I just made some shelves for the bathroom, made wood supports but my skills and space to work are lacking, would love to make some pallet furniture at some point.
Now I have to cut some white vinyl to cover the screws up.
@reg036 We use “fastcap” screw covers for inside open cabinets to conceal flat-head screws. If you can find them at your local big-box home improvement store it will save you time… or ring up a local shop and offer to trade a beverage for a sheet. They’re online at https://www.fastcap.com/product/fastcap-peel-and-stick-cover-caps to give you an idea for logo etc.
Pro tip-wipe the cabinet down just before applying. They’ll stick better!
@2palms I know of what you speak but these are just for shelf supports and because I’m anal and I can’t stand the silver heads on the white supports lol. Just gonna use the vinyl cutter machine and whip out a bunch. Also have a few things I wanna cover up on some cheapie stands we have. Takes no time at all to make em.
It’s sorta my day job. I might get to build an oval “wedding cake” for children’s theater as a volunteer project this weekend: normally I do the scheduling, bidding and purchasing and let the shop guys build the cool projects.
Amateur here. Lacking space, tools, and time but I owe my wife a porch swing and plan to be working on that soon. We have an odd size space for it to go–5’ is a touch too wide and I’d rather it be bigger than 4’, and those are the sizes they sell so I decided on a 56" custom build. If I can source cypress lumber and it won’t cost a fortune that’s what I’ll make it from.
I fully expect at least my share of misadventures asking the way. I’ve lined up my buddy’s shop for cutting the boards to size and rounding exposed edges with a router, then I’ll truck it all home and build it in my shop. At least that’s the idea. I really don’t think it will be that hard as long as I plan properly.
@luvche21 the plan is to cut a profile on the back support vertical members and then attach the slats that will be the back of the swing horizontally. Let’s see if I can get a picture that may do a better job of explaining it.
@djslack ah I see, that’s much easier than the vertical pieces that I was imagining (I guess I was thinking of a rocking chair). My wife would love me if I made her a pitch swing, except our porch isn’t big enough. You should post it when you finish!
@djslack@luvche21
Did you finish your porch swing, i’d love to see pics!! Wifey must be thrilled IF she’s not still waiting! Being i’m just seeing this thread started in 2018, have you made anything during the pandemic/lockdown of 2020-21…???
@luvche21@Lynnerizer haha, the best laid plans… I still owe my wife a porch swing. Didn’t get too much free time in 2020, I guess thankfully I worked all year.
@djslack@Lynnerizer I totally forgot about this post, but it helped get the woodworking bug in me, which took off last year (thanks pandemic and new hobbies?)
Garage shelves (painted too and they look awesome). A scrap wood BBQ table and a planter table. I’m just getting started now that I have a garage, so I need some new projects and tools. I want to make a small greenhouse.
Any favorite tools beyond a circular and miter saw that I should get next? Planer? Table saw? Lathe for fun?
@turtle_2014 that’s what I was thinking too. I want to build a kitchen table at some point, and a bed with super awesome custom nightstands, so I think a planer would be very helpful for those.
@luvche21@turtle_2014 It’s true enough that you can use a circular saw instead of a table saw. But once you have a table saw, you’ll wonder how you ever managed without one.
I used to design and build pieces based on ideas my wife had. Stuff like a cute little oak drop-leaf coffee table, or some curtain valence covers. After a while I started to notice that they had a short service life before she lost interest/changed her taste in furniture, and they’d end up in storage or given away. So now I do mostly utilitarian stuff. Once the weather cooperates, I will continue on a storage unit platform for underneath our waterbed, but it’s just plywood, and the “joinery” is wood screws and brackets. So it’s sort of like woodworking, but without the art.
I do some woodworking from time to time. I have everything a person might need to build cabinets (which I’ve done a couple of times) or furniture with the exception of a lathe. I even have a dovetail jig so I can make my own drawer boxes.
I recently purchased a planer and a jointer so I could mill my own lumber. While I haven’t milled any of my own trees yet, I did recently acquire a large load of sawmill oak lumber. I couldn’t believe how much cheaper it was than buying it off the shelf at a Lowes or Home Depot.
My biggest obstacle has been workshop space. I have so much stuff in my 20x24 garage, that I don’t have anywhere to work, which is a problem. Cutting a sheet of 4x8 plywood requires far more space than I can seem to make. My goal is to build a larger shop, or at the very least, to build a lawn shed to store the mower, and other lawn stuff in – so I can free up space in my garage.
Right now, I’m working on some open shelf bathroom vanities for our two upstairs bathrooms. Then it’ll be the bedroom suite my wife has been begging me to build for a few months. I’ve attached a picture of what it SHOULD look like, and I feel confident it will, but we’ll see!
