I bought my wife a lunchbox she wanted for her birthday, but that kind of seemed like a boring birthday present. I went down to the basement and dove into the cut off pile and found a chunk of wenge. I had a bit of curly maple left over from another project and liked the look of them together, and this is what I came up with.

My little sister sent me a picture of the coffee table that my father had made out of old pallets. Needless to say, it definitely wasnt the quality that some of the guys here were coming up with! I told her I would come up with something for her based on the wood I had sitting around and here is the result. The only real requirements she had was size and wanted something a bit smaller for her apartment. The top is about 22” x44”. I was going to use metal drawer slides then saw a couple chunks of padauk in my scrap file, so made slides out of those. Adds a little pop of color to a pretty black and white table. Finished w/ four coats of arm-r-seal.

I told my little sister that I would make her a coffee table for her birthday, so we started talking about wood combinations. I suggested walnut and maple, but since she’s 500+ miles away, there is no good way for to visualize the woods together. I made a quick cutting board and sent it her way so she could sign off on the combo. As a bonus, the cutting board turned out pretty nice and fit together well.

So I hate to post this as a project here since its so simple, but I’m hoping it will inspire someone else to have some fun at work this week.

Out of about the 40 people who are here on a normal day, there have been 7 of us here this week. To finish out the week, we decided to have a ping pong tournament tomorrow. I ran home and made a quick trophy over lunch. Hopefully we can make it a traveling trophy and an annual tradition!

I found a cabinet maker who was going out of business and bought at on of oak, maple and stock that is 2 1/4×3/4”. I used the cherry and maple to make the following table and chair for my 18 month old. The seat and table top are cherry, the rest is maple.

I used pocket screws to attach the table top and chair seat so they could easily be removed for sanding and refinishing. Its amazing the damage and overly excited kiddo can do with Thomas the Train.

We were short a couple presents for a Christmas gift exchange so I went rummaging through the cut off bin and found a few pieces of walnut and cherry to use. I also had about a 5’ chunk of bird’s eye maple that mistakenly ended up in an order of curly maple, so decided to throw it in. 5 minutes at the table saw, 5 minutes at the planer and 5 minutes for gluing and I ended up with these. I am pretty happy w/ how they turned out.

I am making a desk out of cherry and maple for my wife for Christmas (well, maybe new year’s day (maybe labor day?)) and had a bit of scrap from ripping the wood down. Thought I would make a couple 5×7 picture frames that I could practice finishing (I’m glad I did, the first one turned out way too dark and blotchy) and then give away as Christmas presents to family (My mother in law will get the blotchy one!)