I'm Famous

Hi Everyone,

A while back I was contacted by Better Homes and Gardens. One of their editors saw the SWW blog and like it, and they asked me to write about woodworking for their magazine Wood Magazine. Well, the article was published and you can find it in the current issue. It's about woodworking and generosity, a subject that everyone who works with their hands, regardless of the medium, should consider.

And as usual, here's a photo of the article:

As always, stay tuned,
VW

Scrap Wood project, continued

Good Morning All,

Well, I've finished assembling all the parts for the coffee shelf project. Today I am going to begin applying the finish. Here are the photos:

Here are the parts of the coffee shelf-the backing and the two shelves. I made all of the parts out of pine:

First of all I'm going to apply a wood sealer to the wood. This seals the surface of the pine so the stain will absorb evening across the surface. It also allows the grain of the wood to show through. If I hadn't sealed the wood, the wood would have absorbed the stain unevenly and the grain of the wood would be obscured. Here I'm working on the backing board and I've sealed both the front and the back of the board and the edges as well:

This is what it looks like at present. I used Minwax wood sealer for this and I'm going to use Minwax stain and polyurethane for the rest of the finish. I like their products as they are simple to apply and I always get good results. Note: always used finishing products from the same manufacturer. Not all finishes are compatible with one another and you can wind up with a finish that won't dry. Then you have the unhappy experience of removing it and starting all over again. Meh:

And I also sealed the shelves. I am going to go and get a cup of coffee and let this absorb into the wood for about 15 minutes. When I come back I'll apply the stain:

Ok, I'm back. Here you can see the stain going on the backing. I used Early American wood stain for this as it results in a medium brown color. I think it will provide a good contrast to the coffee bags and coffee cups that I plan to display here. If it doesn't look very appealing I can always deepen the color by adding another layer of stain or I can also use a colored varnish over it to change the color. Or I can just use a clear polyurethane too:

Here are the shelves in the same color:

The last thing I did was stain a small piece of scrap lumber from this project. This allows me to experiment a bit before I do the final finishing. Another good reason to keep scrap lumber:

I'm going to leave all this to dry and tomorrow I'll do a little experimenting.

Just a reminder: if you live in a cold climate like I do, it's a good idea to begin moving wood glue, batteries, varnishes, etc, into a warmer part of your shop. Cold temps are not good for those kinds of products.

Ok, see you all tomorrow.

VW

Scrap Wood Project, continued

Hi Everyone,
I'm back-I apologize for the delay in working on this project but I've been a bit under the weather. I'm much better now so it's back to work.

When last we met I was working on a coffee shelving project out of some of the scrap wood in my shop. I worked on it more this morning and here are some photos of where I am right now with it:

To recap: I made the back of this unit out of some ship lap pine left over from a previous project. I love this stuff. The tongue and grove edges make laminating this together a snap:

The bottom shelf

The unit is going to have a top and bottom shelf to hold coffee bags, hot chocolate containers, a coffee grinder, etc. The bottom shelf will be attached 4 inches away from the bottom edge. This will give me enough room to attach some hooks for coffee mugs:

To assemble the shelf-first I screwed a 2x4 block to each of the ends of the shelf with the cut face facing outward:

This is what it looks like assembled:

 Next I attached a 3/4" x 1 1/2" strip to the edge of the shelf with some glue and a screw on each end:

The top shelf
The top shelf will be attached 5 inches below the top of the unit:

And I assembled the top shelf in the same manner as the bottom shelf with a small rail attached to the 2x4 blocks:

Here you can see I attached the rail with a spot of glue and a finishing nail instead of a screw:

 And this is what it looks like assembled:

Here I've just placed the top shelf on top of the ship lap backing. It doesn't look like much now but it will look different when I've finished it:

I've brought all the glued up parts inside as it's getting cold outside and I want the glue to dry out completely. When that's done I'll attach the shelves to the backing and then seal and stain the wood.

Stay tuned
VW

Scrap Wood Projects, continued

Hi Everyone,

I've been busy since we last met, making some housewares that we need around here and using up the scrap wood monster, which lurks in all wood shops, in the process.

Here's what I've made thus far:

A stand for a large IPad out of some poplar shelving scrap:

A router shelf out of some scrap pine from the bed project:

And a wall rack for my never ending pile of bedside books:

And I am proud to say I've made a good sized dent in the wood pile.

Now that the holidays are coming up, I'm going to make a coffee bar out of some tongue and groove pine and a leftover 2x4 and some 1x4 pine as a present for someone special.

Here we go:

This is going to be a very simple rack for bags of coffee, the coffee grinder, and some coffee mugs out of scrap pine. I have an 8 foot long tongue and groove plank along with a 2x4 and some 1x4 common pine for this.

I made the backing for the rack out of the tongue and groove plank:

Here is a side shot of the tongue and groove. This feature is milled into the edges of pine boards and when the planks are assembled there are multiple grooves in the resulting rack backing. You can see how these fit together:

In this photo you can see the backing. I'm going to glue and clamp it together a little later on. The planks for the backing are 22" long. I've also cut the shelves for this. The top one will be 22" long and the bottom one was initially 22" long too but I will be cutting it a little shorter in the next couple of photographs:

I took another section of 1x4 pine, cut it 22 inches long and then ripped it into 2 1 3/4" wide strips:

I took one of the strips and cut off the corners and those will be glued down to the remaining 22" long strip. This will be attached to the bottom shelf:

I then cut the 2x4 into 2-3 1/2" blocks:

This is how I was going to assemble the bottom shelf initially but I changed my mind and decided to cut the bottom shelf down to 19" and fit it in between the 2x4 blocks. I think this will look a little better this way:

And this is what the bottom shelf will look like when it's assembled:

This is the underside of the bottom shelf:

I'm going to stop and eat some lunch. I'll be back a little later on.

VW