@mossygreen My kitchen has shaker style cabinets. I really like the square edges on stuff, but the main reason I did that was because I didn’t have any router bits at the time – now I have a plethora of router bits (and I rarely use them).
Over the years, we have remodeled most of our home. I’ve done craftsman style door and window frames in all of the common areas (I haven’t done the bedrooms yet). They look great and they’re super easy to do.
Here’s the first kitchen I did. At the time, It was cheaper to buy the tools and build my own cabinets than it was to buy them off the shelf. Plus, I knew we would be selling that house in the coming years and I’d have the tools to do another kitchen when we bought again.
[1]:
[2]:
@capguncowboy@mossygreen
Imressive!! I didn’t realize your skills were so advanced, guess I was thinking more like arts & crafts. Silly Me!! (Duh!)
Love the furniture! My brother-in-law does stuff very similar. My favorite of his was a wood floor though, he put an amazing design in the center, wish I had pictures to show you! Do you have any recent projects to share, hadn’t realized this thread was from 2018. Yet again, Duh!
I’ve added a lot of tools to my shop since I posted the above. However, I haven’t had the free time in the past couple of years to do much with them. My father in law gave me a lathe but I honestly haven’t had time to play with it much. I was able to use it make newn pencil legs for a vintage couch we had reupholstered last year though.
The vanities I built for my home were a big success with the wife and our friends/families that I built a few more for some bathroom remodels I was contracted to do. Everyone seems to like them and they’re easy to make now that I’ve done a few of them.
I also built an entryway bench for my mom for Mother’s Day last year.
I’ve got plans to do a lot in the coming year, including a new console for our TV, a desk for my daughter and that bedroom suite my wife’s been begging for the last couple of years
I have a bunch of tools I inherited. I’m not very good and I don’t have much time to practice. Shop was one of my favorite classes in middle school. Don’t know why I didn’t take it in highschool.
The last thing that was built was a stand for my vegetable garden. My brother engineered it, so I just paid for the supplies and assisted him to put it together.
I just finished building a new well-house. All pressure treated wood, handmade insulated pine door, 3" styrofoam insulation, wired 240/120v with outlets inside & outside, exterior freeze-proof faucet:
I’ve done a little chainsaw art, including woodburning designs into the scrap slabs:
I also built all kitchen cabinets, solid oak fronts and 3/4" oak plywood, but that was a long time ago. They still work perfectly!
Here’s one wall of them:
And a barn (in the back), a designer chicken coop and a greenhouse (in foreground with shade cloth covering plexi to keep it cooler in summer).
@daveinwarsh loving the projects especially the trees on the scrap. Was recently watching a guy burn lichtenberg patterns to create a similar effect. Seemed like a lot of work though.
@RiotDemon Yes, it took a long while using a little woodburning iron to do the trees. I decided to leave some of the chainsaw marks on the wood instead of sanding them out completely.
All this art stuff is not easy for me… I also carved mushrooms out of the cedar. Most all my chainsaw carving projects got sold at a charity event.
@dannybeans As a retired old dude with a very large workshop, I look for projects sometime… The chainsaw art was an accident. I had to cut down a rather large old cedar tree & I thought ‘what the hell, how bad could I do’… After watching a Youtube video & switching out my skip-tooth chain to a safety chain… I dove in.
The slabs were about to get pitched onto the burn-stack when I had an idea. I watched a wood-burning video on Youtube & became an ‘expert’… lol
I don’t know what blogging is… wait… I’ll Google it.
No. I don’t blog. You would be the only one reading it. I appreciate that you like my work though.
@daveinwarsh You are talented! I do not have the patience to do that kind of stuff. I bought myself a woodburning kit as a young teen. I did not do well.
@RiotDemon cept where it sticks out of the tabletop. I hope that does’t get any coffee spilling off the table onto it…also seems like it would get bent back and forth if it’s just dangling there…likely to just snap off clean after awhile.
@mossygreen I loved that show! It had a completely random spot in our local PBS schedule, so I only ever saw it by chance, but damn was it entertaining.
@dannybeans I can’t tell you how happy I am to have found the other person with a strange, complicated, decades-spanning love of Furniture on the Mend. Super-happy! Obviously, it’s not just the two of us; @walarney definitely knows the secret passwords. But yeah, the new show looks good! They sound exactly the same and don’t look that much worse (not a compliment, I guess)!
@mossygreen If anything, I’d say they look better - Ed especially. Some guys were born to get old.
