Record Sorter

May 31, 2026

After many years of not having a record player or for that matter vinyl records we now own both again. It’s been fun playing records at parties and small gatherings either ours or ones that other folks bring. I don’t think we’ll be collecting a large number of records, just a few special recordings that are fun to have in this format.

We didn’t really have a place for storing/viewing records either so they were up on a high bookshelf and not really easily viewed. I decided to make a record sorter to let us or guests browse through the records easily. It needed to not take up much room and be attractive to fit in with other furniture in our living room.

I decided to make it in a retro-modern style and wood choice to contrast a little with the rest of the colonial-ish furniture in the room. Here’s my very rough drawing of the concept. The red lines are just dimension references to help with drawing the curved outline of the ends of the sorter. The dark brown line is a reference for the groove that would receive the ends of the sorting bin sides.

I drew the layout on chipboard at full scale including the location of the groove. I then cut the chipboard out into two different templates, one for the groove and one for the perimeter. Each template was only 1/2 of the whole thing split vertically since it was symmetrical along the vertical axis. I checked the fit of records against the template as well.

I used the chipboard template to make 1/4” plywood full size templates. I decided to use rift-sawn white oak and I glued up 3/4” x 7 1/4” pieces to make the ends of the sorter and 1/2” x 7 1/4” pieces to make the sides of the sorter bin. I made sure to orient the grain of the panel pieces so it would have a nice flow upward and outward.

I then used the templates and some double stick tape to cut the grooves in each end panel using a 1/2” x 1/4” pattern bit. I used the other template the band saw and the router table with a flush trimming bit to cut the perimeter.

This is the first dry fit…

I rounded over all of the panel edges on the router table and then started the sanding/scuplting using a 60 grit sanding disk. I cleaned up the edges and sanded everything to 220 grit. I then glued everything up and after the glue was cured I applied some Natural Danish Oil.

And that was it, the sorter was deployed. I’m really happy with how this came out and the contrasting design and wood really work in the room.

Set of folding side tables

March 25, 2026

As I mentioned at the end of my previous post about folding side tables, I needed to build three more of these side tables to complete a set of four. This was the project of the last couple of weeks. They are very similar to the prototype with a few small improvements which I will mention as we go through the project.

I went over to Boulter Plywood Corp in Medford, MA and got four straight, flat, clean, 8’ x 5 1/2” x 3/4” Maple S4S boards. I cut three pieces of 41” from the flattest boards and glued them up to form the blank for the tops of the tables. Handily I had designed this table with 1 3/4” wide stock for every other part of the frame which divides 5 1/2” into three including the 1/8” saw kerf. I ripped the rest of the stock into 1 3/4” widths.

Then using my chop saw I cut all of the rest of the stock to rough length.

Using my Milescraft TrackSawGuide and after flattening both sides of the glued up table top blank and marking the triangles for the table tops 19 1/2” on a side… I cut them with my circular saw.

I switched the table saw over to dado mode and put in my 3/4” x 8” stacked dado set and using my crosscut sled and a stop, I cut all the tenons which were all 1” x 1/4” x 1 1/4”.

After that I marked up all of the mortises and used my hollow chisel mortising machine to cut all of the mortises.

I rounded all the corners of the table tops on the band saw and the sanding station. Then I pre-drilled and added a 3/8” deep 3/8” wide countersink for all the screw holes for the fixed leg which will get screwed and glued at assembly time.

For these tables I got new hinges with narrower leaves and three screws inline and rounded corners made from solid brass. I located the hinges on the leg uprights away from the mortise and tenon joints so that I wouldn’t be screwing into the mortises. I also used my router table to create mortises for each hinge on the legs and for the hinges in the underside of the table top after rounding over the edges on the router table and cutting the top into two pieces for the fixed part and the leaf.

I also drilled the recesses to receive the rare earth magnets that would help locate the gate leg when it was opened. One in the bottom of the table leaf and one in the top of the gate leg frame.

I cut a taper on the inside of all of the legs using a tapering sled on my table saw.

I then rounded over all of the edges of the legs and frame members as appropriate. I avoided the hinge and tenon mortises in this process.

I also rounded over the back edge of the leaf to clearance for the hinge to operate correctly.

I sanded all of the parts 80, 120 and finally 220 grit. At the 80 grit stage I blended the transitions from the router round over to the area near the mortises.

Finally I assembled and glued up the leg frames.

When those were dry and I’d cleaned up any glue squeeze out I cleaned all the dust off all the parts and applied a coat of General Finishes Hard Wax Oil.

Once that had dried sufficiently I assembled each table. I used CA glue and accelerator to secure the magnets in position. I glued and screwed the fixed leg assembly to the matching table top section after attaching the table top hinges. Finally I secured the hinges between the gate leg and the fixed leg. I repeated this process three times and they were all assembled.

I’m very happy with how these look and function, they store neatly in the space where we used to store the old tables. On to the next project!

Hallway mirror

March 10, 2026

This is another quick project, my beautiful and talented wife asked for a mirror for the hallway so she could check her outfit before leaving the house. I found a company that does custom glass on the internet ( https://www.onedayglass.com/ ) and after some mocking up with tape on the wall I ordered a nice custom sized mirror from them. They did a great job and it came well packed and exactly as specified.

I had an off cut of Sapele which was a good dimension for a frame so I cut it down to 1” x 1” and then I put a profile on both front edges that responds to the mill work in the hallway. I put in a 1/2” x 1/4” rabbet on the inside of the back to receive the 1/4” thick mirror and a 1/4” thick plywood backer.

After sanding I glued up the frame and reinforced the corner joints with one #8 x 1 1/2” finish screw placed so you wouldn’t see them when the mirror is hung up in the hallway.

I put a coat of General Finishes Hard Wax Oil on the frame and once that was dry enough I assembled the mirror holding in the back with framing points. I put hanging hardware on it.

I put a piece of 3/4” plywood between the door frames and behind where the mirror would be so I would have a surface to hang it from that was flush with the door moldings. I just screwed it into the studs along the sides. I then put in a heavy duty hanging hook ( since the mirror is a little heavy) positioned to get the right hanging height. It is now installed and has passed inspection.

Folding side table

March 8, 2026

We have a set of folding tables that we got thirty plus years ago and the hardware on them is failing, my beautiful and talented wife asked if I could replace them. I proposed an initial design for some triangular stacking tables but we decided we didn’t want to give up the floor space for the stack of tables so I modified the design to be a triangular folding table that uses a gate leg and a folding top.

