A few weeks ago I blogged about a deck overhaul/patio project that didn’t quite fit into a “woodworking” category. This one’s not exactly fine woodworking, but it is wood, and it’s been a good project. It’s made from pressure treated lumber. The main columns are 12’ 6×6 buried 42” in concrete, the main beam is two 20’ 2×8’s, the large stringers are 16’ 2×6, and the cross members on the upper tier are 1×4’s. The stone at the base of the columns are just some pavers that are held in place with construction adhesive. Still have a lot of landscaping for the whole area, and some stain to put on the pergola and deck rails, but is otherwise a done deal.

Here are the before and during pics:

Guitarlet, Telecrapper, Johnny-Rocker, Poo-caster, Stratocrapper, Fannypack, Eric Crapton signature, The Hamerrhoid, Less Paul American Standard, Gibson #2 ….whatever you want to call it, I’d think twice about doing a guitar lick on this thing!

This is a Christmas gift for my younger kids. They watched me build a real guitar for their older brother last summer, and made several comments about wanting a guitar too. The problem is that none of them play, so it’s hard to justify the time and money of building a nice guitar…the Poo-caster was just the ticket. Guitar builds don’t get much simpler than this….one pickup wired straight to a jack. We already had the neck, the pickup, and saddle, so I only had to buy the tuning pegs, toilet seat, strings, and a jack cover. Fitting the seat, and spacing the bridge saddle and neck are the most critical parts, and I wasn’t overly fussy about it. I’ve probably got 4 hours and ~ $40 into it. I just got it strung and fired up this week, and it seems to work fine. Still need to add a strap. We’re going to wrap it in toilet paper and put it under the tree. It’s a far cry for fine woodworking, but hopefully they will all have a good time with this.

The build:This was as simple as an electric guitar can get. I bought a cheap oak veneered toilet seat, removed the hardware and spacers, split the seat, and located the neck and saddle, then mounted them to the inside of the seat cover. I wired the pickup directly to the output jack (no knobs), and used an inverted Strat style jack cover bent over the space where the seat splits. The wood is poo-dook, the finish is wiping varnish. ;)

I made an electric guitar for my oldest son a few weeks ago. For obvious reasons, the guitar quickly became known as the “Green Goblin”. Knowing that he can be a little rough on things, I thought it best to put it in a case. Sticker shock prompted me to make one out of scraps from the shop.

The top and bottom are 3/8” pressboard, and the sides are paneling scraps. I glued and stapled the panels together into a 6 sided box, then made the cut for the top from that. The lid is held in place with some piano hinge remnants I had. I bought some heavy gray material for the cover and spray glued and stapled it in place. I used the original template from the guitar to shape some foam scraps, spray glued those in place, then spray glued the fleece fabric over that. It’s a little heavier than I would have liked, but he’s young and healthy. Material and hardware cost in the range of $25. It was nice to have a low keyed project that could be completed in a few hours.

On the horizon – A 15-20 watt tube amp and speaker cabinet for it….

This is a hard tail electric guitar made for my oldest son….my 2nd guitar, and 2nd completed project of the year. The front is curly maple with green dye, the body is ash painted black. The finish is lacquer. Those interested in details of the build can find more info here . Completion time was about a month…roughly 70 hours. There are still a few adjustments to be made, and I need to fit cover for the jack, but it’s working well so far.

Finally a completed project from my shop this season! I seem to get time for fewer and fewer projects these days, and this one’s been on my bench since spring. It’s a mission style entertainment center made of quartersawn white oak and oak ply, with cherry bow tie inlays on the top. Dimensions are roughly 66”w x 24”d x 29”h. Construction is mainly glued dados and pocket holes. The corbels are doweled, and the door grids are half lapped. The finish is a mixture of early american and colonial maple, with a poly clear coat. Most of the QSWO was salvaged from the Widmer Wineries.

