Category: Projects

Things I've made and what making them taught me

Live Edge Hall Table

It’s been a while since I posted a furniture project.  This one is inspired by the work of Geoffrey Warner that was featured on the back corner of Fine Woodworking #222.  I particularly like the motion in his design, and the combination of the natural edge top, the clean lines of the arches and mostly …

An Outdoor Table

I was given an old glass table top when I first started making things and it sat in my basement for a few years basically gathering dust until this summer.  Having finally finished my deck railing, I decided I needed an outdoor table.  It’s built from a home centre cedar 4×4 post and 5/4 decking …

Walnut Bowl

I was asked to make a salad bowl out of solid walnut a very, very long time ago.  I lucked into a very nice piece of walnut that had been drying for several years, so I snapped it up.  Despite being handled apparently properly, there was a bit of a crack in the end grain …

My Workbench

Well I didn’t take any good progress pictures on this one, but it has quickly become my favourite tool.  This design is somewhat based in the workbenches that Lee Valley sells.  It has a Veritas twin screw vise on the tail end, and a large quick release vise on the front.  I drilled holes in …

Coffee and End Tables

After building stuff for other people for a while, I decided it was time to build something for myself.  This coffee table is solid red oak with maple drawers.  This project had a few firsts for me.  I paid particular attention to the grain orientation on the legs, skirts and drawers on this one, and …

Tea Table in Walnut

This is the last of these tea tables that I’m going to make.  After staring at the earlier versions for a while, I decided that I wanted to refine it a little and make this one feel a bit more delicate.  I probably still didn’t go far enough with the lightening up but I don’t …

Tea Table in Cherry

This tea table was based on my prototype table, and was made as a gift.  The design is practically identical. This is solid cherry with a bit of boiled linseed oil applied to bring out the grain before finishing with sprayed waterborne acrylic lacquer.  A barrier coat of shellac between the oil and the water-based …

Tea Table Prototype

At some point, I decided it’d be fun to experiment with a piece that was a bit more sculpted.  The piece I was planning was to be a gift, and I wanted to build it in cherry, but trying out this many new techniques in cherry didn’t seem like a great idea so I built …

Saddle Cabinet

This is a quickie rolling cabinet that I built to store English riding tack for a certain rider I know.  It’s mostly made of scraps I had sitting around – a bit of 3/4″ maple ply, a couple of 2×4 studs and some white melamine particle board.  The wheels were from some scrapped appliance or …

Antenna Bracket

A friend has this 30-some year old flying saucer-like TV antenna that was sitting on their front porch for some time.  One day near Halloween 2008, they asked me if there was a way to mount the thing higher to get better reception, so I thought about it for a bit and figured, “sure – …