Woodworking
I am an amateur woodworker. I primarily use handtools (pictured on the left), and enjoy restoring vintage tools as well. It's incredible how well a hundred year old tool works after a little care. I learned woodworking by watching Youtube videos and working / experimenting with wood. For anyone who's interested in learning handtool woodworking, I'd recommend checking out Paul Sellers.
Anyway, the goal of this page is to document a selection of my woodworking projects. I'll try to keep it in roughly chronological order and add new ones as I complete them. I'll also add older projects over time. Maybe one day we'll even make it to the first project, the hangboard stand a.k.a. Python's guillotine. Scroll down to see more!
This is my workbench. It measures roughly 4' x 1.5'. It's on the smaller side, but that's what you get with the space restrictions. Our apartment has a long hallway that is about 3' wide. Noone wants an empty hallway that is wasting valuable square footage in a small apartment, so I put it to use. Luckly, we can bypass part of the hallway, so the workbench is not blocking access to the bedroom.
When I first started, I used to work on the floor, on a piece of 2x8 lumber that was raised about 8 inches from the floor. I made collapsible saw horses (used as legs here) to raise that, which later turned into this with the addition of the benchtop and a lot of reinforcement. It does great job for it's size!
This is my lumber rack, both a woodworking project and part of the workshop. I was originally storing lumber on the floor, stacked on each other, but as anyone can imagine, that wasn't very practical. After a trip to the lumberyard, where I bought way too much wood to store on the floor, I had to find a better way to store my wood. So, I made this!
Wood used: Mostly Red Oak with a tiny bit of Alder (I ran out of Red Oak :)).
This is a foldable cutting board with a knife in it. We're planning to use it for picnics and camping trips.
Wood used: Alder.
Date: January 2021
Wooden rings.
The first picture is the one I made for my fiancee to wear at work. Made from Red Oak.
The second picture is for myself. She wanted to get me a silicone one, figuring that I wouldn't want a metal one. I figured making one out of wood was more fun. This one is from Sapele.
The last picture is from an evening where I invited two friends over for some woodworking. I figured making rings would be a fun and easy project. With a little bit of instruction, they did a great job. Those are also from Sapele.
Date: January 2021
Birdie is an old lady that loves sleeping. But she needs a little help getting on the bed. So, I made her some stairs! To be fair, she had to wait a loooong time for me to make these. I first sketched the plans about 6 months ago, and the pieces spent months just sitting under the workbench, without me doing anything to them. To date, this is the most number of joinery that I cut for a single project. There are a total of 15 pieces in there, with 16 mortise & tenon, 4 bridal and 4 housing dado joints. It is currently held together without any glue. Bonus picture of Birdie included!
Wood used: The base is from Ash, the legs are from White Oak, the middle step is Hard Maple and the other two are Soft Maple.
Date: January 2021, planned back in June 2020.
I enjoy working on small projects like these. I can get a cutting board like this together with 2-3 hours of effort, which makes it a great gift. I made this cutting board as a gift for a friend that we were going to spend the New Years with. I made an identical one a short while ago as a gift for a newly wed couple as well. The spatula was for our use.
Wood used: Cutting board is Soft Maple, spatula is Walnut.
Date: December 2020
Some shop improvement. I made a little rack for my marking gauges, and a thing (not sure what it'd be called) for the scrapers.
Wood used: Marking gauge rack is Walnut. The other one is some sort of softwood, Spruce, Pine, Fir?
Date: December 2020
Upgraded saw storage. Part of my saws used to be hanging on screws on this tool wall. This was taking too much space, so the rest had to sit on a magnetic strip by the workbench. I decided to try out using magnets glued into pieces of wood to hang them vertically, and it worked great! In about 2/3s of the space half of my saws used to sit, I now have all of them. It's also super convenient to just pull them off the magnets.
Wood used: A bunch of scraps, some Ash (none visible in the picture).
Date: December 2020
A kuksa! It is apparently a traditional Scandinavian drinking cup. A friend showed me pictures of these, so I made my own version as a gift of him.
Wood used: Alder.
Date: December 2020
Another cutting board, made as a gift for a friend.
Wood used: Cherry
Date: December 2020
A small bowl and a ladle I made.
I made the bowl because I wanted to play around with my new toy, the gouge. I actually submitted a short article documenting the process to Highland Woodworking's Wood News, which I will link here once it is published.
Edit: It is finally published!: link.
The ladle is a funny story. I left a bad review on a poor quality carving gouge on amazon a long time ago. They sent me another gouge and a block of basswood out of blue months later. (The gouge was still low quality. I ended up buying a good one and made the bowl with that.)
Wood used: Ladle is Basswood, bowl is Alder.
Date: November 2020.