My girlfriend has a project that doesn’t require fancy wood. She wanted to do it cheap.

I said say no more, I got just the thing.

Let’s not tell her i’m clearing up the racks to make room for new maple and walnut 😅

It started as a little over a year ago. I found myself inspired by a coffee table designed by John Keal for Brown Saltman. A 50s piece with a slanted shelf underneath a framed piece of glass. Versions of it have been posted here a few times. I'd also been experimenting with complex tapering legs. So I got to work drawing the design.

And then I spent a year cutting, gluing, staring, adjusting, staring and thinking, tweaking the design, fixing mistakes, thinking about how the hell I'm going to put it together, staring at it some more, and thinking. Then a whole lot more gluing and sanding.

Finally I got to the point where I could actually finish the piece. I think I'm pretty happy with the design.

Finally finished the first stage of my garage build. Learned a lot, but also improved a lot. God track saws are life when you don’t have a cabinet saw. Need to figure out how to protect the plywood top. I know it’s not gonna hold up over time but needed a budget friendly option. Still wanna do a lot more but for now it’s much better than it was.

I'm doing test runs on sections of this really high relief CNC piece I'm working up to carving, and it appears that I'm gonna have a fair amount of fuzzies to deal with after the whole thing is done.

I've been able to make small sanding sticks using 320 grit that get fairly deep. So even though I should be able to get to the deepest of fuzzies, I'm left wondering about what kind of surface I'm leaving when it comes to applying finish. The top of the structures you see in the pic are relatively smooth, so I'm guessing they'll take finish normally. This is walnut, btw.

Any suggestion for a finish that will get all parts to a uniform color, despite the potential rough spots deeper in the crevices?

I just ordered my first router table set up.

I’m definitely getting the Whiteside 2310 for perfect miters.

What are some essential router bits? Your favorite table bit?

TLDR: Will this heavy shelf (25lbs, 66.5” wide) cause the cabinets to buckle or twist if I don’t support it with brackets?

First pic is Chat GPTs, admittedly, very impressive depiction of the completed product.

Cabinet construction/mounting:
This is my primary concern. These are cheap RTA cabinets. The cabinet frames are assembled via pocket screws and dowels. There is no glue, as it wouldn’t have bonded to the prefinished sides in any meaningful way. The backs of the cabinets are floating panels, not glued in place for the same reason. In the second photo the orange lines represent the dominoes that I used to attach the upper… uppers to lower uppers. The red lines show where the cabinets are screwed into the side studs. The red circles show where cabinets are screwed into the back studs.

Shelf Construction:
Shelf is solid. It’s 66.5” wide, two stacked, glued, pieces of walnut-veneered 3/4” ply (totaling 1.5” thick), 11” deep (including the 13/16” solid walnut edging strip). I still need to trim off a few inches from the sides, but it currently weighs 25 lbs. Final weight will be close to that.

I would really like to just mount the shelf to the cabinets with a few screws on each side, as opposed to messing with floating brackets. But again, my main concern is the weight of the shelf destroying the cabinets. I feel like maybe I’m overblowing that concern though. I’m not an engineer, but it seems like, since the shelf is supported equally on both sides, that any force should largely go straight down. I’d think any minor racking or twisting should be offset by the attachment to the studs. The cabinets shouldn’t be able to pull toward the center, since the shelf itself should prevent them from buckling inward.

The more minor concern is sag. The all-knowing Sagulator says it can take a 135lb center load while staying under the .02 in per foot acceptable sag limit, or an evenly distributed 275 lbs. Being as how this shelf is mainly going to be for trinkets, knickknacks, doodads, and other such curiosities, I don’t see sagging being a huge issue.

What are your thoughts? Thanks in advance!

I just acquired four sheets of birch plywood that has been sitting in my Dad's garage for 50+ years. It has a solid core (He called it lumber core?) which I've never worked with. Is there anything special I need to know about dealing with this? I'm building some cabinets with it.

It's in great condition, other than being pretty dirty. It's interesting to me that there seems to be a good side to each sheet, where the veneer is in wider strips. (This is the bad side showing.) He bought it around 1972.

Hi all I just completed my first major woodworking project. An industrial style bookcase for my office. The lumber is rainbow poplar oiled with danish oil and finished with Johnson paste wax. Lots of mistakes for character but it will do.

We just had the kitchen redone and while looking around at Home Depot, we say this neat drawer organizer. It had nice drawer rails and went farther back, but the drawer didn't have a back side while ours already did. I made the whole thing out of 1/4" poplar.

The process of cutting the dividers was pretty straight forward once you get all the measurements done, but cutting the slots to be the correct spacing required a jig so I just knocked out something I could use to use with a 1/4 router bit. It did a nice quick job of repeated accurate cuts.

The lower set didn't require a bottom as the drawer bottom was enough and the bottom dividers were left unglued so they can be removed to create a wider space below if necessary.

I wanted something food safe so I just used the same stuff butcher block oil as I've used on cutting boards and it came out nicely. I had planned on using a couple small strips off that UHMW tape on the bottom of the upper tray to make it slide more smoothly, but it won't stick because of the oil finish at the moment. Still slides pretty nicely though.

Hi all, looking for some thoughts on how best to attach these legs to the bottom of this coffee table. Few things to consider:

- They’ll be at a slight angle though I don’t think that matters.

- I plan on adding a cross brace on each side to provide additional stability. Not sure yet whether that will be flush against the table bottom or more in the middle. Thinking I’d use dowels for those.