After removing the old entertainment center last fall to install a gas fireplace, we’ve been without serious music in the house….a tough feat for a recovering audiophile. Now I can finally hook up my beloved modified Dynaco 70 mono blocks to Sterling Acoustic speakers (made by yours truly) and have some decent sound again! Christmas just wasn’t the same playing the family favorites through a boom box (wince

Next up…guitar build number two for another son!

We added a gas fireplace to our family room this fall. This was a pretty big undertaking for us, and required that a “chase” be built off the back of the house, 45’ of gas line, the fireplace installation, hearth, and mantel. Originally I was going to hire the gas line and fireplace installation, but to save money I ended up doing it myself. The mantel is primarily QSWO, but also has some plain red oak interspersed.

Below are the updated pics with the surround tiles installed:

Here’s my first completed wwing project of the season. It’s a towel chest that I designed for our bathroom made mainly of red elm….just in time for our 27th anniversary, though it was never initially intended as a gift. The doors and drawer sides are ash. The drawer has hand cut dovetails, the sides are frame and panel…nothing too fancy, but the tenons on the cross braces are a sliding dovetail for extra strength. The stain is a combination of golden oak, cherry, and early American. Some of the pics look a bit more red than it really is…the pics of the top and dovetails are more realistic of the actual color.

These were built several years ago, but I’m still really pleased with both the look and the sound. At the time I wasn’t into woodworking, so I designed the cabinets and had them built from MDF by a local cabinet maker, then hired the paint job…that’s faux wood on the sides and base.

This is a proprietary design that I developed over a period of 7 years (I’ve designed about 9 models, of which I built and sold a couple hundred pairs under the name of Sterling Acoustics…these are by far my favorite set). The basic cabinet is an 8’ folding transmission line for the 8” Focal kevlar long throw woofer, the 5-1/4” mid is also a Focal kevlar driver that’s in an aperiodic chamber that vents into the T-line. The tweeter is a dual chamber Seas aluminum dome. The crossover is passive, using some unique poly capacitors that are made specifically for Convergent Audio Technology’s “CAT” preamps and amplifiers. The inductors are heptalitz air core, and the internal wire is Kimber Kable. Each driver has it’s own input terminal… the drivers are currently tri-wired with some very average basic OFC 14 awg speaker wire but were wired with Kimber Kable once upon a time at our other house….they can also be tri-amped. For a number of years now they’ve been hooked up to a Lazarus Cascade Basic tube preamp, and a pair of modified Dynaco Stereo 70 tube amps that were converted into triode mono blocks. At only 17 watts per channel (less than 1/10th the power output of some of my other amps…Hafler DH500 255wpc, NYAL Moscode 300 150wpc, Distech LS-2 @ 105 wpc), they’re the sweetest sounding amps I’ve owned. Ironically, about the time my “poor man’s” highend system was really coming together and sounded amazing, we were at the stage in our lives when the primary music in the house was Alvin and the Chip Monks, Raffi, and the Muppets! Now that the kids are bigger, I’m 49 and I’m certain my high frequency hearing is no where near as sensitive as when I built these. The system now sits largely neglected and is no longer optimized for the room, and gets used mainly for Christmas music, but was once a very nice sounding setup with these speakers…the potential is still there, but I suppose I lack the motivation or desire to do anything about it right now.

This is a hard maple countertop I made for our kitchen island in the summer of 2007. All of the maple was salvaged….most of it was former “bumper board” from work, some was roadside discards from a set of twin beds. The matching stools were made later on from scraps of the same maple, but we were originally going to buy the them….just couldn’t find anything we liked that was reasonably priced.

This is a closet door I finished for our master bedroom late last fall (2008). The frame is oak, the panels are butternut. I used a Freud door making bit set for the cope and stick joints that did a super job and was easy to use even for a first time door maker.

!http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y203/hewood/Door/moordoor004.jpg!

This is a jewelry box made for my oldest son’s girlfriend. It’s a combination of maple, curly maple, birdseye maple, and padauk. The style was inspired by a project featured in Wood Magazine a couple of years back.

