The trick with the finger joint jig is that you must set the dado head to egg-zackly the width from the slot to the stop-bar.
The torch tote was my objection to paying $78 for a blow-molded plastic POS. I did have to buy some #6 screws to make that one. Much the same for the paper towel holder. $20 for a piece of bent coat hanger??? I can build one out of scrap for...like...nothing. Unless you want to count the one nail I used to hold the center pole in. My favorite is the saw horse herd coming out of the shed in the dawnzerly light...and the computer bench is cool, too. It has paint on it. One of my least favorite chores!

 

@wayneh You never answered about the finish. Is it a secret recipe or what? That's fine if so, I'll drop it.

Sorry, I missed the original question. This thread has a lot more response than I expected, which is cool!

All wood was sanded to maybe 150 grit, certainly no finer than 220. In general my cuts were very nice so the finishing was mostly to obscure my imperfect edge-gluing and to clean up the factory surfaces on my lumber.

The stain was MinWax's "Golden Oak". I had this on hand because much of my house is done in that color. I didn't get as much penetration into the oak as I would normally expect, and that was OK with me. I just wanted a hint of darkening. Not sure if my stain had aged or it was just the nature of the wood.

The final varnish was MinWax's water-based polyurethane. I think I applied two coats to everything, with maybe 3 on the top-facing shelf surfaces. I don't recall sanding between coats but I sometimes do that to remove any bubbles or dirt that may have appeared in the previous coat.

The water-based stuff is a little more expensive than the solvent stuff but I find it dramatically easier to apply, work with and clean up after. I mean like ten times easier. I'm NEVER going back to the sticky solvent stuff.

 

@#12 Your saw horses look pretty healthy, you must feed them lots of oaks.

 

@#12 Your saw horses look pretty healthy, you must feed them lots of oaks.

Lots to learn there. See the difference between structure the old ones and the new ones? The old ones have long criss-cross boards screwed to the sides of the top beam and ending in a piece of plywood screwed on to the legs. The new saw horses have their criss-crosses "let in" at the center of the top beam and each one ends in a 2x4 which is "let in" at the legs.

In addition, the new sawhorse at the second position in the herd has its legs hollowed out so they are not 2x4s...they are I-beams. It is just as strong as any other horse in the herd, but it feels like picking up balsa wood.

And that is the difference between, "Gotta get me up 3 feet to fix this ceiling" and, "have all day to screw around with this".

ps, just got back from a refrigerator peeing in the floor. Bad solenoid for the drinking water dispenser. Mostly wipe and wait. Aha! It's a warranty job! Call Sears, I'm going home.

 

Forgive the necropost. I just posted a picture of a woodworking project and it got me thinking of this thread. I have more to share!

Here's a project I finished in the last year. It is part of a growing matching set of furniture I'm building for my house. The table I posted earlier was the first piece. Next up is a coffee table and dinner table. This is all made from wooden shipping crates I get from work. I leave the wood (white pine? - from Norway and Netherlands) outside to weather and then sand, followed by urethane or lacquer (standardized on urethane now, easier than lacquer).





This is my swingset project (ongoing). The idea is basically like below, but on a much larger scale. I call it "The Swingset of Unreasonable Awesomeness."


Instead of 4"x4"x8' pillars sitting on the ground, I'm using 4"x6"x16' pillars, cemented 4' into the ground.
Instead of 6' main beam height, I have 10' main beam height.
Instead of 2'x2' elevated playhouse I have 8'x8' elevated playhouse, 7' up so an adult can walk under it.
I am making use of much scrap lumber I have laying around. I had to find an outlet for all the scrap wood I bring home, and this was a good project for it.
In the pictures you don't see any scrap though; I had to buy the 4x6 beams

 

Here's a project I finished in the last year. It is part of a growing matching set of furniture I'm building for my house. The table I posted earlier was the first piece. Next up is a coffee table and dinner table. This is all made from wooden shipping crates I get from work. I leave the wood (white pine? - from Norway and Netherlands) outside to weather and then sand, followed by urethane or lacquer (standardized on urethane now, easier than lacquer).

If you don't want to wait for it to weather, you can also raise the grain of White Pine as I did with this cabinet using a propane torch to bring the grain out.
Max.

 

If you don't want to wait for it to weather, you can also raise the grain of White Pine as I did with this cabinet using a propane torch to bring the grain out.
Max.

Why would you want to take away my procrastination excuse? I lean heavily on it!

