I am embarking on a quest of sorts to “recycle” an old sewing machine table I’ve carted around from move to move and held in storage for something like 15 years. My goal is to turn it into a hub in my computer room to store a UPS, a laser printer, a Synology, several hubs, a modem, a router, a 5-port switch … While tastefully arranging lots and lots of cables and power cords and allowing for good air flow. This will sit next to my computer desk at the point where I’m having fiber installed in a couple of weeks, so I’ll be able to hardwire my computer and keep all the associated network and associated gear neatly in place next to it.

Not sure how this is going to turn out, I’m designing it on the fly and relying on a sketch. Today, I got things started.

I began by disassembling the sewing machine table, which was quite an effort. I’m keeping the parts I don’t use in the hopes that I can use them elsewhere. There is some very interesting hardware here that I’m certain I find a use for in future projects. I’m thinking of mounting the foot pedal as part of the back cabinet “wall” for air flow, maybe to route some cables, and because I think it will look cool.

The first step is to create a lower bar to hold the eventual shelf that is going to be housed inside the iron frame. This is a scrap of bubinga. I will hold this in place with two dowels inserted into the lower screw holes of the iron frame.

The next step is to make the dowels. I’m using walnut here, pounded through a 1/2 inch dowel jig. Turns out 1/2 was a bit too large so I had to shave them down to a proper millimeter size to fit the screw holes.

Next, I drilled holes in each end of the bubinga bar to house the dowels.

Here’s what it looks like rough assembled.

Here’s a front view. The cabinet I’m going to build will be mounted on this bubinga bar at the bottom. At the top, the cabinet will be held in the frame by two wedged tenons.

Next up I needed to join two 8 foot lengths of sapele so I have boards wide enough for the project. This is an image of joining the edges.

And I glued them up so I’m ready to start cutting out the cabinet pieces tomorrow.

I sketched out a rough plan. I think this is the right kind of project to sketch out the basic idea but figure out the finer details as I go along. This sketch shows a side and front view. The cabinet will taper to fit the shape of the table. One thing I haven’t figured out: I want the UPS to sit on a shelf that faces the back wall. No idea how I’m going to do that at this point.

I finished up a gift pencil box for a friend. I have a bunch of lapel pins that I use for these projects. I cut off the back of the pin and then carve out a place to inset the pin into the box. Makes for a nice keepsake.

For this project, I used wenge for the sides and walnut for the bottom. I challenged myself to cut the smallest dovetails I’ve ever attempted and it was indeed a challenge. I almost scrapped this project to start over because I had so many problems. This is the completed box from the front:

And from the top, showing the walnut bottom:

I was originally going to make a sliding lid for this project, but that didn’t work out. I cut grooves for lid, but I cut them too close to the top of the box, so the top edge split the first time I tried to slide in a lid. So I improvised and shaved off the top grove to make it an open box. For the box top corners, I used a chisel to make little bevel edges so it looks like I planned it that way. I also had a heck of a time with the tiny dovetails. When I started this, I was thinking “I wonder how small I can go with dovetails?” Well, this is apparently as small as I can go with my experience level.

A few items of note for this project:

I used a Raamtang vise made many years ago. As I do many smaller projects, I find myself turning to this tabletop vise quite often. It’s a very useful appliance.

Planing the thin pieces took some creative work holding on my Nicholson bench.

This is the setup I used to mark the tails. The hardest part about working with this wood: I could not see the lines, the wood is so dark.

When I was cutting the dovetails to the line, I used blue tape to mark where to stop since I had so much trouble seeing my lines. I used a Dozuki saw to cut the dovetails and it worked very well. I think I prefer using this saw over my western dovetail saw.

A few holidays ago, I got this set of very tiny little chisels because my wife thought they were cute. I’ve never had occasion to use them until now! I felt ridiculous, but I couldn’t otherwise get at some of the places with my smallest regular-sized chisel.

Fun project, but looking forward to the large bookshelf I’ll be building next.

Utility room shelves complete.

Working on a project to build a couple of utility room shelves using big box store poplar, which is proving to be a fun hand tool challenge. The top shelf is joined with dovetails, the bottom shelf ends are 3/8" dados with through-tenons that will have cherry wedges. Tools used: rip saw, carcase saw, router plane, chisels, and a swing brace. #woodworking #handtools

I’m back to woodworking after more than a year without a shop. During the long transition to move to a new home, I got rid of my remaining power tools. I’m now a 100% hand tool shop for my projects. Started out by making a box out of scrap pine to warm up after such a long hiatus. I’m rusty!

(Sign me up) When a woodworker buys a forest

In 2023, you will be able to attend woodworking classes in Japan while gazing upon a forest at the edge of Mt. Fuji. Not only is Tak Yoshino currently building a school where he bought a forest; he is building the school out of said forest. Mt. Fuji Wood Culture Society will indeed be open to the international community.

I decided to try my hand at making a small Kumiko ornament for the tree, as a first step in learning this process for later larger projects. This one took way more time than expected, because I needed to first create the jigs to cut tiny Kumiko strips. I figured out what I needed to do with an excellent book, Shoji and Kumiko Design: Book 1 The Basics by Desmond King, and very helpful YouTube videos from Adrian Preda. So I bought a big chunk of 5’‘W x 36’‘L x 1-1/16’’ basswood from Rockler and went to work. Here’s the finished piece.

And here are the basic steps, starting with some pics of getting the basswood cut down to size. I started by cutting the board into thirds.

And then cutting those boards into thirds.

And then resawing all of those thirds.

