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.

Featherboards Galore

Whats a new bandsaw good for you ask? Well its good for a lot of things, but one is making feather boards. I made the feather boards bellow out of some leftover willow I had laying around. They work on the router table, the tablesaw, and the bandsaw. O the joys of simple projects.

Wine Rack Pt. 5

It’s time to make some tenons and try out my new flush trim bit. I’ve go On of the big purpose built table saw accessories for making tenons, but I’ve found that my crosscut sled a ripping blade and scrap wood does a better job. All you need to do is clap or tape some crap wood to the base and back of the sled. This provides a perfect “zero clearance” surface that will prevent chip-out. Then all you need to do is set the blade height and go to town.

I’ve been looking forward to the pattern routing part of this project, since it started. I’ve been excited about taking my work to the next level, but also a little nervous, because I didn’t start small. Every singe board in this project has at least one curve on it. Aa the old saying goes, “go big or go home”.  It turns out I didn’t need to be nervous, because the compression bit left a surface that will only require light sanding, plus one for modern technology.

Wine Rack Pt. 4

I spent very little time in the shop over the last week, because it was the hurry up and wait time of the project. Since my shop is a garage with no real climate control, I have to take my time milling up lumber. My routine is strait forward, and starts by flattening a face, and then letting the boards rest for 24 hours.  The next step is to thickness plane the boards, I don’t take them down to final thickness, just down enough to make them uniform across the entire board. I then let the boards rest for 24 hours. I then repeat this the process on the edges. I run through the entire process one more time to bring the boards to finished thickness & width before I start cutting joinery. It takes a long time, but it guarantees my boards stay strait and true.

Since I spent most of the week doing nothing, I was itching to get into the shop over the weekend and start doing something. As I stated in an earlier post, this is my first project I’ve made that used mortise and tenon joinery, so I took my time and set up the router table to rout out the waste. One thing I have to admit, is buying the spiral up bits was one of the best purchases I’ve ever made. Once I got the waste removed i set to work squaring up the ends using my chisels. I think for a first attempt, I did pretty well. The following photo is inspired by Chris schwarz, and all the black & white photos he posts on his blog.

Raised dog dishes Pt. 6

The bad mojo is gone, and I’m back on track now. Last night, I wrapped up construction of the top, in spite of it being 50 degrees in the shop. I know I know I’m a big sissy; but I like to be warm, when I’m working in the shop. It’s kind of hard to focus on the task and hand, when you keep pondering what temperature frostbite start to become a concern.

The first thing I did, and forgot to take a picture of, was crosscut the tops to length. Routing holes for the dishes, was the second and most time consuming step of the evening. While it’s time consuming, it’s simple with a router circle jig. Step one is to locate and drill the hole for the centering pin. Step two is to pick the appropriate radius, and the final step is to start making saw dust.

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