Although the wife liked the first ring she wanted to see more of the walnut, so I whipped this up. These things aren’t the easiest to make but the system I’ve made for them makes it easy to make multiple blanks at once which is a good thing since there are small ring fragments here and there as I experimented with what system works best. Once I figured it out there were no more broken rings. For size, this is a size 5 meaning it won’t even fit over my pinky knuckle and the walls are between 1/16 and 1/32 so about 3/64, it also means that the pictures are way bigger then the actual object. Without the offset segments these things would fall apart but if the segments are properly glued and offset the dremel can fling these suckers 20 feet without them breaking.

Once I had down how to do it a parishioner came over with his son, the son wanted to make one for his girlfriend. I didn’t get a pic of the son’s which was purpleheart with walnut center. However the father wanted one for his wife and that produced the final pic, a combination of padauk and walnut that looks amazing, his has walls that are about 1/16” thick and is about a size 5.5; he was worried about going thinner. All three rings were produced in 2.5 hours with me explaining the steps.

The only downside to the whole process is that I think I’ve ground off half the prints on my fingers and replaced them with superglue.

I felt inspired by this month’s contest; I’ve been wanting to make something for my wife while I’ve also been wanting to dabble in segmented turning and this is the result. This was sized to fit the same finger as the gold ring in the last picture. The center of the ring is from an ebony pen blank, it wasn’t possible to see through the wax till I was cutting but there are brown streaks through the ebony that are similar in color to the walnut. The walnut was salvaged from a pallet board; I’d assumed the board was poplar from the brown streak among white wood, turned out the board was 3/4 sap. What remained looks like a tiger eye stone with streaks of golden yellow in the brown.

Each strip of wood is made of 8 segments giving the whole piece 24 segments total. This was the second attempt to make one, the first involved trying to drill the hole on the drill press with a spring clamp holding it in place. At this time I don’t know if that attempt is still in one piece or where one of the clamp pads are. To make the hole I mounted a piece of wood to a faceplate, turned a hole in it that the ring could be wedged into and turned the center hole as well. Finish is CA glue which has been polished making good pics really hard.

3 different cameras were used to take the pics and these were the best of them.
edit:managed to find my 10 year old digital that was terrible at everything but closeups. All new pics except the last one.

These were most of what I managed to produce for Christmas this year excepting the mallet for the mallet swap and a trio of rocking dinos for the church giveaway.

First one was also my first major project on a scroll saw as well as my first successful creation of a frame with tight mitered corners. The second frame’s corners didn’t come out quite as well as this one’s but even it was more successful then my previous throwaways. The scroll work is on curly mahogany and the image was purchased from scrollsawartist.com
The frame was made from what I think is poplar, it was from a pallet. I used the tablesaw to make the mitered cut and was successful due to the use of a zero clearance insert I made from oak, the factory insert sat proud of the tabletop and always messed up the cuts. First the rabbit was cut in the back, then the miters, the final glue up was then routered with a 3/8” ogee bit. I used spray adhesive to mount the fabric to a backer board and the finished piece to the fabric. The frame was finished with antique maple stain and wax and the scroll piece with spray poly.

Second is one of 3 rolling pins, it features a range of woods and is meant to match the cutting boards. These were gifts for my sister and sister-in-law as neither one has yet to get a cutting board. The third rolling pin was turned by a friend for his wife and didn’t have a matching board. Woods include mahogany, cherry, purpleheart, maple, apple, white oak. I originally intended for the zigzag to be on all 4 sides of the rolling pin but wasn’t thinking during glue up. I should have created a 1”thick blank that was twice as long as my 2” thick blank.

Final one is a step stool/bench design from fine woodworking that I was turned onto by willdoc here on LJ. This one was for my nephew but while driving in my lower dowel on his read oak version the side split the whole length, with the top glued on I decided it was easier to just proceed with a new one. The biggest issue with not going oak is the lack of 3/4” hardwood dowels, the local woodcraft had one size down at 7.00 each which is more then I care to pay besides being the wrong size. So I chucked a piece of 1×1 cherry in the lathe, turned down the ends to 3/4” using my “calibrated” crappy box end wrench from where ever to fine tune the fit. Actually it was a crappy 19mm box end but since the forstner bit is low grade it turns out that the lack of specification between the two creates a perfect fit every time. The edges of the 1×1 was then routed over with a 1/4” roundover and the whole piece finished with clear shellac.