And yeah, it’s a hard show to find, but an easy one to like. I think if you’re a Car Talk fan, you’ll appreciate Furniture on the Mend. It has the same vibe.
I’d call myself a handyman; haven’t practiced enough with the fancy tools to be a proficient woodworker.
Lost the shop space I used to share so my tools just take up space in the garage. I dream of a shed in my near future, a dedicated workshop in retirement.
we do receive the Handyman magazine in the mail (well, one of my cats does) and I have enjoyed refinishing some furniture (and all our doors and window frames when we remodeled) but other than that, I got nothing
I’m currently building a workshop in an unused section of the big barn on our property in my spare time. It’s about 35 feet long by 15 wide, with a dirt floor.
Now that it’s cooling off, I’m hoping to make a big push and get the floors done in the next couple weeks. I’m using all reclaimed pallet wood for the job, which is slow going. To make the floorboards, I have to get the plank off the pallet, take the nails out, rip it to 3.5", plane it smooth with the jointer, and cut it to length. The joists supporting them are 18" center-to-center, so each board is 1.5’, 3’, or, occasionally, 4.5’ long. It’ll all get a linseed oil finish when it’s done, and then I can move the big tools in and build some workbenches.
After that, I’ll pour a concrete hearth and put in the wood stove I restored this spring. I doubt I’ll be able to afford the chimney in time to use it this winter, so I’ll be heating it with a couple of kerosene burners this year.
Then I need to put up some walls to separate it from the rest of the barn. It’s actually mostly separate now, but the ends are open, so walls and doors will go in. Then I’ll cut a couple of windows for more natural light, add a few more outlets, and it’ll be done.
This is all being done with salvaged materials in my spare time, so it’s going to take a long time - it’ll hopefully be usable by November, but it probably won’t be done until next fall at the very earliest. But hey, it gives me something to do.
Oh, and a dust control system, of course - airborne sawdust and woodstoves don’t always work well together. I plan to build one out of PVC pipe with exposed copper wire to ground it, all hooked up to a 25-gallon shop vac I got at a yard sale.
@dannybeans Yeah, working with pallet wood can be a real pain in the ass - the wood is usually VERY hard & the fasteners are specifically designed to HOLD TIGHT.
I used pallets for the flooring system of a temp garage/storage shed. My trouble was water seepage around the perimeter. Eventually (4yrs) the ‘canvas’ gave up the ghost. About half the pallets had dry rot & were tossed, but the rest are still stacked out back getting weathered.
/image Harbor Freight portable garage
@compunaut It certainly is a pain, but I’ve gotten pretty good at getting the boards off in one piece. It helps if I can grab them before they’ve been outside for too long. And the price is right - my budget is such that I can afford materials or tools, but not both. So I buy the tools, use them to make the materials, and then have something to put in the workshop.
I made a big push this weekend and finished the first half of the floor. That was my goal for the season, and it’s enough that I can start moving in once the polyurethane dries. That’ll be sometime later this week, because I’m giving it three coats of high-build, and I can only realistically do one coat a day. The next step will be pouring the hearth for the stove.
There are a couple in my area, and I love them. But they tend to be better for furniture, hardware, and fixtures - neither ever has much in the way of lumber.
I just made some shelves for the bathroom, made wood supports but my skills and space to work are lacking, would love to make some pallet furniture at some point.
Now I have to cut some white vinyl to cover the screws up.
@reg036 We use “fastcap” screw covers for inside open cabinets to conceal flat-head screws. If you can find them at your local big-box home improvement store it will save you time… or ring up a local shop and offer to trade a beverage for a sheet. They’re online at https://www.fastcap.com/product/fastcap-peel-and-stick-cover-caps to give you an idea for logo etc.
Pro tip-wipe the cabinet down just before applying. They’ll stick better!
@2palms I know of what you speak but these are just for shelf supports and because I’m anal and I can’t stand the silver heads on the white supports lol. Just gonna use the vinyl cutter machine and whip out a bunch. Also have a few things I wanna cover up on some cheapie stands we have. Takes no time at all to make em.
@reg036 Hm we need a “any vinyl cutters on here?” thread! I had envisioned X-acto and scissors. My sis-in-law has a Cricut. Seems like a fun tool.
@2palms Well there is a crafting thread that covers vinyl cutting: https://meh.com/forum/topics/silhouette-freebie-part-2-and-other-things
It’s sorta my day job. I might get to build an oval “wedding cake” for children’s theater as a volunteer project this weekend: normally I do the scheduling, bidding and purchasing and let the shop guys build the cool projects.
@2palms - Nice watch!