I decided to build a prototype using scrap wood that I had around the shop so this first table contains Walnut and Maple in the top and Sapele in the legs. I barely had enough 3/4” material to make this table and had to glue up the blank for one of the legs from two narrow off cuts of Sapele.

I glued up the panel for the top and after some flattening I was able to mark up the nineteen inch equilateral triangle for the top and cut the angles using a panel cutting sled on my table saw.

I then cut all the material for the leg frames from 1 3/4” x 3/4” Sapele. I joined the frames using 1” x 1 1/4” x 1/4” tenons and mortises. I used the dry fit frames to figure out where the fixed leg frame of the table would be and where the hinged leg of the frame would swing to. I decided where I was going to place the hinges for the table top and mortised the underside of the table top for the hinges.

I decided t hat I was going to glue and screw the fixed leg frame to the top. I located the upper frame part and drilled and countersunk three screw holes. This also allowed me to do a full assembly mock-up of the table to figure out any clearance issues. I realized that I would have to round over the back edge of the underside of the table to provide clearance for the table top to fold down. I also cut the table top at the right distance and installed the hinges during this process. I also installed a rare earth magnet in the underside of the table top where I wanted the gate leg to stop and into the top frame of gate leg so that they would grip each other tightly.

I then took all the hardware off and took apart the leg frames and tapered the inside of the lower part of each leg on a table saw tapering jig. Once they were all tapered I glued up all the mortise and tenon joints for the leg frames. After they cured I rounded over almost every edge of the legs. The combination of tapering and rounding over makes the legs look much lighter and more elegant.

After some touch up sanding, I put a coat of General Finishes Hard Wax Oil on the legs and the top.

I reassembled the table and I was done. I like this prototype a lot and we’re going to use it. Watch this space for a project where I make three more out of Maple. So the set will have one multi-wood table and three Maple tables. I’ll do a few things differently on the final three but they are mostly cosmetic or process things.

Office organization...

February 27, 2026

There was one corner of my office that was a bit messy. It was where I stored paper and chipboard and framing mat supplies. They were just piled on top of my filing cabinets. Every access to anything required going through some or all of the pile.

I fixed that the last couple of days making an organizer for the top of the cabinets out of 3/4” natural birch plywood for the case and 1/2” for the shelves. It is just screwed together like my shop furniture.

I made a bin that hangs from the wall to the left that holds the larger chipboard and art board in a similar manner.

There is now even some room for growth.

Craftsman-ish Ottoman for my Morris Chair

February 18, 2026

Five years ago I built a Stickley inspired Morris Chair and I’ve really enjoyed having it in my office since then. My one regret was not making an Ottoman to go with it. I have now fixed that regret and built my version of a Craftsman-ish Ottoman to go with my chair.

I designed it to be 22” wide and 18” tall to the top of the cushion to match the chair cushion height. I made the legs 2 1/4” square to match the chair and added a pyramid detail on the top to give them some interest. The top rail of the Ottoman is 5 inches wide and the bottom rail is 2 1/2” wide with five 2” stiles spaced evenly on the long side and two stiles on the short side.

All of the stock was cut from two pieces of 8 foot x 9 1/4 inch x 3/4 thick quarter-sawn white oak. I glued up the leg blanks with a little allowance for glue creep and I jointed and thickness planed them to a nice smooth and square blank. I trimmed the ends and then I marked up all of the mortises and the pyramid on the top and cut the pyramid detail. I was careful to mock them up in the orientation that they would have to each other to make sure I had the quarter-sawn sides facing forward and backward and the laminated sides facing to the sides and also to make sure all my markup made sense.

I cut all the rest of the material to size and then using my crosscut sled and the 3/4” wide dado stack I cut all of the tenons on the frame parts. All of the tenons are 3/8” wide and 1” long. I wanted the short sides of the frame to be flush with the inside of the legs so that there would be a rectangular interior at the top to set the upholstered top in. I offset those tenons to the left by 3/8” to allow more material between the tenon and the side of the leg. All of the rest of the tenons were centered.

I also cut a 3/4” x 1/4” deep dado 1” from the top on the inside of the top frame rails. This was to support a piece of 3/4” plywood that would support the cushion and also to give lateral stability to the whole piece. I cut the mortises for the main frame parts and dry fit it to be sure of the size of the 3/4” plywood support panel and the 1/2” plywood base for the cushion to be built on which needs to be 1/8” smaller than the opening on each side so it will fit with the upholstery on it.

I then cut all of the rest of the mortises and dry fit the whole ottoman with the stiles. Twenty-two mortises all together. Then I disassembled it again and sanded all the parts up to 220 grit. Finally, I glued it up.

I cleaned up the glue squeeze out and did some touch up sanding and then applied the same finish that I used on the original chair which was WATCO Danish Oil in the Golden Oak color. While the finish was curing, I used the plywood base of the top cushion to cut two layers of 1 1/2” high quality ( deluxe ) foam. I glued one piece to the plywood base and then the other piece on top of that to make a full thickness of 3 1/2” inches. I got a Hamilton Beech Electric Carving Knife for cutting the foam it it works great producing nice clean straight edges. I had some of the same fabric that I had covered the chair with so I was able to wrap the cushion with that stapling it on the back to the plywood base.

I inserted the cushion into the top of the ottoman and it was done. I’m very happy with how it came out.

Gift box and charcuterie board

January 22, 2026

A couple of small projects came out of a recent cleanup of my ever expanding scrap wood pile.

The first one is a “continuous grain” box about 3 1/2” x 4 1/2” x 1 1/2” that I made from a spare glue up of some scraps from a couple of years ago. The woods were maple, sapele, and western red cedar. I had a gift that I was sending to a friend and I decided to jazz it up by making a box for it. I barely had enough material but I managed it. The cool part was I actually got the grain to wrap in all directions. The miters were not perfect and the glue up was a little off so it is somewhat asymmetrical but that just gives it a bit of an organic feel. I was able to hide most of my errors.

