Woodworking and other real world projects
mod
I know we have at least a few woodworkers on the boards, so let's see what you're working on or have made! Woodworking, home improvement projects, 3D printing, really anything you're making in the real world goes in this thread. Shots of your shop, new tools, etc, are also fair game.
Here's a side table I finished recently. It's made out of walnut and maple.
And here's a jig I put together to more safely and accurately do pattern routing. This piece is part of the leg assembling I'm making for some more side tables. The extra blocks around the workpiece keep the router perfectly level, which reduces cutting errors. It also gives a more stable platform so I can take slower/more precise cuts. It's a lot safer than doing it on the table router too. Everything is stuck down with double-sided tape so it can be repurposed later.
Here are some stacks of wood that are acclimating for future projects. There's a forestry service nearby that has really good prices on hardwood. They have limited supply, but it's all local/sustainably harvested. Much of this wood likely came down in the derecho storm that hit Iowa this fall.
Here's a side table I finished recently. It's made out of walnut and maple.
And here's a jig I put together to more safely and accurately do pattern routing. This piece is part of the leg assembling I'm making for some more side tables. The extra blocks around the workpiece keep the router perfectly level, which reduces cutting errors. It also gives a more stable platform so I can take slower/more precise cuts. It's a lot safer than doing it on the table router too. Everything is stuck down with double-sided tape so it can be repurposed later.
Here are some stacks of wood that are acclimating for future projects. There's a forestry service nearby that has really good prices on hardwood. They have limited supply, but it's all local/sustainably harvested. Much of this wood likely came down in the derecho storm that hit Iowa this fall.
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What kind of joins are those on the sides?
My family bought a 1950 Icelandic timber house, and I'm doing all the renovations myself. This included teaching myself the icelandic plumbing system (which includes a low pressure radiator loop for heating as we get hot water as a service), electricity, and the icelandic window system, which is a very mature design based off decades of building wooden windows in the snowy and freezing island I call home. The last major update to the window system was from 1986 when I was 5.
The house had 20 windows, and we're adding 6, and all the windows have trim. We live on the same street as the major glass cutter, and they create the double panes for me, which I build the frame and opening bits for and then install. I'm also replacing the corrugated metal siding, a unique residential siding to Iceland from our early building boom in the 1900s, 1910s, and 1920s, where we arranged a trade between England who was producing this new product - sheep for corrugated metal. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-09-23/the-history-of-reykjavik-s-iron-and-wood-homes (read more here)
Trim was used to social signal the builders wealth. As someone who has now made 9 sets of trim with more to come, the hours add up, and normally need to be paid for when procuring a craftsman. Wood was all imported, and our tradesmen have always had strong unions and good wages. The wealthiest families paid to have elaborate trim created for their houses. Here is an example that probably took 20x the hours per trim set mine does.
Window trim is used to cover the seam between siding and window, the siding is near impenetrable, important for Iceland's brutal precipitation, likewise the window itself, but the border between? got to cover that. The trim serves that purpose, channeling the water away from the seams where it could get behind the metal siding. This is the original trim of the house, basic and functional, with as little wood as possible for cost savings.
The original design in 3d. I started every object as a box primitive corresponding to an off the shelf timber size, and then subtracted, keeping in mind I'd be making many multiples and advanced cuts would take much longer.
The main element of trim I wanted to have more facets for catching the light, and a bit of bulk so as not to rot away (thin wooden pieces don't last long in Icelandic weather) I have a 4 step plan with all table saw settings to be able to make lots of trim at once.
Now some window porn.
I've wanted a garden window since I learned of their existence. Buying one is about 4-5 thousand USD, but I made mine for under 500$ in materials (all windows about half the cost is the glass, which has icelandic labor cost built in)
The supports under are custom made by our other neighbors, a steel manufacture, from my design. The double scissor truss uses 2 beams at 30 and 60 degrees pinned in the middle instead of a single unit at 45 degrees. The half eyelets are to hang lanterns or potted plants.
This is our bedroom window, it started as two smaller windows and I built a tall thin one for the middle space and raised the height for a window wall. The outer trim is a single piece for upper and one for lower sill.
view from inside
Two sides of the house done. Currently I'm building my 3 largest windows yet, one with a single door, and one with double french doors, and the doors themselves are white oak whereas the rest are all from pine. I dimensioned the oak from raw planks using only hand planes.
This unit is 2,4 meters wide by 2 meters tall, the opening is 140cm wide with both doors open, with no center post.
