Those of you who have looked at my workshop know that I’m working in about 300 sq ft. Probably makes me obsessive/compulsive about being organized-I’m one of those guys who can’t work in “creative clutter” in my shop. I also hate having to spend time looking for tools needed for a project.
Got very tired of looking through several drawers and plastic storage bins every time I needed a particular drill bit size. Had some scrap cherry pieces and MDF lying around the shop, so I got busy building a drill bit cabinet.
It stores not only the bits, by size and type, but my combination square, phillips and pocket screw driver bits, marking knives, and marking guage-saves a ton of time finding the right size and type of drill bit.
Not a piece of fine furniture, but it’s one of the things that makes working in the shop really enjoyable.

I decided to make use of short pieces of figured maple and walnut I had around the shop by turning them into boxes (made 4 of them for my wife, daughters, and myself).
Turned out to be a challenge (but fun) for a number of reasons-

1) Had to build a 45 degree crosscut sled for the mitered sides and zero clearance inserts for my table saw to keep the small pieces from falling into the “black hole” in the factory supplied insert.
2) Followed the instructions in several articles in Fine Woodworking and milled the side pieces to 3/8 inch (Doug Stowe’s articles were the inspiration). Then found out all my sources of box hinges were 1/2 inch, so had to redesign the tops to eliminate the hinges. (Thank you to the LJ’s that suggested new sources of hinge supplies with 3/8 inch ones-in response to my recent post.)
3) Unlike larger cabinets and furniture pieces I’ve built, working with small pieces of wood near table saw blades and router bits is really scary! My next boxes will be fabricated using more jigs/fixtures with safety features that keep my fingers away from things that can eat them.
4) Sides are walnut, tops figured maple, and handles are leopardwood.
5) Finish is several coats of shellac (starting with a 1lb cut, and moving up to a 2lb cut), rubbed out with steel wool and then waxed.

I’m already planning my next series of boxes, hopefully more decorative. The Caver’s (FL) recent box projects posterd are very beautiful-and a great inspiration.

Don’t know about the rest of you, but when I begin a project my wife always asks me what I’m building a piece for. In the case of the boxes, I told her I was designing them for “stuff”-LOL!

My wife wanted a rolling TV stand with shelf, so I built the carcass. She didn’t like the orientation of the grain of the plywood shelf and bottom, so I built a 2nd stand for her. Took the carcass and decided to make doors for it to be used as a shop cabinet. I have a small shop, so every bit of storage helps.
I had purchased a set of rail and stile router bits years ago and never used them, so thought this might be a good chance to try them out. While they’re not cheap, based on my results, I’d recommend them to anybody who’s going to have to make lots of cabinet doors.
The bit on the right is the stile bit-cuts the grooves for the door panels in both the rails and stiles. The bit on the left is the rail bit that cuts the tenons in the ends of the rails to fit the groove in the stiles. The last picture shows the router table fixture I built from baltic birch plywood. The carrier slides along rails, and helps guide the rail pieces past the cutter (clamps hold it down firmly). You can learn how to build the fixture on Marc Adams video “Cabinets”, which I highly recommend. Have built most of my cabinetry using the techniques shown on the video. http://www.marcadams.com/ is his website-he also runs woodworking classes at his school in IN, with guest woodworkers as instructors.

Cabinet is oak and oak ply, finish is Bartley Gel Stain (Honey), and 2 coats of Minwax Polycrylic.

I only finished the outside because after all, it’s a shop cabinet!

Built this desk for my youngest daughter a few years back when she was in high school. Wanted the wood and finish to match the dresser/hutch piece built a few years before. Construction is out of solid oak, dovetail drawers (hand cut), and finished with Minwax Golden Pecan, and three coats of Polycrylic Satin.
The design was simple and straighforward, I wanted a piece that was sturdy and functional. I had just purchased my Delta hollow chisel mortiser, so creating the mortise and tenon joinery was a breeze.
I fitted the drawer to the desk using a technique found in Fine Woodworking-don’t remember the issue. If you look closely, you’ll see that the desk front is actually made of three pieces of oak, with the center piece being the one with the drawer face cut out of it.
If I had to do this project again, I’d cut all three pieces from the same board, so the grain pattern would be unbroken. Think at the time I built this, didn’t have a wide enough piece of oak to accoomplish this, so got lazy and made it from two separate boards.

