It’s funny how a seemingly insignificant piece of furniture can play such a major role in the function of a room. You may not even notice it (unless you’re a woodworker) until it is gone and you suddenly have no place to set your keys or reach for a tissue. So by Thursday afternoon it was readily apparent that she was going to need something to replace the table, and preferably something that wouldn’t fall apart when a student leans on it.

Enter the fabulously talented woodworking husband of said teacher! My marching orders were to produce a small table that would sit in a corner and be around 25″ high. No drawer, no shelf, just a simple, square table top. It needed to be built and delivered by Monday ideally and built using only scrap laying about the shop. The finish would be black lacquer to match the piano already in the studio.

My time constraints immediately eliminated the visions of cabriole legs and Queen Anne cyma curved aprons. I am a notoriously slow woodworker so I needed to scale back my design. I decided upon something from the Stickley catalog because the straight forward lines and sturdy construction would fit the bill both aesthetically and functionally. The Stickley number 603 Tabouret would fit the bill nicely.

The size and stock requirements would allow me to build it with only the scrap laying about and it would fit into a corner well. I liked the crossed stretcher and uniform design that allows you to place it any which way and it will always be facing front. My wife is not keen on the round top and with some quick mocking up in SketchUp I was able to render this same design with a square top. That got the seal of approval and I was off to the races.

I did an inventory of my stock in the shop and knowing that this piece would be painted I wasn’t ready to “sacrifice” my good hardwood. I came up with a piece of 2×12 construction lumber and a big hunk (5×4.5×36) of Kiri that I got for a song many months ago. For long time readers this is the same piece that I used to make my Tansu box in June of 2009. Knowing what raw material I had on hand it was time to consider where construction compromises needed to be made. Since I was only using scrap I would need to do some resawing and panel glue ups to get the dimensions I needed. I hoped to save the time added in milling by attaching the lower stretcher with an integral tenon instead of the through tenon that Stickley so loved. Not having to fuss over a clean exit of the tenon and then clean up/chamfering the exposed end would cut an hour out of the build easy.

I considered attaching the top stretchers with pocket hole screws but since I was building the piece out of softwood I was not convinced that the pocket screws would hold up over the years. Instead I stuck with the traditional half blind dovetails into the top of the leg posts. No one will see these dovetails so they don’t have to be show quality and using softwood allows for some compression space when fitting the joint. In reality these joints came out really pretty and it was almost a shame to hide them under the top.

The top was glued up from two pieces in probably one of the cleanest panel glue ups I have ever done so there was very little surfacing to be done once it came out of the clamps. It is attached through elongated screw holes from the top stretchers to compensate for seasonal movement.

From rough lumber to a sanded piece, I only spent about 5 hours. I kept to my promise of table saw and power jointer abstinence as well, but don’t think that really added any build time since I roughed the pieces out on the bandsaw while cutting down that big hunk of Kiri. I usually do my joinery by hand anyway.

This was a whirlwind build from concept to finish and it taught me a lot about how I work and what decisions I make along the way. What compromises do you make in a design due to time and money constraints? How do you deliver a quality product on a tight delivery schedule while not sacrificing your style? I don’t have a picture of the finished piece yet because by the time the finish was applied it was dark outside and I really can’t get a black lacquered piece to show up well in my shop lighting. I’ll take some pics when it reaches it’s final home and post them.

The design is simple enough that even our most novice members can challenge themselves to build their first furniture piece. On the other end for the more advanced members the simplicity of the design allows for a lot of variation and personal embellishment. In my case I want to satisfy my Queen Anne tastes by adding a little southern 18th century charm to it and model the table after a piece in the Colonial Williamsburg collection. More on this later and I will of course share my build process. That is not what this post is about as you may have guessed by the title.

