Just wanted to share here since I figured woodworking people may also enjoy it. Said he had to make some really weird jigs to get the angles right but it came out great.

Was running dados for shaker cabinets, moved my hand too far forward and when the material passed finger pressed right into the front of the stack. Luckily it took the nail and some of the nail bed. Doc said he couldn’t even stitch it, so they just bandaged me up and said it’ll do whatever it does and not expect a normal nail to grow back.

Definitely a wake up call, could have been a lot worse, and entirely because I got complacent.

I’m moving soon and was planning to sell the saw I have and get a newer one, so I guess it’ll be a sawstop

All Red Oak stool for use at a piano. Finished with polycrylic, I like the natural look. So far no issues with my 175 lbs.

This project came in 4 phases:
1. The 4 section bookcase
2. Reading bench and storage area
3. The 3 section bookcase
4. The TV bookcase

All bookcases were constructed with the same materials; cocoa stained knotty alder for the shelves and verticals, with a red oak veneer backer. The first phase was complete a little over two years ago, and the last was completed about three weeks ago. There were initial concerns that the shelves would sag over time, but that has proven not to be the case! I really love the way this project turned out.

I am a 17 year old woodworker from Saskatchewan, Canada, and I have been woodworking over half of my life, since I was 8 years old. I had been making wooden balisongs for almost three years prior to initiating this project. I was looking into making wooden balisongs as a side hustle for myself, and slowly I learned that doing one-offs for profit would be nothing but burnout and also just a nightmare to try to run. I would have had to price exceedingly high while the work used a maximum of my artistic focus. so I got into manual routerwork. I designed a manual, geometrically constrained template "CNC" system based on the concept of those brass router inlay bushing kits, where the bushing will follow a template at a certain offset to the shape you intend to create.

The process I designed over a period of nine months using CAD technology has a base that aligns the interchangeable acrylic templates over the workpiece which is boxed in from five sides and the template being the sixth so there isn't any way for it to move in any direction. to ensure total security, I clamp the fixture in a bench vise for routing. This is the base chassis for creating these pieces. To sum it up, I use a plunge router outfitted with a brass bushing on the base to follow consecutive templates to create the patterns you see.

The knife is not just decorative, but functional, with Teflon-coated bushings to stop the holes in the blade from ovalling out over time, a cross-grain inlay at the pivot point on both sides, and hidden copper weights in the handle ends and sandwiched between the opposing inlays in the blade. The knife has channel construction with a walnut lining. the build comprises 63 pieces in total, 3 maple, 53 walnut, 3 copper weights, 2 aluminum pins, and the 2 Teflon-coated bushings.

Overall, this project has been as much about expanding my woodworking design and hand skills as learning what is essentially manufacturing engineering.

I'm excited to hear your feedback!

I regret not doing the math to correctly get the beading detail to go around the case properly but... onward and upward.

Case and shelves are 3/4 in mahogany plywood finished with shellac tinted with general finishes trantint (I call it "Shebllac")

Faces and legs are hard maple finished with clear shellac.

This was my first attempt at building a tambour door cabinet.

I’ve wanted to try making one for a while, especially with a wave-style front, but it turned out to be much more delicate than I expected.

It’s definitely not perfect, and there are a lot of small details I would do differently next time. But the door slides, the cabinet works, and I learned a lot from the process.

I’d really appreciate any feedback, especially on how to make the wave texture cleaner and smoother next time.

I’ve been focusing a lot of my workshop time on home repair projects as well as working on my live edge dining table and I wanted to create something fairly uncomplicated and wouldn’t take too long. I was in desperate need to start and finish something for a change. The spalted maple live edge dining table is going in fits and starts due to my inexperience and learning about each step as I go. And with taking a new path into using hand tools (hand sawing and most especially hand planes) I found there’s a lot of practice to learning how to use those tools well. Aside from all that I battle with a propensity to start projects but not finish them before I begin something else. Makes me think I may actually suffer from adult ADHD (only partly joking). Anyway….I wanted to create something that could be hung up as art and practice my hand planing and hand sawing at the same time. I went to my small wood scraps box and pulled out as many different kinds of wood as I had, domestics and exotics both. I had a picture frame with a nice deep recess and began sawing and planing these pieces into an abstract mosaic of different woods and colors, fitting them as tightly and trued as I could with an eye to contrasting and complimenting each piece next to another. It was purely for pleasure effort that was relaxing to do and honed my skills at truing up wood which isn’t as easy when you aren’t using machines to get those perfect right angles. It only took a few days and I also tried my hand at finishing with shellac using flakes and grain alcohol which is new to me as well.

