Matt’s Weekly Shop Update – May 9, 2017

A productive week outdoors.  I slabbed up a goofy maple log and my friend, Jim, dropped off some logs and spent the day with me slabbing the big ash log.  In the shop I started working on a porch swing bed thing.

Houston Visit

July 7, 2017: Meet up at Beer Market Company (http://beermarketco.com/) from 5-9.

920 Studemont St #900,
Houston, TX 77007

July 8, 2017: Saturday session with the Woodworkers Club of Houston. (Visit their website to become a member of the club)

I will be hosting six 45-60 sessions

Viewer Projects

Live Edge Waterfall Coffee Table by Sean

This piece is a Rock Elm Live Edge Waterfall coffee table with a matte black powder coated leg on the opposite end.

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http://www.instagram.com/Steel_and_timber

Walnut Liquor Cabinet by Chris

It was an original design, but the joinery was mainly inspired by your Changing Table build. In fact your videos were my main resource for learning a lot of the techniques I used during the build.
I built it in a community workshop near my place in Montreal. It’s all solid walnut except for the back panel which is veneered particle board, and the drawer sides and bottom which are maple.
More images and progress pictures: http://imgur.com/a/9MHrV

Spice Box by Tom

The box is made of walnut and poplar with dovetailed drawers and box. The hardware is from Horton Brasses and the quality is top notch…very impressed. I used a General Finishes water based finish after quite a bit of testing. I felt it popped the grain well and didn’t overly darken the walnut which I was concerned about.

The challenges were many throughout the build….the raised panel….getting the feet just right….and of course the cutting of the dovetails!

I’ve never hand cut a dovetail in my life and in building this box I became incredibly focused on being able to do so. I started out by cutting the top and side panel dovetails on my Leigh super jig…then the longer drawers as well. But I found that the small size of the drawers made it difficult to do with the jig and router. I jumped into a hand joinery class at a local woodworking school and worked at my skills until I was able to cut the remaining drawers by hand. There’s plenty of opinions on hand cut vs machine dovetails, for me it was important to have that hand skill in my piece and I’d have to say it was the highlight of this project for me.

http://lumberjocks.com/projects/304674

Farmhouse Table by Matthew

Over the past weeks I have made this X-Style Farmhouse table.  The Table is 6 feet long and 36 inches wide.  I also made a bench for it and am using 3 chairs from our old dining table on the other side.  The table is held together with dowels, LOTS of glue, and pocket hole screws.  I used Mortise and tenon joinery on the 2×4 support beams on the bench.  The table is stained dark walnut, and has 2 coats of semi-gloss polyurethane.  I picked up my first tool a little over 6 months ago.  My family had no power tools and for the first couple months I used a cheap miter box, and hand saw, an old Black&Decker drill I found in the free section of craigslist.  I sold various pallet projects and started to build my tool inventory.  I guess my story goes to show that you don’t need age, experience, or an entire workshop to get started.  You just need perseverance…. And YouTube lol

Submit your viewer project: Email me pictures and a description of your project and I’ll feature your project on the show.

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Home Addition & Renovation

Upper Cabinets and Range Hood Surround

Welcome back to our home renovation.  Today I am going to be working on this wall. It needs some upper cabinets and the surround for

2 Responses

  1. I’m inspired by the younger generation! They have done a great job . We need to be sure our schools have shop classes again .Teach some skills I know it helped me in Jr an senior high school .Im also inspired to see the amount of women taking on the wood craft too. Very impressed!

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