One of our number, Duane, has been fighting with pancreatic cancer for a while now. You may remember Duane from Marc’s steamer trunk build where he helped Duane build an heirloom by creating a video series. Unfortunately, Duane’s cancer is not ready to give up it’s fight and it has taken a strong hold on him lately. He is really excited about this group build but has concerns about being strong enough to complete it. Marc and Nicole, being the incredible people that they are, flew out to Ohio to visit Duane and do some one on one coaching to give Duane his head start on the project.

That was not enough and Marc has dedicated our March build to Duane and for every guild member that completes this project, Marc and Nicole are going to personally donate $5 to the American Cancer Society. In addition, being the savvy business people they are, this dynamic duo has gotten a few companies to agree to match this amount too. All of the guild members are encouraged to donate as well and we of course welcome the general public to donate. I have been in touch with Marc and he is working on getting a donation page up on his free site. I’ll let you know when that is up and link to it as well. Stay tuned, in the meantime…

Now I have recommended that everyone join the guild in the past because of the value it can bring to your woodworking, but now there is a higher calling. Why not join up, learn a lot, make some great friends, build a beautiful piece of furniture, and contribute to a great cause. I make no secret of the fact that I am an affiliate for the guild and if you click the link at the top of this page and join the guild, I will donate 100% of my affiliate fees back to the American Cancer Society for the duration of this project.

Come on, everybody’s doing it. Let me sum up by quoting our Guild master Marc in an email he sent earlier today.

This isn’t just about woodworking as a task, its about woodworking as a
lifestyle, and woodworking as a Community. I want people to be inspired
by what we are doing, and perhaps even donate to the cause themselves.

God bless you Marc and Nicole, and hang in there Duane we’re all praying for you.

Reality check, it’s 2010. Aren’t we supposed to make contact with aliens this year in orbit around Jupiter or something? So when another 4×5x3″ mortise presents itself, I break out my router, pattern bit, and a template. Yes, I am very confident that I can chop that by hand and make it pretty and square and to depth with my lovely chisels. I have chopped enough mortises to say that I can do it, but I have also chopped enough to say that I don’t want to do it.

I’m putting the finishing touches on the sliding leg vise for my Roubo bench and it is time to inlay the vise nut into the sliding chop. I cut the nut down so it is only 5″ long but it is still a huge mortise and one that requires utmost precision so I don’t compromise the strength of the chop. Woo hoo for power tools!!! Turn on the dust collector, turn up the music, don the respirator and hearing protection and let’s chew up some wood.

10 minutes later and I have made a mortise that would make the Grand Canyon proud. I even used pocket holes and a powered drill to make the template. If it makes the galoots out there feel better, I squared up the corners with a beautiful 1.5″ paring chisel.

So before anyone starts calling me a purist, let me also say that I like my TiVo, read a fair amount of Science Fiction, and cannot live without my iPhone. Hooray 21st century conveniences!

…now where did I put my laser marking gauge…

This episode came out longer than I had planned as I really try to keep them under 30 minutes. However, I find that oftentimes woodworking shows can be frustrating by telling you how to do something without actually showing it so I decided to keep in all of my footage of cutting the tongue and groove joints by hand. So I apologize for the 200+ MB download (even after compression) but I hope you will enjoy the show.

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I hope you enjoy it!

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I am plagued with this all the time. I did a podcast many months ago on organizing yourself when working on multiple projects. In that episode I was talking about combining like tasks with like tasks like doing all your milling at the same time, etc. Lately I have been building task lists for my projects. I have had a list for my Roubo bench stuck to the wall of my shop for the better part of a year which is great since I dip in and out of the bench so often that it helps me to remember where I left off.

Lately though I have been frustrated with my progress on a few projects because I can’t seem to get even a single task on my list completed. For example, on my Roubo list was the item, “leg vise”.

It seems I have been working on that task for several weekends now and have not been able to gain the satisfaction of crossing it off. It is such a little thing but the act of crossing something off a list gives us OCD types a real warm fuzzy feeling. I think the problem here is not that I work slow it is that there are so many little parts within that one task. I’ll break it down and I think you will see that this applies to just about everything you make.

