Intended to conceal a wall safe from prying eyes, this project challenged in a number of ways.

First, it was installed in a building in which there were no square, plumb or straight walls or floors.
Second, this is the first project of its type for me and I had no plans to work from, so I had to engineer it from scratch.
In order to make it a good concealment, the hinges couldn’t give it away that the little bookcase would open, so I used European type hinges. Six of them for good support and adjust-ability.
I used red oak plywood with solid edge bands.
Some of the chair rail and base moulding had to be removed.
Unless my next client wants to pay a premium for heating my shop, this will be the last project of any size until next spring.

My client brought my attention to this piece by mentioning that he had an old rocker with animal feet on the front legs. I thought that to be very unusual and he said he’d like to have it restored since it was in poor condition.

The finish was in deplorable condition and nails and screws had been driven in through the legs to hold it together. There was no upholstery on it at all, just some straps tacked on to hold a cushion or something. All the joints were loose and there was even some mud in the carved paw feet.

I found a Southern antique expert who said it was probably a factory built chair around the early 1900s, not a valuable antique, but a nice keepsake.

First I had to disassemble everything and repair the damage done by the makeshift repairs inflicted on it. The old finish, badly oxidized and beat up was scraped and sanded off and restained approximately the same color. After assembly it was finished with poly, hand rubbed with 0000 steel wool and finishing wax.

With the new upholstery carefully selected for the period it finally looks like a rocker from a Victorian parlor.

Don “Dances With Wood” Butler

Two things drive this project.
1. I don’t like buying things I can make.
2. I can’t afford fancy factory made studio equipment.

So, because I’m re-igniting my old profession, photography, and want to do perosnal portraiiture, I will be building most everything but the camera.
This is the first thing, a free standing main light. It’s all oak except for the hardware.
The second photo shows the diffuser half withdrawn. the other photos show that there are four CFLs in the lamp, and they’re individually switched show I can select different light intensities.

Since I began designing what I call “Badges”, 3D looking logos for my website, carving a real 3D logo has been on my mind.
I recieved a sample of SignFoam to try and carved this design with three distinct carving levels on my CarveWright machine.
It required absolutely no touch up sanding because there is no tearout due to grain. The background was painted with acrylics first, and then the letters were highlighted in white. After the acrylic dried I applied three coats of clear spray.
Then, having some pieces left over from another job I made the black walnut frame, and applied clear, glossy urethane finish in two coats, following up with some finishing wax on four aught steel wool to bring it to the sort of sheen I like.
Incidently, after I finished this another sample arrived in the mail of another brand of High Density Urethane Foam (That’s what Sign Foam is). This one is called Precision Board and the same density foam, #15, is much harder. They claim it can actually be substituted for wood in all outdoor sign work. I wouldn’t be surprised to find it under the paint in some painted furnoture. The little sample I got actually sounds like wood when its dropped on a countertop.

I hate wasting good hardwoods, even the smallest pieces.
So while I make other things and there are little cutoffs, I save them to make rings.
These are two of the latest. The first and second photos are the same ring, all black walnut.
The third picture is a ring made from laminated tropical woods, the names of which I forget. Sorry.
I painted the initial B to look a little like jade. I used acrylic paints.
Both rings are finished with spray clear coat, then 0000 steel wool in paste wax for the last touch.

Don

This spiral column, made about 5 or 6 years ago, needed some maintenance. I took it down from our outside entrance to my wife’s Knit Shop and repainted it. I decided that the old medallion, scroll cut letter “B” was worse for wear, so I carved a new one with the CarveWright machine. The medallion is 4.5” in diameter.
It’s carved from red oak and finished with acrylic color and urethane top coat.
The other column, it’s opposite mate will get similar treatment.