The second one was made from long thin cutoffs that I just couldn’t bring myself to discard, I mean they’re 8’ long after all. I decided to rip them all to 3/4” wide and then cut them into 24” lengths and glue them up into a 5 3/8” x 24” panel. After flattening and thickness planing the resulting panel on the jointer/planer it measured 5/8” thick. I immediately saw a charcuterie board and I made a paper template and marked it up and cut it on the band saw and put the hanging hole in the end with a 1 3/8” forstner bit. I rounded over all the edges with 1/4” round over bit and then sanded it from 120 grit to 220 grit and after carefully cleaning it applied mineral oil to it.

That’s it just a couple of one’ish day builds…

Big Cutting Board

January 14, 2026

I was watching an old Hot Ones episode on YouTube with Andrew Rea who is on YouTube as Binging With Babish and Andrew says this:

This immediately struck a chord and I decided right then to make a Big Cutting Board. I also am accumulating a lot of extra lumber from past projects and I’m due for a cull to avoid a wood avalanche in my garage. I made the cutting board above out of Sapele and Maple. I glued up alternating strips that were 1 1/2” thick by 1" 1/16” wide into a rough dimension 24 1/2” x 16” panel. When it had cured I used planes and 60,80,120,220 grit sanding to flatten it. I cut it to size and rounded all the edges with a 1/4” round over router bit and then oiled the whole thing with food safe mineral oil. I put rubber feet ( compensating with some washers for a slight twist) and it was done. I really like it, I should have done it sooner.

Storage Ottoman

January 3, 2026

Back in 2022 I built a blanket rack to store and display the lovely blankets my beautiful and talented wife had spun and woven. We don’t super heat our house and so in the winter I like to have a blanket while we’re watching TV. The rack worked fine for making them available and displaying them.

However, we have two evil tabby cats who think that nice woolen blankets are something that they should claw and eat. This is not good. Finally we had to hide the blankets away in a closet to prevent further damage to them or the cats. Shortly after that we came up with an idea for a storage ottoman that would keep them handy and safe. Also my wife uses the ottoman to sit on when she is threading her loom and so something that moved around easily would also be great. I also wanted to make the ottoman only partly upholstered to limit evil tabby claw damage.

This is the design I came up with:

Storage ottoman on casters 19” tall by 24” wide by 24” deep with a hinged lid under the seat

I designed a 19” x 24” x 24” ottoman on casters, it would be slightly larger than the original ottoman and use fabric that was left over from when we had our couch re-upholstered. I had a bunch of left over Sapele lumber from the new Fire Table Chairs so I only had to pick up some nice 1/4” Sapele veneer plywood that was veneered on both sides since I would be finishing the inside as well as the outside.

Because this would be seating as well as storage I made the corner posts actual 2” x 2” posts and all of the frame members were 1” x 2”. I used my new jointer/planer to dimension all of the parts exactly and to remove all of the saw marks.

Once I milled all of the frame and seat frame parts to size I cut all of the mortices in the corner posts. I deliberately offset the tenons so that there would be extra material at the top and bottom of the posts to help give the frame extra support. I also centered them in the posts for the same reason. I made them 1” deep which which would require notching the tenons so they wouldn’t collide.

Then I switched my Sawstop table saw to dado mode, the first time I’ve done this, it turned out to be much faster and easier than I imagined. I used the dado stack and my table saw sled ( modified for dado usage ) to cut all of the tenons.

After that I cleaned up and dry fitted all of the mortices and tenons.

Then I reset the dado stack to 1/4” and cut the panel grooves in the corner posts. I cut the panels to size and did a dry fit of the whole body of the ottoman.

I also made up the frame for the seat which was also mortice and tenon and fitted that to the body. I added an inside cleat to support the seat and a 1/8” alignment edge that extended below the seat to make sure the top lid wouldn’t shift around when someone sat on it.

I then sanded everything from 120 grit to 220 grit ( trying something new to see if it had a good effect on the Hard Wax Oil finish with hardener ). I suspended my sander and vacuum hose from the ceiling with a bungee to reduce sanding fatigue.

Then I glued everything up and installed the bottom of the box on cleats that I attached around the inside of the bottom frame. I countersunk and pre drilled all the holes from the bottom of the seat to attach the seat to the top frame and mounted the heavy duty hinges ( really passage door hinges ) and chains to hold the top open when getting things in and out of the interior.

Then I took all the hardware off and put finish on everything including the interior.

Finally I did the upholstery gluing two layers of high quality 1 1/2” furniture foam onto a 3/8” thick plywood backing. After shaping the top so it had a curved profile around the top, I covered the seat with upholstery fabric which matches our couch. My wife kindly helped by stitching a large remnant into a square that was just the right size to cover the seat cushion.

Then it was just final assembly and adding the casters and it was ready to deploy.

Three or four picture frames...

December 29, 2025

My beautiful and talented wife had a couple of pictures and a certificate that she wanted to frame and put up in the house. I volunteered to make frames for all of them.

The first item was a certificate from a Sherlockian club in Philadelphia that my wife is a member of, they are called “The Sons of the Copper Beeches” after a Sherlock Holmes story. I thought it would be cool to make the frame out of European Beech which is what a Copper Beech is. I was able to order the material from Rare Woods USA in Maine and it came in great condition and I just cleaned it up a little on my Jointer/Planer before cutting frame material from it. For this frame I put a bevel detail on the inside of the frame. The Beech is beautiful hardwood with a tan to almost pink coloring, this board was also quartersawn making it very nice. It was very easy to work with. I just used General Finishes Hard Wax Oil on it and it looked great. I made an identical one for one of my wife’s friends who is also a member ( hence the “or four” in the title of this post).

The second one was for a print from Calamityware called “Early Unicorn.” I had some left over Wenge from an earlier project and I made a thick square profile frame for this one. I used the same finish and I really like the grain of the Wenge around this image.

The third was a lovely print which I think we saw in a museum which references the “Year of the Rat” from the Chinese Zodiac, we’re both from a year of the rat and there are sewing/spinning references in it so it is very appropriate. I used some left over Sapele for this one and put a rounded profile on the inside of the frame. I like how the reddish color of the Sapele brings out the color in the print.

Frames aren’t terribly difficult but they are nice to see around the house. One small note is that I started using Polycarbonate instead of Acrylic and it is easier to work with because it doesn’t melt so easily when you’re cutting it.

That’s it for this small update.