I'm assembling them now, but the stain and lacquer effect I'm doing. I use a red stain, then clear two part epoxy lacquer.
Please notice my shapely calves, from hoofing the lumber home via foot as apposed to penis replacement, I mean truck.
Oh yeah I taught myself door making too.
https://imgur.com/VT6vD8c
Some dead images I think. Starting after the first red window dtfANlD.png, they seem to use https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/ instead of imgur.
And thanks!!! It's a spirit based stain and then a two part epoxy lacquer. I do one coat thinned with epoxy thinner to penetrate the wood as a base coat and that seals in the stain, then a second coat full strength which gives that glassy sheen and really protects the wood from the elements while showing that gorgeous grain.
For smaller parts or repetitive cuts, a good quality miter gauge is worth its weight in gold (I've got the Incra 1000SE and highly recommend it). A Grr-Ripper (or two) or similar knock-off push block is a very handy tool to safely make difficult and dangerous cuts on the table saw.
If you plan to work with sheet goods a lot, consider adding either a track saw or circular saw (ideally with some sort of track or guide system) eventually. Track saws can cut miters too which can be easier than throwing big panels through the table saw. These tools are also handy if you're going to work with rough lumber for squaring up edges, but rough lumber is going to require at minimum a planer (aka a thicknesser or thickness planer depending on where you live) and better yet a planer and a jointer, or if you wanna be like Ben, quality hand planes with sharp blades and copious amounts of free time.
A jigsaw is an inexpensive but generally very useful tool to have as well.
It's also worth taking time to make sure both your miter and table saw are cutting accurately. For the table saw this means making sure the fence is flush with the blade, and the 45 and 90 degree stops are correct - these are generally adjustable. There's not much worse than cutting a bunch of miters and then going to glue up the boards and realizing you hit at 44 or 46 degrees. A combo square and a speed square are essential to set these up, and a quality level is a good idea too. You can get a cheap magnetic digital level gauge that can make setting the angle on these saws easy too.
There are lots of plans available online but honestly, coming up with designs is one of the most fun parts. If you're doing at least some of the design work yourself you can make sure it's suitable to your skills/available tools as well. A good exercise is to find some stuff that you like, be it a commercial design or whatever, and try to reverse engineer it and mock it up in the 3D app of your choice. And then try to figure out how to make it with the tools you have, and adjust the design if you need to.
There are some really great people making video content on youtube these days. I'm generally into mid-century modern stuff, so here are some links:
https://www.foureyesfurniture.com/plans - they have detailed plans and videos to buy, and free videos that cover a lot of their process (but fall short of literal plans): https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC1V-DYqsaj764uBis9-UDug - though their builds are generally a bit more advanced - again it's good to be able to sort of soak some of this in and then try to adapt it to a design that is approachable
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9Lfb5wvuqFXaEiEJtJYAYg - Shaun contributes to Foureyes but has his own channel as well
https://www.youtube.com/c/Bourbonmothdecor/videos - some of this guy's stuff is a bit more approachable, and he does a lot with his miter saw
https://www.youtube.com/c/3x3CustomTamar/videos - she has a good mix of more advanced stuff and simpler builds that you might be able to do with fewer tools
https://www.youtube.com/c/KatzMosesWoodworkingShop/videos - lots of great technique videos here, and some good build ones too
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCxWzA3ZlYEOLr1JkKH0ZMyg - detailed build log stuff and some excellent traditional technique videos toohttps://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNyGbxoEo6CQvaRVEvItxkA - some quirkier stuff, many of his projects (esp his scrap wood stuff) are smaller in scale and relatively approachable
https://www.youtube.com/c/MichaelAlm/videos - somewhat more quirky and contemporary stuff
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7FkqjV8SU5I8FCHXQSQe9Q - no-talking Japanese zen videos
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVOpX2P5wygh7sB1KXgh_5g - more zen
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChiQ73lwc97xXbZSLi6znhw - yet more zen
If you have Amazon prime, the entire Wood Whisper series is on there too. Lot's of good technical stuff in those, though he leans a bit more towards traditional shaker style stuff.
I normally try to do chamfers on my table saw, but because that one had a start and end, and I had to already assemble the window frame first, I did it the hard manual way. I bought a 3 liter wine box, and just got to work for hours, lol. The planing of the oak planks took 3 days to do 9 boards. I used a Number 6 Rider planer along with a cheaper Number 4 I sharpened the edge to be scalloped for big removal, wish I could get Lee Valley stuff shipped here without paying a spotted owl for shipping.
