Past Projects

Some of my co-workers asked me to post some pictures showing the projects that I've built over the last eighteen months or so. I mentioned many of these projects in my first post, however I didn't have time to include any images. Instead of editing that post and adding images I felt it would be better to create a new post and include the images. There are a few projects missing including the beds/bunk beds I made for my sons and the change table I made 14 yrs ago before my first child was born.

Dresser

The first project is a dresser that I designed it myself because we couldn't find a design that my wife and I were happy with. To get some of the basic dimensions I used American Furniture Design's Mission dresser and from there basically designed as I built it. The drawers are dovetailed with full dovetails on the back and half-blind rabitted dovetails on the front. The only regret was the location of the drawer pulls. When I got around to putting on the drawer pulls, I just mocked it up on one drawer and it looked very nice but once we mounted all the drawer pulls it didn't look quite so good. I'm still quite happy with the overall outcome.

Night Stands

The second project was to build a pair of nightstands. I did a search on the web for night stand plans and again using the basic dimensions I designed the nightstands myself. The dresser dictated the look. I think these came out quite nice and really complement the dresser.

Student Desk

The third project I build in 2009 was a desk for my son Mattheus. Unfortunately at the moment, the boys are asleep so I could only sneak in and get a quick picture so I can't show the complete design. I couldn't find a decent student's desk plan on the web. After much searching I came across a picture that I really liked build by Warren Hile Studio - Bungalow Student Desk. I took the picture and attempted to take the basic dimensions from the site and estimating the rest of the dimensions off of the photograph. I then mocked it up in SketchList 3D trial edition. SketchList is an interesting program, it took me a bit to figure it out but it wasn't too bad. It had a lot of rough spots but the developer seemed interested in making it a better product. I haven't tried it since the trial expired.

The pencil drawer has a drop front to allow a keyboard to be in the drawer. The breadboard pullout really increases the desk space when needed. I still need to make a minor modification to the pencil drawer - I wasn't happy with the drop front drawer slides from Lee Valley. Compared to the heavy duty drawer slides  used on the rest of the drawers, they felt extremely cheap. I wound up cutting the front catch and hinge off and using heavy duty slides. I want to remove those flimsy swivels and catches and replace with piano hinge and bullet catches.

During the design stages I miss measured the width of the file drawer, instead of designing it to handle hanging file folders that would sit on guides set on the top of the drawer side, I made the drawer about a 1/2" too wide and thus I need to create a little insert to handle hanging folders - but at least it was too wide, not too narrow :-)

I'm really proud of how the project came out and Mattheus is very happy with it.

Morris Chairs, Ottomans and Sofa

I started building out the living room set in early July 2009 and finished the sofa in early Feb 2010. I started with building a pair of bow-armed Morris chairs using the American Furniture Design plan. It took awhile to get the chairs complete and then a little longer to pull the money together to purchase the upholstery material for all the items at once - to have a single dye batch. The wood for the chairs is quarter-sawn white oak bought at a local lumber yard. The wood for the sofa is actually local wood harvested right here at the lake that I bought from a friend up the street. While the sofa wood was not intentionally quarter-sawn, I managed to find enough boards in stack that were cut through the center or near the center of the log and had good ray flake. The boards had a lot of splits, knots and bug damage so it was quite a challenge and effort to really sort through and plan how to get the best pieces out. I had to use a less figured board for the front stretcher of the couch as the more figured piece I had set aside suffered damage when I was cutting the sliding dovetails for the cross braces. The router bit heated up and started to drop down - something that didn't occur during the 2 practice runs I did prior. Unfortunately I've had this happen a couple of times with this router - especially on days where the temperatures are really cold and then making some agressive cuts.

Stacy Barnard Stacey Barnard (Barnard's Upholstery) did an awesome job on the upholstery. The material is recycled leather. I really love the final outcome on these pieces and they really fit well in our living room.

Nativity Crosses

At Christmas I made a pair of "Nativity Cross" for my wife. The pattern is from Sue Mey's story cross designs at Scrollsaw Artist website. The first one is made of curly maple with a walnut background and the other is a walnut foreground and curly maple background.

When I first started out, the plan was to make a curly maple front and walnut back for contrast. I had made the foreground from 1/8" maple that I had resawn from 4/4 curly maple. The walnut was 1/4" resawn from 4/4 walnut. Both piece were bookmatched and edge glued to make 12" wide boards from 6" wide original material.

Once I had edge glued the boards to create the proper width, it became obvious that the excess material cut off above and below the arms of the cross could act as background material for the opposite cross. So we decided to use double stick tape to stick the two boards together and cut them as a single effort. The crosses are about 18" tall and 11.5" wide. It took me about 3 evenings to cut out the pattern with Johannes' scrollsaw. I think they came out really well.