Tips for Buying Lumber

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Normally I would publish an article that relates to the video posted here that would include details not covered in the video. This time we are only going to publish a link to an excellent article that is posted on the West Wind Hardwood website entitled The Art of Buying Lumber by Dick Burrows.

It is far more detailed and extensive than what I can publish and is a great resource for people who want to get the best value and products from their wood purchases. Click HERE for that link, it will open in a new window, and don't forget, they do Ship Wood so if you are looking for something special to highlight a project or add some special detailed woods, send them a request for quote on some wood delivered to your door ...

As more information or links come along that relate to this topic, we will publish them also. Until then, our thanks again to West Wind Hardwood for giving us their time and expertise to help all of our viewers become more knowledgeable in their lumber purchases.

Make a Keurig Coffee Pod Holder

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Coffee, Coffee, Coffee ... I don't drink a lot of it, but I love to have a couple of cups every day that I can really savor. In recent years specialized coffee machines have brought the convenience of coffee varieties and single cup servings to home market, and I must admit, I was one of the first buyers of them.
One of the problems with coffee pods, especially if you like to have a few different varieties around, or if you purchase them in bulk ... they can take up a lot of space on the counter, especially if you store them in the little boxes they come in.

I have tried many different ways of storing these coffee pods, I have used the little boxes they come in and tried to stack them, but they always fall down when you try to use them ... I tried making little wooden boxes, and they looked great, but they still didn't stack well. Then there are a variety of self feeding holders where you pull a pod out of the bottom the the others stacked on top cascade downward. These work fine but if you want a particular flavor you still have to go digging for it.

Then one day I spotted a little rack that stands vertically, held around 35 - 40 coffee pods and displayed each one so you could choose a flavor. I could make one of those !!!  and so I did.

I must admit that I worked on a few different designs and even tried making the holes at an angle so the pods would sit in them and not fall out ... but in the end I discovered that the simplest design was the most effective ... so here's how I made it ...

Wine Carrier / Wine Rack

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Getting free lumber isn't always as free as we might think, especially pallet wood. Wood from pallets is often pretty nasty stuff. It's often been kicked, dragged, smashed and driven over before we get it. It's almost always embedded with tiny rocks and gravel, hardened nails or screws and who knows what else. All of these unwanted elements go a long way to dulling, damaging or even ruining jointer and planer knives and even saw blades. Still, it's fun to get, but even more rewarding is getting lumber that already has some character to it. All this means is that you need to treat pallet wood differently than you do virgin wood from the lumber store. The fact that it does have all these embedded nasty elements is the reason we use it.

 I have found the best tool to use for pallet wood is either a circular saw, or a table saw with a circular saw blade installed. Circular saw blades are much less expensive than 10” table saw blades. If you are going to use a jointer or planer, sanding the wood first, or brushing it off with a wire brush, then using one of the hand metal detectors to check for metal is a must. Of course the problem with doing this is that you are often destroying the patina of the wood, but ... we do what we need to.

The purpose of this project is to make a decorative wine carrier, that can also double as a wine rack. We decided to use some “character” pallet wood. There is no reason that wood from the lumber store or other sources cannot be used, the only real requirement for the sizes we made is that it be 3/4 inch stock material. Before we give out some dimensions, it's important to note that there is no standard in wine bottle sizes of shapes. The bottles we selected were of similar size and shape so that they would interchange with one another.

Natural Edge Wooden Serving Platter

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This was supposed <supposed !> to be a quick, easy project. I had no idea going into this project it would take as long as it did, and be as complicated as it was. After all, it's only a simple wooden serving platter.
It started off easy, I had a piece of wood with natural edges that had been sitting around in my wood storage room for several years because I didn't know what to do with it. I started off by selecting a section of it that would be perfect for the platter ... even sawed it off with a hand saw to be safe.
Next I planed the thickness of the board to around 3/4 inch, just thin enough it was easy to handle but still showed off enough of the natural edge to make it look great.

Now, unbeknown to me, the hard part started. How to you prepare the edges of this board without destroying it's natural look. It was quite craggy and rough and needed to be smoothed down but still retain the natural edge look. I decided to start off with a tiny wire brush on my rotary tool. To my delight it worked great ...