Post up your woodworking projects

Nothing special, but it's been dead in here for a long time...

A little background. My wife's family owns a cabin in upper Michigan. Just over a year ago we went up, opened the cabin, and woke in the AM to a massive flood from a pipe that had been weakened over the winter and burst while we slept.

So we spent all of the Memorial Day weekend in 2015 tearing out everything in the basement, all the sheetrock, insulation, anything not waterproof or in the few areas that didn't get wet.

One of the things that hung around was this crappy rickety set of shelves. This photo is actually after re-relocating it this weekend and having thrown just enough 3" screws into it to keep it from collapsing while being moved.



Anyhow, it moved because it was in a prime spot right next to a window and the walk-out doors. I had brought up a bunch of old 18v Ridgid tools (excuse the sea of orange) that I no longer use, but are a lot better than nothing, as well as a super cheap 7-1/4" Ryobi miter saw that again, is better than nothing. So I needed a place to put and use them:



Center of the table pops out and goes into the slots below it to allow the miter saw to sit flush with the rest of the top for material support. 3/4" Melamine top for durability and easy cleaning, 2x6 supports for rigidity and the rest 2x4 for convenience.

Also added the outlet box to the upper right, but found that there are no neutrals in the switch box, just unlabeled white wires used in switch loops and as the traveler for a 3-way circuit. I hate switch loops and I hate unlabeled white wires used as hots. Whoever guided my father-in-law in the wiring of this place loved switch loops, and they went out of their way to use them on every last light in the entire place. And not being an electrician, he didn't properly label a single one.

So next time, bring some extra wire to carry down the common from the light (it's just outside the door and straight up from the switch). Then mount the chargers off the bench and build some shelves on that wall space. We also had to buy a ton of 20" box fans when the flood happened, so I'll pick up a case of 20x20 furnace filters and build a way to fasten them to one of the fans and it can sit in the window just off to the left of the photo for air filtration.

 

^^Nice! I love the idea of the sunken in support for the saw to have it sit flush with the rest of the work bench. Ingenious.

For my projects: I started a night stand for my fiance, but it's been at a stand still since February due to all of the wedding planning, autox, and busy schedules. I hate having an outstanding, unfinished project, but it will get done after the wedding. It will definitely be my most complicated project yet since I have to make and mount drawers. I eventually plan to make a matching one for myself, a bed frame/platform, etc.

I might take up a mini project and make a wedding card box for our wedding. Hoping it will be quick and easy, especially if I can use the brad nailer that I just bought not too long ago (harbor freight special).

 

I must admit there wasn't a whole lot of "working the wood" other than some cutting and staining, but the wife and I collaborated on some new computer desks recently.

My vision was to make them look floating, her vision was to give them a vintage/barn wood type look or something. This is what we came up with.

Hers


Mine


Fairly basic. 4 colors of stain, couple coats of poly. Bunch of cutting to get the staggered look. And finally got to use 1 of my 3 Christmas presents (Bosch nailers).

Planning to build a matching box to hide the tower and wires for each. Ended up finding two pieces with fairly massive knot chunks missing from the side. Lined em up in the back corner of mine, opposing each other so it makes a big gap for the wires to run through the top without having to cut a big hole.

Of course the pics won't work... Will have to edit links once I get laptop access tomorrow.

 

I can't edit yours, but I can fix links:

Hers


His

 

They look great @Krazylegz1485 ! I also finally opened my brad nailer and tested it out last night...air tools are awesome This will make some projects so much easier.

Side note - does any one have any tips for applying polyurethane? It seems like no matter what I do (stir slowly, apply slow or fast), I get tons of little bubbles when I apply it, and some of them still show after it dries. I'm using a regular brush and it's not a complete cheapo brush. I also sand with 220 grit between coats, remove the dust with a tack cloth, and sometimes I can still faintly see some sanding dust. I hate the the polyurethaning process!

 

I bought this saw for $94 back when TMF posted the deal (looks like it's now $140). It mostly just sat in the box over the last year. I think I used it once or twice for just a few cuts at a time. Over the last few weeks it's finally gotten some good use because I decided to redo my deck with composite.

I have made hundreds of cuts with it and also bought an abrasive blade for ferrous metals to cut the brackets for in the hand rails. Coming from someone with zero experience I have been happy with the saw. Took a little while to get a feel for where the cuts would end up but I have it down pretty well now.

It's always been on my list to do a bunch of 2x4 and plywood shelves in my garage so that might be the next project once I have some time.

