Making a Child's Doll Cradle
- Read Time: 6 mins
- Hits: 16174
We all get different kinds of satisfaction from all sorts of different projects. For me, utility projects and furniture have the most appeal but once in a while I like to make things for other members of the family too. In this case, a young niece. Another member of the family hand made a doll's quilt, so to make a complete package a doll was purchased and of course some sort of a bed is needed, so why not a cradled.
Since this is a child's toy I wanted something that would not be too heavy to carry around, yet sturdy and of course easy to clean. The wood I selected was some rough cut Cedar of Lebanon that was well below 12% on the moisture scale. I knew at the outset that this cradle was going to be painted (not by me, I hate covering wood with paint) so I was not so concerned about how the colors of the wood matched up.
As usual, this was a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants project, which means I wasn't working from a formal pattern, so I needed something to work with. I started by measuring the hand made quilt and from that could determine a base for the cradle which would be around 9 by 20 inches on the base and 10 inches in height.
The first order of business is to size the wood which means breaking down the rough cut wood on the jointer, then the planner then the bandsaw and finally back to the planner .... I always love dressing lumber because it's just like a ...
Serving Tray with Holly Inlay
- Read Time: 5 mins
- Hits: 19354
You don't always have to make enormous size wood projects to create something impressive. Sometimes smaller items can be every bit as impressive if you add some creative elements to them, in fact, often they can be better because they can be more portable and used more often, such is the case with our serving tray.
In this article and video we create an ordinary serving tray, but make is a bit more extraordinary by combining different woods and creating a rudimentary inlay in the tray bottom. Remember that this is the kind of an item that will show off your woodworking projects every time it is used so take time to make a good job.
In our case, we started of with 3 kinds of wood. The sides of the tray are something called Locust wood. A hardwood with a prominent yellow tinge to it. For the tray bottom we wanted to use a plywood product because it is more stable and will move only slightly. To add a bit of a WOW factor we selected Holly wood for the inlay as it will contrast nicely with the Mahogany Plywood tray base. We wanted this project to be
Building a Box Joint Library Cupboard
- Read Time: 7 mins
- Hits: 10668
Book,
Magazines, Newspaper clippings, photocopies of wood working projects and pictures. That pretty much describes my woodworking library. Now let me describe where I keep it, in the book case in living room or next to my favorite chair, some in the bedside table, a few others in the workshop, and of course at least a couple of magazines in that place where we all go for a bit of quite time every day.
When it comes time to try and find something that I have bookmarked or need reference to, just finding the magazine, book or photo copy can be a challenge, so I decided it was high time to build a small Library Cupboard for the workshop so I can find things, when I need them. The first thing I did was stack up all by library items in one place to see how much space they take up, then allow for a bit of extra room that will surely be needed in the future.
Since this cabinet is going to be holding a fair bit of weight, I decided that instead of the standard rabbets, I would make the corners of this cabinet as box joints. That way The carcass will be strong enough to hold the books and can still be wall mounted and have doors attached to keep the dust out.
Click "MORE" ... to watch 2 more videos on this topic ...
Cutting Boards for Accolades and Profit
- Read Time: 9 mins
- Hits: 17507
Here's a question for you! How many cutting boards do you have in your house RIGHT NOW? I'll be you have at least 2 and many of you will have 3 or 4. And, if you are up on the latest news, the wooden ones are still the best because the natural chemicals in the wood, the oils and tannins for example, are anti-bacterial apparently. That's right, the natural oils in wood actually kills bacteria, making wooden cutting boards more food safe than plastic cutting boards. Amazing!
In this article we explore not only the aspects of making cutting boards, but we will also touch on revenues that can be made in selling them. If you think about how many houses there are in your country and that each one of them has at least 2 cutting board, you can see that the potential for selling cutting boards is quite significant. But you can't just throw together any cutting board, you need to make something unique, different or otherwise more useful than just the run-of-the-mill cutting boards that can be found in many stores. And, if you have some sort of a venue where you can sell them yourself, like a flea market, garage sales, on-line etc. there are many different ways of selling and distributing cutting boards, we'll leave that part up to you.
Cutting boards can be made from pretty much any kind of wood. Hard woods work best because they last longer. In my opinion, the best cutting board wood is Oak because it has both tannin and natural oils to help combat bacteria, but any wood will work fine. Then next thing you need to decide on is design ...
Refurbishing a Random Orbital Sander
- Read Time: 5 mins
- Hits: 9744
Every good woodworker knows that keeping your tools in good shape is paramount to good turning out good results. That is why we keep bits and blades sharp, why we make sure parts are installed correctly and why we do routine maintenance from time to time. And if you are like most other woodworkers, you will be doing most of that work yourself.
The latest tool to fail on me was my Bosch Random Orbital Sander. I love this little sander, it's quick, easy to use and it does a good job. I also happen to like the dust catcher actually works, despite the fact that I do almost all of my sanding out-of-doors to help cut down on the fine dust in my workshop.
It seems that in time, all tools will fail, wear out or cease to work, and in my case the hook and loop base of the sander all of a sudden stopped holding sanding discs. I knew right away what the problem was, the little plastic hooks that form the bottom of the base had become brittle over time and and many had probably broken off to the point that there were not enough working hooks to hold the loops in the sandpaper discs.
Halloween Woodworking - SCARY
- Read Time: 5 mins
- Hits: 10332
Halloween has grown to be a pretty big non-holiday for both kids and adults. It's really a fun time where everyone can be little bit silly. One of the great things about Halloween is all the costumes and decorating that happens, and it's a perfect time to introduce non-woodworking people to the craft.
One of the safest woodworking tools and one that has LOADS of potential is the scroll saw, and when it comes to making Halloween ornaments, like window and lawn figurines, the scroll saw is the perfect tool. Finding scroll saw patterns is pretty easy, but when it comes to Halloween, there's an even easier source. For the cost of little more than a dollar, you can go to your closest dollar store and find all sorts of Halloween items that can be used as patterns. In most cases, you can't buy scroll saw patterns anywhere for that great price, and they have a pretty extensive selection, at least the ones I was into.
Now that you have a source for scroll saw patterns, you will need wood. Scrollers often use thin plywood for making figurines like the Halloween ones, so if you have any scraps of thin 1/4" or even 1/8" plywood around, that is perfect for scrolling. If it turns out you need to buy a bit of plywood, many stores sell cut sheets, BUT, many of them also sell Door Skin plywood. This is very thin plywood ...
Page 89 of 103