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.
I freely admit I’m an accuracy addict, when I’m milling stock my calipers are never more than a few feet away. The only problem with my calipers, is that they are graduated in thousands of an inch,and while I know some of the decimal to fraction conversions I’m not in the shop often enough to memorize all of the useful ones. Fractional calipers can be had, but they are usually only graduated in 1/64ths and in my opinion that’s just not fine enough, so I never purchased one.
Fast forward to black Friday, and Berland’s House Of Tools. if you have ever been to Berland’s, you know it’s more of a contractors tools store. I wasn’t expecting to find anything spectacular, but while browsing the layout & measurement section I came across the little gem below. When I saw this baby i lit up like a 5 year old on Christmas day. A fractional caliper graduated in 1/512ths, yes please.
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.
It’s hard to believe it’s been over 3 weeks since my last post, but there it is. With the weather changing, the holidays coming, and other interesting changes happening in my life, I haven’t spent a lot of time in the shop over the last month. I have however, found enough time to design and build some prototype Christmas presents. In stead of giving gift cards this year (my family is impossible to buy gifts for), I wanted to give something I made.
What I came up with were tea candle holders. They are simple to make, all you need are holes 5/8″ deep and 1-9/16″ in diameter. The best way to make the holes is with a Forstner bit on a drill press. How many candles per holder, and the shape of the holder can be anything you want. The following holders are ones I made from off cuts I had laying around the shop.
I almost forgot I took the photos, until I found them this evening. The till went together with out any major complications, and after the glue dried, it received a coat BLO, and paste wax. It’s mounted to the wall with a single drywall screw, that’s more than enough to hold the weight. I decided to make the till large enough to hold 4 saws, so that gives me room for one more. I sense a 14tpi dovetail saw in my future.
One spot open
Sliding dovetails are a wonderful thing.