Better Storage frees up floor space in the shop

November 9, 2025

When you have a small basement workshop you are always looking to carve out some more square footage anywhere possible. The image above is the reclaimed space and the project was to build the white shelving units and move the refrigerator back to the wall. Here is the before picture, below…

Behind the refrigerator along the wall is an old shelf that I built many years ago when we first moved into the house. I had to clear all of this stuff out and then dismantle the old shelf. Fortunately then as now I only use screws to put things together in the basement, so I just had to unscrew a lot of screws. I was able to salvage the 2x4’s and most of the plywood.

I ordered more of the 12x12 interlocking garage floor tiles that I have in the rest of the shop and put that down in the space. This provides protection from dampness and is easier to clean and walk on than the cement floor.

I have recently become a fan of frame-less cabinets so I built two units for the right side and stacked them, the bottom one is slightly further out because of the waste pipe behind it. I built a single unit to go over the refrigerator. The top units are screwed to the studs for support and all the units are screwed to each other as well.

I used 3/4” paint grade natural birch plywood for the bodies and 1/4” natural birch plywood for the backs. I painted them all with BINS primer just to help protect them from the damp in the basement.

You may notice a large paint stain on the floor, I had a spill of a whole roller tray of paint ( or most of it) on me, on the floor etc… Ah well… In any case the cabinets are rabbeted and screwed together, the uppers have 3/4” x 4” cleats added top and bottom at the back to support the cabinet when screwed to the studs. The backs are screwed on with #6 x 3/4” screws.

Then everything had to go back in… and I was done and I now have a very usable piece of floor space recovered. There was a bit of work disposing of the pallet and some other things that weren’t going back but that about wraps it up.

Fire Table Chairs: Take Two

October 18, 2025

Every defect gets respect

Every project is a learning experience, some lessons are taught while you’re building the project and some lessons come after you’ve completed the project. Back in 2023 I built a set of outdoor chairs to go with the Fire Table that I had also built. You can see my write-up of the project here.

I was very happy with how the chairs came out and we used them frequently over the next couple of years. However, as we approached the two year mark a problem emerged. The joints where the side rails of the chairs met the front leg with a through tenon joint were twisting and breaking. I immediately engaged in a root cause analysis process to understand the defect, like any engineer would.

The fundamental root cause was my inexperience at the time that I built the chairs, but the details were also instructional and informed the design for this project.

The first problem was the choice of material for the chairs. I had focused on the property of being weather, bug, and rot resistant without applying a finish and this led me to choose Western Red Cedar as the wood. I had ignored a couple of other important functional requirements, strength and hardness. Western Red Cedar is a very soft, relatively weak, light weight wood. The chairs that I was copying had been made out of Teak which is the opposite. I probably could have gotten away with it if I had increased the dimensions of all of the parts of the chair but I didn’t.

The joints that failed had a through tenon meaning that the mortise went completely through the leg. I had also foolishly made the tenon square and 1” x 1” because the side rail was 1 1/4” x 1 3/4” so I could. This meant that this tenon was surrounded by only 3/8” of material on each side of the 1 3/4” leg and only 1/4” of material above it. The softness of the Cedar also made it very difficult to cut a clean mortise without tearing out surrounding material meaning that several of my mortises didn’t fit great.

The chairs have sling seats that are suspended from the side rails of the chair by clamping bars bolted through the top of the side rail. I didn’t think about what this meant for the nature of the force exerted when someone sits on the chair. In addition to pulling down on the side rail it also exerts a rotational force inwards. This caused the through tenons in the poorly fitted mortises to rotate and put a lot of force on the meager 3/8” of material next to them and split it.

Finally I also went and looked closely at the original manufactured chairs I had copied and I was reminded that they had screws which had been countersunk and plugged which went through the front and the side of the leg into the rail and the stretcher. I had just ignored them thinking they were unnecessary if I used “real joinery” when in reality they were there to help the joinery resist the twisting force of the sling seat.

New (L) Manufactured (R)

The new design

Two of the chairs had developed this problem, the other two were hanging in there because I had gotten better at making the mortises when I made them. But, I figured it was only a matter of time before they failed as well so I decided to remake all of the chairs.

I would be able to unbolt and reuse all of the hardware and the fabric parts of the original chairs. I planned to eliminate all of the causes of failure from the first set of chairs in the new design.

I decided to make the new set out of Sapele which is an African hardwood with beautiful grain and color. Sapele has a Janka (hardness) rating of between 1410 and 1510 which is harder than Teak which is between 1070 and 1155 and about three times harder than Western Red Cedar which is 350. Sapele is also very weather resistant and it is cheaper than Teak and has less silica in it so it doesn’t dull your cutting tools as bad. It is also cheaper than White Oak which was the second runner up.

I eliminated the through tenons and made all of them rectangular 1/2” wide by either 1 1/4” or 2 1/4” by 1/2” deep which in the 1” thick legs left a lot of material on all sides of them. Also I added a countersunk 2 1/2” #10 stainless steel screw into the end of each of the rails front and back and from the sides. I plugged all the holes including the hardware holes which I didn’t do on the other chair.

Another controversial choice I made on the originals was trying to copy the manufactured chair’s joinery for the back leg and chair back rake. They had used a custom finger joint to create the angle between the back and leg and I had used an angled box joint. None of these joints had failed and the only issue I had with them was cosmetic. But, I had been given some feedback from a more experienced member of my woodworking guild that I should have done a glue laminated leg instead. I decided that I would make that the thing that I learned how to do on this project to have a more seamless and also potentially stronger leg.

The manufactured chairs that I was copying have an aluminum bar which curves out from near the top of the back and joins the two back rest frame members together. I had tried to fabricate these out of wood on the original and because of the grain direction they turned out to be fragile if the chair tipped over. I decided to replace these with my own aluminum version of the bar, not bent because I don’t have the tools to bend 6061 aluminum but out of multiple parts bolted together. This bar is important so that when you sit in the chair the sling back has spring to it and the chair back rest frame doesn’t get pulled inward.

I also decided to put a finish on these chairs even though technically the Sapele would also be fine outdoors with no finish. I chose to use Total Boat Lust Spar Varnish, this is a marine varnish which is formulated to allow rapid coat buildup without sanding and long curing times. It is typically used on the decks and other exposed wood on boats in a hostile environment on the ocean.

The project before the project

The first step in fabricating the new chairs was creating the fixture to glue up the laminated back legs. The legs are made up of 8 slices of 1/8” Sapele 2” wide and 36 inches long. I traced the outline of one of the manufactured chair’s back leg onto a large piece of brown paper. I also noted all the transitions and mortices on the tracing in the correct places.

