Category: woodworking

Woodworking Fall 09: Week 8

Last week’s woodworking class was fun. I glued together the lids and made some progress on the giveaway cutting board.

I cut some pieces of walnut to go around the panels of the lids. When I was cutting the sides I taped them together so they would be exactly the same length.

Gluing the walnut sides to the lid. After the glue is dry I’ll trim the sides so they’re square.

The three different lids.

And I had just enough time to get the giveaway cutting board glued up. All it needs now is a lot of sanding and to be trimmed.

Tomorrow is the last day of class *sniff*. I’m going to make a list of tasks I need to finish so I waste as little time as possible. Wish me luck!

Woodworking Fall 09: Week 7

It’s coming down to the wire; only two classes left! *Gulp.* I made some decent progress last week but not quite as much as I had hoped. My teacher said that he’s going to be at class a bit early tomorrow and so I’m going to show up early too to take advantage of the precious shop time left.

Here’s what I did last week:

I filled in a few gaps in the dovetail joints with wood putty and plugged the holes I drilled for the now-defunct lids. After the glue dries I will cut off the dowel and sand it so it’s flush with the side. You shouldn’t be able to see it too much.

I took the tape off the lids I glued together last week and drew out the dimensions of the lids.

And then I used a miter gauge on the table saw to cut rectangles out of the blanks.

Tomorrow I’m going to glue banding around the edges of the lids and cut them to size, sand the outsides of the boxes, and hopefully get the giveaway cutting board glued up. (Yeah, it’s become evident that I shouldn’t have spilled the beans about the giveaway until after it was finished. I’ll definitely get it finished at some point, if not before the holidays then in January. I feel bad that there might be a bit of a delay, but I’m trying my very best!)

Woodworking Fall 09: Week 6

Woodworking was fun this week. I spent a lot of time gluing stuff together. I just realized that I never explained my plan for the new jewelry box lids: the lids are going to have center panels made up of diamond shapes banded by walnut.

I’m turning these panels 45 degrees so the lids will have a diamond pattern instead of a checkerboard. But if I turn them on a angle there isn’t enough surface area to cut out a large enough rectangle.

So I cut off the corners.

And then I glued them onto the edges so I can cut a bigger rectangle out of the middle.

I couldn’t use clamps because of the angles involved, so I tightly stretched masking tape over the joints while the glue dried. I was kind of dubious this would work but my instructor said it’s what they do in situations like this.

While I waited for the glue on the lids to dry I started another cutting board. (I’m kinda addicted to making them lately, in case you haven’t noticed.)

But this cutting board is special–after it’s finished I’m going to have a giveaway and one of you lovely readers will win it! I wanted to say thanks for visiting my little corner of the internets and following my woodworking adventures. And I conveniently had a bunch of wood leftover from the other cutting boards. I wish I could make more than one for the giveaway but class time is already short as it is. It’ll be a couple of weeks before it’s finished, but be sure to check back for it then.

Later this afternoon I’m dressing E in his dog costume and taking him by N’s office for their Halloween party. Pictures on Monday. Have a happy Halloween!

Woodworking Fall 09: Week 5

This week woodworking went really well. Last week I ran into some issues and so this week I came prepared with a list of tasks I wanted to accomplish and I pretty much got them all done.

I made some good progress on my box lids and also on my cuttings boards. These first boards are for my jewelry box lids.

I cut the blanks I glued up into strips and then flipped every other strip over to form a checkered pattern.

Then I glued them together, paying special attention to matching up the lines.

The panels after gluing (left to right): purpleheart and curly maple, walnut and bloodwood, and African lacewood and maple.

My unfortunately non-square cutting board.
You can kind of see how the strips shifted while they were being glued and it turned into more of a parallelogram instead of a rectangle. Lame.

After I trimmed the edges off on the band saw it looked more squarish.

I went over the edges on a router so they would be slightly rounded.

And then I started sanding the surface of the board.

I have some more sanding to do next week and then I’ll slap a couple of coats of mineral oil on it and call it good. It still won’t be totally square but after giving myself a mental pep talk I’ve managed to let go of the notion that it needs to be absolutely perfect. I’m okay with it being slightly wonky. (It helps that it’s only for myself and not someone else).

I also re-sawed and re-glued the other cutting board that was having issues. So I think I’m in good shape for next week. Who knows, I might actually have time to make E a toy afterall.

Woodworking Fall 09: Week 4

Woodworking last night was kind of rough. I was really looking forward to class but as soon as I got there it was just one disappointing thing after another. And I think I’m finally succumbing to N’s nasty cold so things just seemed harder than normal.

The first thing that happened was that I pulled out my camera to take some pictures only to realize that I had left my memory card inside the computer. (D’oh!) So yeah, no pictures today.

Next I sanded the cutting board that Steven and I put together. Then I went to trim the ends of it…and discovered that it wasn’t quite square. (I would like to blame Steven but it was my own darn fault. Sigh.) Because of the pattern the non-squareness of the board became painfully obvious. But I talked to my instructor and I can trim it on the band saw and I think it will be okay.

