This is it. Around 150 hours (estimated, not counted) of laboring at techniques, all new to me. Thanks to Warren Jordan (designer) for so much supporting advice, as well as the people over at the WoodenBoat forums.

The full picture gallery can be found here .

I’m not sure this is worthy of project status, since it only took a few hours. Thanks to Lee for inspiration and PaBull for the plans .

The wood is all scrap: striped maple for the head, cherry for the handle and walnut wedges. I did use 5oz of lead shot on each side for weight, left loose (instead of epoxying in place).

I may still futz with the handle – I did only minimal trimming of wood, since I can remove more later as I figure out what works.

EDIT: If you try to make this from the plans, one bit of advice. For my “first mallet” I followed the plans rather closely, but they didn’t give a length for the handle. I just scaled it from the pics, and went with it. I don’t yet know whether I would have kept them, but if you do the same, keep some extra length in the handle—an inch or two. You can always take it off, but you can’t put it back.

-b

This is a small breakfast table that I started while taking a 6 day course with Jeff Lohr. Since that time it has received 3 coats of Original Waterlox and a single coat of Minwax wipe-on poly. Both were applied with lint-free paper towels, and wiped down after 10 minutes. I may still wax the top.

I was inspired by Don Kondra’s improving my photography skills post to try a backdrop and some lighting. The backdrop sheet helped, but the lighting was actually worse than my small camera’s flash. Needless to say, it takes more gear than a pocket size camera. Still, these pics are better than my first batch in the basement, but don’t do justice to the walnut inlays.

This is my first finished piece of substantial furniture. I made every single cut, joint and mistake that you see here.

-b

Lumber rack… not much of a project, but my shoulders are awfully sore. Too much drilling and screw-driving for somebody without much shoulder mass. :-)

Not much to say really… built a lumber rack, mostly from the design in FWW #181 – “Lumber Storage Solutions”. I can’t attach to my ceiling without redoing my insulation, and I refuse to glue to the floor, since I’ll be selling this house in 2 years, so we’ll have to see how sturdy she is without those reinforcements. I’ve already loaded the bottom level, and will be migrating some other stuff in the next couple days.

One nice thing—cutting all those gussets gave me lots of curve-cutting practice on the bandsaw, with little consequence. Aside from the experience factor, if I could do it again… I’d consider just spending a couple hundred dollars on a rack kit. Mainly because it simply took a lot longer than I thought… building the wall supports, cutting 48 gussets and 24 arms, leveling, clamping and adjusting each arm, then drilling 144 countersinks + 160 holes, etc. Maybe I was just being too anal… and maybe I’ll feel different when I can comfortably drill above my shoulder level again :-)

-b

These are editions #2 and #3 of the cutting board experiments. (#1 isn’t worth showing.) Both based on the wood whisperer’s method, although I made 2 sets of slats and mixed them to produce these two. Walnut, cherry and maple are the woods in both.

The picture quality is bad, since I have no good place to take the photos without serious cleanup… sorry.