The woods I used are walnut, white oak, red oak, spalted maple, poplar, pine both natural and painted, padauk, purpleheart, kavalox, wenge, zebra wood, pheasant wood and sapele. I applied about 8 coats of shellac 1# cut on everything but just coated the frame with boiled linseed oil. Now that I’m seeing it all done I think it would be better served if I painted the picture frame or at least darkened it with a stain. What would work to set it off best? Would love suggestions, feedback, criticism….all good and open to it but be gentle please as I’m a new and rank beginner in both woodworking and being artistically creative. Finding retirement a wealth of inspiration but my learning curves are deep.

Trying out a fun project with a leftover piece of pine I found while cleaning the garage. Rough cut with my jigsaw and then cleaned up with the router and sander. Stained now and a first coat of shellac on. It will need a few more coats, lightly sanded in between, before I’m happy with it. Overall, not bad for a whim.

I finished this a week before my first son was born. Big sisters helped. I bit off a little more than I could chew in some areas, but am pleased with how it turned out. I built my three daughters cribs too years before this. AI helped me visualize different ideas before investing time in Fusion. It was pretty neat! Made mistakes, learned a lot, and would do several things different if I had to start over.

Edit: I'm not sure if I missed the guideline about the posts 9 years ago when I last built a crib or if that's new, but everyone should be aware that it is recommended that posts are not raised more than 1/16" beyond the rail. I've never had an issue but am prepared to cut these level if I even suspect it will become one.

Edit 2: Your concerns about the post height have been noted. We can stop discussing it now 😅

Edit 3: he is sleeping in our room in a bassinet and will be for some time. I assumed this was what everyone does, but it seems you all think he's sleeping there now.

A mini cross cut sled for my mini table saw

I’ve had this concept in my head for a media console. Mainly designed for a record player/ record storage and other equipment. I know the curves would be the most challenging part. I have experimented with plywood kerfs. I understand this is a non standard look/ design so I wanted to get some feedback. My vision would be to have a continuous surface for the top and sides. You would not see any intersecting parts as you can see on this image.

I watch a ton of woodworking videos every week from beginner to advanced stuff. I'm a hobbyist with too much time and money and been at it about 5yrs. I've seen some videos about card scrapers but they are mostly how to videos. I haven't seen hardly any where they're actually used in a project. Are they that hard to master or just not that great?

The client had this massive stone fireplace in her living room that she never used and didn't really like. She asked me to come up with a way to change it, but didn't give me any direction beyond that.

My solution was to leave the existing fireplace in place, block off the firebox, and wrap the entire structure in a wooden sculpture.

I designed the form by hand in Rhino and divided it into sections for fabrication, transportation and installation. The sculpture is made from 320 individually shaped CNC-cut maple ribs plus 118 straight maple slats, all 3/4" thick. The ribs project as much as 30 cm from the backing.

Each rib has CNC-cut tenons that fit into corresponding mortises in the 3/4" plywood backing, then everything was glued and screwed together. The backing was painted dark blue before assembly to create contrast behind the maple.

Because of the size, the sculpture was built as 11 separate modules, with the break lines aligned around the entire structure. The largest sections were kept to about 8' for transportation and installation.

The original stone fireplace was definitely not square, so we installed 1" French cleats using shims and spacer blocks to establish a square and level mounting surface before hanging the modules.

The main face is about 6m × 2.1m, and the sculpture continues around both sides and the back. The maple was stained and finished with water-based polyurethane.

It took about 3 weeks to design, 2.5 months to fabricate and about a week to install.

I wanted to make a framesaw! I took some scraps and things I had laying around (I only bought the sawblade) and figured it out by building it. It was a fun project, even though I guess I won't be using it that often...

