Last Day of Spring

It feels strange writing about this next project. Mostly because I've spent the last 7-8 months thinking about and planning it, and now that I'm done, I'm struggling to spend any more time on it. Oh, well, here we go...

The Portico
For the 11 years that I have lived in my current house, the back porch (which is also the basement walkout), has been just a slab of grey—or more recently white—concrete. We've been spending more and more time back there over the last few years and frankly, I've grown to dislike the austere slab of 'crete. So, with an idea and financial sign-off from the boss (that's the Mrs to those who don't know), I began to plan. And plan. And then plan some more. Then I bought the materials, ready to work. That was late fall of last year. In fact, we brought the materials into the basement, just outside the woodshop, on the last nice day of 2014. The next day, winter began.

So I spent the winter looking at the pile of lumber every time I walked by it on the way into the woodshop. "Hello, looming project," I would say, and then go work on something else. Eventually spring rolled around and I ran out of excuses and I got to work.

Built to last, this 3 piece portico features mortise and tenon joinery, plugged pocket screws and some tricky miter cuts. Made of cedar-tone treated pine and finished with an opaque deck stain—this thing just might outlast me.

Here's some build shots showing the mortises and the diamonds I cut into the shelf column sides.

 

And heres some shots of the assembled shelf columns.

Here's a few showing various stages, from cutting the roofing plywood down, to the hand-cut support stretchers (hand-cut because I chose to make them parallel to the roof—an angle not achievable on the miter saw. Silly me, right?)

And finally, here's the porch before and after. We've some lovely plants on the shelves now, but I don't have pics of that, so you'll just have to use your imagination.

First Day of Spring

Today is the first day of Spring and while it's not quite spring weather here in St. Louis, we're out of the woods on the super cold winds that had us indoors for far too long. Being indoors is ok as long as you can find something to do, and lucky for us, we have the woodshop to keep us going. Here's some of the projects we've worked on since the year began.

Scrap Lamp
As always, the shop is teeming with scraps from various projects just waiting to be useful so we designed this lamp. Made from cutoffs of oak, walnut, cedar, spruce and a few others—and lots of glue—we turned this down on the lathe and finished it off with shellac. The hardest part was coming up with a lampshade we like dot pair with it, but finally hit pay dirt and we're pretty pleased with it.

And here's my shopmate demonstrating how one shade was too big.

Vertical Hat Rack
We were lucky enough to come into some reclaimed oak from a family member who's renovating their kitchen. The request that came with it was that we make a vertical hat rack with the wood. The fun part was that the board and all of the pegs came from the same piece of oak that had been in that kitchen for the last bit of forever. Not many pics for this one, maybe the owner will send some pics my way (hint hint)

Treasure Chest
My shopmate's birthday was late last month and he's really been into pirates as of late, which suits me just fine. He had drawn up a plan for this chest earlier in the year so I thought I'd surprise him by building it one weekend. Completely constructed from old pine 2x4s that I planed down and ripped into smaller planks, it's finished off with a layered paint job. Black paint went down first and then was sanded down to expose the grain and knots. Over that a walnut stain darkened and richened the wood and finally shellac brought out the shine and richness. We've got some good build pics, but the final pic is a bit 'meh', so maybe we'll circle back with a better one after a bit.

Return from Yesterday

First off, let us apologize. It's been a bit too long since our last post here at the Woodshop blog. We'd like to post more often, but we also don't like to post unless we have something worth sharing, so that leaves us in a bit of a spot. Today, we'll meet ourselves halfway and post some items that are.. almost worthy. We promise to do better next time.

The holidays are interesting at the shop because we tend to do less work in general as we out shopping and decorating and cleaning and on and on. The work that does get done is for a gift, or an order for a gift, so there's not much we can show until now.

First up is a six-pack carrier. Nothing amazing (see first paragraph), but still a fun little project. Made from reclaimed cedar and elbow grease this sixer will get you rounded in style. Rounded? Oh that's a little Maugerism meaning ‘take the edge off’. Not sober, not tipsy, just ‘rounded’.

As we were building this it was discussed how we might embellish a piece like this in the future. A fellow wood worker was dabbling with a wood burner and his enthusiasm rubbed off a bit so we picked one up. A great tool for making art—if you have got the chops—but for us, a great tool to add to the arsenal of finishing options. Here’s the shop sign in progress (which is also the new blog header image). There's a lot of great wood-burner artists out there (many on youtube) we encourage you to check them out.

Last up is a small project that most woodshops do from time to time, the trophy. The Mrs won her fantasy football league (I still imagine wizards playing take football when I hear that), and who more deserving of a trophy than the woman who puts up with all of this wood dust? At the time writing this the trophy is off at a local trophy shop being fitted with plaques, but until then here it is in all of it'a naked glory.

Thanks for reading. Happy New Year—we'll write more soon.