn white oak I’ve been hanging on to for years.

The joinery is mostly pocket holes… read my ””shoe problem project for my thoughts on pocket screws if you like…

It’s been done for a couple weeks – sat in the garage forever while I tried to find the perfect hinges and knob. But I had to get it out of the shop and into the house so I settled on both the door and the hardware.

The door is a quasi raised panel but the panel isn’t mortisied, it’s floating and held together with pocket screws. The hardware is from Lowes and is fine for now, but my intention is to replace both the door and the hardware in the spring. I want a whte oak door to match the top.

The top I am especially happy with – I fumed the White oak which was the way Gustav Stickley used to darken his. I stuck the machined and sanded top in a big box with a bowl of household ammonia (the pros use much stronger stuff, which makes it darker, faster), but I like the color I got from leaving it in there for 3 days. I then finished it with Minwax hand rubbed poly.

The important thing is it’s done and LOML likes it!

Note: Originally posted in October 2007 to my woodworking blog at www.affyx.com which was a just a redirect link to Blogger – well the big brains at blogger have tagged my site as a “spam blog” (it isn’t) and although I’ve asked for it to be reinstated, I think LJ might be a better place to rebuild my blog and a good home going forward.

Here’s the problem: too many shoes cluttering the garage… (you know a lot of them are Crocs – those people are making GOOD money!!!).

The solution was to create a shelving unit to go into an otherwise useless little corner near the door from the garage into the house.

My wife had been bugging me for years to do this project and while I had been tiptoeing around the edges of woodworking, I had yet to fully jump in. After buying some “Amish made” furniture from a local store, I began to look at the assembly methods and they were almost all pocket joint joinery! Well shoot, I can do that! So I bought a Kreg jig and I’ve got to say, even though pocket holes are not the most desirable and pure form of woodworking, the technology really launched me into woodworking as a (mostly) all consuming hobby!

It is now my goal to wean myself off of pocket holes, as my skills increase, my pocket hole use should decrease… at least that’s my goal!

I used Google Sketchup to design the shelves. My first design was a group of shelves with a big seat/bin on the bottom.

I decided that was a bit much for my first project, so I ended up just going with a simple bookcase looking shelving unit. It’s open in back and will attach to the wall studs with long screws.

Here's a link to both models for Sketchup