I spray mounted the drawing onto a piece of 3/4” natural birch plywood that was wide enough so that there would be substantial material on either side of the leg when I cut it out.

I carefully cut each side of the leg on the band saw, it is important that the space between the two halves of the clamping fixture is the right width for the entire leg. I carefully cleaned up the edge with the sanding station being careful to come just to the line and keep the edge square.

I then glued these two pieces of the fixture to a matching stack of plywood with another 3/4” layer and a 1/2” layer to make the total height 2”.

Once the glue was completely cured, I cut the two sides apart following the top layer pattern and staying carefully on the waste side so as not to mess up the top pattern layer. Then I took each side to the router table with a 2” flush trimming bit with the bearing on the bottom ( top in this case in the router table) and cut the two new layers flush with the pattern at the top.

I then sanded the face of the fixture smooth and covered all the glue-up facing surfaces with packing tape. I screwed alternating wood spacer blocks to the bottom of the fixture so that they would support the contents of the fixture, slide past each other and allow the glue to mostly pass through. These were also covered in packing tape. A key tip on packing tape, the direction of the tape should be the direction that the fixture is going to move when clamping, not perpendicular. Also avoid any wrinkles.

Later I added some tape covered spacer blocks on top to keep the slippery glued up strips from rising up out of the mold.

The process to create the legs was to slice up two 1 1/16” x 2” x 36” pieces of Sapele into 1/8” strips on the table saw. I didn’t use a thin cutting fixture, I just pressed them against the fence and cut the 1/8” off the outside. There was some small variation in the strips but it had no effect on the lamination. I also didn’t try to additionally sand or flatten the strips I used them right off the saw. I did try to keep them in order as they were cut from the blank. It made the side pattern on the lamination quite nice.

I used a glue roller bottle from Rockler to spread glue on one side of each strip and stack them together. Once I had the eight layers stacked I just slid it into the fixture and matched the ends up with the marks I had made on the pattern on the top. I tried to keep them from sliding out too much at the ends, I had allowed about 1/2” of extra length. The target width for the legs was 1 3/4” so I had 1/4” to clean up the sides of the lamination.

I carefully aligned the sides of the fixture and closed the outside clamps first and each time I had to reset them I just tightened down the center clamp to keep things in place. Once I had the outside clamps fully in place and the center clamp tight I added two additional clamps mid-way in between. I left each leg in the clamp overnight. I would clamp up the next leg in the morning and then work on the rest of the parts for the chair while I waited for it to be done.

When a leg came out of the fixture I would clean up one side on my jointer and then cut the other side with the table saw to 1/16” over the final 1 3/4” width and then I would use the jointer to clean up the saw marks on down to the final size.

I would then mark the top and the foot by laying the leg on the chair I was copying or the other leg if it was already made and mark them and cut them on the chop saw.

Building the chairs

I’m not going to go into all the details of making the other parts of the chairs if you’re interested you can take a look at the linked post in the first paragraph. It was basically the same except in Sapele instead of Western Red Cedar and the design changes noted above.

I also have a mortising machine so that made doing the mortises much easier.

The “plugging” process was two phases. After the glue-up I then did any clean up sanding, tacked everything and cleaned it with alcohol and then masked every counter-sink hole. I then put on a coat of Total Boat Wood Sealer and let that dry over night. The next day I put a coat of Total Boat Lust Spar Varnish on every 1 1/2 hour making sure to get all the end grain, three coats in total (Total Boat says 6-8 but I think they just want to sell varnish and I’m not taking these out on the ocean). The next day I washed all the seat fabric for that chair and then I put all the hardware and fabric on the chair.

The back bar of the chair was made from two 1” standoffs made from 1” diameter 6061 round bar center drilled with a clearance for a 5mm x 60 mm bolt and a bar of 6061 1” x 1/2” that was about 18 1/2” inches long and marked and drilled for two holes centered on the back rest frame three inches from the top. I drilled the holes in the bar stock at the tap size for M5 standard threads. I tapped the holes. I sanded all the parts to 320 grit and coated everything in clear spray lacquer. Then they were bolted through the chair frame into the bar making the cross bar structure.

Second phase of plugging was to make all the 1/2” plugs required, sanding them so they would fit easily and then gluing and tapping them into place. After they were dry I would mask off the area around them and saw them flush with a flush cut saw. I then sanded each plug flush with surface and up to 320 grit and then went through the sequence of wood sealer and spar varnish on each of the spots that needed covering.

The plugs came out very pretty, their chatoyance was in a different angle than the surrounding wood so they gleam and show up also they are frequently a different color than the surrounding wood and stand out for that reason.

The spar varnish is so clear and thick it really highlights and magnifies the natural figure in the Sapele, it really shimmers beautifully. I am a crappy painter so there are runs and drips, you’ll have to find it in your heart to forgive me.

On these chairs I put screw in rubber feet on the bottoms of the legs so they wouldn’t be sitting directly on wet surfaces.

I’m really happy with these replacements, they are a big improvement on my original effort and they salvaged a lot of work I did on the first ones as well.

Dog ramp

August 9, 2025

My neighbor has a Miniature Dachshund that has been having trouble getting on and off of one of the beds in their home. I offered to build a ramp to help the dog get on and off of things. They sent me a picture of a commercial dog ramp that they thought was good and I deduced the angle and size of ramp from the clues in the picture.

I made the height/angle adjustable by having several possible holes for the strut to come down and brace the leg. I used 1/4” x 20 bolts and lock nuts on most of the pivots but used some 1/4” x 20 knobs on the adjustable position so it could be tightened and loosened without tools.

I built a perimeter frame out of 2” x 3/4” maple for the deck of the ramp that was 48” x 18” and put a 1/2” by 1/4” deep rabbet on the edge to receive a 1/4” natural birch plywood deck panel.

I made two frames for the strut and the leg out of 1 1/2” x 3/4” maple joined with lap joints. I rounded the ends so that they would contact the floor well and clear the deck when they pivoted.

I put a Natural Danish Oil finish on all the maple surfaces after sanding them to 320 grit.

My neighbor provided a rug which we cut to size to cover the plywood deck and my beautiful and talented wife sewed an edging on the cut sides to prevent unraveling. I glued the rug to the deck with 3M Super 77 spray adhesive.

As far as I know from watching the initial test with the young dog, he is not afraid of it and he ran up it without a lot of trouble.