Amateur here. Lacking space, tools, and time but I owe my wife a porch swing and plan to be working on that soon. We have an odd size space for it to go–5’ is a touch too wide and I’d rather it be bigger than 4’, and those are the sizes they sell so I decided on a 56" custom build. If I can source cypress lumber and it won’t cost a fortune that’s what I’ll make it from.
I fully expect at least my share of misadventures asking the way. I’ve lined up my buddy’s shop for cutting the boards to size and rounding exposed edges with a router, then I’ll truck it all home and build it in my shop. At least that’s the idea. I really don’t think it will be that hard as long as I plan properly.
@djslack Measure twice, cut once!
@djslack that sounds like a tough one to pull off - will you bend the pieces for the back support?
@luvche21 the plan is to cut a profile on the back support vertical members and then attach the slats that will be the back of the swing horizontally. Let’s see if I can get a picture that may do a better job of explaining it.
/image porch swing contour back slats
Edit: That’s pretty much it.
@djslack ah I see, that’s much easier than the vertical pieces that I was imagining (I guess I was thinking of a rocking chair). My wife would love me if I made her a pitch swing, except our porch isn’t big enough. You should post it when you finish!
@djslack @luvche21
Did you finish your porch swing, i’d love to see pics!! Wifey must be thrilled IF she’s not still waiting! Being i’m just seeing this thread started in 2018, have you made anything during the pandemic/lockdown of 2020-21…???
@luvche21 @Lynnerizer haha, the best laid plans… I still owe my wife a porch swing. Didn’t get too much free time in 2020, I guess thankfully I worked all year.
@djslack @Lynnerizer I totally forgot about this post, but it helped get the woodworking bug in me, which took off last year (thanks pandemic and new hobbies?)
I first built an outdoor drinking fountain:
https://imgur.com/yPZTOtq
Then a Japanese torii gate (we’re trying to make a Japanese garden in our front yard)
https://imgur.com/MU3EJTI
And right now I’m working on plywood hexagon designs (I’m starting the process for a headphone shelf and want this to be a design feature:
https://imgur.com/i9izFUw
@djslack @Lynnerizer Also I can’t for the life of me figure out how to embed imgur images (I’ve been away from the forums for far too long
)
@luvche21 very cool! Those hexagons look neat!
Garage shelves (painted too and they look awesome). A scrap wood BBQ table and a planter table. I’m just getting started now that I have a garage, so I need some new projects and tools. I want to make a small greenhouse.
Any favorite tools beyond a circular and miter saw that I should get next? Planer? Table saw? Lathe for fun?
@luvche21 I would go with a planer. You can use the circular saw in place of a table saw, but nothing can really substitute a planer.
@turtle_2014 that’s what I was thinking too. I want to build a kitchen table at some point, and a bed with super awesome custom nightstands, so I think a planer would be very helpful for those.
@luvche21 @turtle_2014 It’s true enough that you can use a circular saw instead of a table saw. But once you have a table saw, you’ll wonder how you ever managed without one.
My wife has some excellent woodworking skills.
@mike808 TMI
I used to design and build pieces based on ideas my wife had. Stuff like a cute little oak drop-leaf coffee table, or some curtain valence covers. After a while I started to notice that they had a short service life before she lost interest/changed her taste in furniture, and they’d end up in storage or given away. So now I do mostly utilitarian stuff. Once the weather cooperates, I will continue on a storage unit platform for underneath our waterbed, but it’s just plywood, and the “joinery” is wood screws and brackets. So it’s sort of like woodworking, but without the art.
@mehcuda67 working with wood
@woodhouse?
@Cythwulf yes i work the wood with regularity
@woodhouse So we are ax’ing you what you do with the wood…
@Kidsandliz i work it
@Kidsandliz @woodhouse see above
@Kidsandliz @llangley @woodhouse
At least he keeps it in house… I mean, if he was @woodpark or something we might have a problem.
@Kidsandliz @llangley @thejackalope
Don’t give @woodhouse ideas.
Next thing you know, he’ll be doing a public exhibition of his “joinery”.
@Kidsandliz @thejackalope @woodhouse
Or @woodall!
@llangley @mike808 @thejackalope @woodhouse
You mean like Woody Woodpecker?
I do some woodworking from time to time. I have everything a person might need to build cabinets (which I’ve done a couple of times) or furniture with the exception of a lathe. I even have a dovetail jig so I can make my own drawer boxes.
I recently purchased a planer and a jointer so I could mill my own lumber. While I haven’t milled any of my own trees yet, I did recently acquire a large load of sawmill oak lumber. I couldn’t believe how much cheaper it was than buying it off the shelf at a Lowes or Home Depot.