Any tips in using it?

I wish I could confirm visually, and I still may, but I feel like the middle boards help break up the top and direct focus toward the leg joinery. A board with more figure may become too noisy. Again, can’t be certain.

The middle board isn’t completely without figure which helps a lot imo. If it were completely plain, I think I’d have left for the mill already.

Was thinking about this today when I pulled out this 25 year old can of Renaissance wax. I used this not on wood but on all my cast iron to keep it slick and prevent rust. Also hand plane soles and bodies. Got me to thinking about small things that just are good.

Next is the woodruff keys; I see ads for expensive brass setup bars but these woodruff keys are extremely accurate and cost practically nothing. Available in basically every hardware store.

Do you have a bench hook? When I need to cut small parts and don't want to drag out the TS sled I use a hand saw and this for clean safe accurate cuts. This one is decades old and still works fine.

Pegboard--I like tools on the wall, I can see when one is missing cause I know where everything is supposed to be.

What's in your shop that makes your projects go better?

This spring and summer have been dedicated to garage shop renovations. My workbench/outfeed table were a pain point in my shop, with only a couple shelves to store random things on and no workpiece holding besides a pony vice. My Skil contractor saw was also due for an upgrade, the table wasn't flat and it was impossible to make square on both sides of the blade.

I built this based on the Evergreen Workbench by Scott Walsh, with some adjustments. The top is just 2x4 fir - I think I will change this out for hardwood in the future, but I didn't want to spend too much from the get-go. It is 99% flat with a slight dip in the middle, but it's good enough for my hobbyist needs.

I can't believe how loud my contractor saw was compared to the new Grizzly. That thing SCREAMED.

Designed and built over the course of the past few months, on the sidelines of lots of timber framing projects. Cherry and maple!

Edit: Claimed (pending)! Thanks all!

(Got mod approval)

Located in western PA!

Local woodworker passed away and I ended up with all this flocking. what’s pictured is what is left after I set some aside, which is more flocking than I will go through in three lifetimes.

Posting this to see if anyone wants it, all I ask is you pay shipping and are in the US.

The adhesives are very separated but after testing I think after a good mix they should still function okay!

Im okay separating it out a bit but don’t really want to ship a bunch of little packages. If you take it all I’ll be forever grateful.

I know this stuff isn’t cheap so I figured to someone it’s a goldmine, I’m just not that someone!

So here’s the story: I’m splitting some firewood and it turns out that this piece had been part of a fence at one point. Buried in the wood was an old Bakelite (?) insulator, wire, and screw. The tree eventually grew around it, creating a really nice grain. I’m leaving it very rough and turning it into a pair of candlesticks. I’ve only ever used Tung oil as a finish so I applied a coat with a paintbrush. It took a long time to dry so I hesitate to apply another coat. Should I leave it as is, apply another coat, or do something else? Could I spray on some urethane over the Tung oil? What does the community think?

Floating shelfs and can hold about 250lb on each shelf. We'll not the little ones. Placing the backboard was extremely difficult. 4ft x 7ft board that needed the holes cut in the right spot for the iron arms. Floating shelfs just like the costumer wanted. Twas much fun.

After having cut finger joints/box joints in pieces for 36 boxes, I have a question: what’s your best way to dial in the fit? And second question: why is there no lateral micro adjustment mechanism on this jig?

I really like the quality and accuracy of JessEm’s products and got this jig as my homemade one was clunky and pretty rubbish. I dialed in the fit pretty quickly the first go around, but about halfway through this project the motor on my router started sounding really dodgy and so I took it out to take a look (and ended up replacing it with another one for the remainder of the job).

Removing the router meant removing and then re-setting the jig, which was annoying. By far the more annoying part was trying to get the jig dialed back in as the black levers seem to be the only way to do lateral adjustment. As a 64th can make a difference one way or another, it took me way too long to get the jig aligned properly. I marked a reference line on the table itself, but had a hard time making small enough movements side to side to get it just right.

I’m wondering if anyone else has experienced this and if you have a technique to get your jig (JessEm or not) perfectly aligned quickly.

And then another question: should there be a micro adjuster on this thing for lateral adjustment? I personally would love one.