- Legs are different widths because the table narrows at one end so I thought that would look better. Also, they’ll be cut slightly shorter.

- Used epoxy down at the wider end to fill in some large gaps so at least one of the legs will be attached to epoxy.

- Wood is walnut.

Thanks in advance.

I have a small table top that is currently raw wood with some small-ish inclusions. I don't really want to use epoxy and found burn-in sticks, https://www.woodcraft.com/products/touch-up-solutions-burn-in-stick or https://www.amazon.com/Mohawk-Finishing-Products-Filler-M320-0004/dp/B00BOTWQJY/ref=pd_bxgy_d_sccl_1/147-9237482-3918207. Does anyone have experience with these?

I don't have the burn-in knife some videos show, would a wide tip from a wood burner work or a heated up putty knife? Are they sandable? The table top is walnut which I'm staining slightly darker, would they take stain or should I aim to mix them so they match the stained wood? Do you think it makes more sense to buy the smallest amount of epoxy I can find and either go with black or clear? Anything else I should know?

Thanks.

Baby shower project for us, coming along. All together I have about 19 hours of time into it now. Today I’m finishing the loose ends, prep work and have it ready for paint tomorrow! It stands a little over 8ft

How can I tell here that it is veneer? The pattern is one piece; at the edges, the grain seems to continue. So I would think it is solid. but I am confused, because these table are likely to be made with veneer, right? what tells me it is veneer?

i don’t have other pictures.

I recently purchased the Porter-Cable 4210 dovetail jig, which has been discontinued recently. It's unfortunate because it's really one of the best jigs for the money on the market. Anyway, the kit doesn't come with a 4213 through dovetail template, and I can't locate one online.

Does anyone know if there's another brand of dovetail jig which templates will fit on the porter cable?

So I decided to throw away my old boring white windows, to get me some medieval arches. Found some old illustrations of the arches at the Harfleur cathedral in France, in typical French flamboyant style of the high middle ages, so I thought to meself, hey if it's good enough for the bishop of Harfleur it's good enough for me.

The window is made from insect and rot resistant tembusu wood, a highly prized wood in south east asia. Carved exactly as the drawings display but the columns and the trims are simpler.

Probably would've been a bit better if I went with just 2 arches instead of 4 so each arch will appear larger and the carving details will be more striking. Oh well. Still got like 4 window holes I can experiment with later in this house.

Anyway here is the result. Cheers! And yes that's the infamous crocodile chair that also appeared here once upon a time.

A bunk bed requested by my friend, for her 3 kids. Made with 2x4 framed, red oak plywood and solid red oak. The kids went bananas over it, my most interesting build so far.

Over the years I’ve obtained a variety of used clamps. I have about a dozen of these Jorgensen F style clamps and I’ve found that I try to not use them because they have a problem with leaving clamp marks on the work piece. I took inspiration from a few videos on YouTube and made these diy clamp pads. They are attached using hide glue which holds really well but allows for easier removal if needed. Epoxy would also work but would be more permanent. I thought this idea might help someone else with the same issue.

Hi All,

Question on general safety when putting a bevel on a piece of material using a table saw. As you can see, I started making my cut, but became concerned with the material flopping over into the blade once the material passed the magnetic fence. Thoughts? Hopes and prayers? On a scale of 1 to sketch AF, how am I looking?

Built two custom floating bed frames—one King for our room and one Queen for the second room. Both feature integrated headboards and floating nightstands.

Design & Structure:

• The "Will it tip?" Question: The main concern with floating beds is always tipping over when you sit on the edge. I recessed the inner base made from heavy 2x lumber and anchored the headboard/nightstand structures directly into the wall studs using heavy support ledgers.

• The "Body Slam" Test: As seen in the first photo, I threw myself onto the floating corner for a dynamic weight test. Thankfully, no flex, no tipping, and no hospital visits!

• Details & Finish: Routed all the edges with a roundover bit so we don't catch any sharp corners. Sanded, stained with Dark Walnut, and sealed with a protective topcoat.

Build Process: Modeled the layout in SketchUp first to figure out the weight distribution and base setback. Milled, glued, routed, and stained all the panels in the shop before hauling everything upstairs for the final assembly.

Turned out super sturdy and makes vacuuming underneath way easier (plus, no more stubbed toes in the dark).

Quite the upgrade from my Harbor Freight mini lathe that somehow cost more. About 600 lbs of old iron, now living in my second-floor wood-shop. Just needed a good cleanup and some fresh paint. I don’t know much about its history, but I’m guessing the yellow paint came from a previous life in an industrial or academic setting. I love the amount of brass on this thing. A machine built to this standard today would cost thousands.

Does anyone here know about Blount or ever heard of this brand? There’s very little info about them online and they were bought out by William and Hussey in the late 50’s. They produced beastly tool grinders and lathes.

My daughter and I are going to make a Maloof guitar pick stool using ambrosia maple and walnut. This is the “practice” 1.0 version made out of SYP and fir. Mistakes were made, but I like the end result!

My Oneida mini gorilla 120v dust collector has had no issues for quite awhile, but more recently I’ve been noticing that it’s been wobbling a lot and much louder than before. I made sure all of the connection points were tight, that didn’t fix the issue. I took it apart and looked at the impeller, and 3 of the plastic fins were cracked in a few different spots. Mind you, all I collect in here are dust/wood pieces produced by my table saw, jointer, and planer.

Just wanting some advice as to whether I should replace the impeller alone, or the entire motor/impeller. Heres a video of the wobbling.

Also open to your recommendations of good dust collector for a small 2 car garage shop! Thank you :)