Stacked Laundry/Half-bath Cabinets

August 4, 2025

This is another “after twenty plus years of putting it off” sort of project. Since we remodeled the kitchen and moved the laundry into this half-bath off the kitchen there has been a narrow shelf and cabinet unit from Target next to the washer and dryer. It was not a good cabinet, and one of it’s many problems was that the top shelves were open and the vibration of the washer and dryer would walk things off the shelves onto the floor or into the sink. This was sub-optimal, but we lived with it for more than twenty years. Well, no more, I have replaced these cabinets with the ones above.

Because we need to be able to get a plumber/appliance repair-person behind the washer and dryer the cabinet needs to be easily removable. I therefore designed it as three stacking cabinets. Also, because of the close quarters with the sink, the middle cabinet needs two shorter doors instead of one door like the top and bottom. I decided to use frameless cabinet construction out of 1/2” natural birch plywood with one internal fixed shelf dadoed into the sides and the top and bottom rabbeted to accept the sides. Each cabinet is 24 inches tall and 12 inches deep so that I could get all of the parts out of one half sheet of plywood. To make the stack the same height as the washer and dryer and to hide the cleat that keeps them from slipping off when stacked I added a 2 inch tall perimeter base that interlocks with a 3/4” cleat on the top of two of the cabinets. They have a 1/4” birch plywood back.

The doors are mortise and tenon 3/4” maple with 1/4” birch plywood panels.

I used concealed full overlay hinges.

I had sanded everything before assembly to 220 grit and then cleaned up any assembly issues with some spot sanding. I primed everything with Zinzer BINS Shellac Based Primer and then put on a coat of Benjamin Moore Acrylic Eggshell paint in Atrium White ( which we had from a previous home improvement ).

After unloading and disposing of the old cabinet, I installed the new ones and reloaded them. There is now more storage space and it all looks much nicer in the room.

A series of small projects...

July 22, 2025

As it sometimes goes the last couple of weeks in the shop have been focused on a series of small projects.

The first one was two more pocket knives that I wanted to put wooden scales onto. One of the knives was from a box of small knife bodies and other leather hardware that came from Noymer Leather back when my father was alive and worked there. Probably 30 years or more ago, it is the small rectangular one. It didn’t have any scales and was probably going to be covered in leather at the factory. The other was an old Swiss Army knife which I just popped the scales off of and used the originals as a template to cut out the veneers. I cut the scales on my scroll saw and did the fine shaping on my sanding station. The finish was just natural danish oil and then paste wax. I attached them to the knife bodies with J.B. Weld epoxy that I carefully brushed on in a distribution so that it wouldn’t squeeze out very much.

The second project was a cart for my beautiful and talented wife’s new shop tool, an electric drum carder. A drum carder is used to process fibers from sheep, plants, and other animals into clean organized rolls of fiber that can be spun into yarn. I built the cart for her “shop” the same way as I do for my shop, screwed together out of 3/4” natural birch plywood with a single fixed shelf inside for rigidity and a 1/4” natural birch plywood back. It is on locking heavy duty casters.

I went ahead and sanded the edges and corners so they wouldn’t snag the fiber and I put some handles on each end made from some ash scrapwood that I had from another project.

The third project was a small Niddy Noddy which is a tool for winding yard after you have spun it. It both organizes the yarn and because each winding around the device is a specific length allows you to figure out how many yards of yarn you’ve spun. This one is a 1 yard Niddy Noddy. It is designed to disassemble into three pieces so that it can be packed in a carrying sack for bringing to spinning and weaving classes. I dubbed it the “Mini Noddy.” I sanded everything to 320 grit and applied a couple of coats of paste wax.

The final project was a Lazy Kate which is a series of spindles on a platform that bobbins with yarn can be placed on while plying. Plying is the activity of taking one or more single ply yarns and combining them by winding them together into a new multi-ply yarn. This particular one is made to fold up for portability to weaving and spinning classes.

The platform is a glue up of Sappele and Rock Maple and I was able to use my new Jointer/Planer on this and it put a wonderful surface on it as well as making the glue-up near perfect. The pivot points are 1/2” dowels and I got a special drill bit to drill the holes 1/64” oversize to allow clearance for the dowels to pivot. I put 1/4” - 20 threads onto brass rods for the spindles and threaded 1/4” - 20 thread size holes in the dowels to screw them into. It took many tries to use the tapping die to cut the threads on the brass rods straight but I got it. I didn’t want to just glue them into the dowels because I feared in the process of gluing them the squeeze out would also glue the dowel to the hole. We’ll see how this all holds up in use. I cut the channels for the rods to lay down in with my router with the side fence on it.

I just sanded everything to 320 grit and then put a couple of coats of paste wax on it which I find works good with weaving tools.

That’s the update for now…

Three shop improvements

July 4, 2025

In between furniture projects I like to knock off some improvements to the shop that I’ve been thinking of for anywhere from days to years. These are three that I just completed.

The first one was to correct something about my main work island that had been bugging me almost since I built it a year or so ago. I had made the top of it out of crappy sheathing grade 3/4” plywood and a layer of 1/8” hardboard. It was a fine surface to get dirty and potentially damage but it was never actually flat. Because the plywood was pretty misshapen when I received it, if I was doing assembly on it square things would get out of true because they weren’t properly supported. I had taken to doing assembly on the cast iron surface of my table saw, this bothered me.

I decided to make a flat, rigid, top for the island and also add an overhang to make clamping along the edge better. I went with 2 x 6 red oak for cost reasons and I glued up a nice top that was oversize. It came out of the clamps pretty flat and I planed and sanded both sides checking them with a straight edge to make them both flat.

I removed the old top and the top frame from the island, I only screw together things for the shop so that I can easily modify or recycle them by just unscrewing them later. I reused the old 3/4” plywood top as the top skin of the island and screwed it to all the uprights and the center divider. I then attached the new top to the island using screws from the underside. I only put screws in where it was touching the plywood directly or where I could put in a shim. I was careful not to try to pull the top down to the plywood and deform it.

I cut the overhang to final size of 3” using my track saw and then I beveled the edges with a plane and did some cleanup sanding.

I put a finish of Tung oil on the surface since this type of finish was recommended for work surfaces. It is now nice and flat and very handy for clamping. And should I ever need to make it level, the leveling foot casters on the island make that possible.