Photos shamelessly swiped from the recipient, thanks GShepherd, since I have trouble remembering to take pics sometimes.
Both the handle and mallet are made from apple wood which I cut down in the spring and dried in my shop; taking it from tree to finished product. I chose to use this wood because; 1. it is harder then oak or maple and nearly matches hickory. 2. I have a bunch of it in the right size. 3. I love the overall look of the wood, I have some plain maple in the right size but this just looked better.

The head is made from a single piece of 3” thick apple and is roughly 2.75” thick, by 3.5” high by 5” long if I remember correctly. The head has a taper on both the faces and sides with the top rounded over from face to face. A camber was put on all the edges using a stanley 220 to cut down on its denting other woods.

The handle was taken from the next board up, the goal was to try and have the grain match which comes through in the shades of the wood. The handle was offset turned and with a 7/8” round tenon left at the top. Since the handle could only be inserted half way into the head by hand with a great deal of effort it was felt that TB3 would be sufficient to hold it together though a clamp was needed to push it through. Although not visible the tenon does protrude slightly from the top, thought of making it flush with the sanding disc but just liked the look.

This was the first attempt at a mallet of this type and overall I feel it turned out well. Depending on what I received I may make another.

My daughter has disavowed anything to do with real high chairs or booster seats choosing instead to stand at the table so my wife pointed to this chair on Amazon and said “make her one of those”. Clutching a load of cherry and my orders I went to it.
Having never seen one of the beasts in public I made up all the dimensions.
First thing was deciding on a random angle of 60* for the set back, another person on here suggested 73 as the best angle but I already had the legs glued at that point so 60 worked for me.
I laminated 2 boards together overlapping them at the bottom to make for a strong glue up.

For the slides for the seat and footrest I originally tried using the router but discovered that my table is worse then Ithough, I couldn’t stop the legs from moving along the mitre gauge and consistant spacing per side impossible coming from different angles. I discovered that it was easy to do with the table saw since the lines would always be perpendicular to the bottom if I slid the bottom against the fence. I had hoped for rounded over sides to the seat and footrest figuring that would grip tighter but flat sides it is. I also set the dado blade wider to compensate for the screwups at the router table. The result was only two spots where it was obvious that the router guide had slipped.

The backs were bent lamination, the sides of which were squared up so that the sides of the backs could be cut square and put on the drill press square, one side of the lamination mold was used to cut the backs of the seat and footrest to match the back rests. Everything is held together with decorative brass bolts and brass barrels that screw into the wood, with the seat and footrest held in place by friction and the backrests and bottom brace being slightly narrower creating tension.

The finish was 2 coats of tung oil sanding to 400grit and topped with spar varnish figuring it will get lots of abuse and be covered in food and drink. This was my first time using it and I discovered that I need a lot more practice. I clearly have too dusty a house with too much pet hair despite constantly vacuuming with a hepa filter constantly. Both it seems are incredibly attracted to wet varnish which also likes to run all over the place; attempts to avoid getting too close to the edge resulted in drips and bare spots. Thinning it 20% with mineral spirits did eliminate this as it cut the drying time to 2 hours reducing contamination and also allowed the edges to be snuck up on with less dripping which was easier to wipe off.

One of my parishioners passed away last Sun, and his wife asked her son-in-law if he would make a wooden urn for the ashes. He was handed a black cube that is roughly the size of the box that will contain the ashes and told to make it however he wanted. Both the SIL and his wife are members at the other church I lead and they decided i’d be a good choice to ask for help. He had some old oak flooring that we milled down to make the base and I had some maple for the top and some thin scrap maple in the garbage that was dug out for the corners. The design was from my head and we both worked on sanding, drilling holes to screw the base on. He made the base and assisted me on the top. Finish is just mineral oil as he didn’t want anything other then a wipe on oil. Despite a couple of mistakes it took the two of us 7 hours to complete it. Both couple are really nice and some of the better members at the two churches in terms of going out of theirr way to help others and really showing a loving Christian spirit so for me it was an honor to be asked for help and to be able to be this involved. Unfortunately I still have the funeral itsself tomorrow.

