Marc Spagnuolo's Blog, page 77

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Chris’ Basement Work Shop

I used to work out of a two stall garage, shared with my car and my utility room. I had lots of storage space (wall length cabinetry and custom shelves) space to work on large sheet goods, and more space than I knew what to do with. Certain changes led me to work out of an unfinished L-shaped basement that is 8.5’x 22′ in the longer leg and 11’x 6′ in the smaller part. I do assembly on the floor or I wheel one of my benches over.

I’ve downgraded from the Ridgid R4512 to a portable contractor’s job site saw by Dewalt. Changed from a 12″ sliding compound miter saw to a simple 10″ chop saw. I still have some good storage and have simplified the number of tools I actually have. My new shop is sorta set up when needed (smaller power tools off to the side and lifted to the bench as needed). Dust collection is my shop vac/cyclone.

I purposely left it a little cluttered in the photos, because that is the way I usually operate in my shop. I’m working on that shop cleanliness thing, but it is a work in progress! I’m not really installing anything too permanently in the shop because I plan to move in a year or so to a place where I can once again have more shop space.

I don’t usually keep 80 bd ft of rough walnut on hand, but my wonderful wife (who lets me use the basement out of the kindness of her heart) has requested a nice TV stand. This should be a challenge, and it will be my first “go-it-alone” type of fine woodworking project.

Tool List: Dewalt DW713 10″ miter saw; Dewalt DW745 Contractor table saw; Ridgid WD1270 shop vac with cyclone; Ridgid R24012 Compact Router; Ryobi 9″ cheap POS bandsaw; Skil 10″ drill press 3320-01; Festool ETS125 sander; Festool TS55 track saw; Festool OF1010 Router; and a few assorted hand planes and basic hand tools/drills/chisels/etc.

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Cory’s Custom Jewelry Box

I’d been thinking about what to do for my mom’s birthday. I had always gotten her something from the store, gift cards, books, or games. But this year was different, I had my wood shop now, and thought maybe I could make her something. It hit me, a jewelry box! Turns out this project would be the most involved project I have yet to do, and my first jewelry box at that!

The design was inspired by a hand-made box my wife got for Christmas one. With input from my wife and dad, I chose to use a lot of the same design principles as that one, including finishing methods. The box is constructed as a flat, wide box measuring 9″x 11″x 4″. It includes interior dividers, as well as a shelf for a removable tray to add extra storage. Two upright pieces of wood in the front corners provide support for the lid when closed. The outer sides are angled at 15 degrees, and joined with mitre joints and splines. Thia same joinery was used for the tray and lid.

The dividers and the inside of the box are permanently affixed using mortise and tenon joinery. I used a 1/16″ router bit to cut the mortises in the sides, and my table saw to mill the tenons on the dividers. The floor of the box and tray are both 1/8″ thick pieces of cherry that I embedded using dados on all sides. I also cut dados on either side for the tray shelves which are glued in.

The lid consists of rails and stiles created with cherry, wenge, and yellowheart to form the decorative border. I cut a 1/8″ dado on the interior where I fit a mirror inside the box. This left room on the outer part of the lid for the inlay panel I glued in later. The lid is held into the box with small brass rods that fit into holes I drilled into the sides of the box and lid.

To really add my own touch, I added a personalized inlay in the lid. Orchids have special meaning to my mom, and I knew she’d love it. The inlay design came from a photograph I found online and traced on my laptop. I found different woods that would form the coloration of the flowers and stems (purpleheart and redheart for the flowers, kiaat for the stem), and used a combination of sand shading and wood burning to shade the pieces. I designed the inlay to be slightly larger than it would ultimately be when mounted into the lid. This gave a nice picture frame effect when mounted into the lid.

I finished the box with two coats of pure tung oil, applied by hand, followed by a coat of paste wax, all done prior to final assembly. The interior storage space is lined with self-adhesive felt.

My mom was absolutely thrilled to receive it!

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Greg’s Apartment Work Shop

I love seeing all the shop variations! Virtually all have some limitations and I really appreciate how folks adapt. Here’s my adaptation story. I live in a 10th floor, 3 bedroom apartment (with an elevator) in Brooklyn with my wife and 4 cats. The apartment is fairly spacious by city standards so we’re fortunate. My wife uses one bedroom for her home gym and I have another room for my wood shop/office/bike shop.

The room is about 10’x 18′; one side is the shop area and the other is my office. The upper shop walls are covered with a slat wall product that I absolutely love. It looks way better than pegboard and is infinitely adjustable. You might notice that I made many of the storage bits myself. I have a Dewalt job site tablesaw with a thin kerf blade that substantially reduces noise; it sits on a shop made rolling stand. When I need to do a lot a cutting, I wheel the rolling unit out to the apartment balcony and share whatever sawdust the Shop Vac missed with the neighborhood. My miter saw is the Swedish Nobex 180; it is very accurate and fun to use in an old school way. The assembly table is a tiny apartment dining table retrofit from Gothic Cabinet Craft; the top flips over, doubles in size and is dead flat if you can believe it.

Hey, is that a Janome sewing machine under the table? – yeah, another creative hobby started a year ago. The 4 bikes include a vintage Colnago and a custom carbon fixed gear beauty that I built up about 5 years ago. The bookshelf was built on site (sheets cuts down at the local box box store) and the desktop is Norm-inspired hardboard over MDF wrapped with hard maple left over from a kitchen remodel. The right side of the desk drawers contains all my bike tools and parts.

