Innehållsförteckning för December 2020 från Woodworker's Journal

Waterfall Quilt Display I designed and built this project to display my wife’s quilts that she’s been sewing. It’s made from one 6/4 x 10" x 10' walnut board. I made everything that went into it, including the doweled rods. Ray Juracek South Lyon, Michigan Enhanced Cherry Blanket Chest My brother and I recently built a cherry chest for my daughter’s high school graduation. This was inspired by the “Classic Cherry Chest” plans provided in the October 2018 issue. We modified the design to include two drawers with a false back and a hidden compartment in the back of each one. There is a concealed release mechanism for each compartment that’s accessible by reaching under the front of the chest. Alan Stottlemyer Chambersburg, Pennsylvania…

While 25 years of business could be marked with great fanfare, GREX would rather see 2020 as the right time to launch an innovative cordless 21-gauge brad nailer. Celebrating anniversary milestones is lower on the priority list, and that suits the folks at GREX just fine. “Frankly, we didn’t even remember it’s our 25th year in business,” admits Raymond Wong, GREX’s vice president of sales and marketing. When his father Frank started GREX in the family’s garage in 1995, the challenge to become a new brand name in the fastening tool industry, among many other well-established brands, was daunting. “My dad did not know a single thing about the fastening industry,” Raymond says. “He had never even used a pneumatic nailer or stapler before. But that didn’t stop him. He’s…

3" Aluminum Swivel Caster with Polyethylene Tread and Brake (4) #60876 ……………. $16.99 ea. 10" Series 757 100-lb. Over-Travel CenterlineR Lifetime Slides, Black (4) #47057 ……. $14.99 pr. Flat Card Holder, Nickel (6) #47608 ………………………………………………………………………………………. $1.99 ea. Ashley Norton Apollo Cabinet Pull (12) #65389 ……………………………………………………………….. $22.10 ea. General Finishes Coastal Blue Milk Paint, Pint (3) #39130 …………………………………………… $18.99 ea. General Finishes High Performance Water-based Top Coat Flat, Quart (1) #53869 … $29.99 ea. To purchase these and other products online, visit www.woodworkersjournal.com/hardware or call 800-610-0883 (code WJ1577).…

Mini Blum® 90° Clip-On Frameless Inset Hinge (1) #38411 ……………………. $14.99 pr. Sugatsune ML-120 Long-Stroke Magnetic Touch Latch (1) #67568 ………. $4.25 ea. ZENS PuK 3 Qi Concealed Wireless Fast Charger (1) #66909……………… $169.99 ea. Standard Side Table (Leg) Kit (1) #65719 …………………………………………………. $199.99 ea. Orange TransTint® Dye (1) #22307 ……………………………………………………………….. $21.99 ea. Cordovan TransTint® Dye (1) #24397 ……………………………………………………………. $21.99 ea. To purchase these and other products online, visit www.woodworkersjournal.com/hardware or call 800-610-0883 (code WJ1577).…

A holiday without candy or nuts being set out would be a sad one. This little bowl, formed from a section of tree trunk or a large limb, is a great conversation piece. One important feature is finding a log that is likely to keep its bark in place and not fall off. Some species that tend to keep their bark well are basswood, ash, birch (if allowed to dry quickly) and in the example here, ironwood. Sadly, most pines do not hold onto their bark tightly after drying. If you find a piece that has a bit of loose bark, you can glue it back in place with ordinary white or CA glue. You can use either a well-dried log or a green log; each has advantages. If you…

Makita’s wet sharpener combines aspects of both vertical wet sharpeners and dry horizontal sandpaper sharpeners. Here a wider 77⁄8”-dia. grindstone spinning at 560 rpm replaces the sandpaper platter. A water trough over the grindstone drips a steady bath of cooling water across the stone to eliminate overheating as it turns. The wide platter, combined with the included blade holder, makes the machine especially suitable for sharpening long blades. It can accommodate conventional planer knives up to 153⁄4" long.…