Number 6 (plane sizes for those who don't know, get bigger and longer the higher the number) Bigger planes allow for more flattening versus a small one will ride over the bumps like a roller coaster whereas a long one will plane off the bumps til flat.
Here is how rough the wood started. When buying wood, the humidity content matters, because wood will shrink and warp as it dries. When getting nicer wood, the higher cost is often because they stored it indoors for years to bring the moisture down. Pine from a big box store is often "house dried" and between 12-14% moisture. Furniture grade wood should be under 7% but there are methods of building that account for wetter wood drying over time. Because it's going to dry and shrink, the nicer wood is often cut to generic plank size with no real regard for width, seeing as it will change over time and the assumption is that the buyer will then dimension it how they are going to use it. My white oak came from Germany, had been stored indoors for 2 years, and was all between 5,2-6,7%, they measured each board with a moisture meter as part of the service. It was 4x more expensive than pine here. I'm jealous of your timber availability, @EarthQuake
I'll share what I'm working on now. Our house is a concrete basement level with two upper wooden floors. The floor between basement and first is concrete, very stable and nice to walk on. The floor between first and second is bouncy in places and needs reinforcing. I'm done with the structural engineering and planning, but the beams we need are wider than normal, meaning joist hangers off the shelf don't fit, and they are made out of stamped sheet metal anyway.
We paid for an artist to make a family crest for us, I pulled out the crow to make the outline of these.
Right now I'm making the beams for those two center supports. Iceland has an anemic forestry service and while it is possible to buy icelandic timber, the largest sizes are very small. Our dimensioned lumber comes from Denmark or Latvia depending on which store, and there is some good sizes but I needed something bigger. These are 2x10s laminated into a 6x10, it should have over 10,000 lbs of support strength even before adding the scissor trusses. The beams are 6x6s. Everything is either C18 (t1 for Americans) or C24, which describes the megapascals of holding strength, easy to convert to PSI for using the AWC's span charts for structural engineering.
My future living room currently. This is about 1,000 USD of timber, all either 2x10s or 6x6s, and they will become the support for reinforcing the upper floors.
Much of it will show, which is why we're going for decorative hangers (fun fact, in Icelandic they are called "beam shoes" instead of joist hangers) as can be seen here:
I've been making wooden things for a while now, and I've seen some "what you should get" lists that have things on it I still don't own because I've never needed their application for the work I do, and sometimes the tools I've splurged on are things that other people don't bother with or have cheapies. You only need the tools that you will use and work with your methodology. I love watching Grandpa Amu on youtube make elaborate creations using very basic tools. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UClaEdLrmti779-tyovta8zw
@poopinmymouth - re:detailed work, thanks! I've got a buddy who makes toy trucks and things like that for his kid, lot's of small parts that need to be accurate enough to be mechanically sound, the smaller the scale gets the more nervous I get about it lol.
Yeah we have great access to hardwood here, living in a fairly rural area there's a lot of local sawmills and things like that. I can imagine everything being expensive if you need to import. When I was in Iceland a few years back I noticed the lack of trees, is this due to deforestation, or are there few native species that can handle the climate? Or both?
Over the weekend I rebuild my slab flattening router jig and tested it out. This one slides a lot smoother than the last one, and works on a table (rather than the floor) which makes it 10x easier to use. Here's a test run with a walnut slab:
Waiting for the epoxy to cure, then I'll take a final pass to flatten it off again. This will be a coffee table with some sort of mid-century modern style legs when it's done (still mocking that up).
I love custom jigs. This walnut slab looks awesome. How do you ensure the slab doesn't move when routing?
And Ben, when I saw the first images of the house I was like "well some stuff to do I guess" but when I reached the last images I was mind blown..
Ca-Racy!
People in Japan usually don't like to buy old houses and fix them up because it's a pain to do so, but since I had nothing to do, I picked this project. The house is about 40 years old and one of the biggest things was: no tatami, more windows and 2.2m tall doorways to everything. Old Japanese homes have short doorways. Drives me nuts.
So I decided to do a complete renovation of the house... I thought it would be a year... been two and some change!!
So I got the house and a common thing is the people will leave the things they don't want.
The bathtub had no running hot water. So for a few months we had to boil water.
The kitchen is 1980's appropriate.
This is the door to the kitchen. My head can hit the lamp.
