Mandy's mirror......

Now that xmas is over I can post the final pics of the mirror I made for daughter #2. I don't have to worry about her looking at my blog and seeing what Santa was bringing her.

I thought at first I had made this a little too low but you can see yourself full view.

mirrors tilts and stays

Full view comes with a tilt (that stays put) and you stand back about 3-4 feet. Most of the ones I saw on line had the bottom of the mirror up off the ground about a foot or more. According to what daughter #1 told me, you have to be able to see your shoes.

I think that this turned out pretty well for a hand made project. The only machine cuts I made were rip cuts. I also like how the stain came out. Just enough to make it black but you can still make out the grain of the wood. It's still waiting for daughter #2 to come and take it home with her.

accidental woodworker

"I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work."
Thomas A Edison

what's planned for 2013......

I have a bad chest cold so I couldn't do anything in the shop today. I feel a little light headed standing up and I don't what to chance anything, even if I am using hand tools. I have to cough carefully because if I just let it go, for some reason my hip will start singing songs to me.

Not exactly the way I wanted to end this year but "stercus accidit".

I went down into the shop and looked around and I was looking at my  piles of wood for my up coming projects and I was feeling a little down because I wasn't woodworking. Some of these I have had hanging around for while because it is very easy for me to go off on a tangent doing something different.

new vise

I bought this vise back in May and I am ready now to put it on. I am going to take off the shoulder vise replace it with this. The more I do hand tool woodworking the more I dislike this vise. It is very good for doing dovetails but that is a small percentage of the woodworking I do.  This vise has a swivel action to it so it is impossible to clamp anything small in it because of that.

I've been following Paul Sellers for a while now and I like how he uses the vise on his workbench. How he uses it, I can see myself using it in the same way. I just need to get in on my workbench to see if it'll make me a happy camper too.


Now that xmas is over and I don't have any more Santa projects to complete, this is the number 1 project for the new year. Besides replacing the vise, I want to put a couple of more drawers underneath the bottom rails. I have one drawer there already and I find it to be very handy. So 3 drawers should make so happy I'll wet myself.

it's not just a piece of cardboard

This cardboard is protecting a 42" diameter piece of 3/8 glass that my last job was throwing away. As I was a dumpster diving champion 3 years straight, I snagged it. I have had it now for about 6 years. I would like to make a round table to use this on but my wife isn't a round table kind of gal. Maybe I can make it for daughter #1. I haven't made a big round table yet but if and when I do, it'll be getting this glass as a top. It's an itch I've had for a while that I can't scratch.

1/2" oak and pine stash

I was on a tote making binge lately. That desire has cooled a tad but if it flames up again I have this stash to feed the fire. I have enough stock here to make 8 of them. I don't need them and I don't have anyone to give them away to neither. I'll let this pile rest here for a while and I'll probably make more when I don't have anything else to do.

pine on the right is for the next project

I bought this pine stock to make a cabinet out of it. The twist is I plan on doing it all by hand, no machine work at all. I've been reviewing my Graham Blackburn video on making a paneled door by hand and I think I'm ready to tackle this too.

cherry cabinet and shelves in the boneyard

pine cabinet and a poplar one in the back

I don't need another cabinet. I have 3 here that I can't give away. but this one will be hand made where as these 3 weren't.

future clock

I have been playing with this idea for a few years now. I don't have a lathe so I've been thinking of some other way to do this. I've searched the web and I can't find anyone selling small round blanks that I could use. I can get the outside roundish with planes and files but it's how do I get the inside of it round too.  This is a good exercise to keep the brain bucket overflowing with weird ideas.

poplar stash

I have no ideas what I'll use this poplar for. I bought it because it was on sale, I had the money, and I like poplar. I'll use a piece for the face on my vise but the rest will probably sit here and season for a while.

sofa table

I made this sofa table back in 1995 and I just found out that the wife doesn't like it. It's ash for the two horizontal surfaces and the legs and rails are red oak. The big plan here is to refinish the top and bottom shelves and sell it. This will interesting as I hate to refinish but if I do it right and use some grain filler with some stain, I might be able to improve it.

I am happy with my progress in using hand tools for my woodworking. I can see a definite improvement looking back. I would like to get rid of my tablesaw but before I do that I would love to find a Barnes (or other mfg) hand powered ripping table saw. Ripping cuts are what I do the most on the table saw. 99% of the other cuts, I've been doing them with hand saws.

I have a few things to do that will keep me amused during the winter months. And the way I work I'm sure I'll see something on some blog that I will have to try and make then and now.

accidental woodworker

"I tried to be reasonable, I didn't like it"
Clint Eastwood

knob done, finish next.......