Workbench Leg Vise

Mill chop stock true and square
Cut chop to final size
Layout for hole for vise screw
Drill hole for vise screw
Layout for internal garter mortise
Cut garter mortise
Cut garter stock to approximate stock
Fit garter into mortise
Mill parallel guide stock
Drill parallel guide pin holes
Finish guide with decorate profile, chamfers, etc
Layout through mortise for parallel guide in chop
Cut through mortise
Flare outer mortise walls to allow for wedges
Cut tenon on parallel guide
Fit tenon
Cut wedge stock
Install wedges and glue up parallel guide
Drill peg holes
Hammer in pegs
Layout chop taper
Cut taper
Layout chop bevel
Cut bevels
Finish plane/sand
Install chop and go to work

This list doesn’t even include installing the vise nut into the leg but you can see that all of these steps go into the single line item of “leg vise” on my list. If you really want to be picky you can break down the above steps even further. Think about all the step included in cutting a tenon. Layout, cut shoulder, cut cheek, smooth and fit, possibly undercut shoulder, etc, etc. Now careful on this slippery slope because you will quickly get into list building and no woodworking. I think the point it clear. If you feel like you are getting no where, don’t get discouraged; but rather, sit down and break down what you have to do. Each one of these tasks can be done with minimal shop time and you feel like you are getting somewhere when you leave the shop after crossing off 1 or 2 of these items.

Maybe you are the type of person who doesn’t need this level of organization, or just doesn’t make lists to keep on track. I still think this post contains something to think about. All of these steps take time and time is money if you are a professional so being able to gauge how long it will take you to build something is your life blood. So next time you feel like you are making no progress and have a customer, spouse, conscience, etc hounding you for results take some time to plan your build so you can really estimate how long it will take and build in some milestones. Remember though, whether you are a hobby woodworker or a professional, don’t forget to have fun. These milestones keep you on track but they should not be a burly bald man with a dog collar beating on a drum in the stern of your shop shouting, “stroke, stroke!”

This week I add the dust frame and back panel to the chest carcase and then move on to dovetailing all 5 drawers. I hope you enjoy this episode and don’t hesitate to hit me with questions or suggestions on how I can improve.

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Not sure how many parts this build will work out to but enjoy.

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4 years ago, she had specialty note cards printed up with her school’s mascot on it to gift to all her teaching colleagues. She enlisted me to make pens to go with those cards. Then it was desk clocks, then wooden bowls full of cookies. Every year the bar gets raised just a little and the pressure is on to come up with a new idea.

This year the fine folks at Craft Supplies came through by offering fondue forks project parts. My wife makes amazing Pound Cake so the light bulb went up and ta da!!!

8 pound cakes, a chocolate fondue recipe, and of course 32 hand turned fondue forks made from beautiful woods. Take that last’s year gift!!

…now about next year, I was thinking about a chocolate fountain…

I know, I know cheesy title but I couldn’t resist. Besides it will be interesting to see what kind of spam those keywords will spawn. For my long time readers, you will remember that I am often commissioned to build projects for a local church where my mother-in-law is a teacher. From build it yourself stools, to church piggy banks and 1st century fishing vessels, these have been some of my most entertaining projects. There has been a lot of talk lately about projects making a bucket list and the one I just finished may just help me to earn a spot in that great cabinetmaker’s shop in the sky.

Don’t avert your eyes, don’t worry the lid is firmly in place. In the church’s recent study of Moses and the tabernacle where the Ark of the Covenant was kept they decided to recreate the Tabernacle so that the children could walk through it and learn about the old testament first hand. When I got the call, “can you build the Ark of the Covenant” I think I finally understand how Noah felt when he got his carpentry commission.

I knew the piece was to be painted gold but I wanted to embellish it somehow so I decided to break out the carving chisels and give this carving thing another try. Certainly the carvings can use some work, but it was a great experience to try some relief carving. I pulled a lot of the designs out of Hepplewhite and Sheraton’s design books and obviously I was heavily inspired by Stephen Spielberg and his Art Deco rendering in “Raiders of the Lost Ark”.

