The wife and I got our first barn quilt completed in December and hung about New Year time. It looks very nice on our barn/garage. It is 4’ x 4’ and has 2×2s around the edge on the back for stiffness. My wife has become unemployed recently and wants to start making these as a little business.

For those that don’t know, barn quilts have been popping up on rural barns for the last several years around the country. Most are painted examples of traditional quilt block patterns, some are very non-traditional. I like them all.

Not a lot of woodworking in it but I did use a saw and sander so it counts.
Enjoy!

Finished a quilt rack for my son Ben just in time for Christmas. He inherited some of my mom’s quilts after she passed away and he found some he really liked and wanted a way to display them. This is the result with one of our quilts that mom made for us as an example of her handiwork. All hand stitched.

Walnut from BIL’s tree, all through-tenons with shellac then polyurethane over that. I was pleased but most of all, so was Ben.

A coworker asked me if I wanted to try and make a an award stand for a heavy metal object called a dynamometer. One of their division’s distributors passed a sales milestone and they wanted to give them this gold painted version of the real thing. I like a challenge so I spent a couple evenings in the shop coming up with this quadrapod. The wedges basically hold the thing together. A leather strap keeps the leg pairs from spreading too far.

Wood is walnut with a shellac first coat followed by a couple coats of polyurethane.

I was happy and so was my coworker. Hope you like it.

I built these from some plans in a magazine several years ago. I’ve still got the plans but can’t remember what magazine they came from. A friend found them and wanted me to help him build them. He had some good ideas but had trouble following through on them so I ended up buying the wood and never seeing him in the shop again. I like chess and loved the looks of the board so I ended up having enough wood for two complete boards with drawers and one board top that stood on the corners as legs, no drawers.

The wood is wenge and curly maple on the top and the body and drawers is mahogany. There are drawers on both sides held by spring clips to keep them shut.

I altered the plans which called for a nearly impossible doweling of the squares to each other. After finding the bits wandered in the hard woods I altered the plans to glue the squares to a plywood substrate for stability. I used old business cards in between each square to give them just a little space to grow and shrink and it has held together for a good 10 years.

Each square has a chamfer on each side that sets them apart and looks nice, imho. The finish is hand rubbed tung oil and it still looks great. I wish I had some real nice chess men to complete the set. Mine are just some old cheap ones but they still work!

I don’t get to play on it much but I’m glad when I can pull it out and play someone a game. Thanks for looking.

Sometimes you run into a piece of wood by accident and you find it difficult to sell once you see its beauty. Such was the case recently of this piece of walnut I made into an Iowa shaped cribbage board for one of my oldest friends to give to her brother for Christmas. We grew up across the road from each other and she visited me recently and loved my cribbage boards and wanted me to build one for her brother.

I picked out a rough sawn board someone recently gave me and when I got it planed I realized that this could be something special. Sure enough when it was all done I could hardly let it go. I’ve included a photo of one edge. To me it looks like a Hubble Telescope photo of some fiery prominence coming off the sun or something.

He’s a farmer so the corn pegs work perfectly.

Oh, well. Can’t keep them all. Got to get rid of them sometime.

Comments welcome.

I had a nice challenge recently from a neighbor. She bought one of my Minnesota cribbage boards and wanted to know if I would make a custom one for her to give to her bosses. They own a local restaurant called The Channel Inn and it sits right over the edge of one of the lakes in town.

She wanted me to make a board in the shape of the building. I struggled for a long time trying to talk her out of it since the building is just a long, low box. But with her prodding I came up with what you see here. I ended up woodburning the outline of the lakeside view, with the dock extending towards you, in between two lanes of the holes. I also woodburned the name in between the other rows and painted inside them.

I’ve made ears of corn for pegs. I’ve made hot dogs on a stick for pegs but she said she wanted beer bottles, and that’s what she got. The smallest turnings I’ve ever done but they came out pretty nice. Even have caps on them. I’m not a good enough painter to paint labels though.

My wife saw the woman just yesterday and she said the people loved the board. Makes all the hours worth it.