Rockler’s Dust Right® Edge-Routing Dust Port attaches to the subbase of any router that accepts 11⁄4"-dia. guide bushings and provides a connection point for a standard 21⁄2" vacuum hose nozzle. Once in place, this reinforced ABS accessory helps to contain debris produced during edge-profiling and flush-trimming operations. A large wingnut makes the angled port easy to attach without tools, and a rubber pad beside the threaded coupling prevents the port from unwanted rotation. The Edge-Routing Dust Port (item 59837; $12.99) works with bits up to 1" in diameter and stock up to 13⁄4" thick. It’s difficult to maintain consistent pressure and angle of approach when power-sanding workpiece edges one-handed. Festool hopes to make this task easier by providing a point of control for a second hand with its Edge Sanding Guide…

NORTH COUNTRY WINTER SONGS Gorden Lightfoot shamed the gales of November as a punishing event in the lives of seamen. Here in Minnesota, November’s blasts of harsh weather are an invitation to spend time in our shops (those of us who have heated venues), filling the long dark evening hours with our favorite craft. Something about the arrival of winter makes the solitude of my workshop richer and more satisfying, although I can’t explain why. But perhaps another north country song writer, Bob Dylan, has the gist of it. “‘Twas in another lifetime, one of toil and bloodWhen blackness was a virtue the road was full of mud.I came in from the wilderness, a creature void of formCome in, she said I’ll give ya shelter from the storm.” Our day-to-day…

Buying lumber is a part of woodworking. Some woodworkers love buying stock, others not so much — but here is how you do it. What is the largest percentage of your wood purchases? Roughsawn hardwood 36.88% Surfaced hardwood 38.35% Dimension softwood 19.5 Roughsawn softwood 1.62% Don’t purchase wood 1.75% Do you purchase plywood or sheet stock regularly? Yes 53.31% No 44.69% When you purchase plywood, what size do you most often purchase? 4 x 8 sheets 62.19% 4 x 4 sheets 6.73% 4 x 8 cut smaller at the place of purchase 12.59% Some other size 5.24% Don’t purchase plywood 3.24% If a service was available to deliver small lots of lumber or a couple of sheets of plywood at a minimal cost, would you take advantage of it? Yes…

This clock project is fast and easy to make. It’s a perfect gift project because once you’re set up, you can make multiple clocks very efficiently. We used Rockler’s Compact Router Ellipse and Circle Jig (item 55819) to rout the circle shape and Rockler’s Signmaker’s Template Kit in the 21⁄4" State Park Font (item 48356) to form the numbers. Making a clock is a fun project that doesn’t necessarily require a lot of tools. You can make the clock face out of just about any piece of lumber. All it needs is a hole for the clock mechanism to fit through. You can also be as creative as you like with the clock face. Keep it simple and clean with a clear finish and no numbers. Or enhance it with…

A dry hardwood branch, a scrap board and a bit of coarse rope are all you’ll need to make this centerpiece that brings the outdoors in. Start by cutting three sections of a 2" to 3"-dia. branch to rough length; we made ours 3", 5" and 7" long. Select a Forstner bit slightly larger than the candles’ diameter. Tea candles, used here, are typically 11⁄2" in diameter, so we chose a 15⁄8"-dia. Forstner bit. Bore a 2"-deep, centered hole into the end of each branch at the drill press with it securely held in place. We clamped our branch sections in a heavy vise clamped to the drill press table and lined its metal jaws with scrap wood. Set the drill press speed appropriately and use moderate feed pressure when…

Powered sharpening systems handle just about everything — except drill bits. Filling the void are diminutive machines like the Drill Doctor, dedicated to bit sharpening. The machine consists of a small motorized base, into which a round bit holder fits. Mount the bit inside the holder, aligned and extended per manual instructions, and then it’s just a matter of turning on the base, inserting the holder and giving it a few rotations to hone the tip. An internal diamond-coated abrasive wheel provides the sharpening magic, and sharpening takes only a few seconds, so overheating isn’t common.…

Closed-grained hardwoods, such as maple, birch and cherry, can be deceptively difficult to stain well. That’s because the density of the wood varies, which impacts how pigment stains penetrate the grain. Oftentimes, harder areas of the grain will absorb less pigment, while softer areas trap more of it, leading to a blotchy, uneven light-and-dark appearance that’s unsightly and tedious to repair. One solution to blotching is to use gel-based stain. Its thixotropic, pudding-like consistency suspends the pigment so it “floats” more evenly over the surface instead of soaking into the softer fibers and over-darkening them. Prepare the surface with careful sanding, starting with 80- or 100-grit and working up through successive grits to 320. What’s important here is to remove all previous (and microscopically larger) scratches with each finer grit.…