 I got a curve throw at me right over the plate today.  Almost 2 years to the day that I got it, it started acting up. I was all done with the project except for the finish and I was upstairs filling my pie hole with my favorite chinese and poof my hip said hello. It decided to introduce me to excruciating pain of kind I have never experienced before. It didn't hurt like this when I got it installed.

For about an hour I couldn't walk or sit and then the pain toned down a tad and I was able to walk. My hip is still hurting like hell and I wonder if the chest cold I caught thursday and the medicine I took for it is the cause of the problem. Not being able to do any woodworking will make me a very unhappy camper. But if that is so, I'll use the time to catch up on my reading.

lid and knob

This is what I got done before the hip started acting up. I marked the center line on the lid and the knob. I am going to put in 3/8" square standoffs because that is the size of the bit in my mortise machine.

re did my lines

I had the center lines marked on both pieces but I couldn't mark the knob onto the top. I had to extend the lines and next batter is making the mortises.

mortises done - cleaning them up is next

removing my lay out lines

After I removed my lines I re-did the bottom edges, rounded them over a tad bit more.

planed a piece of 1/2" white oak down to 3/8"

will it go together?

The hole on the right is a teeny weeny bit too close to the mortise on the left. It'll go together and no one will notice it.

dry fit is ok

glued the posts in with hide glue

I have already got 5 coats of my Crystal Lac grain filler on the red oak box and I'm putting it on the lid too. I have plenty of time of think of whether or not I want to dye it first. The only shellac I have is questionable so I'll probably put some wipe on finish I have left over from my desk.

My box here is nothing compared to Andrew Crawford's Boxes from across the pond. This is the guy that makes the smart hinge. It's pricey but I think it's worth the cost for a special box. Andrew's boxes are works of art and mine is plain and simple. Eventually I would like to make a box like he does.

oak tote two days later

the split hasn't changed

I wish this hadn't split on me

I like the black stains on the sides and the angled end panels are a better look than my rounded top corners. I'm going to use this as a catch on my bench to try and get a handle on the clutter I have all over it.

accidental woodworker

"Mistakes are the portals of discovery"
James Joyce

last project of 2012.......

This is most likely going to be the last project that I will do in 2012.  I don't have any other projects in the "must do right now" column. However, I am going to do some surgery on my current workbench. I bought a new vise some time back and now is a good time to install it. I'll finish my last project and start on that.

my first chisel box

I wanted the chisel box to look good and be made out of a hardwood and I think oak was a good choice. Unfortunately for me, I took my interior measurements with the smallest chisel in the set. The 1" chisel wouldn't fit so I have to find another use for this box.

I glued up a piece of white oak to use for a top, it's leaning against my tote. I wanted to use red oak but I didn't have 3/4 stock. It was either use white oak or poplar and white oak won.

have to fix some rocking first

 I picked the two high corners and I planed a few swipes off of them and checked it. I kept at this until I got no more rocking and the box laid flat on the workbench.

lid cut and trimmed to fit

scored the cross grain ends before rabbeting

fixing my rabbets

My rabbets came out square and flat. Two of the corners came out even and two were a little off. I'm fixing the didn't come out even corners with my tenon plane. The two corners that were off were the far side starting points. I wasn't maintaining even pressure throughout the planing but I seem to have gotten a handle on getting the rabbets square. I'll take the 2 out of 4 for now and work on getting all 4.

moment of truth coming - will it fit?

it fits the box both ways

I had set the rabbet plane for a 1/2" by using a piece of scrap 1/2" red oak. The lid fits almost dead nuts end to end and is about a 1/16" off on the side to side. I hadn't planned on that as I thought I was going to be a tad tight and I would doing some trimming. It worked out in my favor here as the looseness is in the part of the top that will expand and contract.

chamfered the top

I used my #3 and small block plane to do the chamfers all around. I laid out my pencil lines and planed down to them. I did pretty good as my lines run out right to the corners. This is why I wanted to use a 3/4 thick top - so I could put a rabbet on the bottom and still have some meat to chamfer the four edges on the top.

I looked up chamfer and bevel in the QED and I looked them up on line. Both terms are used for meaning the same thing. I went with chamfer here because all the definitions for it stated it was usually a 45 degree angle connecting two sides. That's basically what I have here - an angle connecting the top (side one) with the edge (side two). If you don't like my use of chamfer feel free to use bevel.

