This is the first face turning I’ve done since 7th grade. The bowl is Myrtlewood with the center showing the base which is European Black Walnut. Finish is beeswax rubbed in with 0000 steel wool followed by bees/caranuba wax. The pieces are joined with epoxy.

I started out turning a bowl, but blew through the bottom. So, I turned a base to fit in the bottom cavity. Didn’t have any more Myrtlewood.

Myrtlewood has a beautiful chatoyance that photography simply cannot show. This is the only piece of Myrtlewood I’ve ever had. It and the Walnut both came from the estate of a gentleman who had been a member of the San Antonio Woodworkers Guild.

This cedar chest started out as a hope chest. In the meantime, my grandaughter got married, so hope turned to cedar!

The frame and tray sides are Walnut and the panels are Hickory. Tray and chest bottoms are plywood. Interior of the chest is lined with unfinished aromatic cedar. The bottom liner is tacked in place with short 23ga. pins. The bottom holds the base of the side liner in place while the top is held by a rabbet in the tray ledgers.

Joinery of the carcase frame is hand cut mortise and tenon. The leg stiles are beveled and splined with a decorative strip on the outside of the corner. The tray joinery is hand cut dovetails. The chest hand rails are formed by using an 8 sided birds mouth router bit. The top half of each hand rail is made from a single board so the grain flows across the profile. Didn’t have any boards wide enough to do the entire rail from one piece but they turned out well anyway.

Note the curved front edge of the chest top panel. That required some experimenting to come up with a fence/hold down system on the router table. The panel raising routerbit used was a Freud that has integral back cutters. Worked really well as long as I took several light passes. Hickory splinters very badly – worse than Red Oak.

The family crest on the underside of the lid is carved in leather. The leather is glued to a piece of 1/8 harboard and that assembly is attached to the panel with a rare earth magnet.

Finished with multiple coats of Deft brush on satin lacquer, wiped on. Followed by rubbing out with 0000 steel wool and Briwax beeswax, then a few coats of Briwax bee/caranuba wax.

The hinges are from Rockler and are torsion hinges that hold the lid at any angle.

As always, your comments and critique are welcome.

This little box was my first recent attempt at hand cut dovetails. The design came from the book “Puzzle Projects for Woodworkers” by Allan J. Boardman.

It is made from Ebony, which is very hard to work due to it’s brittleness and hardness, so probably not the best wood to practice hand work on. The inner side panels are Brazillian Cherry because I had some that was 1/8” thick. Outside measurements are 2 3/4 X 1 7/8 X 1 1/2 inches.

Note the knot on the top. The knot is not the secret to the box, though it is close to it. The secret is in the book!

I sawed the parts and dovetails with the new set of small Japanese saws that my wife gave me for Christmas. Then squared them up with hand planes and a shooting board. The inside of the dovetails were too small for my smallest chisel, so I ground an old 1/4” chisel down to 1/8 inch. The dovetails on the first corner are a sloppy fit. Each set got a little better and the fourth set fit much better than the first.

I glued the corners with epoxy to fill some of the gap. Then fitted the bottom and glued it in with CYA. Then sanded the outside on my oscillating belt sander, filling the remaining dovetail gaps by applying CYA and sanding while it was still wet. Several passes at this on each side filled in all the dovetail gaps. Of course, had I done a better job cutting the dovetails this wouldn’t be necessary.

Most resaw fences that come with band saws are too short in height. I’ve seen many shop made fences that are tall, but they have all been full height, causing the upper guides to be set too high for resawing narrower stock. So, I came up with this design, which is still in the experimental stage. This resaw fence is currently designed to attach to my band saw fence. However that may not provide adequate lateral stability, so I may add a base to it in the near future.

The fence is composed of three parts: a standard for the fence posts to attach to, a fixed fence post and an adjustable fence post. The reason for the posts being so wide is so that the blade guide can be lowered to just above the upper post position. The standard has a shallow dado running its entire length with a 1/4” groove routed through the wood to accept the adjustable post bolt. The fixed post is epoxied into the lower end of the dado. The adjustable post has a 1/4” cap head screw (minus the cap head) epoxied into the center of its flat side. The adjustable post fits snugly into the standard’s dado.

