Dan's Hobbies » Cherry

My fist commission

Dan — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 02:31:24 +0000

People loved the tea candle holders I posted last time, in fact I was actually commission by several friends to make some for them. I learned an important thing while making them, You have to be really careful pattern routing end-grain Purpleheart.

Cherry, Bubinga, & Purpleheart tea candle holders.

Finished shoe racks

Dan — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 03:25:50 +0000

I finished Rebecca’s shoe racks a few days ago, And tonight, I could no longer smell the finish, so it was safe to bring them inside. I had originally thought about finishing them with polyurethane, but at the last minute, I decided to finish them with boiled linseed oil cut with 50% mineral spirits. They didn’t turn out as nice as I would of liked, but Rebecca loves them none the less. The main flaw with the design is the dado joints used to join the top cross beams to the sides. Getting all of them cut to just the right length and thickness was tedious. Ultimately, I spent more time with chisels fine tuning the fit than I would have liked. If I had to do it again, I would use through dovetails.

Shoe Rack (Pt. 1)

Dan — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 14:12:48 +0000

Last weekend I started making Rebecca some stack-able shoe racks for her closet. I wanted to make them from materials I had on hand (cherry), so after an hour or so of fiddling in Sketchup I came up with the following design. The design is pretty simple, it’s made from 1″ x 3/4″ stock. Something I strive for in all my projects is a minimization of fasteners, thus I only used Dado-and-Tongue, & Slip joints, to hold the racks together.

The following series of pictures shows the progress I have made to date.

The Grizzly tenoning jig made the repetitive task of cutting all the slip joints easy once it was dialed in.

After gluing together several of the ends, I have decided I really like slip joints as they make making square joints almost fool proof.

After a few tries, I figured out how to use my new low angle block plane to clean up the slip joint end grain, without causing tear out.

A tenon planed down close, that is now ready for some sanding. I probably could have made another pass or two with the plane on this particular one.

One joint planed down, and sanded smooth (only 23 more to go before the end pieces are done).