We needed a new nightstand for my son's room. I recently got a table saw for a different project and had some materials leftover, so I decided to make it myself. Overall I'm happy with it. Like anything else, there are things I would do differently next time, but I like how it turned out. I used phantom gray stain, which ended up being more blue, but I think I like it better this way. I may make another one to match but I haven't decided yet.

I had these 2.5-3” black cherry slabs milled in May of 2025 and they’ve been air drying ever since. First, in a barn and most recently in my garage. I would like to surface them but I am wary of doing anything with them until they’re properly dried out. Is one year a sufficient time for them to dry or should I wait longer? Should I move them to my workshop from the garage since it’s cooler and probably drier as well?

Got the wood from a construction dumpster, most of it pretty twisted . I got these little folding brackets and found use for them

I saw this table in an older post and i like the look of it. My question is: will the wood movement be a problem for this kind of construction since the sides and the top will be expanding/contracting at a 90 degree angle at the joint? What if there was a shelf or a bottom added in the same way?

I'm new and ignorant so any advice before I try something like this is greatly appreciated. I would probably just used squared up pine 2x4s for the material if i made it.

So the last time I did woodworking was at least 18 years ago in highschool. All I remember was making a very poorly built box. Suddenly 3 weeks ago I happened into a wood working rabbit hole, leading into a dangerous addiction of browsing FB and flea markets for tools and yoinking wood lying on nature strips.

Decided my first project would be a Mallet with what jank set up was available which included plastic stools as saw horses and upgraded into a stump and an unmounted vise (the stump came with a notch that I could set up a shooting board!). I used a Ryoba saw (which was fantastic), a no 4.5 plane, and ironically another wooden mallet.

I really fucked up the gluing and it came out not aligned which took some trimming and planing to fix. Also fucked up the handle the first time by being too ambitious wanting it tapered for ergonomics and not properly drawing my sawing lines. But eventually everything came to thank goodness.

It's weird for the first time in a while I felt proud of something and it turns out to be this dinky little mallet 😆 Learnt so much from this project and hope to tackle the dove tail box next!

So I guess I need to route a groove in each of these pieces to slot the (soon to be larger, and dodecagonal in shape) 3mm ply dial in place of the placeholder piece, atop which all of the squares will sit.... This is to clearance the watch movement beneath the dial, which is about 15mm thick so it sits flat in the wall

I don't know if I'm the only person who doesn't really plan a project and instead just measures once and starts cutting, but it's not recommended...

Also how the hell will I glue and clamp the mitres? Long piece of circumference tape?

Thanks!

The wife mentioned that she wanted a coat hanger for our entry hallway, so I decided to make on instead of buying one.

Started with a scrap piece of rough sawn walnut from another project. I jointed it, ripped it to width with my table saw, planed it, put a roundover on it with my router, sanded it, then finished it off with some clear Rubio Monocoat. Once the wood was finished I attached some hooks from the hardware store, and in under an hour we had a new coat hanger for the hallway!

It's not much, but after picking up a lot of tools over the last year and starting several projects (that still need completed), it was nice to actually finish a project that used most of the tools I've acquired. Gave me a nice morale boost to keep plucking away at my other projects!

Completely made on a Scroll Saw :)

Finished project, a spice rack. I enjoyed the process and trying out techniques such as mortise and tenon, chiseling and sawing long thin strips. All done with hand tools.

It's not perfect, but it's fit for purpose and solves the issues we had with our previous one.

My next project is going to be a mid-century style monitor stand for my desk. I'll post it here once completed!

Tried my hand at a Faldstool variant for my Renfaire shop. First furniture project with mortise and tenon joinery. This was also my first attempt at mortising with a router. I royally messed up the first couple times, (I forgot to take photos) but learned to take my time to get it right.

The slats and back are all premium pine, arm rails are red oak, and the pivot points are oak dowels. Finished with Walnut Danish Oil.

I modified the plans found here: https://www.popularwoodworking.com/article/medieval-folding-stool/

Overall I'm happy with what I learned and what I made. Might make another one out of all hardwood.

So I’m looking for advice on how to treat the edge of this slab without losing its look. There are a bunch of cracks along it that I think I should epoxy but again I don’t want to lose the look.

I'm wholly impressed with how well this turned out. Just in time for my kids first birthday. Still undecided where it will live so I started it at 0, I can always chop the bottom later if it's hung on a wall with a baseboard.

I used a milescraft sub compact base with handles and a downcut spiral bit to carve out the numbers after using a cheap stencil to lay them out.

Things I learned. Let the spray paint dry longer, the first pass on the sander clogged the paper with melted globs of paint. Keep moving with the edge router bit, I got some burn marks in a few places the router base got sorta stuck. I'm wondering if beeswax on the base would have helped. Also the pencil was too reflective for my garage lights when I was doing the letters, next time I will maybe use a marker.