This room is called "the smoking room" because the previous owner chain-smoked like mad.
My sons and I gutted the place down to the frame.
I sourced all new windows from Yahoo Auctions. Double pane and 1/4 the cost. The colors don't match (some brown, some white, some black..) but that's OK for me.
I would say the hardest thing was demolition of the bath and toilet.
My youngest son on the jack hammer.
Japanese hornets...
This is the bathroom looking from across the kitchen.
So much garbage we tossed.
I put this in, the other windows were done by the contractor. The contractors only did gas, earthquake, window install room extension, electrical and plumbing. This was difficult.
This log is called a "hari". Japanese homes had this, kind of like a shinto thing. Gonna clean it off and leave it exposed.
Osha what?
My oldest son doing some work.
Did drywall, ceiling and started fixtures. I don't like the window framing, so gonna rip them down and do again.
This is the smoking room. It will be used for working out/dance.
Ceiling is plywood. I am thinking to do a dropped light fixture instead of the bars here.
Toilet. Now I can sit and not hit my head on the ceiling.
New bath, I did the walls with micro-cement and made it black. This was hard work too... sucked. The idea with the bath now is that there is a door to go outside in the summer so kids can play on the deck and come inside and clean off. This idea was from my wifes mom.
The house is black
The entire 2nd floor has 5mm sound dampening material under the floor. I also ran gigabit networking to all the rooms. My oldest son doing work I didn't want to do
Cool thing about doing this is new toys.
Smoking room flooring done.
Dead tired that day...
Doing an island kitchen with a real stove. Can't wait.
We're much farther along than what is above. Just about ready to do flooring downstairs.
@poopinmymouth the secret is hot glue. So when I take the first pass, I shim the board to get it roughly level and make sure it doesn't wobble at all when the router hits it, then I take a hot glue gun and put beads all around the slab, and also on the shims to keep them in place. Once one side is flat you can flip and use it as the reference surface, and hot glue all around it again. You need surprisingly little, just a little drop every 8-12 inches or so to keep it from moving. There's a stack of MDF under it too, I use more or less MDF to set the height, the router can only extend so much so if I take a lot off (I took a little over 1/2" off to flatten this boy) I have to raise it up a bit.
Here's one side with the epoxy trimmed off and rough sanded to get the router marks out. Finally, I can start to see what the grain is going to look like. The little black marks here are black CA glue (super glue), this stuff is great for filling small imperfections and voids. I use clear CA on the lighter parts of the wood. You can put a little CA in and sand the nearby wood to form a paste, instant color-matched wood fill! There's an activator spray you can use to make it set up in just a few seconds too. Sure beats putting down more epoxy and waiting a couple days for it to cure.
that looks gorgeous!
@Lamont
wow, I thought I was doing a project, that's crazy! You did all the carpentry? did you take a class beforehand or have carpentry experience or just throw yourself at it? The microcement looks like it sucked, can't imagine.
@poopinmymouth - I just tossed myself headfirst. I did everything minus the walls in the shower room, and the new sink area for the bathroom. A lot of this is first time on this scale. But I think it kinda goes with everything, just do your best to plan and research. What kind of sucks is that I kind of treated this as a project I do on the computer: Oh, don't like that? Delete. Do it over. This is not good because the costs add up like a mother. The microcement did suck, but wasn't as backbreaking as the bathroom and toilet demo. I really dig you making all the window frames, which I am sure saved some money. The work you are doing is crazy kookoo loco, and it looks fantastic. The red really pops.
The joinery work you and @EarthQuake are doing is off the charts. I wanna get into that when I start the kitchen counters.
Currently living in an apartment with no space, so in the meantime I'm mostly carving spoons, spatulas, and little butter-knives out of some greenwood I got from a fallen tree in the woods nearby. Fun way to play with shapes, as you can see; quite a few of these just aren't practical (heck, some aren't pretty either). Fun to carve though.
All the flatish shapes are made using only a sloyd knife. The spoons were made using a hatchet, a sloyd knife, and a spoon knife. Long way to go, but I enjoy it! The pale ones I just carved yesterday, so still have to do a final pass and coat them (I slather them in propolis extract if I want to darken them, which is a weird trick I started a while back, then cover them in linseed oil.)
I realize the wood background isn't great for seeing the darker ones, but, well, hindsight and all that.
And a shot to show off a lil spoon I think has a lot of character:
This weekend I am making a desk. Purchased a motorized standing desk two weeks ago.
