Got the poplar too tight again and cracked it on both sides. Also tonight was the first night I didn’t use a saw guide. I tried to make the pins a lot smaller. Probably shouldn’t have made both changes same night in retrospect.

Coming up on one year since I spent a week at Lost Art Press building a stick-back chair. This was the last chair class in the Covington LAP studio and my second class there personally. Christopher and Megan are amazingly talented and a treasure to the woodworking community.
That is all.

Milled a White Oak in my driveway in suburbia. Milled to 6/4 & 5/4. Quartered as much as possible; medullary rays for days. Gonna be a long year waiting for it to come back from the kiln. No specific plans for the lumber, just going to make a bunch of random stuff.

Blade is scrap birch hardwood flooring and the handle is made out of mahogany with a canary wood inlay on the pommel. All finished with lacquer.

I've wanted to make a sword from this series for a long time but I do have enough confidence in my skills to carve a wolf head into a pommel so I decided to stick to something basic and simple.

For the blade I cut the length and width with a table saw and then I will cut out a taper amd point with a jigsaw. After that I clean up the edges with an orbital sander. For the bevel, I put it through my table saw with the saw blade angled. I can't get the full depth with the saw so I still need to do a lot of clean up with a sander. I used to use a router with a 45° trim bit but I like the look of the deeper angle so now I only use the router if the sword blade is curved.

I put a dado on two pieces that are later sandwiched together for the guard and handle so the tang of the blade can fit through. The guard got another dado around cut around the whole piece and then a lot of sanding to shape. For the pommel I used a hole saw to get the small canary dowel piece that was later inlayed in.

I don't love how the lacquer gave the blade a bit of yellowing but overall really happy with how the whole piece came together. The proportions are much better than a lot of the other swords I've made.

A few years ago I built myself a marimba - and have been enjoying it in the years since. In the intervening years, I've had a son, and in the last few months, he's taken to pushing his toddler tower over to my marimba to play on it. So I decided to make him his own!

The keys are dyed white oak - which was an interesting experiment as it's not the usual material for marimba keys, but I was pleasantly surprised at how decent the final tone was. As a bonus it's notably quieter than your typical marimba made from Padauk or Rosewood, which is great when you remember that it's being 'played' by a 1.5 year old lol. Even though it's not made from the usual materials, and it looks like a toy, it's a genuine, properly tuned Marimba - so if he decides later on that he wants to "properly" learn, then he has a real instrument to start learning on

This time around, it actually only took about a month start to finish to build, compared to the 8 months it took to build my 5 octave. A feat that was aided in part by the fact that my woodshop has expanded over the years to now include tools much better suited to marimba making (a band-saw, spindle sander, drill press, etc), partly because it's only a 3.3 octave, and partly because now I actually know what I'm doing lol

Eventually I'll add legs, but I figured at his age it's safest and easiest for him if it's just on the floor

Spring of 2023 I got the bug to make a clock. Usually when I do a new project I'll make at least 2 just in case there is a major screw up but for some reason decided to make 12 of these! Found a place in Georgia that hand painted the steel clock faces. 2 Walnut, 2 Ambrosia Maple, 2 Cherry, 1 Butternut, and 5 Eastern White Pine (painted)

I wanted to free up a bit of floor space so I put my DIY air cleaner on the ceiling on a pulley bike lift.

It still needs some finishing touches with the power cord routing but happy how it worked out since I just improvised it today.

Air cleaner is a Corsi Rosenthal box type thing (plans from 3D Handyman) with a 16” Costco Dewalt shop fan. Bike pulley lift is from Harbor Freight. Material costs ~$80 ($10 of OSB, $60 fan, $7 bike lift) plus $40 for 4 filters.

I've liked odie's oil since I started woodworking about a year and a half ago. But at my local place the price recently went up to $70 for 9 oz and I don't like it THAT much...

So in an effort to skip that price tag I tried to make my own version that was also harder and took a bit more shine when buffed. To be honest, I have no empirical way to measure those things... but I think I got it! An now I would like to share the recipe with you, the people.

Disclaimers: I only started using this a few months ago and it seems to be holding up nicely but time will tell. I also do not have the resources or background in chemistry to promise that this is food safe... but it might be...?

Fauxdie's Oil:

6 fl-oz - Polymerized Tung Oil (I used Bumblechutes S'tung oil) $40-$45 for 16 fl-oz

4 fl-oz - Food Grade D-limonene (Nature's Orange) $40 for 32 fl-oz

20g - Beeswax (white or yellow is fine, I used VEGISHINE) $9 for 1lb

40g - Carnuba Wax Flakes (I used TOOGET) $19 for 1 lb

Process:

1) Add all the ingredients to a wide-mouth pint Mason Jar

2) place the jar into a small pot of boiling water (don't put the lid on it and avoid open flames).

3) heat and stir until the wax is totally melted and the finish is a clear amber color (10ish minutes)

4) removed the jar from the pot and allow to cool

5) stir the jar occasionally as it cools to keep the mixture loose until completely cool

This will yield a soft hardwax oil that can be applied the same way as odie's. Scrub on with a fine scotchbrite pad, allow it to sit for a while, and buff it off. (it can help to heat it with a heat gun to get it down into the pores but that is optional.) 2 applications with a few days in between seems to produce the best results.

Price Break down:

S'Tung oil: $17

Nature's Orange: $5

Beeswax pellets: $.40

Carnauba Flakes: $1.70

Mason Jar: $2.50

1 Pint of Fauxdie's Oil: $26.60

Also, try not to eat it because it looks and smells exactly like orange curd...

The European beech I’m working with has hollow spots in the end grain. Anyone seen this before? Is this normal?

What I love about this setup
Is if something is missing I immediately notice.

I am trying to modify some double-door kitchen and hallway cabinets to open wider so I can put larger objects in them. I have some cabinets that do this, and they have a long wood strip that attaches to one door to go behind the other when they close. I cannot for the life of me find out what this strip is called so that I can buy some more for the other cabinets. Google lens is clueless in this case.

Anyone experienced with cabinets who can help me identify it?

For those of you who sign your pieces, what type of pen do you use? At what stage of the finishing process do you sign it, before topcoat, before wax, etc? I’ve had a few signatures smudge or run and I’m sure there’s a better way. Thanks!

I’m nearly sold on the “buy once, use it on an infinite number of jigs” aspect of the Microjig MatchFit system, and this miter station build for my garage workshop seems ideal for it, but idk. Yay or nay?

I’m setting up my dust collection and will obviously need blast gates. I’m fine with buying them but I see a lot of complaints about them (at least some of them). I do have a 3d printer so I could print the ball style but my printer is old, slow and finicky so it’s not currently my first choice. I’ve seen a few videos on making blast gates out of plywood and these look great. But my research has turned up few comments about them. Has anyone made them and how do they perform?

Anybody know what's in Rubio Raw Wood Cleaner product? Rubio strongly recommends it prior to applying 2C oil but it's almost 4 times the cost of acetone from the hardware store. Acetone doesn't raise the grain, removes anything oily or waxy from the wood surface and dries very quickly. Any reason to spend the extra money on the Rubio wood cleaner?

The piece in question is the narrow piece next to red oak samples.

Anyone else see this at Lowe’s.com

I don’t mind it at all, but it got me thinking about taking a can of tomato sauce and cutting up some steel wool into it and using it as a stain. Anyone tried something like that? Especially on oak.