The wife wanted a really big cutting board for the kitchen, after over a year of doing it in my spare time this was the result. The second pic shows our current kitchen cutting board in perspective, this new one measures 17×24x1.75 and was finished in mineral oil. There are handles cut into each narrow side which took a lot of effort since the board is friggin heavy and bigger then the router table and holding this long term trying to ease it onto the bit meant holding most of the weight at stomach level.
The woods are purpleheart, cherry, mahogany, apple, walnut and purpleheart in the thick rows and purpleheart, apple, walnut, cherry, oak, mahogany, and purpleheart in the thin strips. A lot of time was dedicated to the order of the strips and even the widths of the wood to create offsets between the thick and thin rows, the end pieces were selected to create a continuous wave pattern at each end. I tried hand jointing it but the board was so uneven and impossible to hold that attempting to joint it nearly tore the legs off my work table, most of the extra nails that held the legs on were popped out. So I ripped it in half and ran it through the planer leaving the middle thin strip slightly narrower. The woods are brighter then the pics make them out to be, lack of flash on the camera phone is the main issue. The wife is very happy with the end results.

I recently decided to make a batch of cutting boards for gifts and to sell, these are some of them. The wavy cutting board had a slightly larger twin that a friend wanted to buy to give as a wedding gift, that would be my first sale. Besides these I made a matched pair of end grain cutting boards in a woven style with cherry and maple, they went too fast to get a pic as wedding gifts.

Moving through the singles,
1. Applewood, maple, purpleheart and padauk. The apple tree was cut down by me, sliced at a local mill and dried in my shop. Despite being 1.25” thick it took only 4.5 months to dry to 9% moisture content. The 3” is down to 13%, had virtually no checking at all.

2&3 are cherry, maple, padauk and purpleheart. The cherry was from mill cast offs that a friend collected; he’d helped with the stacking so they gave him a stack of seconds and after drying them in his barn for 4 years he passed them to me. The maple in both boards is from a pallet runner. Picked one up that would have been used to haul copper, aluminum, or brass; different cuts produced different effects and I liked the results either way. I figured with the one since the cherry was so straight grained that a wavy/curly maple would break the straightness up while the other having a more curly cherry the ripple effect would stand out better.

4. More of the same cherry. The oak was taken from the floor of a 100+ year old hunting lodge that was built with 2” thick oak beams pegged to the joists. Lots of planing to get to the center area but nice results. This is much heavier and denser oak then anything I’ve bought at the local mill. Thought this would make for an interesting grain orientation.

Let me know what you think on wood selection and grain patterns.

I decided to get into pen making a little since I have a lathe and some people seem to like it so much; I can see the attraction in getting something done so quickly and efficiently and finding a way to really bring out the grain in a piece of wood. Not to mention turning something on the lathe just seems so much more satisfying then cutting and gluing; even if you have to do that just to get to the lathe. Both these pens are slimlines and I’ve discovered that even with a lathe and turning tools this is not a cheap thing to get into.

The first of the two is applewood and I’m only satisfied with it as it is the first I ever made. I knew I wanted the bottom to be fatter but I wasn’t certain how to deal with the top. I slimmed it down a little but it made the pen tipsy and top heavy; not to mention the pieces are too thick and so the ends don’t smooth down into the trim pieces. I’d never used CA glue before and that has a bit of a curve as well so the surface isn’t as smooth as I’d like. Hard to tell in the pic but the grain does line up, on this one I left off the clip to make it smoother looking. The end is slightly dirty in the pic because my toddler managed to chew on it before I could get the pic.