You may notice that the spirals run opposite to one another on this column. The other column is a mirror image of this one.

db

Finished just in time for our 49th anniversary, this little box is heavy, being made from .75” oak.
All the carving except the feet was done on the CarveWright machine.
The inpainting is with acrylic paint and clear coat.
As observed by a friend, it will only take a couple of thousand to fill it with jewelry!

db

After a long, cold Winter, (the CarveWright doesn’t do well below 50 degrees F.) I did a serious sign. Its 30 inches wide, carved in poplar and painted in acrylics and top coated with polyurethane.
The carving goes in a quarter inch in the deepest areas, but the large white letters are at the top surface of the board.
The CarveWright machine took about four hours to carve this rather complicated design, but it would take a week, more or less, to carve with hand chisels and it’s far beyond my skill level.
When the board comes out it requires a fair amount of clean up. There are lots of fuzzies and tool marks that need to be cleared up, but it still beats hand carving, for me.
I have no idea if there is a local market for this sort of thing, but I’m going to give it a try.
But a sign like this, given the materials, design time, hand work and painting, would run a customer about $350, so I’m hoping there are some folks with the desire to have a sign unique to their business.

db

I am partial to bow ties when wearing a suit.

With a deep bow toward my hero, Jordan Straker, I selected a portion of a maple burl to carve out a bow tie that I intend to wear. No, really.

When I told my wife what I wanted to do she asked, “You’re not got to actually wear it, are you?”

“But, yes, my dear, I will wear it.”

So here is my bow tie, except for the neckband, ready to wear.

Many, many years ago, when I was a mere youth, I worked in a new car dealer’s MG garage. Some of you may remember the MGA or MGB.
One of the things we had to do to get a new MG ready for delivery was to install a radio. They didn’t come with built in radios. In the dashboard was a removable plate where an aftermarket radio could be installed. On the face of the plate was a diecast and chromed MG badge. Most of the techs just discarded the plate, badge and all.
I kept the badges.
Fast forward to the present.
I cut an oak silhouette of the MGB, sizing it so a watch insert would go in a wheel. The watch went in one wheel and a photo holder of the same size and shape went in the other wheel.
That looked good to me, so I did a clock/car modeled after the venerable MGTD, much older than the B model. The TD is shown with the windshield folded down, just the way the original windshields were. That also kept the fragile, thin outline of it from sticking straight up where it would be easily broken.
These clocks now contain a 50 year old MG badge salvaged from actual new MGs.
And it’s a fun project.

d

Seeing other LumberJocks making rings made me curious at first.
Then I started to get ideas.
Then I had to do it.

My first ever wooden finger ring was made in my size just in case nobody liked it.

I started by cross laminating some exotic woods I had. They’re in sheets about 3/16” thick. I used four layers.
I also cut a hunka pine for a base to attach to the turning plate. I used a piece of cardboard as the join between the pine and the other woods.

I then started the process of making it all round by verrrrrry carefully taking the corners off with a slow speed and a very sharp chisel. There was almost no trouble during this phase. I say almost because I found out that the cardboard wasn’t quite the right thing. It parted the ring off before it was complete.

Good thing I made the OD big.

Of course, when I got the ring reattached to the turning plate it wasn’t quite centered, so more chisel work to bring everything into concentricity. A Forstner bit was used to hollow out the form, then careful scraping to bring the ID up to the right size. Sanding was done up to 2000 grit which made it look almost good enough to just wax it, but a glistening clear finish was irresistable. More slicing on the OD to shape and size it and then it was time to part it off.

With my scrollsaw I roughed out a tiny letter B (my initial). It was glued to the ring and shaped out with a dremel rotary tool with tiny carbide tips.

I’ll make more rings because I like the process. It doesn’t take a lot of wood, either!

d

This strange and unusual chair was brought to me with one bottom side stretcher broken off cleanly right where it joined the back leg.
At first I was a little leery about doing anything to it for fear it was a valuable antique. After conferring with two antique dealers I was convinced it was alright to restore it. The client, by the way, was impressed over the fact that I did so much research on her behalf.
Now to the problem: I couldn’t just drill out the end of the stretcher because the pear shaped finial tapered right out to the tenon. It just wouldn’t be enough ‘meat’, even if I was so clever as to hit the stretcher dead in the center. So I copied the finial up to the next feature and left tenons on both ends of the copy. Then, not realizing I was holding my breath, I cut the original final off the stretcher and drilled it out for the new one.
The second photo shows how it came out.
By the way, take notice of the unusual features of this chair. It appears to be all original and doesn’t seem to have been much used except for the broken stretcher. A chair with such fancy carving on the back splat and crest wouldn’t ordinarily be made with a caned seat. but this looks to be original. The back legs are of unusual design, too.
I was almost as happy with it as the client.
d