I was made aware of the torch trick a few years back, and ever since I learned of it, I can spot it.
When I walk by the arts/crafts section of the county fair, I look and say "they burned that one, that one, this one, the other one looks ok, that one's toast, ..."
Sometimes it looks good (yours looks good, looks like you went very light with the torch) but most times to me it looks exaggerated.
For me, natural weathering gives a pleasing and consistent look.
I think my issue is that I don't trust myself to do the burning lightly and evenly enough. I'm afraid I would regret it.
And I'm a procrastinator.

 

I seen this done on an Episode of "Fixer Upper" wife's favorite home builder show. They sealed a House Boat.

kv

 

I was trying to think of a list of Wood's that I have worked with or fashioned is some way over the years.
I came up with these, there are probably a couple I missed.

Tasmanian Oak, (Eucalyptus)
English Oak
Red Oak
White Oak.
Agba
English Walnut
Cedar.
Spruce
Sitka Spruce
Teak
Elm
European Ash
Beech
Birch
Balsa
Mahogany
Obeche
Fir
Pitch Pine
White Pine
Walnut

Includes Veneer and marquetry.
Max.

 

I was trying to think of a list of Wood's that I have worked with or fashioned is some way over the years.
I came up with these, there are probably a couple I missed.

Tasmanian Oak, (Eucalyptus)
English Oak
Red Oak
White Oak.
Agba
English Walnut
Cedar.
Spruce
Sitka Spruce
Teak
Elm
European Ash
Beech
Birch
Balsa
Mahogany
Obeche
Fir
Pitch Pine
Walnut

Includes Veneer and marquetry.
Max.

No white or yellow pine? What have you been making? Jewelry boxes?
Lol.
That list is more impressive than mine. Mine consists of a lot of question marks. A lot of whatever pallets and crates are made of.

 

I just added white pine while you were posting!
Max.

 

My neighbor gave me an interesting box of scraps, with bloodwood, ironwood and other exotics. No lignum vitae though.

Other than that, if you can't buy it cheaply at the big box stores, I haven't used it. I had to go to a lumber yard to get a heavy piece of cedar for a deck step. That's about as exotic a wood as I've used.

 

If you were to happen to shop for Mahogany now, or Mahogany plywood, you most likely will get Philipine Mahogany which is not a Mahogany at all.
And not with such a nice rich grain as the real thing.
Max,

 

This is the local candy store for woodworkers. I've used some of their exotics around the house for accents but I don't have the tools for real woodworking.
http://www.crosscuthardwoods.com/species.html

 

I just started getting into woodwork the last year or so.

I picked up a hand power planer two years ago and was impressed with what it could make an old board looklike and last year I added some bigger tools like a good table saw with router attachment plus power miter saw and some other things that now make day projects into hour or two projects!

Up until then woodworking was about as high on my things to do for fun list as shoveling dirt up a hill to make it bigger. If it was wood and it wasn't pre dimensioned it was seen as firewood.

Now too much of my old wood seems to fit in the category of having way too much potential to throw in the burn pile even when that were it would best belong

 

I get my strange from Weiss Hardwoods. I'm sure there are other hardwood companies all over the place.

 

I think I already posted this somewhere else, but what the heck... About 20 years ago I decided to design and build my own chess set. And it tested my wife's patience because she said that I was dedicating more time to that thing than to her... which was actually true... but in the end even she had to admit that it was worth it and liked the result.

I designed the pieces myself and drew them in AutoCAD. Then I searched for the perfect wood type for each color and decided on hickory for the dark pieces, and bird's-eye maple for the light ones. I actually had to make the material myself because I couldn't find anything in the market resembling what I wanted. Each layer of the finished pieces was actually cut in a CNC router (which I also designed and built myself ) from wood sheets formed by gluing together five layers of veneer alternated at 90°. The sheet ended up being about 3/32" thick.

The last part involved making lots of tests mixing and using different types of wood stains until I got the antique effect that I wanted.

​

The board is made from leather, but I'm not the one who made it. I bought it for about $80 dlls during a trip to Paris with my wife in 1995... I bought the board back then even before conceptualizing the pieces, but avoided buying the pieces on purpose so as to feel more motivated later on to build them myself... and it worked.

 

In my early 20's my friends called me Jesus, I had long hair and was good at woodwork.
Max.

 

The board is made from leather, but I'm not the one who made it. I bought it for about $80 dlls during a trip to Paris with my wife in 1995...

Nice job, Marquetry would be a good project for making a board.
Max.

 

In my early 20's my friends called me Jesus, I had long hair and was good at woodwork.
Max.

Give me a call when you're able to turn water into wine...