Here’s a mission style coffee table made a couple of years ago for our den. It’s from QSWO that was salvaged from an old water damaged armoire my MIL was going to toss. There’s a blend of Colonial Maple stain mixed with a little Aged Oak. The finish is poly.

This is a black walnut hall table that I designed and made last summer as a wedding gift for the son of a good friend. The walnut had been given to me by another elderly mutual friend who’s not doing much wwing these days. The butterfly dutchmans were done with a Freud inlay template and bit set, and are made from cherry that was also given to me. The finish is a combination of tung oil and poly.

This is my first and only attempt at a guitar so far. It’s a hard tail electric lead guitar made from curly maple and mahogany, made for my 18 year old son. The neck is a used Mighty Mite Fender replacement that’s birsdeye maple with a rosewood fretboard. The tuners and other hardware came mostly used from Ebay. The pickups are a double humbucker from my brother’s John Petrucci OLP, a used Duncan Lil ‘59, and a used DiMarzio D-111, all mated to a 5-way switch. (The pics show some stock Squire pickups that have since been upgraded). Total cost was about $125.

The curly maple was given to me by a good friend, and the mahogany came from a garage sale…turns out that the mahogany was from a boat table that belonged to a coworker’s brother. The birdseye maple for the pick guard was part of a deck that was discarded at work. Like any memorable guitar, this one has plenty of history …even before a single note was played.

The finish on the front is an aged maple stain on curly maple. The back is natural mahogany, and the whole thing is coated with spray on poly. I’ve since learned that nitrocellulose lacquer is the finish of choice for instruments.

To get started, I sketched out a shape with french curves, and transferred that to a template that I used on the body. The front and rear pieces were cut separately using the same template. There’s alot of routing involved to dig the channels and receptacles for the electronics…much of which is buried beneath the pickguard.

When we started out, we were just hoping the guitar would work. It actually sounded pretty good and we made the decision to upgrade two of the pickups. It sounded much better with the better pickups…good enough that I followed up this project with a homemade 5W single ended tube amp made from parts from my father’s old 1939 Stromberg Carlson radio. The amp chassis is stuffed into an American Bosch radio cabinet from roughly the same era…the Bosch also had belonged to my father. The schematic is a bit of a hybrid between the original Fender Champ and a more modern P1 Extreme. As with the guitar, I had no prior experience in amp building, so once again embarked on a massive research effort. With alot of enthusiasm and the bliss that accompanies ignorance, somehow or another, we got that darned amp to work too. After some experimenting with output tubes, it sounds pretty incredible. It was now obvious that we needed a more appropriate speaker so we bought a used Fender Blues Junior speaker and mounted in a cabinet….I did have lots of previous experience with speaker design so was less daunted by this step. We can now boast that we’ve built the entire chain in his setup. We’re biased as could be, but it’s got a wide range of different sound styles that all sound good…a couple of which are classic blues sounds. We’re extremely pleased with the end result.

This is a hopechest that I designed and made for my oldest daughter’s graduation. The sides are panel and frame, the top is solid, the bottom is solid aromatic cedar. The corners are glued and pinned with a couple of pocket screws. The QSWO was salvaged from old wine vats that came out of the Widmer Wineries in the Finger Lakes region of NY state. You can see the wine stains on the inside. The pegs are handmade from black walnut, and are decorative only. The finish is poly.

This bench was made as a wedding gift for a good friend who got married last summer. It’s a mixture of red oak and QSWO. The bench contains 36 M&T joints. The finish is a mix of Early American and Colonial Maple, with a poly clear coat.

I made a pair of these for our bedroom. It’s a fairly straight forward design except for the angle of the sides. Raised panel front door, frame and panel sides. I roughed the top on the jig saw and sanded it to final shape, then used a table edge router bit for the profile.

Red elm is a bit finnicky to work with but has stunning grain detail IMHO. I find it to be one of the most interesting woods to look at. It’s a bit prone to movement and fuzzing even with good sharp cutters, but if you let it acclimate, then dimension it slightly oversized, and let it acclimate another day or so, it seems to stay put.