Built this pine chest of drawers from pine flooring I reclaimed from my attic-had been there 40+ years and was pretty dirty, but had a nice grain pattern. Cleaned up and surface planed the pine boards for the side panels, and drawer fronts.
Drawers are dovetailed and cut by hand (sorry for the picture quality). I had tried using my Leigh D4 to cut the half blind dovetails, but the wood was so old and somewhat brittle that it shattered as soon as the router bit hit it, so had to cut by hand instead. I enjoy hand tool work so it wasn’t a big deal.
Wanted to use a traditional finish, so I applied 5 coats of shellac- 2 lb cut. Finish has aged beautifully to a rich golden color.
Drawer pulls were cast pewter from a California company called “Natural Objects”. Most of you know my bias towards very special hardware, and finding these pulls was no exception.

The joinery on this project was extremely challenging but fun. Plans are in the April 1998 Fine Woodworking #129 article-”A Blanket Chest with Legs” by John Mcalevey.
Top and bottom rails of the front/back are joined with double through mortise and tenons (pegged with maple). Rails of the sides are joined to the front rails with blind mortise and tenons. Mortises were cut using a Delta hollow chisel mortiser, and tenons were cut on a bandsaw and fitted using a shoulder plane and chisels. Grooves to trap the maple panels were plowed with a plunge router, using a fixture to trap the leg and allow the router to cut the groove exactly in the middle (see Gary Rogowski’s Router Joinery video for how to make this jig-also handy for cutting mortises if you don’t have a hollow chisel machine) Layout is key in this piece.
For those of you interested in the layout, I can send a photo of the layout on a scrap to give you an idea of what it involved. Definitely a measure twice, check set up three times on the machine, then cut once (your only chance). I also recommend you plan ahead for the hinges, since I found Mcalevey’s hinge and leather strap less than an ideal solution. I ended up with solid brass butt hinges (3), and a lid support (also brass).
Since assembly involved lots of glue surfaces needing clamps at the same time, I used Franklin Titebond Extend with about a 15 minute working time-needed every minute of it. Glue-up was sort of like rubbing your head, patting your stomach, and jumping up and down on one foot-simultaneously!
Finish was Bartley’s Gel Varnish (my favorite), which was wiped on-3 coats. Cherry darkens naturally, and the figured maple gets a nice golden tone as the varnish darkens.
Two very important things to keep in mind-1) If you use Cherry and figured maple, expect to take out a mortgage on your house before buying the wood (can run into the hundreds of dollars, depending on your supplier), and 2) the joinery (as mentioned) is extremely challenging, but very rewarding if you’re up to the challenge. I like to take on projects where you feel like a trapeze artist working without a net-it tends to move you up the woodworking learning curve faster. On the downside, those of you on tight budgets (and who isn’t) will want to hand yourself if you mess up on a $50 piece of cherry because you cut the mortises in the wrong place on the leg-LOL!!!
Bottom line however, if you’re married, building a piece like this for your wife is good for at least 20 more years of happy marriage!

I built this small side table as part of a Handtools class I took from the Chicago Bauhaus (not-for-profit woodworking school. While the pieces were milled from oak on power tools (ie. table saw, jointer, planer), all the mortise and tenon work was done with hand tools.
I used a Dozuki saw-my favorite tool for hand cut joinery (especially hand cut dovetails),-and chisels to cut all mortise and tenons. Stretchers holding the legs are blind M&T, and the view of the table top on one corner shows the exposed M&T joint.

Designed this piece for my youngest daughter who needed storage in her bedroom. Made of soliid oak and oak plywood. Drawers were dovetailed with a Leigh D4 jig, and mounted with Blum undermount slides. The combined unit stands about 6 feet high. All moldings and drawer fronts were router-shaped.
Since I’m very biased toward using top of the line hardware on a piece, the drawer pulls are solid brass-not cheap, but really add class to the finished work.
Needles to say, like all woman, my daughter has this absolutely crammed with clothes-otherwise I’d open the drawers and cabinet doors to show more! LOL!

This oak entertainment center fills an alcove in my finished basement recreation room. I designed the 3 cabinet modules to fit the space available. Because my shop is only 325 square feet, I had to move each glued-up carcass out of the shop before gluing and clamping up the next! (You guys with big shops will get a good laugh out of that). The speakers are a custom design as well. I have a neighbor with an electrical engineering degree who builds audio equipment as a hobby. His CAD program gave me the cabinet dimensions for the speakers, and he chose the speakers themselves and built the crossovers. Their design copies models that are $7,000/pair retail. Cost of wood (MDF core oak plywood), speakers, and electronic components came to about $700. And they sound as good as the $7000 ones! The shelving units for the audio components have cutouts on the back to vent heat, and allow cables to connect the components. The finish for the cabinetry is good old miniwax (golden pecan stain), and polycrylic finish (3 coats).