A nice little job combining traditional jointing techniques with the biscuit jointer and routers. It seemed to take a phenomenal amount of timber, but worth it I think. People tell me that it is beautiful. The object inside is a mounting batten – I try and think of most things.

Finished with the scrapers, which seem to give a superior result, then Danish oil, a final rub down and wax polish.

This is designed with a small CD collection in mind that might be kept in a study or bedroom, using a small bit of wall space.

A project that turned out to be far trickier than I thought it would be. Don’t get a microscope on it will you?

Pine body, mahogany and beech board, hickory plinth. Dimensions in millimetres: 343 square at then base X 145 high. Comes complete with timber draughts and plastic chess people.

Not as bad as it could have been.

I have to say that I’m very pleased with the way that this one has turned out. As ever, made by eye and without a plan, it will remain unique.

Presented here is a pine box in carefully selected timber, dovetail jointed, with pretty little brass butterfly hinges and a catch, finished in my favourite Danish oil before a final buff with wax polish. The piece features an inset lid using highly figured ash, scraped and polished to a lustrous finish. Lovely: even if I do say so myself!

The piece’s external dimensions in millimetres are width 200, depth 155, height 76.

This box has quite a high storage capacity for its size, due to the inset panel lid and the base location. It is useful for storing a range of small items, or simply for its appearance which I hope will complement many a modern room in a range of styles.

I hope that you will like this piece.

I have not posted for a while because I have been working on this. The project, on and off has taken two years, but it’s been the main thing since Christmas 2010.

All has been hand made, apart from a bit of routing and the trusty band saw. i didn’t turn the columns as I have no lathe. Timber is pine and beech. The piece weighs a tonne; thank god I didn’t make it all in hard wood, or it would be able to withstand a thermo-nuclear attack, and more to rhe point, be immoveable.

If you want more details on how it was all done, here’s a link to a Facebook album. The comments are made for the lay person, not the serious woodworker who will know it all just from the pics:

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150256971689603.371863.705549602&type=1&l=9b00cbf1b9

I hope that you enjoy looking at the piece. A photo of the chunk of c* that it replaces is also provided for comparison.

I posted pics of a bumble bee project sometime ago. In June 2011 bees have moved into the box – hurrah! Quite a few people expressed an interest in this project, so I thought they might like to see these pics of a bee in the box (there are some others, honest).

Here’s a few more little box projects finished over the last few months. I’m pleased to say that the hickory box with the walnut pin joints has sold, as have the six beech and sapele spice boxes. One gets the feeling that people are buying items as gifts for others rather than for themselves, which is a not entirely comfortable sensation. However, the other items are still adorning my worktop, which is even less of a comfortable sensation.

From left to right, as I’m looking at the items now:

• sapele band saw box using a driftwood piece found on our South Beach here at Blackpool, England
• hickory body and pin-hinged lid, constructed using walnut pins to secure simple butt joints – ‘rustic’
• oak band saw box from a garden bench project off-cut with a bevel-planed, walnut-laminate, hinged lid
• laminate band saw box of sapele, ebony and sycamore with a figured beech, hinged lid
• made from the discard core of an earlier project, six spice style boxes in sapele, beech and sycamore.

As ever these have all been finished with my favourite Danish oil and then buffed with a wax polish.

The items are mainly constructed with hand tools, apart from my trusty band saw of course and occasionally the drill press to make pin hinges. As I’m getting better at setting my hand planes and scrapers, I’m finding that abrasive finishing apart from de-knibbing is becoming less and less necessary. They do say that a true craftsman never needs abrasive paper, but I’ve always considered that b**cks.

I hope that you enjoy looking at these. I’m now on with my much postponed Welsh Dresser project, which will probably take the rest of the year, during which I’ve sworn not to be distracted by other projects. The Dresser will of course be posted, assuming that I don’t manage to trash it completely.

All the best to you all.

A few recent band saw boxes. These can really be shelled out can’t they?

The sapele was left from another job. I had meant to avoid mixing tropical and temperate, but a contrasting tropical timber to sapele is hard to find. The beech I used on these does seem to work quite well.

A core from an earlier box provided the raw material for the chess and elm-topped items. The two tops were from interesting off-cuts that I’d saved.

I hope that you like these boxes.

A box designed as a desk tidy for pens and pencils, which also includes a little cubby hole for an eraser. It has a simple lift-off lid (the lid and base has two notches for correct alignment). This intended to grace any desk top and help keep the build up of clutter under control.

The box in millimetres is 250w x 75h x 107d. Its base is of beech (external side surface), pitch pine and oak. The lid is of ash jointed with spalted elm, the latter giving that lovely marbling effect. The little divider is sycamore.