The second is ebony with the black line clip in the gold slimline kit. This looks every bit as sweet as I would have liked. Learning from the first piece the top is thinned right down. The polishing of the top gave me fits though; I think I was putting the same time and effort into sanding the glue and applying polish to both pieces but with the thinner diameter that was over doing the job; I eventually sanded all the CA off the one, put it on the mandrel with just an insert and reglued and polished it as its own piece. That did the trick. Both pieces came out exactly smooth and polished. One end of the top piece didn’t exactly match the band but since the grain doesn’t show up on the ebony I just flipped it over and it fit without noticing it being oversized on the clip end.

Overall it has been a learning experience and I’ll be turning these out for family gifts; just enough to enjoy the satisfaction but not build into an addiction.

I actually finished this about 6 weeks ago for my daughter, that’s her half hidden under the giant bunny asleep for the night, and I’m finally getting around to posting it.
Bed is made of white oak with and was measured to exactly fit the mattress from the crib, the finish is shellac that I made from a red seedlac. The whole thing was designed by me without plans and made up as I went along. This did occasionally involve me sneaking into her room at 2am to remeasure the mattress with her sleeping on it because I lost whatever I’d written the measurements on the last time.

As you can see in the pictures the head and foot boards are rather tall but that’s just because I knew that my daughter will, and has, jump on the bed an I wanted to make sure she wouldn’t fall over either one when she stumbled and land head first on the floor. The top of the mattress only sits about 12” off the floor so that she can safely fall out of bed. The third night she used it I heard a thump and went in to check, she had rolled out of bed but the drop was small enough that she didn’t wake up; I was able to just toss a blanket on her and she slept till 6am so I know it is low enough as well. All 90* edges have been chamfered with hand planes, especially on the posts, side rails and the top rails; the top of the posts have several facets all in an effort to avoid any cracked skulls or stitches. All wood was finished with 400 grit before applying the seedlac. The seedlac was done in 3 layers using a semi-french polish style. I used the pad to apply it thinly and sanded down the raised grain that came up with 400 grit and then applied a second thin coat. After the third I used a brown scotch brite pad to finish it.

The whole thing is assembled with mortise and tenon, I actually remembered to take a process pic above which shows an early test fitting. I initially messed up the spacing a touch on the slats but by trimming the tenons on two of the boards was able to fix it with no evidence of the mistake unless the whole thing comes unglued. I also used this as an excuse to buy a mortiser. The side rails are stub tenons with lag bolts. I’d initially assumed 3/8×2” would be a sufficient size and snapped 2 bolts in the same rail during the test assembly shown in the final pic. Both snapped just inside the tenon right where the threads started and the shoulder stopped; this despite predrilling the recommended size based on the McFeeley chart. I ended up buying 1/2×2” and drilling into both ends of the one side at an angle to slip past the two snapped bolts while still using the same recessed holes in the legs. It is strong enough that I’ve jumped on this bed at 275lbs and it makes no noise.

Final assembly was done in her room, it was at that point that the wife noticed that I’d completely forgotten to make slats for the mattress to sit on; I had just proudly laid the mattress in to show her how well it fit. My daughter thought having a new bed was so awesome she promptly squealed with delight and climbed on only to have the mattress fall through. 20min later I had cut, trimmed, planed and rough sanded 5 cherry boards I’d just pulled from a pallet so there is nice hardwood throughout. Considering how badly she hated her crib I’ve been very pleased at how much she loves the bed, today she voluntarily climbed into it to take a nap and she has never previously voluntarily taken a nap before let alone gotten into bed of her own volition. Most nights she sleeps through the night now that she has it making it far more then worth the effort.

I went to one of those schools that virtually eliminated shop unless you were one of the troubled kids who needed to learn a trade, long story short, I’d never previously made a bird feeder. The impetus to build this was a visit to a shut-in who’s been in the nursing home for the last 9 years and her old feeder looked like it was falling apart so I told her I would make her one. I was supposed to have this finished last week and have visited her then but a string of funerals delayed both.

The whole thing is white oak with the exception of the dowel, it’s mystery wood from the neighborhood ace hardware, and the seed stops and crosses which are purpleheart. The whole thing is held together with titebond 3; all of it was from the scrap pile except the plexiglass.

