CRAFTS

Well, in this section I will show some of my attempts to make stuff out of wood. Because of the house in Maine, I can buy wood at the local lumber mill at about a quarter of the price I can get it from Home Depot. Of course, I have to move it to my shop as well, which is in Boston. The shop was my dad's and he was a master craftsman. He's dead now so he no longer needs the shop. I am a woodworking hack, but it is fun and I spend a fair amount of time here. In this photo are pictures of 3 colonial/traditional style blanket boxes. Making these boxes is my favorite project and I have made about 15 of them now. I give them as gifts and so on. I line some of them in cedar also. It takes about 12 man hours to make a box. They are painted with 5 coats of Groton Milk Paint and linseed oil. They hold a lot of stuff and hold up well.

This is a bed I made for my friend Diane. This was by far the most complex project I have ever worked on. The requirement was for a platform bed that had a lot of under bed drawer space and could fit in a small apartment. The bed comes apart into 5 distinct pieces. The drawers are quite large and hold a lot of stuff. The bed is made from Port Orford cedar and deck mahogany. It is covered with three coats of linseed oil and the platform is covered with tan felt. This project took over 200 man hours to complete. It does not look complicated but it was really more difficult than it looks. I learned a lot about construction along the way. I had planned to make two more but gave up after this one. I told Diane in August it would be done by Halloween, but I was unable to deliver it until May. That was hard.

These are bunk beds in the Maine house. They are made from clear 4x4s and pine with plywood bottoms. This project was completed in about 10 hours and was a lot of fun. The rails are mortised into the 4x4 and the whole thing is covered with oak stain. The beds are much sturdier than I expected.

This is a little table I saw in a Pottery Barn magazine and thought I could easily reproduce. It was mostly a failed effort. Although the table is sturdy, I rushed the project and as a result the legs are at the wrong angles. At some point this table will most likely end up in the fireplace.

This table is one of my favorite projects. It was made out of deck mahogany and an old oak shipping crate I found. I broke the crate apart and milled it clean, glued it up and used it for the top and frieze. The problem with this type of wood is that it is usually not sawn well and sure enough the table top cracked after the table sat for awhile. I had to glue in a piece and sand and fill it. The legs are glued and lagged and it would be hard for them to come apart. This was one of my first projects using a hollow chisel mortiser that my brothers gave me for my birthday one year. It is a cool tool that saves tons of time versus drilling and chopping the mortises by hand.

This is a little table that I made for the Maine house out of some scrap oak floorboards. Oak flooring is great because it is really cheap, strong, smells great and it fun to work with. This table has strange dimensions because I made it fit a particular space. It came out better than I expected so I have used cheap floor oak on lots of projects. The only problem is you have to use lots of glue and clamps to keep the wood tight and you have to prevent the inevitable cupping. It requires a fair amount of sanding but it smells great working with it.

This is one of my favorite projects. It is made out of South American hardwoods that were being used as a packing crate for marble slabs. I saw a counter company disposing of them and took them. They said they usually burned them at home because they were so hard. I couldn't believe it, what a waste. It is by far the hardest, heaviest, tightest grained wood I have ever worked with. It destroyed my steel planer and table saw blades and my 3 HP table saw motor bogged severely cutting it. It even caused the lights to dim. I jointed and glued them together and made the top, gluing and clamping. The bottom legs and platform are made from some scrap rock maple that was sitting in the shop for about 30 years. It was my first attempt at mortise and tenon work. I drilled and chiseled the mortises and cut the tenons on the table saw and hand fit all the pieces. It took many many hours to make this table. I coated the whole thing with many coats of undiluted linseed oil, then scraped off the soft oil. It left a beautiful finish. I still have some of this wood and am considering another go at it, but it was an enormous amount of work.