I have used my favourite Danish oil for the restrained low-shine finish, with a final coat of wax polish.

This box is designed for our family’s use, as opposed to anything that might be a gift or possible future sale. It’s had to be rather more ‘designed’ than my stuff usually is, in order to make sure that paper, bottles of ink etc will actually fit in. The fact that it’s only me and my wife who will be examining it has made me more relaxed during its construction, I must say. This box should accommodate and rationalise a lot of the stationery stuff that we have accumulated; we may even be able to find what we want when we want it.

The carcase is oak, dovetailed together with a moulded walnut plinth fitted with mitre joints. Dividers and the lift-out tray are in sycamore. Two different walnut types have been used, basically because I didn’t have enough of one type. In addition, the piece used for the plinth was worm-eaten in one section: this proved impossible to cut out, I have therefore left it in for ‘character’. Reinforcing pins have been used on the mouldings and edgings, particularly where they are fitted to end grain.

Hand tools were used for the vast bulk of tasks, apart from the trusty band saw of course, although I did relent and use the router to cut the plinth mouldings and the shaping on the entirely decorative walnut block attached to the lid.

The finish is three coats of Danish oil, rubbed down between coats, with the final one applied with a nylon pan scourer.

Issues with this box include non-matching ironmongery and the joint tails ending up bigger than the pins, leaving really too much end-grain showing to the front. On the ironmongery, those hinges are difficult to get in Blighty,, never mind in ‘antique’, so they are in inappropriate ‘bright brass’. On the tails, I think that this was something to do with the need to compensate for the bottom edge sitting in the plinth rebate and for the plywood base rebate to emerge from end-grain so that it could be plugged; I still have not worked out how to do a stopped rebate with a 050 multi-plane. The mitre joints needed a little plugging, but this seems to have gone quite well and the plugging is not obvious until up close; I am determined to make myself a mitre shooting board this week, which should solve this problem.

Overall I am very pleased with the way this piece has turned out. Despite the issues raised, these are the best dovetails that I’ve done and fit very tightly. It’s also the first time that I’ve fitted a lock and this has worked quite well. I may standardise on oak and walnut for boxes as this combination does seem to work particularly well.

I was asked for more views of my bumble bee box project, so here they are. The timber is shuttering pine with some oak I had left over, some of which was scrap.

This box’s construction is simple, the sections being butt-jointed and fixed with the brad-nailer. The sections are roughed out on the band saw and then squared on the shooting board. I should have checked the edges for square but didn’t, relying on my supplier to have ripped them adequately, which seemed to work. The felt is lapped over the lid’s edges and then fixed by nailing on the oak lath edges. I pre-drilled the front with the 20mm forstner bit, then drilled the little oak entrance tunnel before nailing it over the pre-drilled hole. Three vent holes were drilled in each side, approx 6mm seemed about right. If ants are likely to be a problem then glue old nylon curtain over the vent holes.

The timber starts off at 140mm wide and 18mm thick. As the lid has to be wider then the main box, 2mm is ripped off the base section. Thus the box is 138mm deep, 250mm long and 158mm high.

The lid is 140mm deep and 252mm long. Its final dimensions are increased by the felt’s thickness and 6mm or so of oak lath. This lid sits on by gravity and should be heavy enough not to blow off.

The entrance tunnel is about 16/18mm deep, 65mm long and 45mm high. Its approx 35mm in from the edge.

Runners are to length and approx 17mm deep and 20mm high. I have used oak for these as they will sit on the ground and need to be a bit more rot resistant.

I hope that this is useful.

Made from rough pine with some scrap oak for the lid sides and runners, this box is intended to help out our natural pollinators come the spring.

Here in England some of our native bumble bees have gone extinct and others are threatened. There’s been a scare about honey bees and colony collapse disorder, but bumbles are actually better pollinators.

Following dimensioning with band saw and shooting board, the box is banged together with the brad nailer. The lid just drops over with the side slats holding that bit of roofing felt down. The 20mm entry hole is reinforced with another piece of scrap oak.

Any woodworker can make one of these in a couple of hours. They are unobtrusive in any garden or yard and can make a real difference to our hard-pressed natural pollinators. Why not knock a couple up from rough stock or scrap? If you have no garden, give a box as a gift to someone who does.

PS. One has to poke a bumble bee in the eye before it will sting.

This was made from a piece of timber found on Blackpool beach at Starr Gate. I posted pictures of this on the site asking for identification and folks told me that it is African mahogany.

The piece was re-sawed to give two usable planks and then hand planed to size. This timber tears out terribly and is very prone to splitting, so working it has been ‘challenging’. I wonder if being soaked in sea water has made this timber slightly brittle. On the other hand, once worked the finish is very beautiful; the surface seems to move as one walks around it. The surface is extremely hard and shrugged off the hand-scrapers, although the No 80 cabinet scraper was more successful; the latter is tricky to use on small sections. I had to resort to hand sanding to get the last imperfections out.