The box is made of poplar and the corner posts are hard maple (not fun to carve). The angels on the top are from Basswood and were mostly band sawn to shape. I cleaned up the lines and added some more details using gouges and a v tool.

Needless to say it was a huge hit at the church and I now I can impress all of my co-workers when they ask that inevitable Monday question, “what did you do this weekend?”

“I built the Ark of the Covenant, how about you?”

Stay tuned to the blog for real time video and audio updates coming to you from Valley Forge and the Woodworking in America Hand Tools and Techniques conference. I will be posting full episodes with my editorial take on each seminar I attended as well as audioboo updates (you can subscribe via iTunes here for those) that will be posted here on the site as well as broadcast out via Twitter.

In addition I will try to capture some video from my iPhone that will be uploaded to YouTube and you will be able to view those clips through the YouTube widget on the home page. New posted will also be announced on Twitter so if you are not following @renaissanceWW then maybe you should

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So call the Guiness Book people because I cut the largest mortise I have ever seen in this episode!

Enjoy the show…

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Now that I have made this case for our civilized nature let me dispell all of that with a little Tim Allen grunting and testoterone filled gloating….

I cut one big as##$# mortise today! You could fit a bunt cake in there (sorry couldn’t think of something else that would fit in there and my wife is watching the food network in the background)

And when I fit the nut into the mortise I felt the air escaping around it in the most perfect piston fit I have ever achieved. OOOhh hoo ahhh arght! (ape grunting noises)

Just thought I would share my ape like regression with you all.

Cue Also Sprach Zarathustra by Richard Strauss (2001 Theme)

Anyway, on with the show.

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This was a fun project for me and hopefully a turning point. I haven’t built a lot of designs directly out of my head. At most I can say that I embellished something I saw somewhere else. So with that being said I want to thank the judges over at TSDC for this opportunity to get outside of my woodworking box. I also want to thank the academy, my mom, my wife, and of course God. I remember when I was a young and naive woodworker trying to get by…

(Cue commercial music, ring the gong, and enter crook from stage right)

Enjoy the show and make sure to get over to The Sawdust Chronicles website to check out pictures from all of the entrants projects and the winners list.

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Enjoy the show!

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You can imagine how concerned I was when a past customer called me to say that she was getting on a plane to France and needed another one of my Pagoda Boxes to give as a gift to someone. She has bought several of my box designs in the past and every time she did I happened to have one already made “in stock” so delivery was almost instananeous. This time…no dice. I told her I would do my best and at the outside be able to get it to her on Wednesday. I got into my shop at 4 PM yesterday and low and behold I was able to produce a box from scratch in 4.5 hours complete with 4 coats of lacquer.

I was stunned, but I guess I spend so much time multi-tasking that when I put my mind to one project it is surprising just how fast it came together. It probably helps that I have made over 30 of these too!

Judging for this contest is going on right now with winners to be announced on or about June 15th. Stay tuned to TSDC for the results.

Enjoy the show.

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I hope you enjoy this episode as much as I did making this project.

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Tune in next week for the conclusion of this project.

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I also touch on a bad kickback episode I had this past weekend. Here is the result. I am fine but sore and more than a little bruised.

Listen to find out how it happened.

I am also curious to see what you all do with your shavings. Do you throw them away like me or is there a good use for them. Here is a pile of beautiful cherry created by hand surfacing a slab of Choke Cherry harvested from my in laws yard.

Here is a new addition to my shop to try and control some of the rust I see in the summer months as the humidity climbs. I’ll report back later to let you know how it is working out.

Finally, here is a shot along the long axis of my shop and you can see the individual stacks of projects all over the place. This is one of my strategies for handling multiple projects by keeping all the parts together and separate from one another to avoid confusion.