I used two-sided tape to hold the wood while I cut the small strips out of the resulting boards, after planing them down.

Here are the jigs I made, which took the most time in this project by far. The first one in the image below is for cutting the angles needed. I made this design up and I’m proud of it because it is all self-contained and can hang on a wall. You’ll see how it’s used shortly. The second jig is for planing the basswood down to uniform strips of 1/2" by 1/8"

Here’s the planing stop in action. The stop is 1/2" and two inserts are added as needed, one is 1/4" and one is 1/8". The side piece of MDF is used to cut the strips to length, after removing the inserts. So it does double duty.

Here’s how the angle-cutting jig works. The two short pieces of hard maple can be flipped around so each has two angles available. These fit into the jig with an adjustable stop for longer pieces. I hope to make larger Kumiko projects later on, so this gives flexibility. I can just cut new maple blocks if I need other angles to make other Kumiko patterns.

And here is my first Kumiko pattern (in the classic asa-no-ha shape). It is not perfect, but I’m happy how it turned out. I stuck it in the Christmas tree. Next year, I aim to batch produce a number of these for gifts. It was fun to learn how these work and was a challenge for hand tools only. Learning to do this with buttery basswood is a good way to go. I may next try one with walnut.

This is another going-away gift for a work colleague who left for another job. I’m incorporating a lapel pin in the project from my place of work, as I’ve found that cutting off the back pin part and insetting the small metal logo looks really nice. The box is poplar with a bubinga top and bottom. The gift is for someone who appreciates quality pencils, so this project was a great fit. The instructions for this box come from Renaissance Woodworking. This is a great, easy-to-do project. The pencils I bought for the box are Mitsubushi 9850. As an aside, I’ve found Mitsubishi 9800 pencils to be perfect for woodworking because the graphite is strong and makes dark lines.

Here’s a project using scrap walnut tongue-and-groove boards I was given by friend, which I used to create a small tray to dry herbs — my wife does a lot with herbal tinctures and such and needed a rack to dry some of the plants and mushrooms she collects while foraging.

This is the final drying rack:

The biggest challenge in creating this was the small size. Here is the walnut board I started with:

I used a holding tool I previously made called a Raamtang to keep all the small bits held firmly while I worked on them. This small wooden vise has proven invaluable over the years and is worth the time and effort to build if you create a lot of smaller projects.

I decided to make this a simple mitered box, but will add splines for strength. I cut the angles free hand and then dialed them in with this 45 degree shooting board I made. The final pieces are shown here resting on top of the shooting board.

I added a fancy curve to the four edges of the tray. I drew the curve on paper then traced it onto the wood. I used a backsaw to cut the to lines of the curve.

Then used a coping saw to get near my lines.

Then cleaned it all up with files and a spokeshave.

Here are the final curved edges.

After glueing up the frame, I added the splines with a contrasting wood (scraps of oak). I cut out the corners, cut the splines, then planed them flush with a block plane.

Then the final step was adding the chicken wire, for which I used some mesh from a big box store. The wire mesh is attached to the underside of the frame with wood strips half-lapped, glued and strengthened with small screws. That’s it.

A short article in the September/October 2021 issue of Popular Woodworking called attention to retired pattern maker Bill Martley’s project to reproduce the bronze head of the classic Studley Mallet, named after Henry O. Studley (1838-1925) that many woodworkers know from his famous and mind-blowing tool chest.

A member of my woodworking group spotted this article and suggested we embark on a group build. The bronze casting for the mallet cost $69 with shipping included. What an amazing opportunity and bargain! I received my bronze mallet head in the mail a couple of weeks ago and here’s the mallet I made with it using bubinga, bocote wedges, and a handle with inset waxed cord. I just love how this came out and I’m so grateful that Martley made this possible.

Here’s the mallet I made with the casting:

And I’ll briefly document the steps I took to make it.

First off, here’s the bronze casting as it arrived in the mail, along with the wood I selected to make the infill and handle. I went with bubinga.

Here’s the infill block sized to fit through the hole in the bronze head.

Next I chop out the through-mortise to match up with the hole where the handle will fit.

Here’s a view of the wooden insert with the mortise completed, mostly to show what the top and bottom of the casting looked like before I polished it up.

Now I began to shape handle, drawing out what I wanted in pencil.

Here’s a view of the handle, where I’ve cut out the slot to fit into the bronze casting. I used my large tenon saw for this. I squared it all up with chisels.

Here it is all rough fit together. Looking like a mallet now.

Next, I shined it all up using a Dremel. Wow, what a difference. I left it rough, because I liked the look of it.

Now, onto the handle. I cut it out roughly with saw work, then filed down with my beloved Auriou rasps.

Here’s the handle, showing the cuts for the wedged tenons that’ll go in the top to splay the wood out and hold it firm. The infill wood has not yet been cut to length.

Next, I decided to go with a wax cord wrap for the handle. I wanted it to sit flush, so I chiseled out the beginning and the end so it slopes inward from each side, so when I wrap the cord it’ll gently slope upward. This will form a nice place to hold it.

This image shows the beginning of the cord wrap, using tape to hold the ends in place. I wrapped the cord so tight, my hands cramped up.

And here a few glamour shots of the completed mallet, which I finished with boiled linseed oil. Oh, and I forgot to mention, I’ve added the wedges here. The two top wedges are tiny slices of bocote, which I think contrasts nicely with the bubinga. It was a fun project, and now I have a small mallet with a lot of mass. It’ll be a useful shop tool that I hope will still be in use by someone long after I’m gone.