I had meant to make the box in one piece and then saw the top off; however, being a prat, I sawed a section for the lid off each dimensioned timber. Why did I do that? This mistake caused a nightmare: the lid still does not really fit properly and you will notice that its single dovetail is a different size to the rest.

After this and several other mistakes, a reasonable looking box emerged. The lid insert is pitch pine, which gives some grain contrast to the mahogany, but which I hope does not jar. This was fitted by routing out with a rebate cutter and then fixing the pine panel in with hardwood fillets. The base is a thin ply rebated into the sides.

Not my greatest work by any means. Sometimes I think that I’m actually going backwards in terms of skill, and making the same mistakes over and over. However, I do take some pride in making something nice from a found material that would otherwise have gone to waste.

A completed project in situ in the garden. There will be a shed on the rest of the hard standing that you can see.

Although not exactly as per the plan, this bench has turned out ok with a few bodges and disappointments – in other words just like all my other projects. Several of the back slats have turned out rather short, the worst being that I jigged those cuts and am therefore not quite sure how it’s happened.

The oak is a great material; so strong. If you haven’t used it and intend to, make sure that you like sharpening your tools and often. The construction is pegged mortise and tenons. I used a mix of polymite epoxy and Titebond 3 glue (not mixed together). The mortises were hand cut apart from those for the back slats; there are 11 slats making 22 mortises, which I couldn’t stand the thought of and got the router out for a change.

After bodging my way through this, I’m sure that I could now make a better bench in half the time, but at the price of the timber this one will have to do for us.

One design point, the arms have been left over-wide deliberately to make a good rest for one’s G&T (eh what!).

I have also included a pic of the family using the piece for the first time. The wife seems happy enough, but R decides that he really doesn’t want his photo taking. He has decided that the bench is a climbing frame and has been using it as such.

A deceptively tricky box due to the 5 deg angle employed. The timbers are beech and walnut, two of my favourites, with a ply bottom. I do like the clean lines achieved.

I’m not sure what to call the joints, sort of half rebates I suppose. They present a problem of glueing to end grain, the price for that clean front edge appearance, which was got around using the walnut pegs and epoxy glue.

The lid was routed out of a three piece laminate of solid timber using the no 71 routed plane, not an easy job and one which took far longer that I anticipated.

The finish is danish oil followed by a wax polish.

I have waited until I had delivered this guitar before posting it as a project. The instrument certainly seemed to go down well, moreso for coming completely out of the blue.

Here’s a link to my Flickr page for wip photos:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/stanley_clifton/sets/72157607964346066/detail/

There are 81 pics so I hope that they are not too boring.

This has been a very demanding and frankly stressful project: a lot of tasks have had to be done twice and the neck and fretboard are really not good enough, even for a first guitar. Thanks are due to Melvyn Hiscock for his book ‘Make your own electric guitar’ and to Steve Dickie for his excellent video series on You Tube.

Now that I have got the experience, tools and materials in hand, there will be further guitars. In fact the next one is already taking shape. Hopefully this instrument will avoid at least some of the mistakes made on this one. I will be able to use the fretboard cutting jig that I posted a couple of weeks ago.

I hope that you enjoy this post.

Those of us who are spokeshave fans will know that the irons are just a bit tricky to hone. This clamp is designed to help with that by giving more grip and getting the hands away from the whetstone’s surface. I have been meaning to build a clamp like this for a while and was prompted by buying a little spokeshave from a car boot sale last weekend, which turns out to be a ‘sweetheart’ Stanley no 64.

The handle is oak and I have rasped out some thumb and finger grips to enable a really good hold. Ash is used for the fixed plate, while another slice of oak provides the moving plate. The clamping bolts are really for roofing and are provided with additional washer and wing nuts to give rapid adjustment and final tightening. The little wedge is of oak and is the only thing glued (with Titebond 3). This is because the wedge would not screw on dry, so I fixed one end and then glued and clamped it in the correct position.

This wedge is cut at 28 degrees. Thus, if the clamp is placed on the whetstone with the wedge down, the iron is fixed in the clamp square and just short of the whetstone surface. Then when the iron’s edge is tipped forward onto the whetstone, a honing angle of approximately 30 degrees will be achieved and the wedge will be lifted clear. This should ensure that the iron can only wobble out in one direction. That’s the theory.

Everything in this clamp is from the scrap bag apart from the metal fittings and glue.

I hope that this is useful to everyone.

A box made as a thank you present for someone who has been helping me at work.

The sides are spalted elm with a waney edge and worm holes; kiln drying should have seen off the worms. The ends, legs and top are walnut. Base is plywood. The piece is part fixed with beech pegs, which I now wish I’d made smaller and from a slightly softer timber.

Generally the construction is mortise and tenon glued up with epoxy resin adhesive (taking no chances). The pegs were used due to the difficulty of glueing onto end grain, particularly as the elm’s spalting had gone just a little too far and the timber kept crumbling away. The hidden hinges are just dowel. A marking gauge and no 4 plane with back up from a block plane was used to form the panel style relief on the lid.

Finish is Danish oil cut bcak with wire wool and wax polished. The piece was supposed to be more ‘rustic’ than it is, so I’ve effectively spoilt it against my original concept by over finishing. Oh well – I still think that it looks ok!

Another challenging piece that was enjoyable to make and from which I have learnt a lot. I hope that Hazel likes it.

I have been making an electric guitar and will be posting a link to photos of this project shortly, when it is finally complete.

During that process I knocked up a little cutting jig that was supposed to help me cut the fret slots square, which turned out to be completely inadequate resulting in mis cut frets out of square. So, I resolved to develop a better jig and that’s what your looking at here.Yes it’s crude but it’s not furniture and will live in the workshop, so I don’t really care what it looks like as long as it does the job.

I hope that its working concept is fairly self explanatory. One of the pics shows the relevant saw for reference. There is a rosewood fretboard blank clamped in for further reference. The number of these clamps may look over the top, but the intention of this is that the boad will be held by three clamps at all times as it is moved past the cutting slot. The two clamps close to the cutting slot are rather too close for comfort, but I want the piece clamped very securely either side of the cut and this arrangement will do this.

Materials are 19mm ply with bracing and fences of ash, beech and a little bit of reclaimed mahogany. The plywood has been stood around for a while and has warped slightly; this is the reason for the over-the-top bracing on the rear side. I think that the warp is coming out: I will be clamping this to the workbench with care, but in practise I don’t think that it’s a problem.

Now for some more guitar projects. I am intending to make a tele pattern with humbucker pick ups and the, hopefully feeling that I’m starting to get the hang of this, and then a Les Paul junior inspired guitar for myself. Having bought a lot of specialist tools I am not giving up guitar making now, in fact it’s starting to feel a bit like the Hotel California. Anyway this jig should make getting the crucial fret slots right a lot easier.

I received a brief for my mother-in-law’s Christmas present, a jewellery box designed to display necklace chains. Here is the finished result.

The main carcase is in brown oak with the plinth and crown in walnut. Small fittings are ebony. The door is beech framed with walnut and with walnut slips. It’s a plywood back rebated in. It’s not possible to see the hanging system, but this is made of hickory strips drilled and then cut on the bandsaw to make hooks, which seems to work ok. The finish is three coats of Danish oil rubbed down hard between.

The sections of this piece did not want to come square despite using a shooting board, but the glue up went reasonably ok. I was going to rout the plinth sections, but messed this up finally resorting to an old moulding plane of my Dad’s and then gradually planing the sections together (there was insufficient timber length to do the moulding and then cut the four lengths from one piece).

I’m most pleased with the timber choice, which I think has worked quite well. Perhaps the coarse grained oak and the fine grained beech don’t quite fit, but everything seems to like that walnut. This is the first time that I’ve used ebony and it felt good, almost like plastic.

The piece was meant to have surface pinned hinges, but this is Blackpool so I’ve yet to locate the pins. I fell back on some very nice butt hinges (Rutlands) but of course I’d glued up without cutting the mortises. The chisel and no 722 router plane just enabled me to work in these mortises and I think that the hinges look ok. Just try not to notice that the door edge got over planed getting it to fit.

Overall a tricky little job with several set backs, but all the more satisfying when it has come together at the end. There’s no guarantee that the mother-in-law will like it; an earlier job I did for her has been squandered. Hi ho – families eh!

Greetings from relatively sunny Blackpool, England.

This project is very similar to Leanne’s box apart from the addition of oak and elm to the timber mix, different proportions, different lid style and a metal handle (cost more than everything else combined). So maybe not too similar then.

Although beautiful, this beech timber had a number of shakes, which I was unable to remove or really fill properly. The cutting waste to minimise the impact of these shakes was considerable. However, with the shakes placed inside the piece, there is little visual effect.

Prior to finishing the piece was not sanded, with the cabinet scrapers being used instead; I think that this gives a superior finish that brings out the timber’s full quality. The finish itself is three coats of Danish oil, rubbed down hard, with two coats of paste wax.

I hope that you like looking at this piece. It is a Christmas present for two dear friends.