Interior has room for 20 pens. Five per tray, and they stack. I convinced myself that cutting the grooves with a router would be a nightmare, so it was a pleasant surprise how easy that process was.
A walnut box with a walnut burl panel lid. The corners are decorated with maple dowels.
Spent about a month on this custom box for my wife’s birthday, to store her pen collection. This was my first woodworking project using a veneered panel, but not my last; I love the marbled effect of the burl wood grain, and the maple trim highlights the wood’s natural colors even more.
A box made of walnut with maple accents, and a walnut burl veneer panel incorporated into the lid.
A box made of walnut with maple accents, and a walnut burl veneer panel incorporated into the lid. The box is open.
A close up shot of the hinges installed in a walnut box. It is… messy.
Jigs and clamps, demonstrating the process of this in-progress box build.
Working on this (not a surprise) box build for my wife’s birthday, destined to hold a portion of her pen collection.
A LOT of work went into installing the hinges and ensuring the lid stays perfectly aligned with the box. In woodworking, the least impressive things can be the hardest to execute.
Yes.
You can cram a whole lot of workshop functionality into 200 square feet.
A walnut pizza peel with a cooked pepperoni pizza on top.
Aw, friend sent me a pic of their gift in the wild. Feels good when my time spent woodworking makes someone else’s life a tiny bit better.
Three pizza peels, on different styles and shapes.
A pizza peel made from contrasting strips of walnut and cherry. A video game controller in the background for scale.
Several pipe clamps and hand clamps being used to glue together a pizza peel.
The rough shape of a pizza peel, sketched out on wood strips with white chalk, before glue-up.
Didn’t go overboard with holiday crafting, but I did make these three pizza peels for my best friends. Pretty happy with how these turned out.
In terms of woodworking complexity, not particularly challenging, except for safely cutting the tapered edges, which required a new jig for the table saw.
Story time. A bit over a year ago, a friend asked me with great excitement to make her a cutting board as a wedding present and handed me about 40lbs of purple heart wood she wanted worked into the job.
75 terrifying seconds of the CNC cutting a juice groove into an endgrain cutting board. This is one of my least favorite tasks in woodworking, and the machine performed admirably once we got everything out of its way. @arrdem.com deserves full credit for believing this was possible.
A guy smiling while standing proudly besides a machine that has recently shocked him with a bolt of static electricity.
But succeed feels so good. Or, in this case, success feels so flat.
A CNC router flattening the surface of an MDF tabletop.
With t-track and spoilboards added to the CNC table, the time had come for another (final) flattening job. @arrdem.com tweaked the machine’s script, we made a few minor cable routing tweaks to avoid snags, and hit the “GO” button. No problems to report. Except the visible arcs of electricity.
A CNC table.
Six rows of t-track laid on top of our reference surface, with 18mm of mdf as material that can be safely chewed up (roughly 7 or 8 mm before the cutting tool could hit the t-track). Time to cobble together clamping options.
Odie’s Dark will darken the wood some over time, but it isn’t as big of an effect as a stain. I believe Rubio Monocoat comes in a lot of stain/color options, but so far, I’ve only tried “pure.”
I used Rubio monocoat on this walnut bench. Super easy to apply, just mix it up, apply, and then buff off. Odie’s Oil is very similar. I highly recommend it if you’re stressed about evenly applying a varnish; just make sure to really buff the wood with a clean cloth to remove any excess finish.
Lots of picture frames combining multiple corners.
Picture frames glued and clamped.
More picture frames glued and clamped, with a whole lot of extra clamps to ensure squareness.
Glueing in splines to the corners of each frame to provide additional strength.
Some woodworking process shots for anyone that enjoys that sort of thing:
A tabletop covered with an assortment of homemade picture frames, crafted from walnut, cherry, and maple.
A different view of the same picture frames.
A closer shot of a glossy walnut and cherry picture frame, with John Singer Sargent’s “La Carmencita” displayed inside.
Nearing completion on my latest woodworking project: picture frames combining multiple wood types. Half of these frames are for my Sargent prints that have been gathering dust, and the other half are a custom job for a friend. Some still need mattes and plexiglass, but that part is easy/boring.
I just realized I’m looking at the wrong piece! I thought the table top was your floor and that little plywood stand was the new table. Doh!
I still think lighter might be better, just to let each piece keep its own unique tone. But really depends on how you like the knots and whirls.
My gut says to put on a clear top layer like Arm R Seal —I prefer the satin finish, it’s very forgiving— to let the light wood keep its natural tone. If you prefer to stain it, you might consider testing on a remnant cutoff to see how the plywood absorbs the stain, especially the edges.
A hand-drawn print of an octopus, in a walnut and cherry picture frame.
Multiple examples of picture frame profiles, cut from walnut, cherry, and maple.
The rough-cut profile of a picture frame profiles, made from maple and walnut.
The rough-cut profile of a picture frame profiles, made from walnut and maple.
After last month’s cherry/walnut picture frame scratched that creative woodworking itch, I’m diving deeper down the rabbit hole. Currently have a half dozen unique profiles, and I’m happy to report that these are both entertaining and a great way to burn through scrap wood that needs a purpose.
Tired of parents enjoying the benefits gifted to them, while denying their own children’s future. Just do to the anti-vax parents whatever happens to their children.
Kid gets polio and can’t walk? We snip Dad’s spine in half. Measles fries a child’s brain? Lobotomy time for MAHA Mom. Seems fair.
A CNC strut placed on an mdf and plywood table. Several buckets of scrap wood sit on the garage floor underneath.
This Lowrider CNC v4 from @v1engineering.bsky.social, built with an incredible amount of work by @arrdem.com, is nearly operational. A crazy tool to drop into my deeply unprofessional, garage-workshop woodworking situation.
Can’t wait to see what sort of trouble we can get up to with this machine.
Seriously.
A portrait in a homemade picture frame made from walnut and cherry, hanging on a wall.
This weekend, I finished the two-wood picture frame and hung it on the wall. I still need to cut a glass pane, but this is good enough for now. Learned a lesson or two along the way.
I find it quite satisfying when I can use my woodworking setup to replace the things I (frequently) drop and break.
Yessssssss…
Nice splines.
A lithograph portrait in an incomplete picture frame made from walnut and cherry picture.
The replacement picture frame project continues to go (mostly) according to plan. I’m not looking forward to all the sanding required to remove the burn marks.
A length of walnut with a shallow coved cut. A table saw in the background has several boards and clamps attached.
My first time trying out this technique of using the table saw to make a cove cut. This setup felt less scary than I anticipated, and I’m always happy to figure out a new woodworking technique that won’t cost me a finger.
Technically, I probably have less square feet per resident.
Why not both?
I’d still rather have real wood ceilings/floors/walls than drywall, even if it means signing up for extra work in the future! You can rejuvenate wood, but drywall will be bland forever.