This is another floor oak project. It started as an experiment. I tried to glue up pieces of floor oak in such a way as to create mortises and tenons without actually cutting them or drilling them, them I pinned them with dowels and polyurethane glue. This is one table that will never, ever come apart. The sides are made of cheap oak veneer from Home Depot and the brown trim is cheap deck mahogany. The project actually came out better than I planned. There were many times when I was ready to set fire to it in the shop, but all in all I can't complain. It is used as a bar in the Maine house and has lots of booze in it. I made an escutcheon and lock for it as well and it seems to be holding up. I like it.

This is the most ambitious project I have ever undertaken. It took two years of effort and I had to teach myself most of the stuff needed to make it work. This is a Queen Anne silverware chest copied after one I saw in the Lafayette House restaurant in Foxboro. The people who worked there gave me dirty looks every time I showed up with a dial caliper and started taking measurements. It came out pretty well though. It is made out of some cherry that had been sitting in the shop for over 50 years. The whole thing is solid, including the back and the shelves. The drawers are made out of single cedar plank my brother once gave me for my birthday. The tracks are wood and the drawers use box joints. They are all felt lined. The legs had been carved by my dad before he died, and I decided to use them rather than waste them, and this is why I made this project. Although it is a total hack job, it still looks pretty good. A cad/cam operator at work faired out the curves on a piece of paper which I glued to the wood and cut to match. It took three tries and I wasted a lot of wood. I kept the scraps however. I sent away to Horton Brass for the handles. The legs are lagged into the carcase. I had to make a template to peg the top into the carcase as well. I use this piece to hold important papers. It smells good when I open the drawers.

This is a lingerie chest I made for a girlfriend once. It was made out of a lot of scraps, such as birch, white cherry and the drawers are fir. It was pretty nice and it was a fun project. The shelves are made of plywood with tongue and groove. When I broke up with her, she broke up the project and burned it in her fireplace. That was somewhat disappointing.

This is a reproduction of an apothecary I saw in Crate and Barrel once. It was a lot more difficult to make than I expected. I would not recommend it. The little drawers are a bitch if you don't standardize your measurements properly, which I didn't. Doh! Every drawer had to be custom fitted. This was another project I wanted to set on fire. It is finished with 5 coats of milk paint. By the way, milk paint is great but expensive.

This blanket box is the first project I ever made. I made it in 1996, a few years after dad died. The shop had been closed up for years and I needed a tool so I went there and for some reason started puttering around. Up until that time I had rarely even picked up a hammer. I had to teach myself everything. All things considered, it came out great. It is fully cedar lined. Every time I left the shop I counted my fingers. If they were all still there, I knew I had a good time. There were a couple of close calls and I have been lucky. The Parks Planer shot a board 50 feet into a door once, and the Craftsman radial arm saw grabbed piece out of my hand and flung it across the room and a circle cutter came apart on the Delta drill press and stuck in the wall. I drew the line at the Boyce Crane shaper however. I call it the Death Machine and after a close call with it, I have never turned it on again. Some machines you just can't tame and these machines are mostly 50 - 60 years old. I always wear my eye protection in the shop, it's too dangerous without it.

This little stool was one of my favorite projects. It took no time at all and came out great. It has 10 coats of milk paint including 5 coats of black and 5 coats of red and is covered with linseed oil. It is held together with screws and oak supports and it should last a long time.

These little shelves were made from an old pallet I found on the ground. I liked the pallet because it had both dark and light wood in it. I broke it up, cut it into strips and glued them up. Then I cleaned the mess up in the Parks Planer and cut the circle on my Darra James tablesaw. Learning to cut circles on the table saw has been a godsend. You can make lots of interesting things with circles that you can't make with squares, plus squares get boring after awhile. I would like to try coving at some point also but I only have one good Forrester Carbide blade and I don't want to destroy it. Making circles on the table saw takes a long time and takes a lot out of the saw. It also generates a lot of heat, dust and smoke and I usually have to leave the shop after the circle is done. I've made a number of round picnic tables using this method and have built a jig that can make a table as large as 44 inches in diameter. The tablesaw is the king of the shop and my favorite tool. Darra James was later acquired by Porter Cable, a proud name in tools. My saw was made in 1947 and still works great, although the motor is getting old and has a hard time sometimes.