Innehållsförteckning för June 2021 från Woodworker's Journal

Architects Charles and Henry Greene were premier designers of homes and furniture. Their distinctive style was popular at the turn of the 20th century and remains so today. Here are three bedroom furniture pieces that are influenced by their designs. You can buy each as a single plan or all three in a combined plan. Originally built by senior editor Chris Marshall, they are elegant heirloom furniture projects. Purchase these plans at www.woodworkersjournal.com/wjfeaturedplans Greene & Greene Dresser This seven-drawer dresser (plus three hidden drawers!) will give you a woodworking workout. Quartersawn ribbon mahogany used here is consistent with Greene brothers’ wood preference. The drawers are assembled with wide box joints to add to the visual feast of this substantial build. Bed in the Greene Brothers’ Style Here’s a queen-sized bed…

There are few upsides to this pandemic, but it has prompted a lot of folks to start woodworking. If you’re one of them, welcome to the club! To support your new hobby, maybe you’ve bought a jobsite table saw like the DeWALT saw shown above. But you’ve probably discovered it’s lightweight, it offers very little support behind the saw table when you’re cutting really long workpieces and it could use a more stable, sure-footed stand. Well, this mobile workstation can give your new saw the “home base” it deserves. The substantial drawer cabinet on wheels raises your saw to a comfortable 36" working height. Behind the saw there’s a full-size router table on a base you can build with ordinary pocket-screw joinery. The router table serves as a spacious outfeed…

No matter how much light you have in your shop, there are times when just a bit more illumination right where you’re working makes all the difference in how efficient your work is, and how safely you perform a particular task. Whether it’s needing a better look at what’s going on while running a machine, being able to closely examine a process that’s just not that easy to see, or even working in a darker area your regular shop lighting just can’t normally reach, having adequate lighting for the task at hand will always “lighten” the load for the better. Even if you have a brightly lit shop and have followed all the guidelines for estimating the number of ceiling fixtures and lighting intensity you need, there are probably still…

Tim Inman is a professional woodworker and finishing expert and the author of The Art of Classical Furniture Finishing. Q Every time I apply polyurethane finish, I get hundreds of tiny bubbles in it. I’ve tried different types of brushes and strokes and even mixing techniques but I still have the same problem. Any advice you could offer would be greatly appreciated. A Is your finish waterbased or oil-based? If it’s water-based, thin it 5 percent or so with water and then use a flat painter’s pad (with the short nylon bristles) or a 3" or 4" foam paint roller. If it is oil-based poly, thin it 15 percent with mineral spirits and use a good quality varnish brush. Don’t work the finish back and forth with your applicator. Try…

LOOK OUT, I AM SHIFTING GEARS! The last year or so I feel like I have been trying to play the game, but someone keeps changing the rules. But even with the pandemic jamming up the gears, I am not complaining. I have been extremely fortunate over the course of the pandemic and my family has done well. Compared to others, my path has been relatively easy. But at the same time, it seems as though I have been stuck in a traffic jam that just keeps creeping along. You can do this … oops, not that! Meeting with close family must be delayed to an undetermined future date. Sometimes it seems as if it might speed up a bit … and then there is a detour, for crying out…

When you stop and think about it, we spend a good bit of our lives sitting at our dining tables. It is a place where family spends time together eating, doing homework, playing games, paying the bills and more. It is a valued place in most of our homes and for that reason, it makes some sense to have a quality table as the nexus of all this togetherness. This table project here is only 40" square, so it would not work for seating a big family. But it is perfect for an apartment — a mom, dad and a young one or two. When it’s time to progress to a larger dining table, move this one to a family room and voilà … you have a game table! One…

For brushing finish without missing spots, a “raking light” angled to reflect off the wet surface is indispensable. Whether finishing a high tabletop or bookcase, a low coffee table or even the sides of a cabinet, the articulated arm of this rolling task light adjusts to shine wherever it’s needed. Getting Started Plane ⅜"-thick stock for the arms, the center layer of the three-part base and the light’s mounting plate. Hardwood such as oak is best to make the articulated arm sufficiently rigid, and heavier stock in the base keeps the center of gravity low. The base platform is 12" wide, while the vertical base components measure 14½" wide, so glue blanks up from multiple pieces. This not only gives you the needed width, but carefully arranging individual pieces also…

When you compare longleaf pine to most of its cousins, it actually has more in common with hardwood lumber — in terms of density, durability and workability — than softwoods (say Norway or white pine, for example). Its resinous nature makes it moderately rot-resistant. Quartersawn longleaf pine presents a lovely straight-grained figure that evokes old-growth Douglas fir, but with a creamier background offset by rich reddish and orange hues. It can be stunningly beautiful to look at. While it is a true softwood, to think of longleaf pine in terms of its more common pine lumber cousins would be a serious disservice to this unique wood, akin to comparing a Ferrari to a Ford Focus simply because they both have wheels. Trial by Fire Longleaf pines grow up to 130…

Your Trains of Thought About It Pat Graeser, who purchased February’s mystery tool, will have a fair amount of information about its former uses, thanks to your guesses and even direct experience with wrenches of this sort. There were a couple of farther-flung hunches at what this unusual wrench might be for. “It looks like a jar lid opener,” offers Jim Thompson. “This is a faucet wrench,” said Kenneth Salsman, “and it’s for removing the top nut to replace the faucet washer.” Well, nice guesses, guys, but your fellow sleuthers will beg to differ with you here. The general verdict that rose from the murky swamp of history is that this wrench’s jaw style points to its purpose. You’ll recall that the jaws open like a “V,” and only one…

Afew years ago, I designed and built this potting bench for Jonathan Wright, who is deputy director for Horticulture and Natural Resources at the Indianapolis Museum of Art and a professional gardener. He provided insight for what his ideal structure would be to support both gardening tasks and play. I say “play” here because the project’s galvanized steel soil bin can be washed out and used as an optional beverage cooler for entertaining. Jonathan has since used this bench as a bar for outdoor get-togethers. You’ll notice in the opening photo that I’ve shaped the wide front apron and bottom shelf with a “wave” style edge to create a sense of visual movement. That same shape is repeated across the top of the bench’s slats by using a large template…

Where a piece of wood is sliced out of a log affects the figure it will present (see the illustration above). And the figure of the wood, often called the grain pattern or just the “grain,” strongly affects the appearance of your project. Within a single board you can sometimes find sections of flatsawn or cathedral grain, riftsawn and quartersawn grain. In addition, a board may often contain both heartwood (generally darker in color) and sapwood (often much lighter in color than the heartwood). How you make use of these variations as you create a project is one of the ways to lift your woodworking from regular to regal. When Does it Matter? If you are building a set of storage shelves for your laundry room, worrying about the figure…

As pocket-hole joints have become ubiquitous, so have the consumer options for creating them. Typical systems use a stepped twist bit inserted at an angle into a drilling guide clamped to the workpiece. The drill bit’s larger flutes bore a deep pocket for the screwhead, and a smaller-diameter tip drills a pilot hole for the screw’s shank. While this process is simple, the end result isn’t always flawless. The angled pocket often has a ragged opening. And if the drill bit’s stop collar is set too deeply, end grain fibers can pop out of the workpiece where the pilot bit nearly pokes through (see left example in the above photo). That crumbly extra wood debris can contaminate the glue joint or prevent the components from meeting flush. Mismatched joints aren’t…