 

I have found it easier to apply poly (& stain) with a rag rather than a brush. If you are going for a gloss finish I use the throw-away foam brushes. It has to be the right temp also. Too warm and it doesn't have time to level and you can get bubbles. To0 cool and you get more dust imbedded. Sanding & finishing are my least favorite part of projects

 

Thanks for the tips. I use a rag for applying stain (which works well), so I might have to try the same technique for the poly. Otherwise a throw-away foam brush would make for easy clean up

 

Did that in mine when we first moved in. Got basically 16' long with 2' deep shelves. 3 shelves high roughly 2' in between, so 4 including the floor. So much room for activities now.

 

Thanks! Stuck doing 99% of my interwebs on my phone since we moved into our new place. Really sucks for forum usage.

 

I worked a cabinet shop briefly recently and did mainly finishing. Wiping stain but spraying sealer and top coat. Stuff dried really fast and looked pretty much mint no matter what. Then I try it at home with "over the counter" brush on poly. What a disappointment. Takes forever to dry and looks like hell (relatively). Definitely got spoiled with the good stuff.

 

The water-based polys tend to have some crazy fast dry times. Sprayed is always best for a finish coat.

I tend to use poly when I care more about durability than appearance, and use a foam brush. If I want it to look really good I'll go to a Danish oil or similar.

 

Everything we sprayed was lacquer based. Some post-cat but mostly pre-cat.

 

Yeah, commercially you would go that route, no doubt. I was simply saying that for the average hobbiest, the water-based urethanes are a good choice for fast drying times.

 

Finished up this set of chairs last weekend, and went with some Sikkens translucent stain. Very happy with how they turned out! (Had to throw a little orange and the dog in the photo for good measure )

 

Still needs sanding and not sure how I'm going to finish it (paint vs oil vs poly), but we decided to create a base station for all of our devices, mostly so it would be obvious if one of the kids snuck one off to use after bedtime. 1/4" baltic birch plywood. Slots for 4 tablets and 4 phones.


Under a false bottom it has this beastie:

Anker 10-port 60W charger.

I'm trying to figure out how best to manage the cables still, as they tend to not want to drop down nicely, which means the devices don't sit flat, but it's not bad either.

Eventually I might put a couple of ports on the back or something to use the last two charging ports that aren't in use now.

I love me some SketchUp. Design and cut diagram:

 

This is awesome! I am going to have to look at this SketchUp you speak of. I have thought multiple times of making something like this for our devices as well. Very cool!

 

Old project just getting around to taking pictures of it. Place your bets.

 

I've sold a couple of these outright but mainly I build them to donate to fundraisers and silent auctions. One went to the Officers Down 5k in Aitkin where I'm from, another to the Law Enforcement Memorial Association(LEMA), and another for an upcoming benefit for a state trooper who was diagnosed with an aggressive form of leukemia.

 

Couple of projects that I have been working on, made these speakers from a kit - overnight sensations - for my wife's craft room

 

These are some cutting boards I am making for Christmas presents for the family - cherry, walnut, maple:

 

Ha, $10 at Total Wine - it's pretty good

 

Apothic is a pretty good and popular blend also, serve that up @ work.

 

I'm desperately trying to sort out my garage before real snow hits (because I need to get the 350z in there). I have this knee wall that runs around the side and back walls. It's 7-1/4" deep. I used to have a bunch of those craptacular stamped sheet metal shelves that you bolt together with a million machine screws up there, but they're a huge PITA to adjust, and they stuck out over the knee wall by 3-4"
Ripped two full and two re-used (slightly undersized) sheets of 1/2" plywood down to 7-1/4 and built these. Shelves on top are all removable, they just slide into the dadoes, the middle shelves (1 per unit) are fixed, while the bottoms are filled with Ikea bins in the 1/2 width spaces.

Debating making a second row of cordless too holders, as I have a couple more Milwaukee tools that should go where the little masterforce and the Ryobi are now, so then I'll have 4 tools (12v drill & impact driver, 18v drill and impact wrench) without a defined home. They may go into a bag as a mobile set.

I'm definitely going to do another holder in the same style for my loose nail guns (trim, brad, pin, narrow crown stapler, 2x T50 staplers). I have a case for my other trim+brad+narrow crown stapler) so that'll be the mobile set.

 

Close-up of the tool holder when possible?

Also, what does one use to dado the shelf grooves? I could see a table saw working to an extent if you had an endless fence length. Router and straight edge? One of these days I'd like to make some shelves at least a little more professional looking than brackets on each end.

 

The tool holder is really simple, it's basically 1-1/2" wide by 4" deep slots cut into the shelf 2" apart. And then a piece of 1/2" ply glued and nailed to the bottom behind the slots as a stiffener. I'll pull it out and take a pic next time I'm out there. Oh, the last two slots are only 1-1/4" wide and a little closer together as the 12v tools are smaller. Cut out with a scroll saw and the inlets are a little tapered to make putting the tools away easier.