I’ve built bookcases, headboards, side tables and lots of odd pieces in this little urban shop. If anyone knows about apartment living, there’s no attic, basement or garage for spillover storage but you still have the need for it. My room serves this function as well so we have to be absolutely ruthless with all of our keep/discard/giveaway decisions.

One of the pics is of me and Norm Abram chatting in front of the This Old House Brooklyn Brownstone Project in 2009 (taken from a TOH project web camera). What? How? The general contractor on that job did the renovation in our apartment in 2004. Knowing my interest in such things, he invited me over one morning during the TOH shoot. Norm had just finished his segment and had plenty of time on his hands and was happy to spend an hour chatting with me. It was delightful; he is exactly the same person on television–down to earth, personable and warm. Big thrill for me of course and I invited him over to see how city woodworkers manage in small spaces but it was getting close to another segment and film crew booted me from the set.

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Baseball Marquetry Wall Clock

This is a wall clock that a friend asked me to build. I always enjoy trying techniques I am not familiar with and testing my skill as a woodworker. This is my first attempt at marquetry and I am very pleased with the result.

The base of the clock is a three piece panel consisting of two pieces of maple and a mahogany spline. The top face of the clock consists of four pieces of birdseye maple and thirty-nine pieces of mahogany. Before I glued the veneer to the base of the clock, I sanded a slight radius on the panel to give the clock a spherical appearance. To glue the veneer to the panel, I made a press using some 2×4’s, MDF, and 6″ carriage bolts. I sandwiched the clock between two pieces of MDF and some Styrofoam so that the curved face would receive even pressure. I then sanded the clock up to 320 grit and finished with a Varathane. After a couple of coats of poly, I added the decal. I used clear waterslide decal paper and printed the image on my printer at home. I then sprayed enough coats of poly to remove the ridge along the edge of the decal. After a few days, I wet sanded and buffed the clock to a high gloss.

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Richard’s Standalone Shop

My wife and I moved from a house we lived in for over thirty years. My work area there was a spot in the basement roughly 200 sq.feet.

My new shop 800 sq.feet, heat and ac, 200 amp service, 5 feet out my back door is like heaven to me.

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Wes’ Huge Shop Table

First I want to thank Marc for all of the awesome free materials he puts out! His generosity is very much appreciated and has benefited myself, as well as the rest of the woodworking community greatly!

Like many beginner woodworkers I started out with sawhorses and a sheet of MDF as my workspace. This served me well starting out but I found it to be too unstable for larger projects so I set out defining what my dream bench would look like. It had to have a large workspace that could serve not only as an assembly table, but also as an outfeed table. It had to be mobile as the weather here in Oklahoma is unpredictable at best, and since I don’t have a shop, I need to be able to get the cars in the garage when necessary. Lastly, it had to have storage so I could have all of my tools right there where I am working.

I tried to jam as many learning opportunities into this build as possible to expand my skill set. Thus I used biscuits for securing the face frame; I used hand tools to trim the face frames perfectly flush with the carcass; made cambered calls for laminating the plywood; I used mortise and tenons to attach the partitions to the base; I used sliding dovetails for the drawer joinery; and the list goes on. I learned a lot throughout this build–patience being the biggest lesson!

All of the plywood partitions and the bottom are made from doubled up 3/4″ maple plywood. I cut tenons into the bottom of all of them and cut matching mortises into the base. The partitions running the length of the bench fit into dadoes in the cross partitions. This serves as a torsion box style construction that adds strength since it will have to withstand being pushed around. The bottom sits on 8 heavy duty dual locking casters, it rolls quite easily despite how heavy it is. The drawers are also made of 3/4″ maple plywood except for the bottoms which are 1/2″ Sandply. I have found it to be more than sufficient for shop drawer applications. They are all trimmed in walnut inside and out. The pulls are also made of walnut and are chamfered to ease the edges. The top is a single sheet of plywood attached with screws. No glue was used on the top so if it ever needs to be replaced the base cabinet can be salvaged. Had I known I wasn’t going to have a laminated top like I had originally planned, I probably would have doubled up the plywood here as well.

Hope you all enjoy the pics. Thanks again Marc, for all that you do!

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Eric’s Sharpening Station

The station was designed with heavy elements so it would stay put while lapping and honing. Built of white oak with rot-resistance in mind. Wenge accents. Breadboard ends and tusk tenons just for fun. The stone holders are removable and held in place with dowels, and they’re stair-stepped so chisel handles have clearance of the adjacent stone while lapping the backs. The swarf collection tray is also removable and replaceable. Now I can take a blade from dull to sharp in a matter of seconds without unpacking all my sharpening supplies. A worthy expense of shop space even in a small, packed shop. I’ve taken some heat that it’s “too nice” for shop furniture. To that I can only respond, you may please have a snack of poop. I believe Confucius said that.

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Brick & Floor Pattern Triple Drawer Case

I started with all these scrap pieces of wood laying around. They are just cut offs from various projects. I decided not to waste them and start gluing up the strips. All the strips became like a floor design with no repetitive pattern. Eventually I sliced them into thin boards and made them into 3 drawers using rabbet joints. For the outer housing, I made a brick layering pattern using purple heart. All those pieces are individual pieces glued together. To give more contrast, I machined out little groves on the jointed area on the top and bottom faces and added maple strips as inlays. The grooves are cut out using miniature table saw and milling machines. The housing is completed using extended finger joints. Size is approximately 8″ tall by 5″ wide and 5″ deep.

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