It’s nice to be challenged now and then.

Thanks for looking. Would love to hear any comments.

What is it? Can you tell from the first photo?

I like having my iPod handy at work and that means standing up where I can touch it without having to pick it up. So, I made a holder for my new iPod touch this week. Works great on my desk too. I had one for an older iPod but this one needed the added feature of holding the iPod both vertically and horizontally plus having access to all the controls.

This has worked great. It slides into position with a slightly snug fit into grooves routed in the edges. It also has a ball bearing seated on a tiny piece of rubber in the back piece that detents into small dents drilled into the back of the front piece with a rounded router bit in my drill press. I then assembled it and ran it back and forth a few times to dent the walnut and then I put thin super glue in the track I created and into the detent holes to make them more durable. Works fine so far.

Well, thanks for looking. I love making putzy stuff that makes life easier or more interesting.

Long story shortened a little, I recently lost the use of my neighbor’s Bosch SCMS. He kept it in my shop for 3 years before he ended up taking it back for a project and as I figured it has found it’s permanent home in his basement. I missed that saw!! So I bought a new Jet SCMS and I’d been wanting to build a portable saw station for the miter saw and bought some plans from Plansnow.com. A few nights later I had the thing pretty much built. I bought some nice Rockler locking casters on sale and love how the thing rolls around the shop.

I bought a new Freud blade to replace the really bad blade that came on the saw and it works great. I’ll have to write a review on the saw station plans and on the saw after a get a few more miles under my belt with it. So far so good!

Thanks for looking.

I finally got something turned on my new lathe I wanted to share. Not that it is great, in fact it is quite modest and even a little silly but I love how it looks on my desk with my special baseball on it.

I was lucky enough to be at the first home game at the new Target Field in Minneapolis on April 12th. It was a great day with good friends and win for the Twins!! Couldn’t get much better.

I bought the ball to remember the day and decided the other night to take a failed goblet I had started and ruined and finally do something with it. I’m happy with the result mostly because of the memories.

Enjoy.

I finished a kitchen remodel a couple years ago and I’m finally getting around to posting the results. This was a major redo. We tore out everything down to the studs, floor joists and even removed an old chimney in one corner.

I leveled the floor with sistered 2×6s and laid the floor myself and designed and built all the cabinets and countertops. All red oak with oak flooring used as the field in all the doors. This is flooring that was in original wire tied bundles in the back of an old lumber yard. I bought it almost 30 years ago and finally found the right use for it.

A couple of my favorite things are the 4 foot spice drawer that disappears into the wall and the ceiling treatment over the stairs that lead to the back door.

Having everything custom fit into our tiny 10×11’ kitchen was worth all the effort and time needed to plan and replan until everything fit and we’re still happy with it two years later.

I look forward to any questions or comments.

Here’s my latest completed project, a bathroom cabinet. This will go above the loo and add much needed storage in our little bathroom.

This was a fun, quick project. My wife requested a cabinet, I found a photo on the internet of a style we liked, I got some poplar for the local lumber yard, sat and stared at the lumber for about 2 days until I had the construction visualized in my mind and started cutting.

I made a couple design changes on the fly, bought a new bull nose router bit for the edges, used a beading bit on the door frames and got it put togeter and painted it over the last several days.

It will mount on the wall with a French cleat which becomes part of the back wall of the cabinet instead of being hidden. With the art glass in the doors, you can’t see the small gaps of the cleat so I think this will work out nicely.

And surprise, the lower drawers are really one large open space.

I hope you like it. I think we will.

I found the nicest piece of wood a couple years ago in, of all places, my local lumberyard. I was looking for some thick walnut to make a cribbage board for myself and out of the bottom of the pile came this 12 foot x 12 inch x 1 5/8 inch beauty covered in birds eye formations by the thousands. My jaw dropped and I pulled out my billfold and paid for it. I got a good price as it had been there for years and years and also I don’t think they knew what they had. We finally settled on cherry as the wood species. Worked like cherry, burned like cherry but finished so nice.