Finally, the blog of the week is Peter Follansbee’s Joiner Notes. This is a great look into 17th century woodworking. You can find Peter at the Plymouth Plantation as well as in the latest issue of Popular Woodworking where he shows us all a simple carved box. Check out his site.

OK, here is the podcast, enjoy the show!

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Shannon,
I found your podcast not too long ago and have been enjoying them immensely. I’ve slowly been going through them and found inspiration in one of your past episodes, 1st Century woodworking. I had some scrap 2×12 laying around as well as 4′ of 1″ dowell so I thought I’d hack together my own “Jesus stool.” I’ve been meaning to make a step stool for my kids. Attached is a picture of my hack job. I don’t have all the nifty tools you have so I improvised the “dowling” by paring away material with my little band saw and then sanding with my bench top disc/belt sander. I used some old “Old Mahagony” stain just to give it some color. I had this piece of 2×12 sitting around for about 8 years. Mine is a little different, a little wider and with 4 legs and a bit shorter. I hoarded all kinds of scrap lumber when my neighborhood was being built up and finally found a use for it! I had enough to make two, but screwed up the first one by drilling the compound angle from the top (one the second hole!) instead of the bottom. That was ok because I didn’t have enough leg material for two. Anyway, thanks for putting together a great podcast. Keep up the good work!
Jason Kanak

Since Shaker and Asian design have so many parallels I thought I would blend them with a Shaker side table inspired by the Sabbathday Shaker community in Gray, Maine. My wife’s family has been vacationing in Maine for years and they even visited this community one year so it is even more appropriate. The asian blend will be mostly the finish and possibly the drawer pull. I will be painting the piece black and putting a few top coats on lacquer on it. I haven’t found the drawer pull yet, but I am envisioning a Chrsyanthemum motif. If nothing else I will try my hand at carving one if I can’t find a metallic equivalent.

The basic design is taken from a Woodworking magazine article by Chris Schwarz because of the ease of construction and the very little amount of stock required to build it. Since the final product will be painted I was thinking poplar. However all the poplar in my shop is already spoken for and milled. I only need about 12-15 board feet so I turned the to scrap pile of pine to see what I could find.

There was actually more than this floating around the shop too, but this pile would serve my needs and then some. For the long time readers of this blog, you will notice the pieces left over from my old countertop before I went to the laminate.

One of my favorite parts of a project is laying out the stock and figuring out where the individual pieces will come out of the rough stock. It is not so important here since the finished piece will be painted, but with so many holes and knots and such on this stock it took some planning to work around it. After some milling I got my pieces laid out for the joinery. Not pictured here are the 18″ square top and the drawer bottom, but it is shocking how little wood is needed to build this table.

Check out the awesome bench underneath it all too!

I cut most of the mortise and tenon joinery on the router table this time. I really like how I can perfectly dial in a fit using my router lift. For the bottom rail just below the drawer, I chopped out the mortises using a chisel and sawed the tiny 5/8″ tenons by hand. Finally I tapered the legs using the bandsaw and cleaned up the cut with my jointer plane.

Time for a quick dry fit.

Here you can see the top rail merely fit into place. I cut 1/16″ shoulders on 3 sides of the rail on the router table and now I needed to dovetail it into the tops of the legs. My dovetailing is still very weak and I keep using my bench in progress as an excuse for not practicing. No excuses for this so I went to work cutting the tails first. This went well since they are so small and only a single tail on each end of the rail. I scribed the outline of the tails into the top of the leg and went to work with my chisel. Both joints fits snugly and strongly but one had a little more slop around the top edges. The other joint came out really snug. I took pictures and loaded them onto my external hard drive only to have it crash so I have no proof.

I beveled the bottom of the top board by marking a line 2 inches in on all four edges and then planed the bevel using my jack plane. From here I glued everything up and finished the assembly.

