I used one of these recently and had alot of fun. So I decided to make my own. I went and bought a keyless chuch and a screw to fit the reciever at home depot, but the rest of this is scrap wood (Ash and Red Oak) I had laying around the shop. The screw was epoxied into the brace no more than an hour before this post so I haven’t had a chance to test it yet, but I’ll be sure to put it through its paces tomorrow. I just guessed on the dimensions based on my hand size and the amount of scrap I had laying around.

As an addition to this post, I was able to use the tool today. I wanted to hog out most of the waste for the mortises in my workbench legs (posting soon) so I use my new brace. Well, the last picture speaks for itself. I was able to hog out most of the waste using a 7/8 inch auger bit in solid ash. It took quite a bit of muscle, but it went fairly quickly and painlessly. The epoxy held even with all of the torque I applied to the tool. I’m very pleased with the result.

Now if only I had a workbench to help me build my workbench.

These are some more tools that I’ve made. All of them were made out of scrap wood I needed to get out of my way. The bigger mallet was the first tool I made. It works great, but the angle on the head is too great at about 5 degrees. However, it is almost perfectly balance and has a lot of heft for carving or beating parts into place. The smaller mallet was a project I had 4-6th graders complete during a summer camp this summer while I taught a woodworking class. Its not very big, but it gets the job done. I learned my lesson from the first mallet and through some trial and error I found that a 2-3 degree angle on the head is perfect. The square is in the process of being finished. i still need to pin the blade in place and finish it. It is 5 inches by 7.5 inches and the blade is out of square by about 1/132 of an inch over its entire length. That is a margin of error I can live. Both projects were really easy and fun to make.

Enjoy

These are a couple bow saws I made recently. The bigger saw has three blades I bought at traditional woodworker.com. I got a 3/8 inch blade for cutting curves, and two 1.5 inch blades with differnet amounts of teeth for rough or smooth cutting. They came in a set. The frame parts are made of red oak, and the handles are made of walnut. It is still a work in progress. I’m fine tuning the shape of the handles and such as I use it so I haven’t finished it yet. Also, I made the stiles to thin for my hands to control well so I used an old trick for making wooden bat handles a little thicker using athletic tape. The handles are made of walnut and the pins are aluminum rods I bought at home depot and are epoxied into the handles. It works really well now that the blades have been worn in. The string is simple masonry twine from home depot wrapped around about 10 times on each side.
The smaller saw was made from parts you can find locally at any hardware store. I didn’t want to spend too much money on my first attempts at making saws so I bought coping saw blades at home depot and designed the saw around them. The saw pictured is the second small saw I made. The first one went to my Father-in-law. The saw is made entirely of oak, and not one power tool was used in its construction. The pins are 1/4 in aluminum rod from the home depot that have been epoxied into the handles. It doesn’t have quite as much clearance as the metal frame coping saws, but it holds the blade much tighter and in my “biased” opinion cuts much better. Both of these saws were alot of fun to make, and they work great. So if your thinking about making your own tools, these are a great place to start

One of my friends asked me if I could make him some bowls from a walnut tree that fell in his back yard. What I didn’t realize was that he was going to give me to logs that were extremely checked. I had to mill the lumber myself, and without a power tool big enough I had to saw them in half with a hand saw. After I milled the logs into boards i glued them together and then cut out concentric circles at 45 degrees with my jig saw. I stacked up the rings and glued the boards together and then used my gouges to carve them to the final dimensions. This was my first time tackling bowls and I think they turned out great.

This set of furniture was a for a couple of friends of mine that were getting married. They needed some furniture to fill their new place and they asked me to do it. This set is also in the shaker style, however, the slats in the sides are curved adding a different look to the pieces.

My mother and father in law wanted some new living room furniture. Mainly, they wanted a coffe table and an end table. They are made out of solid oak in the mission style. The top was glued together and then entirely handplaned since I didn’t have a power planar at that time. They are both pieces that I’m really proud of.

My wife and I bought a new house recently and our office was lacking some furniture. To remedy that, I built her and me a desk that we can both sit at. The desk is solid oak and has through tenons in the legs that are wedged with walnut. The drawers are dovetailed along with the aprons to the drawer supports. I hand cut the dovetails with a saw that I had found at an antique store and refurbished (which is the topic of another story). The desk turned out magnificently.