And THEN I went to look at another cutting board I started and realized that it hadn’t glued up quite right and that I’ll need to re-cut it on the saw and re-glue it. I almost just called it a day because I was so discouraged and feeling under the weather.

But I stayed and made some nice progress on the new lids for my jewelry boxes (which I will take pictures of next week). So at least class ended on a positive note.

Woodworking Fall 09: Week 3

I decided to redo the lids of my jewelry boxes so they sit on top of the box instead of sitting flush inside the box. This will allow me to use a different sort of hinge and work around the lame lid-won’t-open problem I encountered last semester.

I also decided to use this opportunity to kick up the design of the lids a bit. I’m going to use a technique similar to the one I used to make my cutting boards and create a checkerboard design for the lids.

This is a fun opportunity to use some interesting (and pricey) exotic woods since I only need a board foot of each.

From top to bottom: purpleheart, African lacewood, walnut, bloodwood, and curly maple.

I cut one-inch strips of each wood and glue them together, alternating woods. In the foreground are bloodwood and walnut and in the background are lacewood and maple.

This blank is made up of purple heart and curly maple.

After so much gluing my hands were pretty gnarly.

Class was a lot of fun and I’m excited for next week.

I’m looking forward to the weekend–N’s taking me to the Melting Pot for a belated birthday dinner. (Yum!)

I hope you have a great weekend!

Woodworking Fall 09: Weeks 1 and 2

Last night was the second week of woodworking. I didn’t post about week 1 yet so I thought I’d post pictures from both weeks today. I hadn’t quite figured out how to fix my jewelry boxes so for the first two weeks I worked on cutting boards.

The lumber: (from left to right) walnut, cherry, and maple.

I cut the wood into strips of varying widths.

And glued the strips together.

Then last night I sanded the panel smooth and then cut it into strips.

I flipped every other strip around (to make the pattern) and then glued them all together.

These cutting boards are kind of addictive. There’s a lot of saw work and sanding involved but I think they’re really fun to make. I had some leftover wood and so I started another one.

Steven tagged along with me to class the last two weeks. I thought he might be bored but he wanted to go again last night so it must have been kind of fun for him.

I’m starting to get excited

Yesterday was my first day of woodworking class. Even though I’m still a little frustrated with the boxes I need to finish I’m starting to get excited about this semester. My priorities this term are

  1. Finish the jewlery boxes.
  2. Make myself a cutting board. (Last year I made some for Christmas gifts and liked how they turned out. But I ended up not having one left over for myself and I’d like one.)
  3. Make a toy for E. I found plans online for the toys below and think they’re cute AND doable. E is mad for anything with wheels and so I think he’d really like this bulldozer.


I don’t know if I’ll finish all three projects but I’m pretty sure I’ll at least get 1 and 2 done (famous last words, I know). I’m a pretty slow worker because I tend to make a lot of mistakes. I guess we’ll just have to see. I’ll try and take pictures and post about my progress as it goes.

The smell of sawdust in the fall

I just signed up for the fall semester of woodworking. To be honest I’m a bit discouraged about this semester because last semester I had hit a snag on the jewelry boxes I was making and I don’t know how to fix the problem yet. But I’m sure that once class gets going and I figure out how to fix things I’ll feel better. The class is ten weeks long so hopefully I’ll have some time left over to make a little toy for E or some bowls or something.

When I was registering for woodworking I took a look at some of the other classes offered through the community ed program. There were a ton of other interesting classes…Wheel-thrown ceramics, Calligraphy, Basic Auto Mechanics for women, Beginning Ukulele, Digital SLR Photography, Beginning Archery, Beginning Fencing, etc…

Wouldn’t it be great to have unlimited time (and money) to take classes in whatever interested you? *dreamy sigh* Sometimes I miss college. Anyway, if you’re local and interested you can see the full listing of fall classes here.

Jewelry Boxes: Update 7

Wednesday was the last day of woodworking class. I didn’t finish assembling my jewelry boxes because I hit a pretty big snag. (As I am wont to do.) But more on that later. First let me show you want I did get accomplished.

My teacher recommended using dowels for the hinges of the boxes. So I taped the lids in place, using a block inside the box to keep the lid aligned correctly, and drilled through the slides of the box and into the lid.

Little did I know that this was when it all began to go wrong…

(A close-up of disaster in the making.)

Using a bottle cap to mark the half-circle for the front of the box.

Carving out the niche in front with a grinder.

The tray sitting inside; it slides side-to-side.

Everything looks good, doesn’t it? But there’s a little problem.

Because of the way the holes were placed, the back edge of the lid hits the box and can’t open all the way!

It was pretty frustrating to discover this little development an hour before class ended. My teacher didn’t really know how to fix it other than re-drilling the holes. So next semester I’ll either have to plug the holes in the lid with dowels and re-drill or make new lids (probably what I’ll do).
So that’s that. It’s a little frustrating to not finish the project. This is the first time I wasn’t able to use the shop outside of class hours at all (our new instructor’s policy) and I think I was really accustom to getting extra time.

But I did learn a lot of new techniques this semester, which was fun. Oddly enough, making the trays was probably the most satisfying part of this project. All in all and lid-problems aside, I think I improved quite a bit this semester.