The smaller hock marking knife blade is set into some hard maple scraps from my workbench. Finished in danish oil and wax.

My wife wanted a new desk to replace her second or third hand me down pile of pine she had all through college. She really liked the design of a desk from Crate and Barrel so I offered to make it. We decided on a budget equal to the cost of the C&B desk. I made a couple of minor changes to the desk. We both use laptops so the keyboard drawer was out and since the desk would be for both of us (although it is mostly for my wife who often works from home) we inserted 2 drawers, one for each of us, in its place.

The joinery is fairly traditional and a mixture of hand and machine cut. All dovetails were hand cut as was the half lap on the legs. The mortise and tennon connecting the leg brace is machine cut (table saw and router). The internal drawer supports are table sawed tongue and groove. The drawers have a false front which was hand cut from the same piece of wood as the desk front to maintain grain continuity and keep the gap small. The legs are screwed to the carcass and the screws covered with plugs.

I really like the combination of heart and sap wood. I think it adds a really interesting design element.

Thanks for looking and constructive criticism welcome.

I wanted to get a little practice before starting a matching set of boxes (one music, one jewelry). I found the piece of maple while wandering through home depot getting house supplies. I saw the ingrown bark and had to save the board. I chose a simple straightforward box to help highlight the natural beauty of the wood. I was afraid that any contrasting color would compete for attention.

I rough cut the pieces on the table saw, then hand planed all the pieces from the 3/4” board. The sides are 1/2” thick the bottom is just under 1/8” and the top is 1/4”. After the pieces were the proper thickness I cut them to final size on the Table saw. After glue-up I chiseled the mortises for the Brusso hinges (which I highly recommended). The finish is 2 coats of Watco Danish oil over planed surfaces.

This is my first real woodworking project since I got my table saw for Christmass. Yes 6 months to make a wine rack is a long time. My wife and I have been doing some major rennovations to our house removing entire rooms installing an entier kitchen from scratch, etc. On top of all this the brakes were applied hard 2 days before I took ownership of the table saw. My daughter was born. Having a daughter that is 2 days older than your saw will slow any woodworker down at leas for a couple of years.

The wine rack is designed to fit snugly inside the buffet it is sitting on and will hold over 2 cases of wine. I’ll have a photo later once the finish has had a chance to fully dry. The piece is made from Poplar. The Dados and Rabbets were machine cut and the slots for the horizontical bars were hand cut. I wanted to hand cut them to get a feel for the difficlut of hand cut dovetails. They could be tighter but I don’t think its bad for a first attempt

This was my first boat restoration. I had helped a friend of mine restore two Thistles and his Jet 14. They are both wonderful boats. The hulls are hot molded plywood which was used during WWII to build some British aircraft. The decks and bulkheads are marine plywood and the internal structure is a mixture of cedar and oak.

The first photo is how I got the boat. The hull was in good shape but there was some damage to the deck. This is a fairly typical condition. The hulls hold up amazingly well. Being soaked in formaldehyde glue helps a lot I’m sure.

The second photo is the finished product. I have since painted the entire outside of the hull white. The inside of the hull is bright as is the decks.

The third photo is the best finished photo showing the interior of the boat. All of the pictures I have show details of the different control systems. Racing boats have a lot of lines to pull on.

The boat has been raced fairly had for a couple of years now and I’ll need to do some touch-up work soon. I have another Jet 14, #16 which will be my next project.

www.jet14.com