The second improvement was to build a set of drawers for additional storage in a shelf unit that I built five years ago. When I built it I just made several deep tall shelves but I quickly found that to be cumbersome because organizing things was impossible, things at the back were hard to see and reach etc… I have been adding drawers into this unit to solve these issues for a while. This is the last set.

I had three sets of 18” full extension heavy duty drawer slides from a batch of cheap Chinese manufacture drawer slides I got a while ago from Amazon. So the drawers would be 18” deep, the case would be 19” deep for some clearance at the back.

I’ve been building these units as a free standing box with the drawers inside it because it protects the drawers from dust and moisture ( I paint them with mold/moisture resistant primer inside and out now as well…) It also makes them modular in case I rearrange the shop and want to put the drawer unit somewhere else.

The case and the drawers are all built out of 3/4” natural birch plywood, pretty good stuff, low voids, not incredibly heavy but strong. The drawer bottoms are 1/4” natural birch plywood. I ran out of the drawer pulls I was using in the shop so I used some shaker drawer pulls that I got a whole bag of at a guild auction.

This came together in a day including painting and it was dry and ready to assemble and install the next day. It has cleaned up that area and I now have some extra storage that is very usable.

The final shop improvement was a cart for a new tool. I have finally reached the point where I want/need a jointer/planer I got a combination unit that can operate on 8” wide material. This is perfect for the kind of work that I do and for the limited space in my shop. I donated my old table saw to the guild auction and that cleared up a space under the stairs to the basement of the perfect size.

I wanted to build a cart for this tool since I don’t want to be lifting it onto a bench every time I use it and I want it to be easy to move back to storage when it is not in use. I figured out the size of the cart to support it and prevent it from tipping and be at a good height for feeding material through the planer/jointer. I built the cart as a box with a center support inside and fixed shelves to provide internal stability. I used the same 3/4” natural birch plywood. I put a 1/4” plywood covering on one side.

I used 4” tall heavy duty casters with locking wheels for the wheels. I was able to screw the planer/jointer directly to the top so it is very secure. All of the manuals, accessories, tools, etc… that go with the tool fit in the shelves in the cart. It rolls easily around the shop and up and down the ramp to the garage with no problems.

The planer/jointer was easy to set up and the test cuts were excellent, this tool with help offset my relatively poor hand planing skills.

So that’s it for shop improvements for now and I’m taking a short break to do some non-workshop projects.

Footstool for Modern Wing-back Chair

July 4, 2025

After deploying the Modern Wing-back Chair that I built, my beautiful and talented wife suggested that a footstool that could hide underneath it would be a nice addition. I had left over cherry wood in the right dimensions to do it so I did a quick project to make one.

After determining the right dimensions, I rough cut all of the material for the top frame and the legs. I connected the frame parts using mortise and tenon joints, the legs I cut an offset 1” x 1” tenon on the top of each leg so the frame could sit on the shoulder. I then tapered each leg on the back and inside and then using the router table I applied a 3/8” round over detail to all of the visible edges of the legs and the frame to match the detail of the chair. The tenons on the tops of the legs also got drilled for a diagonal screw to pull them into the corner of the frame. The tenon stops 1/2” below the top of the frame to create four support points for the 3/8” plywood base of the cushion.

After sanding from 60 grit to 320 grit ( and cleaning up the tapers and transitions of the rounding over process) I glued up the frame and installed the screws holding the legs in along with glue.

I cut a 3/8” thick plywood base with a 1/8” clearance around it for the base of the cushion. I glued 1 1/2” deluxe foam that had been shaped to have curved edges on four sides and 1” of polyester batting onto the plywood. I then covered it in the same fabric as the chair making sure to align the pattern so that it pointed in the same direction as the chair. I stapled the fabric on the back of the plywood panel and trimmed off any excess. I just friction fit it into the footstool so it is technically removeable.

I put a coat of General Finishes Hard Wax Oil finish on the cherry and let it cure and then I was able to install the cushion and deploy the footstool. I think it complements the chair nicely and it does add to the comfort of using the chair.

Sewing storage wall cabinet

June 15, 2025

My beautiful and talented wife was complaining that her sewing materials, needles, zippers, pins, thread, etc… were stored in a myriad of work boxes and every time she needed anything she had to search five places. I suggested that I could make a wall cabinet to go above her sewing table, in the same style, that would provide storage for all of those things and more. She loved that idea and so I designed the cabinet and after approved drawings I got to work on it.

I decided to make it out of maple to match her sewing table which would be right below it. I wanted to add some interesting details to dress it up so I decided to do a marquetry pattern on the door fronts, a herringbone pattern of 1 1/2” wide slices of the same maple as the case. It would provide an interesting texture and pattern without contrasting too much.

I also decided to use dovetail joints for the cabinet to give the side view some features as well. I made a practice project from some scrap to practice making dovetails since I’d never used them before.

The overall size of the cabinet was 36” x 24” and 9” deep including the doors. I chose to make the doors bi-folding because 18” doors would be cumbersome next to the wall on the left and the door opening on the right. Also, the sewing table has bi-folding doors and I wanted to repeat that feature.

I put a divider up the center of the cabinet so that there would be six independently adjustable shelves inside.

After acquiring all the maple that I needed for the project I cut the blanks for the sides and laid out the dovetail tails on the sides so that the bottom and top would have the pins. I cut the tails manually using my gents saw and then traced them onto the corresponding ends and cut the pins. I removed the waste using a coping saw, chisel, and rasp. After fine tuning the fit, I cut grooves in the panels to receive the back and a top batten and bottom batten to give me something to attach the wall mounting hardware to.

I built the frame of the doors as one big panel with the vertical frame parts for the doors centered at 9” intervals. I made split tenons on the three vertical frame parts that went into double mortices with a 1/2” space between them. This was so when the frame was assembled I could cut it into 9” ( or so ) panels and not show the mortices in the side frame. I assembled the frame and glued it up.

I routed a 1/2” W x 5/8” D rabbet around the inside edge of the back of the frames to hold the marquetry panels. I found that my Milwaukee trim saw was great for quickly cutting the waste out of the corners.

