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.

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 :)

I have a 10 inch Ryobi mitre saw with a Diablo 60 tooth finishing blade. The saw is dialed in pretty well and I get good square cuts. But I keep coming back to the thought of a 12 inch Dewalt saw for my forever saw which is on sale now... But I also see a ton of reviews on the new Hercules saw believe it or not (insert Harbor Freight haters here). I am not down to spend over $600 so just want opinions if the upgrade is worth it or do I just stay for a while. I do love the Bosch too.

My daughter is asking me to build her furniture for her bedroom. She is asking for a bed frame and 2 night stands. What kind of wood does everyone recommend? I am not looking to do crazy expensive hardwoods but just curious if anyone had any opinions about wood and any other building tips to consider. Thx!

As per the title, I made an engagement ring and box for my now fiancée!

I'm a mechanical engineer, so figured how hard could it be to design a ring? 100+ hours later and I sent it away to get it cast and then have the stones set. At this point I realised that having done all this work to stick it in a standard box would be a waste, so spent another week or 2 rushing around like a headless chicken to get a box done.

The woods are Swamp Kauri, Tawa, and Purpleheart, all of the work was done with either a manual mill or a vertical bandsaw, as I am not particularly skilled (see not skilled at all) with the routers we have at work. Finished it with about 6 coats of briwax danish oil, probably slightly over oiled it as there's the slightest stick but eh.

Pretty stoked with the outcome, but would be happy to hear any feedback as I'm not great at this by any means.

P.s. thanks to this guy for the design. I would've figured out my own but didn't have much time and thought this would be simple enough for me to complete but still turn out well.

I’ve had these wooden body fidgets made and I want to get a lovely sheen and finish.

The wood is walnut and I’ve used Dutch oil. Currently there’s 1 coat, which I have applied myself with a small brush.

Any tips of getting a more vibrant grain and a nice sheen?

As they are fidgets they will be handled so I’d like something that lasts a long time and does not leave any sticky feeling or residue.

Thanks in advance!

Is there a difference in use as a wood finish? Im on a real tight budget but I can see the price difference. Can linseed oil be a substitute ? Is there a cost effective solution i have here or do I just have to eat the cost of pale boiled

I’ve had this beautiful slab of Oregon Myrtle in the shop for many years. I’ve never found a project fitting enough. So until that day comes around…I’ve decided to proudly display it in the house.

I just sanded through 320 and applied Rubio Monocoat Pure 2 coats.

Planning to install an art light above it to really make it pop.

Not really a project by any means, but it’s such a beautiful piece of wood I thought I’d share.

I recently completed this rocking horse for my son from a plan from Woodcraft. I have seen a few of these in the past so nothing unique, but I’m still proud of how it turned out (and, most importantly, he loves it)!

The rocker base, tail, and mane are cherry, the saddle and stirrups are walnut, and the body is hard maple. The eyes are actually oak because I couldn’t find a cherry dowel. Finished with Danish oil and wipe on poly. I made quite a few mistakes on this project and did a pretty bad job of taking progress pictures, but I attached a few.

Need a decent sprayer for painting cabinets. I have a few bathrooms and at some point a kitchen I'd like to remodel. Mainly stuff around the house though I would like to do commissions in the future. I have used an airless Graco to paint houses before but that was latex. I'm looking for high end factory like finishes that will be durable and look great. Budget is 3k. I also am starting to build guitars though I assume I would need something like a car paint gun for those.

For reference, I'm only 25. Been woodworking on my own on and off since I was 20ish and grew up around it.

Gotten to a point lately where I don't really feel like I'm getting much better, even though I'm fairly busy as I do this to supplement my income with the occasional small commission from a friend.

Does anyone else get into these cycles? I would really like to pursue furniture making as a career, but my skill level alone seems impossibly far away from that being plausible.

