My wife enjoys watching the design shows on HGTV. On one of the shows she saw a tiled mirror she just had to have. We tracked it down the retailer through the HGTV web site and found that it was a 3’ X 5’ mirror composed of 3” X 3” ceramic tiles and a 1.5’ X 2’ mirror. Cost (before shipping) $845.00, shipping weight 138 pounds.

My alternative is 2’ X 4’ with a 1’ X 2’ mirror. The backing is 1/2” MDF with a 4” MDF frame around the back (to support the French cleat). The “tiles” are 2” X 4” X 1/4” (102) and 2” X 2” X 1/4” (18) of just about every species of scrap wood and leftovers I had in my shop (walnut, cherry, oak, kingswood, poplar, bloodwood, ash, wenge, paduk, and hard, soft, and birdseye maple.

Total out-of-pocket expense was less that $50.00, the mirror weighs about 35 pounds and I got to use a bunch of those little scraps of wood I just couldn’t throw away.

It’s hanging in the dining room so I guess my wife likes it. Now, if only she hadn’t seen that damn oak armoire.

Candle holder from Woodsmith Magazine and TV show. Seemed like the perfect project for an Ambrosia Maple cutoff that’s been lying around my shop.

Was building an endgrain cutting board – screwed it up. Was building a cheese board – screwed it up. (There are those days when it makes more sense to stay as far from the shop as humanly possible.) Salvaged what I could from both projects, put it in the scap bin, and moved on to other things.

When it came time to clean-up the scrap box it seemed reasonable to try to combine the two screw-ups into one usable project. Not sure how practical or usable a hybrid cutting board might be. I don’t think I’ll ever find out. This is the third cutting board I’ve made for my wife and she has yet to put a knife to any of them.

Overall size is 12” X 12” X 1”. Endgrain is maple, other woods include ash, walnut, canary wood, and purpleheart.

1931 Cadillac roadster from a set of Toys and Joys plans. This was my first attempt at using large scale automotive commercial plans and was impressed at the their level of detail.

Upper body is walnut, lower body is oak. Radiator and top are maple, the trunk is maple with ebony straps. Seats are paduck. Striping on the hood and body sides as well as the wide whitewalls is holly.

Years ago Doug Kenny published plans for a jig to build spoked wheels. Even with the jig, spoked wheels are still a pain in the … well, you know what I mean.

I was reading my latest issue of Fine Woodworking and came across a great article by Doug Kenney entitled “Building an Aherns-Fox Fire Engine. I clipped the article and filed it away as something I was going to build as soon as I had the time. Well, 23 years later, I finally got it built.

The fire engine is made mainly of bloodwood on an oak chassis. Maple, walnut, cherry and ash are the accent woods. Brass rod, brass tube, and braided nylon rope were used to make the hoses.

One advantage of waiting 23 years to build the Ahrens-Fox is the 100’s of reference photos that are available on the internet that weren’t available in the late 80’s. It gave me the opportunity to build the project without making a clone of Mr. Kenney’s work.