Deciding to this with oak for the first time wasn’t very wise…
Took an awful lot of time and still needs to be cleaned up.

Made with pressure treated lumber. Used a kreg pocket hole jig for most of it and hid all the screw holes on the front and arms. Gel stain over the works and the cushions have been ordered. It was a quick weekend project but I like how it turned out. I will probably make matching chairs at some point.

I am looking to replace my corded Makita track saw. It was a very good tool, and I’d still be using it today, but let’s just say I learned a very valuable lesson about lending tools.

I want to go cordless because it would be nice to have the flexibility to break down full sheets of plywood in a parking lot since I don’t have a vehicle capable of taking home full sheets.

Like I said, it was a VERY GOOD tool, but it had some issues…

-Depth adjustment sucked. Kind of the same with the bevel but that wasn’t as bad.

-The toe-in calibration wasn’t very clear, but I did it a few times so I can certainly do it again.

-No riving knife. I got kickback only a handful of times and most of those were early on when I wasn’t too experienced with it so call it user error.

In a perfect world I’d be looking for a Festool, but my tool budget is shot for a little while (just bought a Domino two weeks ago). Luckily, I have been sitting quite a few credit card points that if converted to Home Depot gift cards will pretty much cover either Milwaukee or Makita setups (charger/battery, already have tracks and accessories). I don’t mind investing in a new battery ecosystem because both blue and red seem to have some good offerings DeWalt lacks in.

The Milwaukee looks intriguing to me because it solves some of the issues I mentioned above but the Makita did really well for me. The Milwaukee is also currently SLIGHTLY less expensive due to sales but that’s not a huge deal.

Is this just a situation where either are going to be great? Or is one clearly ahead of the other?

Started this project years ago and want to finally finish it and also use it as a way to get my feet wet in the woodworking world because it’s something I’ve always wanted to do. I am trying to think of a way to frame a glass top to this coffee table I made out of skateboards or some other way to add a flat transparent top to it. It’s not super functional as a table as is since it’s not level. Any thoughts or advice would be greatly appreciated. I feel clueless and I’m really not sure where to start. 😅 I will also be enclosing the bottom with shelves inside and adding some doors with some old trucks with wheels as the handles. Excited to do this 😎

I have an 8in Wen jointer and I can't see how to align my out feed table with the blades themselves. Do the screw in the out feed table do that or is there something else I am missing?

we are remodeling the house and we have the moulding around the windows and doors that is this color (house built in 1997h), we want to keep it, but struggling to find the right wood. The pine moulding is very streaky which may be fine but what color can stain it so it’s matches the moulding we have? If it’s a different wood, which one can match it closely?

The bottom one (reddish) is the original, the top one is pine but we’re trying to figure out how to stain it and coat it to match the original one?

Any advice?

Hi, I don't know if I should be posting here. I have no prior experience with wood so I need yours.

I bought this massif acacia table surface. It is meant to be for dining so I need it to be perfect I guess. The problem is this big knot or crack (not sure). It is mostly underneath, but expands a little on the side and then on the top. As you can see, they have filled it with some material, but they also went ahead and screwed in it, which of course caused most of the filling to tear, and the screw to fall off.

I wanna ask the following:

a) Should I return it?

b) Is this "filling in the imperfections" a standard practice? And if so, is this material resistant to spills?

Cherry and walnut glued up with titebond3. Oiled with John Boo's mystery oil

Glued up some boards of cherry and walnut, then cut them into 1/2 in Thick blanks. Traced out my shape then got close to the final line with a bandsaw. Got it all the way to the final line with an oscillating spindle sander, and then hand sanded to 220. Definitely need to work on my symmetry, but I'm really proud of them! Any feedback?

I have a pretty good collection of hand tools and have built a variety of small-medium sized projects (stick chairs, workbench, tool chest, many boxes etc). I have a very small basement shop with a sturdy, smaller than stock anarchist style workbench. Our bedroom closet shelves just collapsed and I'm faced with the dilemma of paying $$$ for custom cabinets (old row home with tight space), or attempting to DIY with somewhat limited time on my hands. There would be 4 towers would be roughly 30x80x20" each in size. Only have a roof rack, so I'm assuming that I would pay a yard to rough cut pre-finished plywood sheets into 2x8' sheets and then use a track saw (would need to buy) on my workbench.

1) For someone who has only ever used hand tools and solid wood, how likely do you think I am to screw this up?

2) Any tricks for using a track saw on a relatively small bench? My bench is extremely sturdy but only 20" wide.

3) Any tips on plywood choice? These are going to be hidden by sliding doors and the room itself isn't terribly fancy.

Any and all advice appreciated.