I used some leftover cherry for this project, finished with BLO and wax.

For sawing narrow stock (5” or less) only the fixed post is needed. It is 3” tall, which gives plenty of stability for narrower stock. For wider stock, the adjustable post is attached so its top is at the top level of the stock. In this way, the upper blade guide can be lowered to just above the stock without interference from the fence standard.

In the current configuration, the standard attaches to the saw fence with a screw through the fence into a brass insert in the standard.

I built this cabinet while still working in the hothouse.

The first picture was taken on our back porch shortly after finishing it with spar varnish.

In the second picture it is in it’s present home on the shelf below my workbench.

The third picture shows the top drawer that is used for router bit storage. After building it, I discovered that some router bits are too long to store in here upright! Best laid plans and all that …

The other drawers house accessories and routers.

The drawer pulls are routed into the face at 30 Degrees with Padauk inlaid on the inner surface. The rest of the cabinet is red oak and red oak plywood.

Before building the hothouse, I bought the radial arm saw and used it on our front porch to cut the lumber for the hothouse.

Here’s how I moved the saw from the porch to the hothouse without having to lift it.

1. Built a pair of ramps.
2. Rolled it down from the porch onto my DR Powerwagon.
3. Rolled it down from the Powerwagon into the hothouse.

Someone asked for some interior shots of my shop. I’ll start out with my latest shop project, which is a sanding cabinet.

The first picture shows the cabinet with the door open to show the dedicated shop vac for the oscillating sander. The two machines are plugged into a device that starts and stops the vac automatically.

Next to the cabinet is my woodburing heater. I use it very seldomly and haven’t since building this cabinet. I don’t think heat will be a problem due to proximity, but, hey, that’s why the sanding cabinet is on casters.

The next picture shows one of the drawers open. All of the belts, discs and sleeves, sand paper and other sanding tools fit in the cabinet.

The third picture shows the downdraft sanding table that I built from Rockler plans and hardware kit. Works very well.

Before building my big workshop, I had built a small one (8X12). The skin is transulcent corrugated plastic on a conventional wooden structure. I built it this way so that it could later be used as a hotouse, which it now is.

This is the door to the office in my workshop. It is made of solid Red Oak, and is 42” wide. Probably weighs over 200 lbs. The joinery on the hinge side is wedged mortise and tenon. The latch side joinery is floating mortise and tenon. Inner rail and stiles are joined with hidden mortise and tenons. All mortises are hand chopped. The panels are solid Red Oak, edge joined with splines and raised by using a Safe-t-planer on my radial arm saw. The panel tongues and the dadoes they are in were coated with blonde shellac prior to assembly.

The compass rose inlays are maple and padauk.

For final sanding, I hauled it to a local custom door maker who ran it through their 48” oscillating sanders for a small fee. The finish is brushed on MinWax Polycrylic water based finish for a very natural look.

It is hung on four 4 inch ball bearing hinges.

Our place is in the hill country north of San Antonio, TX. The house was here when we bought the place, but it had no garage. So, 6 years ago I decided to take a sabattical and build a workshop.

My wife, a couple of friends and I did all the work except for the concrete slab.

The first picture shows me putting up part of one of the many steel arches that make up the shell. The second picture is me catching a breather while hanging 6” insulation to the ceiling. The last picture is the front of the shop with it’s dock.

The end walls are 6” conventional wood construction. The interior includes a small office, closet, utility room and painting room complete with explosion proof exhaust fan. I built and erected the end walls single handedly, using a come-a-long to tilt up the base walls and then to lift the gable walls. The shell is set in concrete in channels in the slab. This baby isn’t going anywhere!

It’s air conditioned with two window units (one is a heat pump), and there is a wood burning stove for winter heat (all ten days a year).

Total area is about 800 square feet, and I need more room!!!