Either Sears, Roebuck & Co. or Montgomery Ward had this piece built in South Bend, IN just after the turn of the 20th century. The page shown in the Sears catalog is from the 1904 edition. I believe this is the Motgomery Ward cabinet.
The cabinet was seriously abused by all the former owners and was heavily coated with nine coats of badly applied paint of various colors. I gather the first finish was a thinly applied, colored varnish over the maple/poplar wood used to make it. The joinery was decently done but no glue or screws were used, not even where dowels were used and the joints at the corners and dado joints were NAILED! Seriously!
Much of the wood was worn out, especially the drawer sides where they slid against the cabinetry. Some parts had to be replaced with carefully copied woodwork.
The original work top was gone. In its place was poplar planks nailed onto the casework and covered with old, oil based linoleum.
Since my wife wanted a French Country theme in the kitchen, and since the woodwork in the cabinet was so dinged and dented, we painted it a buttery yellow with an antique looking blue trim. I added some scrollwork fancies on the sides of the topper because I felt it was too plain.
The ugly work top replacement was tossed out and a beautiful, custom made piece of granite was used instead.
One of the legs was unusable and a new one was made and then new ends were made for all four of them. They were designed to fit plastic low friction slider pads and made wider to spread the, now heavier, weight of the unit.
New die cast, nickle plated hinges were installed on the doors.
Low profile electrical receptacles were installed in the back panel.
It took most of a Summer and Autumn to do the work.
I’m happy with it and, most importantly, She Who Buys Me Tools is pleased.

A large project, ongoing, is lining two walls of the living room with bookcases from floor to ceiling. When It comes to the corner the plan is to have a lower cabinet for storage and the top cab, reaching to the ceiling is to be a clock.
This part, 47” high, is complete in itself, but will be installed in a larger casework.
The clock case has a hinged glass door for access to the clock hands. The clockwork is installed on a hinged panel and a separate glass door is hinged for access to the pendulum case.
When the outer corner casework is finished this entire clock casement will swing on a pivot to allow access to the space in the corner behind the clock, where there will be electrical boxes and computer connections. The next cabinet to be built, next to this array will be the desk which will have the computer keyboard, mouse and display.
The clockwork is electronic and the pendulum does swing, although it doesn’t actually regulate the time.

A Breakdown Worktable

The second picture shows the bottom of one of the side stretchers.
The third one shows all the necessary parts.
The last one is the way one starts to assemble the table. After getting one end and one side part together the other end is connected and finally the second side.

I was working on a series of SketchUp models to be used in making a model of my shop. When I got to the ShopSmith I realized what a challenge it was. Taking up the challenge, I made it as detailed as I could. Then I made a photo rendering of it. The first picture is the photo render and the other one is an exported 2D from SketchUp without the rendering.

The first picture is a photo rendering of the SketchUp drawing I made of this project. It’s a worktable I designed to remedy the problem of having no space for a proper workbench. You can see in the background that the table comes completely apart. The top is a torsion box so it stays flat but is very light. The other picture of it is an actual photograph of the build out. It works as intended, taking only about a minute to set up or take down.
The other thing (sorry if I’m violating the rules by showing 2 projects) is a 100 year old kitchen cabinet that was in horrible condition, although still in use. It had nine badly slobbered coats of heavy paint, many parts were worn out, cracked or so badly damaged that they had to be replaced with new ones. It took most of the summer to do the woodwork. The worktop was gone, replaced with boards nailed to the cabinet and covered with old style oil based linoleum. We replaced that with a beautiful piece of granite.
The wall shelf I had built years ago to go with it also needed to be replaced and, since I have a new CarveWright, I had to carve out a nice Rooster to go in the center of the back board. The rooster is SWBMT’s new theme, part of the French Country decor. On the two support brackets there are scollsawn silhouettes of the same rooster image.