Hand Planes Resonate Your recent Tool Tutorial about hand planes [August 2020, page 54] encouraged me to send in this photo of three planes I picked up cheaply at a local yard sale recently. I’ve got a lot more tools than I have skill, so I hope one day to actually be able to use them. It’s a shame there’s no markings at all on the little guy, but if a 51⁄2" #1 is “very collectible,” I can only imagine my retirement lifestyle when I sell a 31⁄2"! Woody Volland via the Internet My selection of a plane to use depends on the job at hand. It appears to me that a lot of their terminology has as much to do with marketing as for actual use. I started out…

Our family enjoys traveling, but for obvious reasons 2020 hasn’t been the year to do it. So to help satisfy that wanderlust, I thought it would be fun to create a funky coffee table that hints at far-off destinations we’ll consider traveling to again one day. This “cartographer’s” coffee table won’t store maps laid flat, as the shallow but broad drawers of those actual cabinets once did. But its four drawers will hold the stuff you may want to have close at hand while spending some quality time on the couch: entertainment system remotes, drink coasters, a collection of favorite DVDs or perhaps the latest novels and magazines you’re reading. Making the Tabletop in Multiple Glue-ups This project’s tabletop is a substantial 11⁄4" thick. I made mine starting from a…

Technology is changing our lives in so many areas — even, it seems, in the bedroom. Now before your imagination runs wild, let me explain. This bedside table has a hidden wireless phone charger mounted under the top. So while you are snoozing away, your phone is being refreshed and recharged as well. (And if you, like me, occasionally use your phone for your alarm clock, you can have some assurance that it will be charged when it is supposed to call you to action.) That’s the first hidden benefit to this table, but it also has a touch-opened door that swings away to give you access to the table’s interior. Just push the edge of the door and the latch will pop the door forward, revealing a storage compartment.…

Unlike the clock on page 42, this little beauty is best made on a CNC router. Why? Because there are 14 ovals to be machined into this one piece of 1"-thick walnut. Making one perfectly shaped oval by traditional methods is hard enough … but 14? Forget about it. Let a CNC Tackle the Ovals The good news, for those of you who have a CNC router in the shop, or have access to one, is that we are offering the .tap files to make this clock free on our website. Go to woodworkersjournal.com and look for the “More on the Web” icon to click on. In addition, there is a video of the full building process for this clock that’s also available as a More on the Web benefit.…

A good cup of coffee is something many people enjoy. And with the popularity of purchasing a bag of beans over a can of coffee, these little bag clips with a built in scoop are fun and practical gifts. Made from a piece of wood ¼" x 2" x 6", the only tools you need are a drill press, band saw and sander. But there is a twist: we used a 11⁄4"-dia. dish-carving router bit in the drill press to bore the scoop recess. It creates curved edges around the bottom of the scoop bowl. After the bowl has been bored, move over to your band saw or scroll saw. Narrow the thickness of the stock in the clip area down to about ¾" — it does not have to…

RIKON 70-3040 Lathe by the Numbers: Street Price: $3,799.99 without accessories Swing Over Beds: 237/32", 311⁄4" Distance Between Centers: 20" to 40" Motor: 3hp (14.8 amp), 220-volt Variable Speed Range: 20-3,850 rpm Working Height (Floor to Spindle): 44" Net Weight: 546 lbs Spindle: 11⁄4" x 8 tpi Tool-rest Length / Post Dia.: 12" / 1" Indexing Positions: 36 Quill Travel / Spindle, Tailstock Tapers: 411⁄16" / MT2 Length matters with wood lathes — whether it’s their swing over bed or the distance between centers. Unless a lathe has a movable headstock, there’s not much you can do to increase swing, and lengthening the bed to turn longer spindles requires buying a bolt-on bed extension. RIKON has an industry-first solution to increase both of these capacities on its new 70-3040 Heavy…