I took the measurements for the drawer and built a simple rabbetted drawer. (I told you my dovetailing is weak!). For reinforcement and a little style, I pegged the rabbet using walnut Miller dowells. I really like the look this gives to the piece and I had some left over from my last sushi box.

I used a block plane to finesse the fit. I did get some tearout at the swirly grain near the front edge so rather than temp fate, I went to the RO sander. This turned out to give me a great finish, but my lack of attention accidentally rounded the corner a little leaving me with a sloppy reveal. Since the drawer ended up being a little proud of the front, so I planed about 1/32 off the front and that killed a little of the bad reveal. Ultimately the black paint will disguise this reveal too so I wasn’t too worried. I’ll chock this one up to experience and be more careful next time.

Finally, I sprayed on a good quality black enamel paint. 2 coats gave me great coverage. After this was dry, I sprayed on several coats of lacquer until I was happy with the shine. I did apply a coat of Renaissance wax to the top to give it a slick feel.

In the end, I chose an antique knob I found at a flea market that had the Chrysanthemum motif I was looking for. The blue color really popped against the black finish too.

This was a fun project that came together really fast. My sister-in-law is really happy with it and was really happy with the drawer joinery as well so I didn’t have to feel bad about chickening out on the half blind dovetails.

Hey, if nothing else this table beats the cardboard box she was using as a night table!

Make sure to check out The Sawdust Chronicles Beginning Woodworker contest. This looks like it will be an exciting contest where you have 30 days to build a new project inspired by an example given by the judges. The build begins on May 1st so get your entry in before then so you can participate in this exciting contest. I hear the prizes are pretty cool!

Enjoy the show!

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The left side of the bench will have the Benchcrafted vise installed there and I need it to be perfectly flat and square since an endcap will be mortised to fit there. I used my bowsaw to take the end flush and then set up a fence to guide my router and a straight bit to get the face perfectly square. I’ll use this same set up to cut the tongue that will mate to the mortise in the end cap.

For the right hand side of the bench it is a different story. Nothing will be mounted here and it doesn’t have to be perfect so this is where the sawing exercise comes into play. A few episodes of my podcast ago, I mentioned that I had won a Disston D23 filed crosscut. I have played around with it on smaller boards but have had problems keeping my cut plumb to the face. Using my framing square, I drew several lines across the end of the bench to use as a guide for practice cuts. My finished benchtop will be 8 feet long but I have 4 inches extra in the top right now. If my shop would accomodate a longer bench I would keep it that way, but I need it to fit under the window and any longer than 8 feet will not work. I used a saddle square to extend the lines down the sides and a little ways across the bottom too.

I started the cut and focused on keeping to the vertical line by sawing almost vertically into the top.

Here you can see the vertical kerf. The angled kerf to the side is an earlier attempt where I was focused too much on the horizontal line acrros the top and wandered off square.

Once I had established the kerf to be plumb I leaned the saw back and started tracking along the horizontal line on the top.

I found that my cut started to wander off the line so I laid the saw down further to correct the line.

This did the trick and I was back in business. Lots of sweat later I had finished the cut across the 20″ wide top and it was time to inspect my work.

I only wandered from the horizontal line by a little at the end of the cut.

But I discovered that I had fallen off my line in the vertical plane. More than likely this was while I had laid the saw down to correct my line horizontally. Here you can see the line of the original vertical kerf and then a tiny ledge where the cut wandered off at an angle. Unfortunately the rest of the cut is in this out of square plane.

Here’s a look at the other side of the cut clearly showing where I have deviated from my line.

Fortunately, the cut went out of square on the friendly side of the line and I can true it up using a spoke shave and my low angle Jack plane. Since I seem to have the disposition to cut off the square vertical plane, I figured I should get some practice truing up a face using a plane. Here you can see the start of a planed face.

This is a simple operation normally when dealing with furniture pieces as you can put the stock on a shooting board and have it square in no time. Not so in dealing with a piece this big. I would need one heck of a shooting board! I have some work ahead of me, better get back to it!