This is a project that started with a gift of wood. A piece of pear wood and ironwood were given to me – for the purpose of creating a project for a fundraising auction. I added a piece of cherry for the lids and splines. I had enough material to make two boxes. One for the auction and the other as a backup – or to keep if all went well.

The floors are lined with black velvet and the bottoms are covered with felt.

They measure 10 1/2” x 6 1/2” x 2 1/4”.

The build is covered in a blog starting here .

Now all that is left is to deliver the box and see what happens at the auction!

I updated my shop storage with some new cabinets. They are constructed with 3/4 plywood with hemlock trim. I put details of the construction in a blog (the final post is here ).

I had thought of the name “Board Room” a while back and had been looking for a way to use it. The big expanse of blank doors looked perfect for it.

The sign took a few weekends to complete, but I enjoy seeing it every time I enter the shop. Also, all the extra storage is nice too!

This was a light-hearted gift for my niece. She is a chef. I wanted to create a unique present using kitchen utensils.

The gift was a big hit. It has a spatula, basting brush, spoon, grater, pizza slicer and peeler as swing out tools and a set of tongs that pulls out the side.

It is about 39 inches long, 6 inches thick and little over 5 inches tall and weighs about 11 pounds.

I posted a blog on the build here .

Lots of handmade gifts this year and LumberJocks inspired all of them!

Picture 1 is a composite of all of them

Picture 2 is of the cutting board my youngest son (19) made for his GF. It is made with cherry, a couple different oaks, mahgoany and walnut. The technique is outlined in my blog post but the original support comes from info provided by dewoodwork and the CBdesigner program provided by jayman7. My son really enjoyed making this and it was a much appreciated gift.

Pictures 3 and 4 are of my version of Andy's Palm Boxes . These are cherry sides with wlanut tops and maple bottoms. Andy’s tutorial was very helpful. This was my first attempt at freeform shaping. I used the disc sander on my Shopsmith.
Picture 3 shows the progression from marked up for shaping to rough facets to final shape to oil finish.
Picture 4 shows all 4 with finish (danish oil and wax).

Picture 5 is a close up of our celtic knot rolling pins. My oldest son (23) and I made these together. He made two – one for GF and the other for his grandmother. I made one for my wife, my mother (for her birthday) and one for a friend that gave me a pile of lumber. One board was the maple used for these rolling pins. These were made with guidance from Lew's blog . The first 3 are maple with inlays of a mahogany/maple strip. The 4th one is maple with a wlanut/maple inlay. The 5th one is mahogany with a maple/mahogany inlay.

Picture 6 is a set of candle holders my oldest son made for his GF. The are made from cherry. While not directly realted to any particular LJ post, this was still inspired by the candle holders seen here on LJs.

I had to wait until now to post these until my mother got her birthday gift.

While it is a great pleasure to see how the gifts are appreciated, the real joy for me was spending time in the shop with two of my sons.

Thanks for looking!

This display box was created as a gift to display a necklace. The story of the wood is posted as a blog entry here . A blog entry on the creation of this box is posted here .

Picture 1 shows the closed box. The lid has beveled glass. The center medaillion creates a lip to place the necklace over. Reminds me of a rising sun (or setting – depending on which side of the island you are). It took some effort to create a support that would allow the necklace to span both the width and height of the box.

Picture 2 shows the mahogany splines used to reinforce and decorate the corners.

Picture 3 is a close up of the solid brass hinges.

Picture 4 shows the hinge detail. Notice how I had to make the box side of the hinge narrower to fit the width of the box walls. The pocket on the door side left a strip of wood narrower than 1/16 inch. Very tricky to cut the pocket without blowing out the side! I also used oversized screws. The glass ends up being kind of heavy and I wanted some extra holding power from the larger screws.

Picture 5 give a better view of the support block. Still kind of hard to see as the support and back are both covered in black velvet.

Finally, Picture 6 shows a close up of the brass latch.

This was a fun project and a pleasure to give away. The necklace ended up being a little too high by less than 1/8 of an inch. I forgot to allow for the thickness of the velvet! No one will ever know …

I wanted to post my two previous jig projects so I could show you what I built this weekend!

I have been working on a box that needed splines in the corners (more on that later). I knew I needed a jig to help me cut the slots for the splines and I just felt like making a nice one.

The fun thing about this project was that I just used scrap materials and designed as I went. I had to think a bit about how to get the fence adjustment to fit.

The box has two oak ends. There are formica covered plywood side panels and cradle sides (does the formica look familiar?). These panels are positioned on plywood supports on the inside of the oak ends (see pic #2).

The assembly locks into place onto my crosscut sled using one of the pivot holes for the miter fence.

A t-slot rail on the top of the box allows me to position the fence so I can locate the slots accurately.

The box is wide enough for a 5” tall piece to be placed on either side of the blade. If I happen to need slots cut on a wider piece, I can lay a 1/2” piece of stock in each side of the cradle and extend the piece past the V-shaped opening on the left side. I can also re-position the jig along the t-slot rail on my crosscut sled.

I probably spent more time making this jig than I will using it, but I had fun and that was the point!