The dimensions are all out of my head, I didn’t even look at a feeder or measure one before starting. I don’t own any as I like my berry bushes so I prefer not to encourage them coming around with feeders. The main basis of measurement was that ACE’s smallest sheet of plexiglass could be cut up into 6 12×6” pieces at the store, the result at 14.5” total length may be a bit much but I rather like it. I sloped the roof to 30 degrees since that usually works well with rain and the plexiglass to 7 degrees. Didn’t know if it was necessary to bother cutting the 7degrees but I liked the look so I did. Similarly I put the two 45 degree blocks on the inside ends to add strength and keep the seed from collecting in the edge, might be a useless thing but I figured I’d put them in anyways. The crosses were an early thought as this was going to a parishioner and woodnutbutter’s recent ranting decided me on them. The whole thing was finished with 2 coats of spray gloss polyurethane. Used fishing line to hang it up outside for the spraying to keep the wife happy.
Thanks for looking, hope you enjoyed it.

I’ve been needing a mallet to work with my chisels with and needing an excuse to use the lathe, end result was this. Although it isn’t obvious it has a number of coats of tung oil on it. No clue what the wood is besides pallet. It measures just over 3” at the widest and only has a slight taper. The handle is longer then most I’ve seen at the store to accommodate my wide hands.

The dino is one of two that I made. The body, legs and seat were made with pine boards from a waterbed while the rockers and cross boards are red oak from a pallet. The seat was stained a dark brown and sealed with urethane, the paint is rustoleum. I’d like to give a special thanks to Karson who supplied the plans for these. I hope to have 5 more for next years donations.

The step stool is white oak and is from a new yankee workshop book and has been modified to fit my tastes. First the dimensions in the book were too tall, the first step was 13” high, I shrunk it down to just under 10”. Second I tried dovetails but without a real bench and vise I just couldn’t accurately cut things. So I hand cut the square holes and used a block plane to shave the pegs to fit. Finish is danish oil.

Turned three more of these on the drill press. The first two are what I assume is spalted maple (got it from a pallet slat) the third is cherry. The last two are thicker then previously, the first of the two because it is going to a 3 year old and the second is due it going to a 6 year old that is a little clumsy. All of them have a single coat of tung oil followed by 3 coats of urethane. I think the second turned out the prettiest with what looks like little blue strings embedded in the wood.

As the title says, this is my first turned project to date however I did it without the benefit of any turning tools.
The wood is from an apple tree that a friend cut down last spring and I hacked up into some thicker pieces for just this reason. The only thing I would have done differently was made the top and bottom more parallel.

First I drilled a 3/8” hole through the center of the blank and then cut off the corners on the bandsaw. Once done I ran a 3/8 bolt through with a nut and tightened it down; then I chucked it in my old drill press like a drill bit. I wasn’t certain what speed to use and eventually landed on 2100 rpms.
My chisel for the purpose was a 100+ year old mortising chisel that was made in Rochester that I picked up for a buck at a flea market.

I used the chisel to shape the outside and add the curves near the edges. Once the outside was shaped I used the scroll saw to shape the inside roughly and a sanding bit chucked into drill. To make the inside completely round I wrapped sandpaper around a pepsi glass that just fit inside the bracelet.

To finifh the outside I then wrapped a rag around the outside of the chuck till the bracelet barely slipped over it. This let me sand the outside to 1200 grit. I finished it with urithane and will add a second coat in the morning

Since I have a number of projects I’m working on and I wanted to feel like I accomplished something I decided to see if I could do a one day project. It took two due to starting after 3pm but could have been a one day. Just need to pick up more rope to complete the scratching pad; turns out when you measure two sides you should multiply by two to get the full circumference.

At 35.00 this is also my cheapest job. The base is 2 2’x2’x.5” pieces of fiberboard that was left behind by a previous resident. The second level is made of the same fiberboard and is 17”x19” with the sides being recycled from old bed slats. The third platform is of unknown dimension and was the last piece of scrap from cutting out the other two platforms.

The main posts were cut up from a 2×12 that was part of a waterbed left in the shop area around 30 years ago while the small connecting/support post is another bed slat ripped in half. Never use a board this small when curling carpet around it, the carpet doesn’t bend that easy.