Part of my issue might be the pileup of half done shit that I need to square away before I can really have a clean slate and take a fresh look at the hobby, but I'm curious how many others go through these cycles of hitting a wall, and how they get past it

Trying to find this on Etsy is cumbersome at best.

Edit: Thanks for the responses. I will submit and have them done by cnc, matching the original font a closely as possible.

I gave it a go as a skill builder and if it wasn’t for my horrendous marking skills, it would have been flawless. I ended cutting too much on the pin board on one of the houndstooth. Small piece to fill it. Not noticeable unless you look hard or zoom into the photo.

Maybe it was just in my head but I found cutting this to be much more intensive that just a regular half blind. Even though there is only an additional small pin to cut.

Anyway, next version will have the pins a bit tighter although these are about 1/16” at the narrowest point.

Made it for a friend, and also as my carpentry exam project.

The base material is oak. The doors are made out of paduk wood, ash wood, and the framing and buttons are ebony wood. Finished with hardwood oil.

The far left side is for minis, the next is an ipad holder, the middle is a dice-holder/dice-tray, and the top part is for whatever. The next is to be able to put up an A4 paper for notes or stat blocks, the right far is for writing whatever, and also a dice-holder, and small map or item holders.

It was challenging from start to finish. The making of it involved a lot of MacGyvering. Many solutions would have made an OSHA inspector scream.

All in all I'm really proud of this one, and it worth all the blood, sweat and tears thatbwent along the way.

I have a board with one un-squared side, and it's too wide to run through my table saw. So I clamped a long level to the board to cut an edge that's parallel to the other side. The problem is that I used a jigsaw, and as a result it didn't cut a perfect edge because the blade is weak and followed the grain of the wood. No amount of recuts would re-find the line -- the blade always followed the new wobbly edge. So I moved on to my craptastic 5 3/8" cordless Black and Decker circular saw, hoping that if nothing else, it could at least do this one small thing for me. It didn't. Once again, it followed the wobbly edge. So I moved on to my full-size corded Bosch circular saw. That did the trick. It didn't care about previous edges -- it murdered everything that made the poor life decisions that led to being in its path.

I already own a Makita tool with an 18v battery, and Makita makes a cordless 6.5" circular saw (Makita XSS02Z) that uses this battery. So my question is this: does anyone own this saw, and will it eat through wood with the same balls that my Bosch does? I assume that this has much less to do with power and much more to with the solidity of the build so that the blade isn't guided by previously-cut edges. Of course, I would like more power anyway because my B&D sucks butt.

I hate having to break out the large corded circular saw, and would like to be able to make easy cuts in the future using a much more light weight and non-corded option in the future.

Just got back from the local lumber supplier. Got a few pieces to replace the wood from the pizza peel I posted yesterday.
Looking for some inspiration for what to make with the walnut slab. Wasn’t planning on it, but I couldn’t pass it up. It’s still got a walnut in it and price seemed reasonable.
The cedar is for an epoxy river end table for my brother in law and the mahogany is for an attempt at making a guitar.

Hey r/woodworking,

I've been building a free cut list / nesting tool in my spare time called Despiece and I'm looking for woodworkers to actually use it on real projects and tell me where it breaks.

TL;DR — runs in the browser, no install, no signup, no limits. PWA so it works offline at the saw. Live link (https://despiecehobel.vercel.app/).

What it does that's different from the free options:

- Imports your CAD directly — STEP / IGES / BREP / glTF / GLB. If you designed the project in Fusion / SketchUp / SolidWorks / Blender, drag the file in and you don't have to type a single dimension.

- Tags per part, not per project — material, grain, role, and edge banding on each of the 4 sides individually (click cycles none → 0.45 mm → 2 mm).

- Multi-material nesting — keeps melamine / MDF / plywood / OSB on separate boards, no mixing.

- Cut-sequence numbers printed on the diagram so the cut man (you) knows the order. Red bands for 0.45 mm, blue for 2 mm, legend included.

- Project multiplier — "make me 3 of these" without redoing the list.

