Innehållsförteckning för Summer 2015 från Woodworker's Journal

When I was contemplating the design for this Entry Bench, my inspiration was influenced by a building called Hopi House. Designed by Mary Colter in 1905, it was her first of several commissions that have since become icons of American Southwestern architecture, greatly influenced by the living history of the region and the many ancient dwelling sites that have stood for thousands of years in the American Southwest. Having had the privilege of walking amongst some of these places, I found it easy to see why Ms. Colter was so enamored. I’ve had an affinity for all things Southwestern since my earliest days as a woodworker. Whatever your discipline, the landscape, the light, the nature and the people of this vast area are sure to inspire anyone with an eye…

Curiously, I don’t actually have a bar in my house, but I am planning to add one soon. So when a really nice stash of bird’s-eye maple caught my eye, I knew that I needed to buy it and use it to make my stools. In addition to the maple, I used clear pine for the seat sections and foot rails, lacquering them black for a dramatic look. Kicking it Off I chose to use Domino loose tenons for the majority of the joinery on these stools. But if you don’t own that tool, any loose tenon process (except dowels) will serve you very well. Because I was designing the bar stools essentially from scratch, my first work in the shop was building a full-sized mock-up from my rough sketches.…

You can see from the layout drawing below that the room this piece was designed for is small. It was once my library and drafting studio. It’s now a sitting room and guest bedroom. As a sitting room, it’s a quiet getaway in which to sit and read or watch a television program in which no one else has any interest. As a bedroom, it’s small but quite accommodating. The settee folds out to a comfortable bed; the cupboard will take care of hanging clothes and the folding things which go on shelves. The small white open shelves will hold a host of small stuff. OK as far as it goes, but imagine yourself arriving at a friend’s house or a hotel for a few days with typical luggage: a…

“Butler” is a figment of my imagination when it comes to who will use this workstation in my home. There are no hired servants here. Nevertheless, a project of this sort, if space allows for it in your kitchen, is most useful for many culinary tasks. This little kitchen workstation is easy to build but still rich in details that make it easy to look at as well. Start off by making the glued-up tabletop, frequently and incorrectly called a butcher block, laminated from native hardwoods of any thickness. (Butcher blocks are made with the end grain as the work surface.) In this case, because the edges of flatsawn material show as quartersawn when they are glued up this way, it is a nice opportunity to put to use all…

This mirror differs from the usual style because the glass is mounted on the front of the frame instead of being set in a groove or rabbet in back. This means you don’t have to miter the corners of the frame at 45˚— often a sore trial for the novice woodworker. Instead, the glass is held in place by small, L-shaped wooden retainers fastened to the stiles with brass screws. As a result, this is a great project for beginners … it looks good and can be completed in a weekend with simple hand tools. Choosing the Shape and Size Follow the Material List dimensions on the facing page to build the mirror shown here. A square frame is one possibility, but if you go for a rectangular frame, we…

My dad was a woodworker, so I guess you could say he was my first real shop teacher. Well, when he decided to hang up his tool apron for good, he passed along his prized collection of Clifton shoulder planes to me. I love them dearly, and I built this little display cabinet to keep them in sight as a constant reminder of those good times with Dad in his shop. Whether you build your cabinet for tools, collectibles or even spices, you’ll have it wrapped up with less than a day’s effort, easy. The joinery is simple — mostly butt joints and screws — but you’ll need cope-and-stick bits to build the door. So, grab a few boards of your prettiest walnut and let’s get to work! Starting with…

Laminated bowls are usually round, lathe-turned and made from large blanks. This rectangular bowl, with colorful stripes, is made on a scroll saw from a blank that is only 3/4" thick. The wood is cut into rings at a steep angle. When stacked and glued, the rings create the illusion that the bowl was made from a single, heavy blank. The technique, from start to finish, is actually simpler than it seems. Cutting the Rings Start by gluing up the strips of wood in the following order: walnut, padauk, maple, padauk and walnut. Once the glue-up is dry, sand it just until smooth and then draw a line down the center of the maple strip. Attach the pattern (page 51) with repositionable adhesive, aligning the center of the pattern with…

While today’s woodworkers have plenty of 19th and 20th century motifs to look to for design inspiration, for this project I turned to the distant past. Curule chairs were popular during the medieval period, but they actually can be traced even further back than that, to the dynasties of ancient Egypt. They’re familiar enough, with their knuckle-jointed “X” shaped bases, but the design element doesn’t seem to find a lot of application in today’s furniture. I wasn’t particularly interested in making a curule chair, but I did want to incorporate the “X” shape into a serving table I was making for my mother. With design in hand, I headed to contributing editor Rick White’s shop, where Brad Becker, his trusty assistant, was waiting to help me through the construction stage.…

I needed a floor lamp for an old house in Nova Scotia — one that would not wobble on 100-year-old floors. The result is about as simple as you can get — three feet (to accommodate a floor that might be sagging from age) firmly attached to a hexagonal stem with 3/8" dowel pins. And while my lamp is truly simple in every regard, it is also attractive and very useful. Since it’s impractical to drill 48"-long holes, I made the stem in two halves, after cutting a shallow groove down the center of each piece. Ideally, if you have the stock on hand, you should cut a 2"-thick section in half, rout or saw the slot for the wiring, then glue it back together. This makes an almost invisible…

It’s tradition to drape an American flag over the casket of a deceased U.S. forces veteran. Prior to burial, the flag is removed, folded into a triangle and presented, “on behalf of a grateful Nation,” to the deceased veteran’s next of kin. I know this firsthand because my father recently passed away, and our family was given his burial flag. My mother asked me to make her “a really nice case” for Dad’s flag. I responded without hesitation: “I’d be honored.” And even though this is an easy thing to build, I still put my heart into making it perfect, knowing how proud my father would have been with the results. When my brother got wind of my making Dad’s flag case, he asked if I would make one for…

Professionally made picture frames come in two types: the chintzy-looking cheap ones, or the really great-looking expensive ones. I decided that I would like to build my own and come up with a really great-looking frame that was inexpensive (but definitely not cheap!). This picture frame makes use of small tiles of hardwood that are glued to a plywood substrate underframe. The beauty of this idea is that the various tiles each have their own grain pattern contained within their border. The accumulation of all those tiles and their differing grain patterns creates a frame that is geometrically regular, but texturally diverse. The effect is quite attractive. As I place my tiles on the frame, I take time to enhance that feature by looking for subtle changes in hue and…