To do the dadoes I used a dado stack in a Delta Unisaw with an extension table. I built a small sled jig to hold the pieces on the miter gauge, and then used the rip fence with a stand-off block (so I could use it to set the depth, but the piece doesn't touch the fence when going through the blade to reduce the risk of binding and kickback). So yeah, a really high capacity fence helps, but you could do it without the fence if you were really careful about positioning each cut. Each shelf is 60" high, so the most I would have needed was ~30" of rip capacity, but that's still beyond most portable saws. I'm a member of Twin Cities Maker so I did the dadoes there on one of the cabinet saws.

However, a router and a straight edge would work well too (I've got one of these: https://smile.amazon.com/E-Emerson-Tool-C50-Contractor/dp/B003TXSAHU), especially if you did the routing before you ripped down the plywood.

As usual, I worked things out in SketchUp first. I was going to do something much more complex with folding work surfaces, but in the end I simplified it.

 

@Vector awesome project to and thanks for posting sketchup. I haven't used it before and it looks like it would be super helpful for making plans, instead of my chicken scratch on blank pages.

 

What you want is SketchUp Make, it's the free version.
http://www.sketchup.com/download?sketchup=make

Give yourself a hour or so and go through the beginner tutorials at: http://www.sketchup.com/learn/videos/58?playlist=58

You'll be amazed how easy it is to put stuff together quickly after that.

 

Yea I watch the first video and it seemed pretty I intuitive. I think I'll be watching the rest and using it for my next project.

In other news, I finally made and hung my first drawer, and it was successful!



I started making a nightstand for my wife's birthday... back in February. Spring and summer got busy and I put it off, but time for me to finish it! Definitely the biggest/most complex project that I've tackled, and it might be the last for a while. It's still a work in progress, but finishing it soon!

 

Did you use a Kreg pocket-hole jig for that?

 

Yep, well actually it was a Rockler, but similar concept: http://www.rockler.com/rockler-universal-drawer-slide-jig

It worked surprisingly well. The hardest part was mounting the screws on the right hand side, because it is a small opening in the night stand and I'm not left handed! (for driving the screws). Drilling some small pilot holes was the key.

@Vector - I looked up the Delta Unisaw because I was curious... Is that yours or did you use it at Twin Cities Maker? I poked around their website a bit...seems like it a community-like workshop that also offers classes?

 

Not mine. Someday.

They have a SawStop cabinet saw, as well as the Delta cabinet saw. The website sucks, but yes, it's a community workshop. Divided into a few different areas, wood shop, metal shop, machine shop, 3d printing and general crafts, laser cutter, plus a large classroom.

 

I have finally finished construction of the night stand, but it hasn't been warm enough to do the staining. I'll post up some photos once it is complete.

In other news, I've been wanting to build a shoe rack that is suitable for my shoe collection, and I finally got around to it yesterday! It's not perfect, but for the time it took to make and it's purpose...it will do just fine. I used 1x12's for the shelves and since I wanted the shelves to be 4 feet wide, I thought it would be much easier to just buy the 1x12x4' boards at Home Depot. Well, that was a learning lesson. They all are not exactly 4' (one was about 1/2" too short), and they also only had common boards so it was tough to find usable boards in the pile. It turned out fine, but next time, I'd probably use plywood or another dimension that comes in "select" boards.





Bonus points for whoever can count the total number of Red Wing's in the second photo!

BTW, do you mind if I steal/borrow these plans? I might make one of these for our living room...

 

Go ahead. PM me your email and I'll send you the sketchup file if you want.

 

Over the winter break I built a project with my 7-yr old daughter. She designed the table, then I cut/drilled/mortised the pieces. She assembled it, then laid out her tile design, and we both glued the tiles on. I then grouted it, and we painted it together, finishing it with a transparent pink glitter glaze. Gotta say, this was really, really rewarding to do with her.

Her design requirements: Mosaic title top, shelf on the bottom, pink paint, and wheels.

 

And a little less sparkly, I tossed together a single-sheet worktable for the maker-space I use:




Built from a single sheet of 3/4" plywood - cheap, and super strong.

I also helped build this shop-vac silencer a little over a week ago (not my video):

https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=10100437354285641

Built using acoustic padding from MNSubaru's very own @Gridlocked.

 

As much as I hate the place, I think Menards might have that size in select boards.

 

Oh nice, I checked online and it looks like they do carry a "standard" 1x12 and "quality" 1x12. I may have to check that out in the future.

I normally prefer Home Depot, but the other thing that drives me nuts about their lumber, is the plywood. A 1/2" sheet of plywood is usually something like 15/32nd's, not a full 1/2"...which can throw off your measurements and tolerances. Menards usually has plywood that is the actual dimension that it states it is!

 

Finally finished my bedframe project. Maple with cherry trim. I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.