Author Archives: joel

Cherry End Table

Posted on November 12, 2018 by joel

I used some more of scrap cherry leftover from the credenza build, and made this end table for our family room. It's been working out good so far, but I think I'm going to swap out the tile in the top. We've all decided that it is a little plain for that table. I think I might use a sheet of mosaic tile instead, to punch it up a little.

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Plane Cabinet

Posted on November 12, 2018 by joel

I had a bunch of scrap cherry plywood leftover from the credenza build, and tried to think of some way to use those scraps for something useful. I decided to build a wall cabinet for my hand planes. Cherry is a bit fancy for the workshop, but it sure looks nice!

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Screwdriver

Posted on November 12, 2018 by joel
Turned this screwdriver on the lathe the other day. It's a lamination of curly maple and cocobolo. It's one of the reversible ones - where both the bit and the shaft are reversible, for a total of 4 different tips.

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Root Beer Sampling – 2018 Update

Posted on November 12, 2018 by joel
Carter and I have continued to try lots of different types of root beer from all over the country. The last time I posted, we had tried about 20 varieties. Now, we're up to nearly 80! I've had to build more shelves. :)

Posted in Other Projects | 2 Comments

Carter’s Artwork

Posted on November 12, 2018 by joel
Carter has been using a lot of my plywood scraps from the workshop as canvases for painting. We've been hanging the better ones up in the attic. She's slowing filling the wall along the stairwell.

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A Pair of Credenzas

Posted on November 7, 2018 by joel
I recently finished a pair of credenzas for our family room. They were built to house our growing collection of retro gaming consoles. The drawers are full of games, controllers, and accessories. We've got a NES, SNES, Gamecube, Wii, Wii U, Atari 2600, PS2, PS3, PS4, and a Switch. The credenzas are built from cherry, and have tile tops. Since this picture was taken I built a shelf above the TV for the soundbar, and have moved that PS3 controller charger off of the top and to another spot in the room. I'll try to get a new pic of the setup sometime soon.

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A Tangle of Feet

Posted on November 7, 2018 by joel

I found Amber sleeping this way the other day. She apparently found it comfortable, but I'm not sure how. I'm not even sure how she ended up that way.

Posted in Family | 1 Comment

Roadtrip Tracker

Posted on August 26, 2018 by joel
Carter and I found a cool US map poster that we hung up in the basement, and we're using colored sewing pins and embroidery floss to show the path of each of the roadtrips we've taken so far. I really like seeing them all laid out like that - it reminds us of all the trips we've taken so far, and gives us ideas of where we'd like to go next.

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Machine Embroidery

Posted on August 26, 2018 by joel
Those who follow this blog know that I love patches - my daily-carry backpack is covered with dozens of them. Because of that, I've always been interested in machine embroidery - as I'd love to have some personal, custom patches to put on my stuff. Make Magazine recently reviewed an entry-level hobbyist embroidery machine and that was basically all it took to convince me to give this a shot. I'm really just getting started and learning, but I've already made the Millennium Falcon patch you see in the bottom right photo. Pretty cool!


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Wiring Up The Garage

Posted on August 26, 2018 by joel
In every garage workshop I've ever had (this one is the third), I've always just used extension cords to get power from the one lone outlet that is in most garages over to the various tools. It's kind a pain in the butt (and you wear out extension cords faster than you'd think), but I've never bothered to do anything about it. This time I decided to use some conduit and run a bunch of outlets along the walls to each of my tools, so everything is ready all the time. I still need to use an extension cord to get to the table saw (because it is in the middle of the room), but for everything else this has been working out great! It wasn't that hard or expensive - I should have done this years ago.

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