I cut 1/4” panels to fit and to be the backing for the marquetry. I laid out the marquetry and then traced the panel onto the slices of veneer and then numbered them and cut them to final shape on my scroll saw. After sanding the edges of each marquetry piece I coated one side of each panel with glue spread with a silicone grooved spreader to an even depth. I then assembled the marquetry on the glue and taped the pieces together with blue painters tape. I built a caul out of two pieces of 3/4” pine, one side I put 2” high legs in the corners and the top piece was just cut to size. I put blue tape on the inner faces. I put the panel on the lower section and taped it down to the caul so it wouldn’t drift around during clamping. Then I put the top of the caul on, and then a curved caul down the center to distribute pressure from the top to the bottom. I clamped all around the edges at even intervals. This made the marquetry come out really nicely.

I smoothed each panel starting with a 60 grit diagonal pass to level everything and then going through the grits to 320 then spraying each with water and letting it dry and sanding it again at 320 to get a really nice smooth surface.

I then trimmed the edges of the panels so they fit nicely in the recesses in the back of the doors. I then mounted the piano hinges on the door sides with them all spaced out using plastic 1/8” spacers to give an even gap and to make them span exactly the 36” cabinet.

Then using my adjustable shelf hole drilling jig I drilled all the shelf pin holes on the inside of the cabinet and both sides of the divider. With that done I sanded all the parts to 320 grit and then assembled and glued up the cabinet.

The first part of the finish was natural danish oil. Then after 72 hours two coats of wipe on polyurethane. This matches the finish on the sewing table.

After that had dried for 24 hours I reassembled everything and I secured the marquetry panels in the doors using framing points ( so if I wanted to change them out in the future that would be possible.)

My talented and beautiful wife helped me mount the case on the wall, remount the doors, install the knobs, install the magnetic catches, shelf pins, and shelves. She then had a great time putting things into the cabinet using the containers from ULINE that I had based the dimensions of the cabinet on.

I really like how this cabinet came out. I like how the marquetry and the dovetail details look on the cabinet. And it is an excellent storage solution for lots of sewing materials.

Dovetail practice box

June 15, 2025

I had a plan to build a wall cabinet for my beautiful and talented wife to store her sewing materials in. I was going to make it out of maple to match the sewing table I built for her. I wanted to use dovetail joints to add a nice detail to the cabinet. I have never done dovetail joints so I decided to practice on some scrap wood. I had some western red cedar that was the same width as the sides of the cabinet I was planning to build so I cut it up into equal size lengths to give me four joints to practice on.

I laid out the tails using 1 in 7 angle on the dovetails and equally spacing them for the width. I cut them freehand with my 8” Lynx Gents Saw being careful to always cut on the waste side. Getting the angle right each time took the most practice and once the very rigid saw was headed in the wrong direction it was hard/impossible to correct.

I tried a number of different methods for clearing the waste, in the soft cedar using a chisel was actually quite difficult and there was a lot of crushing/tearing of the wood at the edges, so I ended up using a coping saw to remove as much waste as possible and then I used a rasp and some chiseling to refine the fit.

I then traced the tails onto the opposite side of the joint being careful to note which side was the outside of the box. The tails were easier since the saw was vertical for all of the cuts. I then used chisel and rasp to fine tune them until they fit.

I got progressively better at each joint with less mistakes and better fit sooner. I realized that I had made a box when I put all the joints together. I decided I would finish the box. I cut grooves in the inside for a top and a bottom made out of 1/4” plywood. I sanded all the surfaces up to 320 grit and then I glued up the box. After the glue had cured, I did some touch up sanding and I carefully filled all of the worst gaps in my early dovetails.

I then cut the top of the box off on the table saw. I then put two coats of hard wax oil on the outside. Once that had dried I put on the hinges and a hasp for a small lock.

I didn’t really have a purpose for the box so I gave it away to a friend. It was an excellent small project to get some experience doing dovetails before I committed to doing them on expensive material.

One day builds...

April 2, 2025

I was just thinking about how pleasurable it is to have a shop, tools, materials, and hardware and be able to have an idea for a solution to a problem and be able to implement it in a day or less.

The shoe rack above was inspired by needing to keep our shoes with laces organized in our foyer which has a door that closes on the inside. This is critical because one of our cats, who we’ll call “the nibbler,” has taken to snipping shoe laces by nibbling them when you least expect it. I can’t emphasize how much fun it is to be about to go somewhere, pull on your shoes, and have the laces come away in your hands. I’m sure it amuses the cat.

I built it in an hour or so out of off-cuts from previous projects and using only hardware I had in the shop already.

Sometimes you just see materials around the shop and an idea will enter your mind and you can have a short side quest following that inspiration. This pocket knife was like that. I was cleaning up the shop and I moved a box that had a bunch of small knives with no scales on them that I inherited when we cleaned out my father’s shop years ago. My father was a mechanic who maintained industrial sewing machines at a leather goods factory in what is now called the Seaport District in Boston. He brought these home from work, I guess they were supposed to be covered in leather.

I had some beautiful veneers made out of wenge wood and curly maple left over from my recent clock project and I realized that they would make cool scales for one of these knives.

A little bit of gluing, cutting, sanding, finishing and I had created a pocket knife that I carry now.

It can also be motivated by finally overcoming inertia and fixing a problem that has been lingering for years. Like the sand paper organizer above. I’ve been stuffing sand paper containers into a jumbled drawer and having them pop open and jam the drawer or spill their contents forcing me to re-sort them by grit when they all mix together. This has always irritated me, but I put off doing “the right thing” for a very long time. Recently, I recovered a bunch of 1/2” plywood from a wine storage case that we no longer use ( turns out we are wine drinkers, not collectors ). I saw this blank space on the back of this bench, and had just experienced the frustration again and in a couple of hours I had fabricated this organizer.

Or someone else has an idea and I can help them execute the idea. My neighbor had the piece of wood with a hole cut in it ( was left over from a kitchen remodel ) and wanted to use it as the lid for a cold frame to start plants outside.

We were talking about it and I volunteered to build the cold frame and also use up some scrap wood and other materials that I had around the shop. Even the primer was from a prior project.

It took less than a day if you don’t count paint drying time….

And finally you might be married to a beautiful and talented woman who does spinning and weaving. In this case there are many “tools of the trade” like the “temple” above which is an expandable bar that can be used to keep the width of a weaving project consistent by gripping the edges in this case with spiky teeth and applying outward tension.

It is fun making functional items and seeing them used to make beautiful things. Also many of these tools have a history that goes back hundreds and hundreds of years.

I love having a shop and being able to do these kinds of projects, they may not be elaborate or difficult, but they deliver a solution and a great deal of satisfaction.