I'm going to saw this without a knife wall

just a tad off on the bottom

A bad pic because I don't know how to take close ups but there is a tiny bit of my marking gauge line left. Other then this, my cut is almost square and plumb top to bottom and edge to edge.

making a lid knob

I just eyeballed this for length and width. I'm going into this blind and making it up as I go. I have an idea of what I want, we'll see how it comes out. I sawed the ends off at a 45 degree angle. There is no way that I could do this with a plane on such a narrow piece.

knob done

I planed the two sides at a 45 degree angle also. I used my small plane to get the lines to run out to the corners. I put a slight round over on the bottom of the knob because you'll be grabbing this to take the top off. Square white oak edges will cut you as good as a knife will. I have to figure out some way to attach it to the top. I'm leaning in the direction of using a couple of 1/4" square stand offs. I'll give that a try tomorrow, I'm calling it quits for tonight.

accidental woodworker

"Success consists of going from failure to failure without a loss of enthusiasm."
Winston Churchill

quick project for the wife......

My wife asked me last night if I could make something for her and after looking at what she wanted  I said yes.  After all I'm a guy and it's not programmed in my DNA to say no to a woodworking request. The wife wants something to hold her microfiche reels while she scans them into her computer.  Easy project, right?

I spent most of the day at work thinking about how I would make this. I would need two stands, one to mount the microfiche and the other to be the take up.  I was thinking of making gears, handles, zero friction rollers, and some kind of victorian looking reel stand. Before I committed to anything concrete, I took some measurements to give me a baseline to build on.

the sides

This is going to be a quick project and I want it to look decent.  The sides are cut at a 22.5 degree angle which looks better then something rectangular. All the dowels in the back were for handles and keeping the reels from falling off. All those ideas ended up in the tall circular file with the rest of my garbage.

jig for drilling some holes

This is the left over piece of the stock I used to make the sides as a jig. I nailed a scrap piece on the back as a fence. This way all the holes for the sides will end up in the same spot. At least that's the plan.

sawing down the sides to the hole

cleaning up with some files

checking to make sure the bottom lines up

my microfiche reel holders

I found a piece of 1/4" pine from when I cut a piece of 3/4 down to 3/8. I cut out four pieces with the sides cut at 22.5 to match the stands. I'll used these to keep the roller from falling out. I wanted to make a handle but trying to get that to work wasn't worth the calorie count. This will do the job  and the wife will have to move the reels by hand.

one stand cooking in the vise

I tried to get both of them in the vise here but it wasn't working for me. I needed one set of hands to hold them and and another set to crank down on the handle. I could do one of them but not both.

the other stand cooking

I am relying on glue alone to keep this project together. I don't expect my wife to subject this to any of the kinds of torture that I would do it.

the reel holder the wife is using now

my reel stand

I still have to clean this up and put a finish on it, probably shellac followed by a waxing with 4-0 steel wool. I'll be able to give these to the wife this weekend.

accidental woodworker

"Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new."
Albert Einstein

pine tote done......

I think this is tote #4. I gave 3 away and I have 2 in the shop but I could be wrong. Higher math like this gives me headaches and I don't always get the right answer.

pine tote #3

I got two coats of shellac of this and I didn't steel wool in between coats. After the second coat dried I applied some wax with 4-0 steel wool like I've seen Paul Sellers do. I got a nice sheen and it's smooth all over.

wedged pin

Simple things to amuse simple minds. The only downside I can see to this amusement is fixing it if it breaks. A round dowel is an easy fix, this won't be. But how often do you break a handle on a tote?

daddy and son totes

After seeing these two side by side I'm leaning in the direction of the angled sides on the smaller one. I still like the rounded ends but I think the angled sides look better. It makes the ends a tad less bulky looking.

side view

The daddy tote in the back was a xmas gift for the wife. When she goes to the cemeteries she puts all of her genealogy crappola in an orange plastic 5 gallon bucket from the Home Depot. I couldn't have any of that so I made her a tote. I gave her the son tote too because I don't need it.

moment of truth coming

As I loosened the clamps there wasn't any resistance against them. The end stayed where it was when it was clamped. Maybe my salvage efforts will work.

the end is still bowed but not as much

you can still see part of the split

the show side doesn't look bad

pretty good sawing

I marked an inch in from the sides at the top and 1 inch above the sides. I connected the dots and that was my saw line. I left the line on all four cuts and I can't see why 3 of these are the same and one is  off. Anyways,  I'm happier then a clam at low tide with this. All of the cuts are plumb and I followed my pencil line consistently. I'm getting better at sawing on a pencil line.

cleaning up the saw cuts

spokeshave action

This spokeshave is just a tad too big for this round over. I am going to have to buy a smaller shave. LN makes a couple based on older Preston models and Igot a LN gift certificate from Santa......

I tried to use my cornering thingies on the bottom of the handle but it didn't work out. I was tearing out chunks so I switched over to 80 grit sandpaper to finish up the rounding over. I sanded the exterior and that's all I am doing on this for now.

I want to let this set out for a day or two and see if the split stays as is. I can't give this away even if the split stays put so I'll be finding a use for it in the shop.

accidental woodworker

"Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn."

Benjamin Franklin