Tons of great videos on youtube, that admittedly make it look easy; it's a lot of fun, though never as easy as this guy (Barn The Spoon) makes it look:
And a video on the established knife grips; knowing this helped me a lot. You don't just hold the knife the way you'd expect.
Here are the steps I follow to make my little spreaders. There are other ways, but this is my way. These are quick and useful, so I have quite a few. I usually use fairly small logs, often branches that are around 3 inches thick. I split a bunch and put them in a plastic bag in the freezer, for when I feel like carving. Helps keep them moist and easy to carve.
But any size of log can work, this same technique works for spatulas, if the log is big enough. I'd just recommend using more axe work, in that case.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MKE2sdlysMY&ab_channel=jolt1
@poopinmymouth it's a higher quality cherry plywood from a home improvement store, there's actually way higher grade plywoods out there but you'd have to go to a lumber supply place. Check out Baltic Birch plywood, sooo many layers *drool*
Final result should look something like ^
@EarthQuake that case is a beauty
I mostly finished this a few days ago and the sun happened to be at the right angle for my crappy phone to take a good picture. I'm impatient so shellac and wax is my favorite finish.
The black strip above the nut is a 3D printed pickup bobbin, I'm planning on installing some electronics so it can kind of play itself and interact with my synths. Here's an early test:
Cool thread EQ. I do a bunch of wood working stuff - mostly furniture for our house and small projects for friends. I'll try to post a few here in the future.
Last year I learned how to make snowboards. First one was a bit busted, but my second attempt is solid and I was able to ride it this winter.
I won't spam this thread with images. You can check out my progress posts via the snowboard builders Facebook group (It should be public).
https://www.facebook.com/groups/snowboardbuilders/permalink/1294441147418423/
^ Lots of progress images of my first attempt
https://www.facebook.com/groups/snowboardbuilders/permalink/1434819430047260/
^ My second board. Works great!
Office Furniture
A very large fire pit I built a few years back. 3/16 plate and 1" square tube, I think its about 40" along each side
Framing pivoting up via a makeshift 5:1 pulley system using some climbing gear. As you pull there is a GriGri - an assisted braking belay device that will capture progress and hold the rope so you can go hands free if needed. I was under the frame deadlifting/squatting while my wife pulled out slack in the system.
My tools are pretty basic. I use a mig welder (esab rebel 215) to do the actual welding. Cutting tools are generally a horizontal bandsaw (harbor freight 4x6 saw), and then angle grinders with cutoff wheels. Also on the angle grinders flap discs and occasionally I use a grinding stone. I also have a 12" disc sander with metal grinding abrasive on it. The other important tools for me are many types of clamps and also I have a small welding + fixture table. I have other hand tools as well but the bandsaw and disc sander do most of the work and I use the grinders for smaller stuff.
@AlecMoody All good to know. Will probably poke around to see what's available to use at the local workshops, as I certainly don't have a bandsaw at my disposal at this time
@Justin Meisse that's very cool, I have the urge to build a guitar, even though I don't know how to play one and know nothing about the acoustic qualities of their design... I still want to build one lol
@breakneck the progress shots for that board are really cool! It's very neat how that is constructed
@MiloKalita I would love to see more about this. Is it steam bent? Do you have progress shots?
@AlecMoody jeez that metalwork is awesome, stop messing about you're going to be the reason I buy a whole new set of expensive tools. And then probably burn the house down when my dumb ass tries to weld.
@pior I didn't know that was a thing! Very cool, metalwork that even a noob like me could pick up.
Locally sourced black walnut, all milled from rough lumber. I did a big dumb with this one and used a new finish (Minwax oil-modified water based poly) without testing it out enough and it turned out to be a major pain to work with on a piece like this. Also, this is the first time I made doors that work and stuff, which was pretty cool.
Misc progress shots
if you are used to doing woodwork, metal fab can be a nice change of pace. The materials are harder to shape/cut and welding itself is a skill to learn but you don't need to be nearly as precise with fit up. A 1/8" gap is no big deal and you can just fill it with weld.
The past few years I have kind of gotten away from 3d modeling for games and such, well outside of my daily job but I have been doing scale model and prop building the last few years and picked up wood working last year. Mainly to build out my workshop for my side gigs but have found it to be really enjoyable. I am currently working on a mobile workbench for my shop for assembly and larger scale things that don't fit on my normal model shop bench.
Will post pics when I get a chance.