Make a Wooden iPhone or Smartphone Case

Read Time: 7 mins

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I'm not sure why, but some projects when we work on them turn out to be favorites, and this is one of my all time favorite woodworking projects. It wasn't that hard to do but it did take time and detail to make a good job. Of course it is a "one only case" which means there is no pattern, you have to make things up as you go along.
All I really knew when I started was that I wanted a wooden smartphone case and that the phone would need to fit snug into it so that the phone would not slide out and get broken, and of course it had to look nice. I didn't just jump into making this case, I have been thinking about it for over a month and just mulling it around in my mind and trying to think of any pitfalls before they arise.
Before you get started ... a word about safety!! Cutting small pieces of wood can be dangerous! always make sure your wood is secure when it is being cut and that your fingers and other parts of your body are well protected and away from any cutting surfaces. TAKE YOUR TIME and work safely.

The first thing of course is to select the wood. With small projects like this you really need to take your time selecting the wood. It should be one of the harder ... hardwoods and needs to have tight, straight grain.

There must not be any voids or cracks. In my case I selected a small piece of Arbutus or Madrona that has been collecting dust in my wood storage room for a lot of years. The chunk of wood is too small to do much with but for a project like this, it's perfect ...

Wine Rack

Read Time: 7 mins

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Not everyone has the room, or the budget for a lovely wine room and for those who still like to have a few nice bottles of wine on hand, or to maybe show off some vintage collection, this little wine rack is perfect. It only holds 6 bottles but it is small enough to display your wine collection on a dinning room hutch, a side table, perhaps on a kitchen or serving counter and still look great.
All in all the wine rack is easy to build but there are a few things you need to keep in mind. The first and most important thing is that sizes are critical. In our case we were using 3/8 notches and 3/8" width wood and in order for the wood to fit the notches in a nice snug fit, the wood needs to be milled and sanded to a very accurate width.

The second most important thing to consider is the wood. You need to make sure the wood is a good, quality hard wood and that the grain is tight and straight-grained because it will be holding 6 bottles of wine, so any cross-grain wood will not be good.

Making a Child's Doll Cradle

Read Time: 6 mins

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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

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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