Maple deadblow mallet.
Turned the handle offset near the end, I was scared to get aggressive, this was my first lathe work in 20+ years.
Purpleheart wedges.

Some pics are before I applied the finish.
What was supposed to be a quick pic for facebook turned into a sexy photoshoot. :)

Maple, Walnut, Cherry and Purpleheart.

Inlaid the purpleheart into the maple strip in the center, Not sure how with all the clamps but one end lifted a bit.
Also napped and missed scraping the glue in time.

I ended up scrubbing beeswax into any gaps.

First attempt at endgrain cutting boards.
Learned a two good things along the way,
a) Don’t get cocky with your glue ups, it’s perfect until you turn your back.
b) Router sleds are your friend.

Made from walnut and hardmaple, used Titebond III glue.
Finished with mineral oil.

First commissioned piece for a non family member.

It would have been a quick and easy project if I hadn’t managed to feed my left index finger to the table saw :(

Built from mid-grade big box pine that was on sale.
Ripped 1×10 down to 3” and laminated the shelves, hand planed them smooth before a quick sanding.

I think the design would be great built with ash.

Cedar “garden” bench I built for my brothers wedding.
I had been hemming and hawing up until the last minute ( 5 days before the wedding) about what I should give as a gift. They asked for either items made personally by the guests or donations to go towards the building of their new home.
I went through several ideas from chairs to benches to picture frames before settling on building a bench.

I ended up basing the design on plans from the march 2012 issue of the Family Handyman. I built the frame out of 2×4 cedar ripped into 2×3 instead of using and 1x. I also tried my hand at some mortise and tenon work instead of the biscut joinery. I really disliked the look of one of the top slats and drove to town (70 mile round trip) to find just one more bit of cedar to curb my anxiety and found the deep dark red board buried in the 10’ 1×10 area. So back home I went and ripped down the new board into the three dark seat slats. I am so glad I made that trip, I really think the outcome was worth the gas and time.

This was my first shot at mortise and tenon and I figured hey, it’s cedar this will be a breeze. It was more difficult than I thought to make anything resembling a nice clean cut without moving very slow and carefully, the light colored cedar felt like I was trying to chisel away at a Styrofoam cooler. Loved doing i tho and I really look forward to doing more work like this.

I used Danish Oil – Natural for the finish.

Thank you for looking and happy woodworking!

Finished set of chairs.
Got the plans from
http://jakeschair.com/index.php

I had seen somewhere I think here on LJ that it was suggested to double up the upper back support so that’s the only real change I made so far.

My first Jake’s chair. Very glad I saw this design here on LJ, this is the most comfortable wooden deck chair I think I have ever sat in though I may be a little biased.
The only thing I changed was to double up on the upper back support and I think I would go with thicker lumber in all the support areas if I were to make one out of cedar.

Cedar endtable I made to practice setting up slats, plugged holes and curves for a bench I want to do soon. Got the endtable design from http://www.runnerduck.com/end_tables/endtable.htm