It’s been a very busy summer and I opted to spend most of my free time with my family rather than in the shop. Other than a couple cutting boards (after seeing all the cool ones posted at lumberjocks.com in the past few months I just had to try a few myself!), I really haven’t spent any significant time in the shop.

However, while shopping for a gift for my wife on the occasion of our 6th wedding anniversary, I learned that the traditional gift was candy or iron and the modern alternate was wood. In keeping with this theme, many of the online vendors were selling wooden boxes containing chocolates. This seemed like a great gift idea, but, being a woodworker, clearly I couldn’t buy her a wooden box. However, since I didn’t have time to build a nice box and don’t have any real experience with them anyway, I looked for another idea.

For the past 5 anniversaries I’ve made it a sort of tradition to get up early and, now that we have children, taking the kids out with me to pick up cinnamon rolls for breakfast. This year, I decided, I would make her breakfast instead and serve it to her, with chocolate-dipped strawberries, on a handmade wooden serving tray.

And this is the result.

This project was unique in that it’s the first project I designed entirely in my head and during the actual construction process. Typically I design my pieces in detail in SketchUp before even selecting the lumber. I must admit it was kinda fun building this way — designing on-the-fly so to speak — though I’m not sure I’ll make this the new norm.

The bulk of the body of the tray is cherry, the handles are walnut. The horizontal strips (the growth rings) are curly maple and purpleheart. The purpleheart, incidentally, was from a board my wife gave me for our fifth anniversary. Each strip represents a different milestone—the day we met, our wedding day, birth of a child and anniversaries. I labeled them with dates on the back and signed the piece with a personal message for my lovely wife.

The biggest challenge in this piece was scooping out the “dish” of the tray. I built the tray in a single day—it was the only time I could spend in the shop without letting on what I was up to. Therefore I had to hurriedly cobble together a quick-y template and jig to position and guide the router. The template slipped a bit on the front edge and the bottom was uneven in spots, requiring a good deal of sanding to make it acceptable. There are still a number of visible imperfections in the piece which, in this case I think give it character. It really does look handmade. In any event, I didn’t have much choice but to accept it as the best I could do within available time. It was a real hit with my wife and will certainly be difficult to top next year!

(PS – In case you’re curious, for her part my wife gave me a waffle iron (I love cooking from-scratch pancake breakfast with the kids on weekends and my son would eat waffles for all three meals if we allowed him) and made a generous contribution to my tool fund — I’m presently more than 1/2 way to a Festool Domino. Woo-hoo!)

[originally posted at http://tenonandspline.com/blog/archives/289]

It’s finally done! Here’s the crib I built for my third child, second son, Nathan. It’s been getting more and more difficult to find shop time these days, which is why he’s getting his crib after his 3 mos. “birthday”.

This is my second Heirloom Crib from the Wood plans. I really like these cribs and using commercial plans simplify the process—which is especially helpful when time’s so limited. I often wonder just how many of these have been built—we could probably find a few dozen of them here at LJ alone.

I made a few modifications so that it would better match the dresser I designed and built for him.

If you’re interested, I've blogged about the build here at LJs.

Here’s the matching dresser’s project page:

Thanks for looking!

This is the third dresser I’ve built. It’s for my third child, our second son we’re expecting in early November. I’ve learned quite a bit during this process and between the face frame and the drawers, got quite a bit of practice and gained some skill at making through dovetails. If you’re interested in some additional details, I blogged the build process on my personal blog as well as my blog here at LJ. I’ve also posted a photo gallery of the build.

I had some fun playing with the photography on this project. Clearly I need a new camera, additional lights, “real” backdrops and some actual training! On second thought, I think I’ll just deal with things as they are and put the money I save on camera gear/classes towards new tools!

Here’s my daughter in her modeling debut:

Here are the other two dressers in the series:

While still far from perfect, I’m very pleased with the outcome and hope that my son will enjoy this dresser for years to come. Thanks for looking!

UPDATE:

I’ve posted the baby’s room this piece was built for over at HomeRefurbers.com. Check it out if you’re so inclined!

Just after our second child, Sean, was born, my parents came out for a visit. While they were here, my mother mentioned that she was planning to purchase a toddler step for my niece, Samantha. Apparently this has become something of a tradition for her. I promptly nixed that idea, insisting that I build one for her instead. 18mos. later, during another visit with my folks, I was reminded that the bench was yet to be delivered. Sigh.

The past two weekends I managed to scrape together enough hours to complete this simple bench/step. As my niece’s middle name is “Rose”, the plan was to inlay a rose into the top. I’ve done very few hand cut (see note) dovetails, so I figured I’d also take this opportunity to gain some practice. And while I’ve incorporated inlays into a number of my previous pieces, I always welcome the chance to gain some additional experience there as well. So a rather simple, blocky design was born. While it won’t likely win any design contests, I found cutting and fine tuning the dovetails very relaxing. It was also quite satisfying to assemble.

The sides are walnut, the top, is cherry. The inlaid rose petals are bloodwood and the stem is zebrawood. The finish is Watco Danish Oil, natural.

(full disclosure: by “hand cut” I mean using a bandsaw and chisels instead of a router template. If it’s good enough for David Marks... ;) )

UPDATE:
I decided it needed a couple top coats of a tung oil-based finish. This added a medium sheen to the piece and I think improved the look dramatically. I’ve replaced the second and third pics with new ones.