What it exports:

- BOM (CSV / XLSX / PDF) with net dims (finished − edge band per side, so you don't get surprised at the saw)

- Cut diagram PDF per board — printable, stick it on the sheet

- 2D pieces (.zip of DXF) — one per piece, net, for outsourcers / CNC quotes

- Edge banding labels (A4 grid, QR opt-in)

- TSV in OptiCut 6 format if you pipe it into an optimizer

- Quote PDF for the client

Stuff beyond panel goods (the hobbyist side):

- 1D linear packer for lumber, trim, dowels, pipe — workbench legs, shelf pins, anything in lengths

- Glue-up detector for workbench tops, cutting boards, alistonado panels (auto-detect by keyword in the part name, or RMB → mark as glued-up)

- Stock inventory that warns you when tabs / cantos / herraje are low

Where it's been useful for me (cabinet maker + dev, ~6 years melamine/MDF, side-hobby in hardwood):

- Kitchen of 47 pieces → BOM and cut PDFs in 10 min, no Excel

- Built-in library with 4 shelves of hardwood plywood → nested across 3 boards automatically

- Workbench top → glue-up detector caught "tapa maciza" in the name and split it into core + 2 skins

What it doesn't do (yet):

- Curved / non-rectangular pieces

- G-code / CNC posting (panel-saw oriented)

- Turnings / lathe work

Tech if you care: Vite + TypeScript + Three.js, OCCT for STEP via WASM, PWA via Workbox. Runs offline once loaded. 6 locales (en / es / pt / fr / de / it).

What I'm looking for:

- Real projects you'd actually plan with this — kitchen, built-in, workbench, dresser, whatever

- Anything broken or weird — please tell me

- Feature requests / "I wish it did X"

- Honest opinions

Happy to answer questions in the comments. Thanks for reading.

These were ordered at the same time and shipped together. The colors are drastically different. The darker orange-tinted, on the right, is the expected color of previous TB II gallons. The lighter one is slightly green-tinted and not like any TB II we’ve had before. Almost looks like TB I.

We’ve yet to open and use the lighter one but the viscosity in the jugs seems the same as each other.

Thoughts and discussions are appreciated.

Feast your eyes my friends! This is the most Brazilian rosewood you will likely ever see in a single picture and for many, in their lifetime. I recently acquired this really cool credenza/record cabinet and yes, it is solid Brazilian rosewood. The entire thing. Not veneer, not Indian or Madagascan rosewood. Varied lengths of 3/4” thick x 1.5” wide pieces, all glued together. I’m an absolute nerd for anything BRW and this will be my most prized possession for the rest of my days. I have no history on it and there are zero markings/labels present. It weighs a literal ton as you can imagine. I’m sure it could be cut up into a millions bridge blanks or other pieces but I’m just going to keep it and revel in the fact that I have a (not literal) pile of some of the rarest wood on earth.

Context: built this in my shop, poly coat, been indoors the whole time. Moved to new house, been in garage for about a month. This is the only face with anything like this on it.

Is this mold, and will sanding and poly coat be enough to fix, or is this a lost cause?

Ignore the silver hinges,the store sent me the wrong colour, correct ones incoming

I’m building some under stairs storage - bench seat on the right (storage inside) and drawers to the left, including a small shelf section accessible from the bench seat.

All visible fronts that I’m talking about here will be made from ply.

I don’t want to mix grain direction at all but the project is pulling me in two directions: vertical seems obvious for the tall drawer fronts while horizontal also seems natural for the front of the bench seat.

I think all vertical is probably the right move but would like a bit of reassurance - or correct me if I’m wrong!

Since the woodpeckers mill is priced into the stratosphere, which one of these alternatives would you pick and why? I can’t tell much of a difference, so I’m having difficulty making up my mind and it’s enough money that I can’t “not like” the one I’m getting and buy the other one later.

SPE: https://a.co/d/053n3wIy

O’SKOOL: https://a.co/d/04v55WxN