I have finally finished a matching pair of Greene & Green inspired desks for my wife and me. The photos are of my G&G desk #2, made based on the Aurora desk by Darrell Peart at www.furnituremaker.com. Darrel sells the plans for this desk at American Furniture Design website.

My desks are made from African mahogany and ebony. I finished this one with General Finishes brand Arm-R-Seal that I tinted with a little General Finishes “warm cherry” stain.

These took almost 2 years to complete because other small projects kept intruding and I would get distracted away from the desks. I am very glad to be done!

I started these desks before Darrell had his plans for sale, so after emailing him for permission, I made my own drawings to build my desk. During the two long years of work, Darrell’s plans hit the market and I bought a set of the plans. Boy would I have saved time if I had those from the start!!

My drawings were very close to Darrell’s dimensions, but were off just enough to make it impossible for me to follow his plans exactly. Since I had already started cutting parts to my dimensions, I stuck with my plans and only used Darrell’s plans for reference.

My shop now looks huge without these two desks sitting in the middle of it as they have been for a long time now. If you are interested in my posts from the construction of the desks, see my blog at http://www.intheworkshop.info/ .

I took a short break from the desks that I am building to turn a couple of tool handles on the lathe. The top one is an Auriou rasp and the bottom one is a Gramercy Tools rasp.

I used a piece of Tulipwood for the Auriou and some Osage Orange for the Gramercy. I polished them on the buffer and put on a coat of wax for finish.

I could never understand why such high-end rasps as the Auriou rasps come with such crappy handles…it always bothered me. I think that it looks better now.

The Gramercy handle was already OK, but it also looks better now.

I completed construction of a traditional sawbench this weekend based on a plan from Chris Schwarz in the new “Popular Woodworking Hand Tool Essentials” book. I made the bench out of scrap construction grade 2×10 material with plywood braces. I drilled a hole in the top for my Gramercy Tools holdfast. It was a quick and easy project (except for cutting my thumb on my flush-cut handsaw while cutting the hardwood pegs…just because the saw is a hand tool does not mean that it is not really sharp!)

I like the design and utility of the bench. Its primary feature is that it is 20” high, a very good height for using traditional western saws. Not too high, not too short. The “V” in one end of the top allows a thin workpiece to be supported on both side of a cut.

I will be using this bench to experiment with a couple of old Disston saws that I recently purchased on eBay. Eventually, I want to learn to sharpen hand saws, but that is a project for later.

This is hardly “fine” woodworking…this is more summer “fun” woodworking. I will post some of my more serious woodworking projects later.

My wonderful family got me a great combination birthday/father’s day gift this year… A Kamado-style ceramic grill/smoker from “Primo” Grills and Smokers (similar to the better-known Big Green Egg Brand cookers). I have long enjoyed grilling, and as my wife says “The ceramic cooker should allow for many hours of your obsessive tinkering and experimentation”....she knows me well.

First order of business, of course, was to combine my hobbies and build a cart for the smoker. See photos above.

More on my blog at: http://www.intheworkshop.info/grillingbbqand_smoking/index.html

This was a simple but fun project that gets used a lot!! Since the smoker’s body is VERY thick ceramic, it is VERY heavy. 200-250 pounds, I believe. So, this stand was built to be strong rather than pretty.

The cart is made from standard pressure-treated lumber for the legs and the horizontal structural components and Trex-brand composite decking for the shelf and top surfaces. Since Trex cannot support much weight, the pressure-treated lumber was necessary for the structural components. As a woodworker, I cringe at the use of materials like Trex, but I must admit that they do have their place.

I used concrete pavers under the grill to protect the decking material from heat. The rear wheels are replacement solid-rubber “handcart” wheels. The front wheels are industrial-rated swiveling casters.

The photos don’t show it, but the cart also has a mount for a beach umbrella to shade the bald cook from the sun. With my wife’s multi-colored umbrella in place, I must admit that the smoker cart looks a bit like a hot dog stand.

A side mounted beer opener completes the project.

Now back to your regularly scheduled “real” woodworking…

Matt

Hi all,
This is my first attempt to post a project to Lumberjock’s, so I just pulled an old one from my blog to test (http://www.intheworkshop.info). More to come eventually.

This is from Sept 2005:

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This past weekend I repaired two wooden garden benches that we purchased about seven years ago. This was the second time in seven years that I performed major repairs on these benches and they probably won’t be able to be repaired again (or rather won’t be worth repairing). In that same seven years, an Adirondack chair that I made sat out in the yard next to the benches. This year I repainted it, and it looks brand-new….it will last many, many more years. In fact after its new paint, I think that it is indistinguishable from the two new Adirondack chairs that I made this summer.

Can you tell which of the chairs above is seven years old and which two are new?

While it may be true that you can buy furniture now-a-days for the same price as the materials to make it yourself (not to mention the tools)...there is no comparison is quality or longevity. Something you make will last a lifetime, something modern that you buy will likely not last 10 years.

Chairs are made of oak and are based on Norm’s old design and have held up like-new out in the weather all this time. A good, basic design.

I had the sense to make patterns for the parts when I made the first one, so these two are only took about 4 hours each to fully complete from lumber-to-finish (minus paint).