Wine Rack Commission

The wine rack I made for the kitchen, has gotten a lot of praise from my friends and coworkers. One coworker commissioned me to make one for her to give as a Christmas gift. Mine is was to complicated to make for a reasonable price, so I designed this one.

Picture framing jigs

I’ve been to busy with work lately to get much time in the shop, but now that things are starting to settle, I plan on getting some serious shop time in.  I have a lot of projects planed for this summer, and the first one is to make picture frames for some posters I bought this spring. I’ve been avoiding picture frames for a long time, because they usually involve miters. In my opinion miters are one of the most difficult joints in woodworking, because small errors are very visible. After some research, I have decided to use the following jigs to get perfect miters. Continue Reading…

Crosscut Sled

The last shop project I needed to make, before I started my next “Real” project, was a small crosscut sled. I’ve found a small cross cut sled like with 2 runners, to be more precise, than high end miter gauges. Construction of a sled is pretty simple, so I didn’t go into a lot of detail in the video, but hopefully you will find it informative and entertaining.

Router circle jig

For my next project I’m going to make some raised dog dishes, and that requires me to make some decent sized holes to mount the dishes in. I thought I would be able to just run down to my local woodworking store and pick up a jig, but oh no. I must have the worst luck on the planet; every time I think something should be easy, it ends up becoming a big ordeal. But I digress.

The jigs available locally fall into 2 categories: template & arm style. The template style jigs are usually for circles 4″ in diameter or smaller, and the arm style are for circles 7″ to 8″ and larger. I need to make circles that are roughly 6″ in diameter. Thus, instead of ordering a jig and waiting a week for it to be delivered, I made one last night.

I made it from some scrap 1/4″ thick Lexan, I had leftover from my router table build.  The only unpleasant task involved in its construction, was having to turn off the drill press after every hole, and clean the melted material out of the bits flutes. As it is now, I can make holes from 4 to 14 inches in diameter in quarter inch intervals.

Giant crosscut sled

I’m not really sure why, but I have been putting off making one of these for years. Making a cross cut sled is easy, but getting the fence square can be a real PITA (Oh yea that’s why). This sled is a smaller (42″ x 42″),  simpler version of the Ultimate Crosscut Sled presented by John McCormack in the July 2008 issue of Fine Woodworking. The actual dimensions of a sled are so dependent on your particular saw and project needs, that it’s pointless for me to draw a plan in sketchup for you to download. The following are some things to consider before making your sled.

Continue Reading…