Many years ago I made a cribbage board for my farmer, father in the shape of Iowa with ears of corn as the pegs. He has passed on but the cribbage board comes out every visit home to Iowa. I started laying out Iowa, Minnesota and later a few Wisconsin boards on CorelDraw at home and perfected the layout of the holes so it goes pretty fast. I ended up making about 10 or 11 cribbage boards out that cherry. I kept the last Minnesota board for me since I have lived here for many years now. I have had the itch to make more but couldn’t find a another bargain like that first piece.

My luck changed this summer as my wive’s BIL took a huge branch off a walnut tree in his yard. We found a local sawyer to cut it into 2 inch thick slabs. I brought it home to dry in my garage so I have to wait 2 years before it is ready. I went to an auction in Iowa this fall and ended up buying a small stack of walnut that was thick and I got enough to make 4 more cribbage boards and several things on my lathe when I get around to it.

Anyway, that is the long story about my little boards. I hand make the pegs with piano wire and a chunk of maple scrap. I chuck the wired into the drill press and turn the wood round, shape it and sand it there. I then hand paint them and dip them in poly to protect the peg for years and years of use. So far I’ve done plain colored pegs, the corn pegs and Green Bay, Chicago Bear and Viking colored ones for people.

Thanks for looking.
Jon

I haven’t been a good member for some time. I’ve been busy building things and having other activities take priority in my life. I do enjoy the site very much and look every now and then but I thought it was about time to share another project or two.

A year or so ago my wife wanted a place to store all the plastic grocery bags we accumulate. She was tired of the fabric bag hanging on the door knob so I said I would give it a whirl.

A couple hours later I had this assembled and sanded and the stain on it. After a few coats of wipe on poly it made its way into the kitchen. It is made of red oak for the body and black walnut for the end caps. It hangs on a french cleat on the end of the cabinet near the back door. Very stable and easy to remove for any reason.

Simple, good looking, functional and fun to build. If anyone is interested I could draw up a quick plan to share.

Thanks for looking.
Jon

This is my first project posting and wanted my latest one as my first. I worked on this Morris chair and ottoman for about 4 months and waited for another two to buy the leather and get the upholstery finished. This is probably the piece I’m proudest of, with my complete kitchen overhaul a close second. The plans came from Woodsmith and I think the number was #155.

This photo is the finished, in the house, read to sit in and enjoy photo. That’s my cat Butu approving.
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The wood is quarter sawn white oak I purchased at my favorite little mill in western Iowa. I think one of the things I enjoyed most was learning something new. That was fuming white oak with ammonia. I read up on the process and decided rather than try to find the aqueous ammonia all the literature said to use, I test plain old cleaning ammonia (18%) from my local fleet and farm. I found that a plastic pail with an inch or so of the solution in a large Christmas tree bag with the whole chair for just an hour and a half produced a beautiful color. I tested several pieces before settling on the time I finally chose. After five hours, the samples were extremely dark. I just don’t think the more dangerous concentrations of ammonia are at all necessary.

With several coats of clear poly and a final of semi-gloss, the finish was just what I wanted. The poly warms up the color just enough to take away that raw, fumed look. The other thing that my tests revealed was that the great ray and fleck pattern of the wood took on a much more three dimensional look with fuming over staining. I describe it as a hologram effect as you tilt the wood in the light. Very cool.

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Below is a photo of the ottoman which shows off the grain pretty well.

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The joints are all pegged with walnut. I did the upholstery by myself except for the back pad on the chair. My sewing machine can’t handle leather. Luckily I’ve got a friend in town who does leather work. I did up the pad and he sewed the bag with a zipper in it.

I did vary from the plans just a little on the seat pad. After making it according to the plans I thought the seat sank too far, not enough support. I had some 1/4” white oak left that made perfect slats so I screwed them to the bottom of the frame and now I’ve got just about perfect firmness in the seat.

I can’t think of much else to say other than it was a rewarding project and a very nice sitting chair. I even find my wife stealing it too often.