(originally posted at http://tenonandspline.com/blog/archives/80)

This is the crib I built last year for my son Sean.

As with the crib I built for my daughter, I can’t claim credit for the design – this was built following published plans from Wood Magazine. It’s the 3-in-1 crib plan. Nothing terribly fancy, but it serves its purpose. I mainly followed the plans but decided to use solid stock for the legs instead of the lamination as suggested.

Unfortunately I had no experience with RTA furniture and I did a poor job of drilling accurate holes for the barrel bolts that hold the whole thing together. This made it rather painful to assemble…but ultimately it all came together. Not to make excuses, but when your newborn son’s still sleeping in your bedroom at 6mos., is it really that surprising that the project became a bit rushed in the end? :)

Mortissing the legs…

Bent wood lamination for the headboard

My Daughter’s Crib:

I designed and built this bar last year just after the birth of my son for a neighbor looking for the centerpiece to their basement remodeling project. If you don’t count my former life as a theatrical designer/technical director, this was the largest piece I’d ever built. The carcass, doors and moldings are all cherry ply and solid cherry. The top is made of shop-cut genuine mahogany veneer over light(er) weight MDF.

The piece isn’t all that complex—fairly standard plywood carcasses and trim. The biggest challenge for this build was logistics. The bar is roughly 8’ square and constructing it in a 2-car garage filled with tools in the dead of winter (closed garage doors) required more planning than the original construction drawings. Finishing the piece in these close quarters was something I’d rather forget.

While most of the mahogany was rather straight-grained, I did manage to find a piece that made for an interesting 4-way book match for the back bar countertop.

One of the highlights of the installation was surprising the client with the rope light I mounted on the underside of the from bar countertop. They added a nice extra touch and the client was very pleased.

I designed/built this dresser for my son Sean born last January. Clearly I needed something a bit more masculine for my son than the butterfly dresser I built for Annalise. I had previously completed a couple projects featuring genuine Mahogany and thought a combination of Mahogany and Maple might be nice.

One of the reasons I absolutely love SketchUp is that it’s so incredibly easy to whip up a design concept, that I actually draw most projects twice. First with little regard to construction or any real practicalities—just free design, primarily concerned with aesthetics. Then I’ll redraw the piece more carefully—and in this case I drew it piece by piece as I would actually construct it. I prefer the surprises happen in the virtual rather than cutting actual hardwood. All that said, I still managed to cut the top too narrow. This lead to the addition of a back rail that I actually prefer over the original design. I guess we can call this a fortuitous mistake…or perhaps it was a sub conscience design decision! :)

The primary design choice that I struggled with was the attachment of the legs to the carcass. I couldn’t decide if I should cut a rabbet in the legs and set the carcass into them, or should I simply attach the “walls” to the whole legs? The former seemed sturdier, but I couldn’t help but think I’d wind up with a gap somewhere between the leg and the side. Also, as I was tapering the legs, I worried that a deep rabbet would weaken them significantly at the bottom. In the end, I decided to join the legs to the sides without a rabbet—by using a combination of biscuits and pocket screws. This feels very solid to me and the top acts as a sort of trestle for the carcass…so I think I’m good here…at least until he becomes a 6’, 200lbs fullback and decides to sit on it. Hmmm. What do you think?

This shows the legs with the opposing biscuit slots…for some strength, though primarily for alignment during glue up. Screw pockets were cut in the sides to reinforce this joint.

Here’s the glue-up of the top, with visible Mahogany splines in the corners…

I was also very concerned about the wide beveled maple edging around the top. I hadn’t mitered such a wide/thick piece before and felt certain that they wouldn’t come together. Thankfully, I was very wrong. By some miracle I managed to get the corners nice and tight. It helps that there were only 3 sides.

The mahogany was finished with a red mahogany stain topped with a “American Cherry” gel stain. The top coat is a satin water-based poly.

If you’re interested, there are more photos detailing the construction at my blog.

Unlike most of my pieces, this one was based around purchased plans. I basically didn’t want to take a risk building a crib that would in some way be dangerous to my daughter…plus they were designed around specific hardware. I modified the aesthetics by replacing the “cherry pyramids” the plan called for with mahogany, zebra wood and bocote inlaid butterflies in the head panels. The end slats are cherry with the legs, frames and front/back gates/slates are built of maple to match the “butterfly crib”.

I have a full gallery of this project online at my blog.

We call the room this crib is in “the Room at Pooh Corner”
It’s based on a “classic Winnie-the-Pooh” theme and features 3d trees and a “pooh sticks” mural painted by my very talented sister in law.

Here’s the room from the post at HomeRefurbers.com:

I built this dresser/changing table for my first born, Annalise. It features a exotic wood butterfly inlay and curly maple “racing stripe” in the top, fluted cherry side and door panels, and a removable top “drawer box”. The main internal structure is birch plywood with frame-and-panel sides. The finish is hand-rubbed tung oil topped with a wipe on poly.

This was my first inlay attempt, and while rather simple I was pleased with how it turned out and have been experimenting with more intricate inlays since – like in the matching crib.

For more photos of the project, see my online gallery.

Here’s the hand-drafted construction drawing. This was before I discovered SketchUp!

Here’s the room from the post at HomeRefurbers.com: