Well my students helped to produce another winner. This year the club that sponsors the contest diversified and created categories. We were the “most festive”. I have heard through the grapevine that others were wining that we use power tools!

If you have seen National Lampoon’s Christmas vacation, all of this makes sense to you. pic 2- tree breaking out the front window, 3-squirrel in the tree when the first tree burns up and he gets a replacement from the front yard, 4- the cat that chewed on the electrical wire.

5-6 were our little flare. We had to go with a “warrior holiday” which is our logo to qualify for the contest. So the stockings are all the principals in the building. Also the decoration on the top in pic 1 is the club’s diamond logo in lights. A little kiss up I know. But i was told, people are now expecting this level of display from us, especially since I do the drama play sets too.

Had some myrtle wood leftover that was given to me by my wife’s grandfather. So we chose to try out a new kit at PSI.

Only problem is the brush stem diameter is smaller than the chrome cap diameter. And for some reason the superglue (CA) is not curing. The metal cap is optional, so next time I will just not get it and drill the appropriate hole to mount in handle.

Overall a successful project and I’m sure it will be a welcomed gift. Although he probably wont use it, just like the pens I made for him. Says they’re too good to use. Go figure!

Each year the football coach at my school gives the seniors an award plaque. The only thing missing from my photo is the brass plaque with their individual stats. The toughest part is cutting the helmets in 2 pieces. Took a trim saw and 2 people. Any suggestions for next year would be welcomed.

We use helmets that are not re-certified to use on the field for next year. good way to recycle something that would end up in the garbage.

This year was the rebuilding year, last year there were 20 plaques made. This year only 6. Last 2 years before this one, made it to state semi finals. This year, not the same luck. Give it a year or 2.

The home ec room at the high school where I teach was in need of new cabinets. This all started off intended to be a class project. I was told the cost of $2800 was high in the administration’s opinion. I told them that yes indeed it could be done cheaper with store bought cabinets. However we would use 3/4” prefinished maple ply for the box construction and dovetail all the drawer boxes. That was September/October.

May rolled around and out of the blue I was asked what it would take to get the kitchens redone over the summer. I said all 5 would be out of the question, 2 or 3 of the kitchens would be doable with help. Now lumber had gone up a little, and they were willing to pay labor. The cost of each kitchen was now $5000. They said go ahead and do 2 of them. Go figure.

6 weeks later, working 25-30 hours each week. Basically 9-3, M-Th, we got it done. Ran into a few surprises along the way, plumbing and electrical that needed to be moved. It was also on a block wall, so the countertop had to have a boxed backsplash to accommodate.

Flat panel doors with concealed hinges, golden oak stain (actually called #252 from the supplier we use). Prefinished 3/4” maple ply for the cases. Solid oak face frames pocket screwed together. Prefinished drawer sides, dovetailed on front corners and rabbeted back corners with prefinished 1/4” ply bottoms. Locks installed on all doors and drawers.

The oak wall that is shown in the 2nd pic is taken from the doorway to the room. Originally it was just going to be a sheet of 3/4” oak plywood. We knew it need a little more. As I was figuring out the dimensions for the frame and panel look, the idea of a logo in the middle came to me.

Found out that lacquer and vinyl don’t work so well together AFTER spraying the decal with lacquer. 20 min later it was all bubbled up. Had to scrape it off, resand, refinish, get a new decal, then use water based poly. There is so much poly on the wall, you can barely feel the decal.

Obviously the last pic is what we started with. That pic makes them look good. Basically they were rusted, cheap drawer slides, metal cabinets that were bent, dinged up, didn’t function properly, ect.

Tried a new project on the lathe. This was my first one, the second screwdriver was better, it went to my wife’s grandfather who gave me a bunch of turning wood. Forgot to get a picture of it, darn.

I was going to offer this as an alternative to pen making for my students for the lathe unit. I will offer this as a level 2 project. Pens and mini baseball bats are what I consider level 1 projects.

This project is not difficult to make, it just has to be right. The diameter of the tenon, length of the tenon, and the diameter at the end of the handle for the end cap.

On the first one I didn’t cut inward and there is a little crown, so the cap doesn’t sit flat. The second kit, I corrected this and had better success.

The wood is cherry. There are 5 coats of Mylands friction polish applied.

These pens were made for my mother-in law after years of promising her one. I was introduced to pen turning in 1998 when I first started teaching. It was my intent to make family pens for Christmas that year. Didn’t get that accomplished, so I wrapped up a regular pen with an IOU.

I then moved schools and no longer had access to a lathe. Finally in the last couple of years, teaching woodworking again, I am back into pen turning. My 6 year old son loves to help also.

Sanded to 600grit with traditional sandpaper
One coat of mylands friction polish applied with lathe off and allowed to dry completely.
7-8 more additional coats applied with lathe running, then buffed off. Feels glass smooth

My first attempt at an inlay pen. Obviously a little nervous at $24 for the kit about blowing it out. But thanks to other LJ’s and their tips I was successful.

Sanded to 600grit with traditional sandpaper, then used up to about 2500-3200 from the plastic sanding kits
One coat of mylands friction polish applied with lathe off and allowed to dry completely.
7-8 more additional coats applied with lathe running, then buffed off. Feels glass smooth

I used to use shellawax since that came with the starter kits, however it wears off after time. Once introduced to mylands at the woodworking show, I was hooked. The other advice I was given was to apply the first coat with the lathe off and let it dry, this seals the wood.

To pass on what I learned. Work patiently and use SHARP tools. I use the carbide tip cutter from Craft USA. That tool is a blessing or a nightmare depending on how patient and gentle you are.

It has been a while since I have done turning. Most of it due to me teaching more construction classes than woodworking. But the kids sure love it. Did my first acrylic pens, have to say I am a true woodworker and still prefer the wood pens, but there sure are some pertee acrylics out there.

Best of all, my soon to be 6 year old loves turning pens. He gets to do most of the roughing, sanding and assembly. He just quite hasn’t grasped the fine touches of the final cuts. I let him try to do a wood pen all the way, and unfortunately he went too deep. It will all come with experience.

Can’t wait to take him to the wood show next month. My only fear is that there will be a great deal on a jet mini lathe. Right now, don’t have the extra $$ to spend on toys. What a feeling in a father’s heart when his son wants a lathe for Christmas next year. He actually said that!

Acrylic pens: black and orange / blue pearl, red, white and black.
Wood Pens: Rosewood, Myrtle wood

Sorry for quality, camera phone pics

It’s that time of year again for decorating. After a tie in last year’s competition because of a technical victory, my students were ready for a good old fashioned “snow ball fight” if that’s what it came down to.

This year’s theme was decorate by subject and you must creatively use the DECA diamond logo in your display. That theme was pretty easy to come by since we are woodshop, we made santa’s workshop. We didn’t stop there. We made a mantle around a 19 in tv which played a dvd of a fireplace. We used a moving mickey in a santa coat working at a workbench with lightup tools. Finally we had a REAL WORKING TRAIN! moving in the soffit, in and out of our room. We also had holiday music playing and lights, of course.

Our freshman class was represented by the hand routered signs. The first year woods class has to make a picture frame in class, which was represented by the diamond logo frame with lights. Our second year woods class was represented by the fireplace mantle and crown molding. Our drafting class was represented with the diamond logo plan on the wall behind the Mickey figure. Finally our construction class was represented by the pvc pipe candy canes.

We won the competition, 7-6 votes. The second place was the counselors’ office that used trash bags to create a snow globe with a 5ft santa inside and a leaf blower to blow packing peanuts around inside of it. However if you blew it around too much the bags fell down. At least ours stood the test of the elements. Now the counselors are challenging us to best 2 out of 3. No problem, we already are planning next year’s design.

This is a fun project for my students, gets the chance to break up the “precision’ of a woodworking project. It also gets the shop program noticed since only about 10% of our school’s population is enrolled in a shop class each year.

Next year’s theme: GRISWOLD

If you know what I mean

My son starts school an hour after I do, but I lucked out and have 2nd hour planning time so I am able to walk him up to school. Where I teach and his school are on the same campus, lucky for us. Anyways, he sits through my freshman class which at the end of the first semester, they make hand routered signs. My son has really taking a liking to these and wanted to try it for himself. So we decided to make one for his teacher and one for his grandpa. The grandpa one will be posted after christmas, just in case!

I already owned a nice dremel tool and I knew that there was a router base attachment for it. I didn’t really think a 5 year old was ready for a full size porter cable router just yet. After purchasing the router base, go figure, my dremel is too new or not the right type for the router base. So now back to the store to get another dremel. After setting it up, I am glad I have 2 separate dremels. It is not difficult, just tedius, and this one is dedicated to the router base.

All I can say is his eye-hand coordination is pretty good, and he has impressed the freshman students in my class.

For those that want to know how I do this, here goes:

I make a pattern using word and make it half the length that I want it to be on the sign and half the height. I then take it to the copier at school and 200% it onto 11×17 paper. We use 8×18 pieces of wood so that it fits just right on the board. I use old fashioned carbon paper (it is a sign of the times when my students don’t know that carbon paper is – or am I just getting old?) and transfer the pattern to the board.

Router out the pattern using choice of a round nose, straight, or a v-groove bit. Paint the letter and design, then send it through the planer to shave off the top layer or sand it off with 60 grit sandpaper if I feel the planer would break off narrow pieces. It is then finished with spray on lacquer.

As we all know the digital revolution is upon us. So as with the switch, Grandma got a new TV. She used to have the console style. She had this nice sofa table to set is on, but a place to set the vcr/dvd player and store her videos was now lacking. So when I was home over memorial day, we drew this up.

All oak, 3/4 ply and solid facing, full extension drawer slides. The bottom drawers have a divider for 2 rows of dvds. The table was purchased from Target. I needed a bag to hyperventilate for a second when I found out Grandma did that, but then realized I live 400 miles away and can’t always make anything. And I sure as heck would not have built the table for $89. (Damn cheap manufactured crap anyway) But that is a whole other issue.

The toughest challenge was getting a close stain via mail and photos. Turned out pretty good. Relatives give it the thumbs up too.

My dad bought a 60+ year old home in our old neighborhood for a rental. It was definitely a fixer upper. It was originally built as a house, but 25-30years ago it was turned into a duplex with a real small kitchen upstairs. The space between the front of the sink cabinet and the wall is about 60inches. Add a fridge and stove on that wall and it makes for a narrow walkway. Which is the only way to get downstairs.

Dad decided to turn it back into a house. To take advantage of the kitchen area upstairs, he got rid of the stove and full size fridge and just put in a kitchenette with a microwave cabinet and an under counter dorm fridge. Due to the non standard size, I had to build all the cabinets. The toughest part was being 400 miles away and only getting to measure it once. Actually dad had to go back and recheck a couple of measurements, but all in all it turned out.

I will get pics sometime of the downstairs kitchen also, which some are standard HD off the shelf, but some are custom also because of that chimney goes down into the lower kitchen also.

Can you tell I like sketchup?

Once the set building was finished, time to get on with Grandpa’s blanket chest. I built the cedar one for a cousin’s wedding, Grandpa wanted me to make him on with some special wood he got from the NW. He also said to use 3 or 4 different types of wood also.

The special wood is myrtle wood. I also used maple, walnut and oak. The 5th wood is cedar, which lines the inside of the box. Also got to try my hand at resawing.

All of the myrtle pieces were about 6-7” wide and 24-28 inches long. I scratched my head and said, “how am I going to build a blanket chest from just this?” Then the resawn panel idea came to me.

The top was one panel I couldn’t bring myself to cut apart after it was resawn. I had originally picked out another piece for the top, now they went to the back, go figure.

Another trick I did was glue a 3/8” strip of maple to the edge of the oak for the frame. The cope and stick joint then coped the maple section and created a border around the myrtle panels. Although this is a little difficult to see in the photos.

The overall box is something like, 18” tall, 18” deep, and 32” long.

Here is our fall play set for the Diary of Anne Franke. This set involved nearly 50 sheets of plywood, 3 levels and nearly 800 square feet of stage. In fact the director even said the set was larger than the real annex. He tried to keep it as close as possible to the real thing including color schemes, but had to make it a little wider for theatrical reasons so that actors wouldn’t have their backs to the audience.

About half of this set didn’t exist one month before the show. We had to build 14 platforms (2×4frames with 3/4 ply) and 12 wall flats (1×3 wall with luan), in addition to the base coat paint, texture paint, and woodgraining.

This set took approximately 40 hours on stage by myself, a student teacher, and several student actors and crews. Who knows how many man hours actually went into it?

This is what has been keeping me in the workshop, but also killing me in the workshop at the same time. It is our school’s production of Disney’s Beauty and the Beast. The castle is 28feet long, 16feet tall, and 4 ft deep, plus a 8ft run on the grand stairs,making a total of 12ft deep. That was always on stage, but behind the middle black curtain during the town scenes.

The tavern is a rolling 6pc set with a theatrical fireplace that uses lights, fans, and a cloth to simulate a flame. The main tavern is 20ft long, and is 11ft tall at the peak. The Bar is 2 pcs that are 8ft long and then there is Gastan’s chair/throne. I didn’t build the chair, it was borrowed from another school. All of that was set up in approximately 30 seconds twice per show for 4 shows.

Chips cart is a 3/4 plywood frame, pocket screwed together with a painted luan side on casters. The bottom is open so the actor can “Flinstone it” as the director called it. The “headdress is borrowed” and my son was trying on the costume.

We had an audience of 1350, not too bad. Considering our attendance in the fall for Diary of Anne Franke was about 500.

The non-structural wall parts of the set are 1×3 wall “flats” with a sheet of luan. The structural walls are 2×4 studs 24” on center with luan sheeting. We build in 4×8 sections to keep it modular and reusable.

It took 2 months to build with about 12-15 hours after school each week with about 6-10 people working (adds up to about 100 hours per week) We call it a 3D puzzle since we do not actually get to set it up until the week before performances. It took about 12-16 hours on stage to assemble with approximately 20-30 actors, crew, and parent volunteers. The sad thing, it was all taken down 8 days later in 2 1/2 hours and is now back in storage awaiting a new paint job for next fall.

We are expecting child #2 in May, so it is time to consolidate our boy’s separate toy room and bedrooms into one room. A while back I built a hunter green tall dresser with clearcoated knotty pine drawer fronts for my wife that now resides in our basement. Our son informs us that he does not want the green dresser with “rotten” wood. He thinks the knotty pine is rotten because of the look. Besides he also wants a blue dresser. I also pointed out to my wife that he would not be able to reach any higher than the second drawer for a while anyways.

I am one to plan almost every detail for a project. My weekend plans consisted of driving 12 hours one way this weekend to pickup my new enclosed trailer in Georgia. However, when I went to to make the final payment on Friday just hours before I was to depart, I was informed that it was a week to 10 days behind schedule. So here I am with a shop, a long 3-day weekend, and no plans.

My wife liked the look and proportions of the changing table I built for the nursery in 04 for the first new baby. I thought, this is easy then. I opened up the plans on my CAD program and just cut off the upright door. This way the drawers are the same size as he currently uses. Issue solved, I have plans and time in the workshop!

So all of this was being discussed at 9:30am on Saturday morning. At 11:00 am we were stopping at Burger King to pickup lunch after the home depot plywood purchase. 4:00pm on Saturday, I called my wife and told her it was time to pick out paint, I had the plywood box constructed. We went to dinner, lowes, and then I went back to the shop to paint the project and let it dry overnight. We used Valspar enamel paint.

Sunday morning I returned to the shop, scraped the glue off the panels for the drawer front and top. Routered and stained them. While the stain was drying, I worked on the drawer boxes. Once the stain was dry I sprayed lacquer. Finally was able to load up to take home about 4pm.

Not bad for 2 days!

It is sanded birch ply from HD, poplar face frame, red oak drawer fronts, top and base trim. The drawers are 5/8 MDF with a paper substrate applied similar to melamine. Full extension drawer slides.

Project dim are 36” tall, 36” wide, 18” deep.

Here is my woodworking classes’ entry into our schools door decorating contest. We have an unfair advantage that I will exploit to win (anything to win is almost my motto). We are an outbuilding that was connected last year by a corridor, most of the doors in the school open up into the hallway, typical, so teachers are limited to a small area around their door and it is difficult for most to work in more than just a 2d plane. But what the hey, I take every advantage I can to win, right!

When I taught middle school shop, I had a display cabinet that I could put my little tree with it’s tape measure garland and keychain tapes and mini spring clamps for ornaments in so that the kids would not mess with it.

I rec’d the email from the door decorating sponsor and my first reaction was, “that silly door decorating contest, people are just going to put wrapping paper on their doors again” I then headed up to check my mailbox and as I came back, something hit me and I came up with the santa’s workshop entrance idea. I pitched it to the kids and they went to town.

THere are even speakers in the ceiling which run to my office and to finish it off, I have “a toolbox Christmas” playng, where most of the music is created by tools.

My wife even loved it enough to use it as our christmas card pic!

This is the other side of the basement family room of the friend/co-worker’s family basement. I tried to convince them to let me build the mantle so it is an exact match to the bookshelves. However they wanted this kit. Can’t say they did a bad job of picking out a matching stain. Matching colors on 2 types of woods is not always that easy. Fireplace is cherry and bookshelf is oak.

Just a disclaimer, I didn’t build the TV either.

A friend and co-worker asked me to help him out with his dad’s basement bar this summer. He now admits what he was really asking was for him to help me do his dad’s basement bar. After all he is the math teacher and I am the shop teacher.

We replaced a 2×2 framed structure with T-111 siding.

Cabinets were built from prefinished maple ply, with oak face frames and raised panel doors. It is so nice to have a spindle line drill. This was the first project I was able to use it on. The front panel is 104” long and 40” tall. It required about 50 bd ft of oak. Each panel was made from a select stock approx 8” wide and 9ft long. Then add the framing material. It took 3 of us to glue the 13 pc monstrosicity together.

Had a lot of fun and frustration during the project. But always worth it in the end.

Still waiting on Dewalt to call me. I entered this project in the top 17 trim carpenter project. Just checked my phone again, no messages. nope, not now either. better luck next time I guess.

Saw this in a book at lowes. Wife liked the look, got rid of an old rusty shelf. If the house doesn’t sell, more of the wall may get covered. Project consists of 1/4” birch plywood with a couple coats of poly. Each row is 1 1/2 inches of 1/4” masonite with 3/4” x 4” birch plywood. Each row is 6” apart. Brackets consist of 1/4” birch ply that is 4” tall with 3/4” x 1 1/2” support with the shelf or holder. Have the helmet shelf and some other holders yet to make. Also seen other versions of this in shop organization also.