The firewood box is starting to come together. I thought this project was going to be quick and easy but you know how that goes…
Started working on a small cherry firewood box for the home. Almost ready to start with the joinery after completing the prep of the panels. I’m going to go with mortises and tenons for this one. I thought about through tenons, but think I’ll just go with hidden joints here. This will have curved sides, which will be fun to make.
I’m on a bench modding kick. Years ago, I installed a small vise on the left end of my Nicholson bench, reclaimed from a discarded Harbor Freight small workbench. I use it to hold small things.
This evening, I replaced the arm with a cast iron wheel I’ve been holding on to for years, looking for something to do with it. They just don’t make good parts like this these days. I save everything… This wheel comes from a Pfaff sewing machine I took apart about ten years ago. I think it’s a nice upgrade to the vise.
As an aside, I turned the base of the old sewing machine table to a cabinet to hold all of my network stuff (Synology, hubs, switch, etc.) about a year ago. I documented that in an earlier post.
This weekend I mounted a Moxon vise to the end of my workbench, which is a big upgrade for my work and only looks a little weird.
I had mainly been using this old vise I picked up when we lived in Europe, but one of the wooden screws started to fail.
But I also had this benchtop Moxon vise I made many years ago. I rarely used this because it wasn’t very sturdy (I made it too small). So I took it apart and re-used the face and hardware and mounted it on the bench. The back is now a sturdy piece of Ash attached to the bench with eight inch heavy-duty wood screws.
Completed the outdoor shoe rack, looks much nicer than the plastic tray we were using before — and finally thought of something interesting to do with the small piece of teak taking up room in my shop.
Taking on a smaller, fun project: using a small slab of teak I picked up at an offcut sale many years ago to make an outdoor mat for shoes and boots.
Completed the hallway linen closet door. The top and bottom are open for airflow, as it’s used for bedding. Most interesting parts to me are the repurposed chair top used for the curve, embedded magnets to keep it closed, and I cut the grooves in the frame to house the cherry plywood panels by hand with as small as a lip as possible (about 1/8th of an inch).
This is nice to see from Fastmail: native desktop apps for Mac, Linux, Windows. I wonder if the FMail developer will call it quits now? www.fastmail.com/blog/desk…
I’m trying Asahi Linux on an M1 Macbook Air and it’s great, except that the battery continues to drain A LOT during sleep. That’s not so great. In comparison, I have a 2009 Macbook Pro running Peppermint OS that is also great with a battery in sleep that lasts for months.
Cutting the mortises for the hinges to hang the closest door I’m making. I always find this process a bit frightening.