The carpeting was left over from when the upstairs was redone about 5-6 years ago and was also left lying in the shop area. The tube section was the only solid part that was purchased besides the rope, the rest of the cost was in glue, nails and screws; all of which were used liberally.

I built this for my mother-in-law just in time for her arrival. This one measures 11”x18”; moving from left to right it is made up of apple, white oak/purpleheart, white oak/padauk, cherry/purpleheart and the center stripe in white oak.

The apple wood was from a friends tree, he had cut it down just before I arrived and needed help getting the trunk to the curb. I helped him by tossing it in the trunk of the car. I used a sawz-all to get it down to 6” wide so I could run it through the band saw and have had it air drying for the last 14 months. As this piece was only 3/4” thick it was dry enough to use. The rest of the woods were random scraps from other projects.

The whole piece was smoothed front and back with my stanley No.5; I bought a new hock blade for it this week and moved between it and the old blade to reduce the number of times I had to stop and sharpen. When done neither side had any wobble on at any corner on my piece of pool table slate and was sanded to 280grit. This will also be my second to last end grain board since they are so difficult to flatten and get smoothly glued up without gaps; the wife has demanded a mobile end-grain cutting board work station for the kitchen which will be the last.

I’d seen a couple of these on here and decided I had to make a pair of them. I managed to glue them up just before the arrival of a baby, new job, and a move so it has been about 8 months since glue up.

The wood is mahogany from my grandpa’s burn pile, padauk, and left over strips from building the crib. The only serious mistake I made was cutting with the grain first which means it is weaker, that’ll be fixed on the next pair. Minor mistake was not using a more proper band saw blade.

When it was first glued up I tried running this one through the planer and something about it caused it to be badly chewed up. I had snipe that was up to 1/16” deep in spots despite using a new set of blades that have still been working fine on other projects. Since putting it aside I started on hand tools, jointing, thickness planing and smoothing were all done with a 30s era stanley #5 that I picked up for 25.00 and a edges were done with a 12.00 1898 stanley #220 block plane. Once everything was smoothed I hit it with 180, 220, and 280 grit paper and butcher block oil. I probably could have skipped the 180 grit. Overall I’m happy with this one and will be trying some of the others in here in the future.

I’d previously seen one of these and decided to try making one, basically the outer cube contains an inner cube that can’t come out while both pieces are obviously not pieced together making it a mystery how the smaller one got into the bigger one. 4.50 at the local lumber place secured a piece of 2.5” thick mahogany that could produce 10 of these which was a good thing. The original I’d seen had a solid center block that had large dimples in it from the forstner bit that I didn’t like, turns out adding holes to the inner block increases the chance of the drill bit destroying the whole piece. The first attempt came out perfect till I over sanded and the inner block could slip out. The next 6 destructed at various stages of trying to square off the inner box or hollowing out the inner box, all of them evaporated in an impressive manner. The whole piece was finished with danish oil.

This was my first woodworking project, I have been collecting the occassional tool for the last 3-4 years and the high price of cheap cribs gave me the impetus to try it. The plans for it came from Rockler with some slight modification. I didn’t like the spindles all around and decided solid ends were better. The piece is made of purpleheart and cherry, originally it was to all be cherry but I accidently broke 3 of the 4 end dividers trying to fit it together and had a piece of purpleheart laying around to try, I had picked it up for 10.00 because it looked cool, turns out it was just the right size.
You can see some of the work area in the second pic, my shop space is about 10’x18’ and 6.5’ high so the table saw takes up most of the space. Tools are what I could get when and the middle clamps are my favorite design though heavy, they’re about 100 years old and a gift from a friend.
The side pic shows how I worked the purpleheart into the spindles, I tried to use curly or figured pieces of cherry and spent a good deal of time making sure each spindle was glued up to show off the most interesting looking pattern possible. The pics don’t pick up the center panel of the ends very well but they were taken from a single piece of the most interesting looking cherry I’ve ever seen.
To go with it the room has been redone as well, new wiring, walls, flooring, ceiling and paint job all of which has kept me busy.