This crosscut sled was my second accessory I built for my table saw. I built this last summer from formica covered MDF and oak trim. I spent several hours searching the web for ideas that I wanted to include in my version. For some reason I never stumbled across Lumberjocks at that time. I saw a sled design on ShopNotes that is a starting point, but I made several improvements/changes. I have seen features here that I might add in the future. Let’s see if I can cover the details.

First is the size – it is 27” deep and 45” wide. This is as big as I felt I could handle. In the past year, there have been two times where friends have stopped by to use this sled because of its size.

I spent a lot of time getting the fence perfectly square. It took several clamped setups and test cuts before I was happy. Test cuts were done by squareing a wide board then flipping the board over and cutting a small piece off the end. The cutoff would show me twice the error of the fence. I would then cut four pieces and stack them to get a better estimate of the error.

The sled has two adjustable panels on each side of the blade. This way I can set the floor of the sled next to the blade even when I use a dado or tilted saw blade setup.

Edit
Cal asked for more information about the adjustable panels and runners. It seemed best to add that here rather than down in the comments. Each panel consists of the floor panel and a piece on each end. Each end is held in place with a bolt. That is a total of four bolts. You can see them in the first picture. There are total of 5 black knobs visible the lower right one is for an extension (described below). The remaining 4 knobs secure the adjustable panels. The first picture shows an end board fairly well – it is to the right of the blade guard (described in the next paragraph). The second picture shows another end piece well – on the back side and for the other adjustable panel. Hope that is clear ;)
The runners are hard maple. I used two of them. They were cut slightly (0.004”) large and fitted by sanding down.

End Edit

The box on the front of the sled completely covers the saw blade. This only works when used with my outfeed table . The stopped slots on the outfeed table stop the travel of the sled before it can pass through the blade cover (and then my hand). This is by far my favorite feature and one I highly recommend.

There are two adjustable miter fences – one right hand and one left hand. They rotate around a pivot point that is centered on the arc routed with a t-slot bit. Getting the pivot point and the arc concentric took some thinking but I figured it out!

There is an extension for cutting large panels. It locks into place with a single bolt.

Finally, there is a t-slot rail that runs the full length of the sled and the extension to let me lock down a stop block (which I have not yet built).

I find myself using this sled all the time.

This is my frst addition to my table saw. It is built from MDF with a formica top and oak trim. There are a few details to point out:

First is the formica used for the top. I went down to my local supply store and asked to search through their remnants. I wanted a piece large enough to supply several shop projects. A brighter solid color was also desired. I found this sheet that worked for me. When I took it up to the sales counter the comment I got was “Thank you – we have been trying to get rid of that for years” ! I think I should have asked for an additional discount…

The table was sized to fit with the space available in my shop (36” x 36”). If I had more room available, I would have made it bigger. It is big enough and a nice addition to the shop.

The legs are designed to fold up. The table rests on the back rail of the saw and stays in place by means of a pin through a hole in the rail. I have never taken the table off, but if I need to the legs will fold under the table.

The slots for the miter gage are stopped. This is an important feature for using my crosscut sled (project posting to follow). There are through holes at the end of these slots to keep dust from building up.

This is one of those projects that once you have it, you don’t know how you got along without it!

This is a piece that I finished in the last week or so. I covered the construction in a blog series that starts here. It started as 4 thin planks of cherry. The base pieces are lacewood with a walnut trim.
It was a lot of fun to make as I let the design take shape as I went along. I’m pretty pleased with it – it should be fun to use as well.
I look forward to your comments…

It’s been years since I made any gifts. The end grain boards that I’ve seen on LJ inspired me to get these three boards done. I used a technique I call “Cut first and design later” that I described in this blog. Since I use narrow strips, it takes a lot (15 to 20) of strips to make up a board. The combination of narrow strips (as thin as 0.2 inches) and a large quantity make it hard to get a design to work, so I mill the pieces, measure them carefully and then design.
The first board is 9×15.5 inches and is 1.5 inches thick. The second one is 9×13 and 1.5 inches thick. The third one is 8.5×10.75 and is 1.25 inches thick. All three boards have a mixture of cherry, red oak, white oak and walnut. The sizes were pretty much dictated by how many strips of what width I had on hand.
I’m pretty pleased with how they turned out. My only concern is the new owners will not want to put them to use!

Hello! First project posting.

This is a lazy susan with a story. My parents were visiting this spring. My dad has been making a few different project using these diamonds. I told him I could use a lazy susan. It needed to be fairly large. I told him 30 inches across, maybe only 28 would work. He went home and got to work. More than 400 diamonds later, he sent me the result. It was a very pretty design, but only 24 inches across (he ran out of wood and was sure it was big enough). We used it for a while, but it needed to be bigger.
I cut off the rounded edges of the mahogany and put a relief on the back side. Then I added an MDF backer to extend about 3 inches on each side.
The existing border made a nice transition from the center pattern, so I came up with a diamond border to add. I used mahogany salvaged from the lazy susan and a couple pieces of oak and walnut from the wood pile. My contribution added another 100+ diamonds.
We now have a 30” lazy susan, but the part I like is that my dad and I got to build it “together” – even though we live 2000 miles apart!