My biggest obstacle has been workshop space. I have so much stuff in my 20x24 garage, that I don’t have anywhere to work, which is a problem. Cutting a sheet of 4x8 plywood requires far more space than I can seem to make. My goal is to build a larger shop, or at the very least, to build a lawn shed to store the mower, and other lawn stuff in – so I can free up space in my garage.
Right now, I’m working on some open shelf bathroom vanities for our two upstairs bathrooms. Then it’ll be the bedroom suite my wife has been begging me to build for a few months. I’ve attached a picture of what it SHOULD look like, and I feel confident it will, but we’ll see!
@capguncowboy Aw man, Arts & Crafts/Mission style is the best.
@mossygreen My kitchen has shaker style cabinets. I really like the square edges on stuff, but the main reason I did that was because I didn’t have any router bits at the time – now I have a plethora of router bits (and I rarely use them).
Over the years, we have remodeled most of our home. I’ve done craftsman style door and window frames in all of the common areas (I haven’t done the bedrooms yet). They look great and they’re super easy to do.
![enter image description here][1]
![enter image description here][2]
Here’s the first kitchen I did. At the time, It was cheaper to buy the tools and build my own cabinets than it was to buy them off the shelf. Plus, I knew we would be selling that house in the coming years and I’d have the tools to do another kitchen when we bought again.
[1]:
[2]:
@capguncowboy nice work!
@capguncowboy Can you stop by and do some work at my place? Very nice!
@capguncowboy @mossygreen
Yet again, Duh! 
Imressive!! I didn’t realize your skills were so advanced, guess I was thinking more like arts & crafts. Silly Me!! (Duh!)
Love the furniture! My brother-in-law does stuff very similar. My favorite of his was a wood floor though, he put an amazing design in the center, wish I had pictures to show you! Do you have any recent projects to share, hadn’t realized this thread was from 2018.
@Lynnerizer
I’ve added a lot of tools to my shop since I posted the above. However, I haven’t had the free time in the past couple of years to do much with them. My father in law gave me a lathe but I honestly haven’t had time to play with it much. I was able to use it make newn pencil legs for a vintage couch we had reupholstered last year though.
The vanities I built for my home were a big success with the wife and our friends/families that I built a few more for some bathroom remodels I was contracted to do. Everyone seems to like them and they’re easy to make now that I’ve done a few of them.
I also built an entryway bench for my mom for Mother’s Day last year.
I’ve got plans to do a lot in the coming year, including a new console for our TV, a desk for my daughter and that bedroom suite my wife’s been begging for the last couple of years
@capguncowboy
Your family is lucky that you share your talents with them, those pieces are really nice! Thanks for the pictures!!
I have a bunch of tools I inherited. I’m not very good and I don’t have much time to practice. Shop was one of my favorite classes in middle school. Don’t know why I didn’t take it in highschool.
The last thing that was built was a stand for my vegetable garden. My brother engineered it, so I just paid for the supplies and assisted him to put it together.
I am working on Adirondack chairs this winter
I just finished building a new well-house. All pressure treated wood, handmade insulated pine door, 3" styrofoam insulation, wired 240/120v with outlets inside & outside, exterior freeze-proof faucet:
I’ve done a little chainsaw art, including woodburning designs into the scrap slabs:
I also built all kitchen cabinets, solid oak fronts and 3/4" oak plywood, but that was a long time ago. They still work perfectly!
Here’s one wall of them:
And a barn (in the back), a designer chicken coop and a greenhouse (in foreground with shade cloth covering plexi to keep it cooler in summer).
[VMod edit: done.]
@daveinwarsh OK. I forgot to dump the ‘s’ from https for my imgur pics above. Are they showing for people out there?
@daveinwarsh only the first one.
@RiotDemon Shit. I’ll repost if anyone cares…
@daveinwarsh @RiotDemon Maybe @narfcake can use his powers to fix your pics Dave.
@daveinwarsh loving the projects especially the trees on the scrap. Was recently watching a guy burn lichtenberg patterns to create a similar effect. Seemed like a lot of work though.
@daveinwarsh @RiotDemon Yes the trees on the scrap wood is very nice.
@RiotDemon Yes, it took a long while using a little woodburning iron to do the trees. I decided to leave some of the chainsaw marks on the wood instead of sanding them out completely.
All this art stuff is not easy for me… I also carved mushrooms out of the cedar. Most all my chainsaw carving projects got sold at a charity event.
@daveinwarsh @RiotDemon looks wonderful! You are talented, dave.
@daveinwarsh My goodness. I can only hope that someday I’ll do what you’re doing right now. Beautiful work.
This might be silly, but . . . do you blog? 'Cause I’d totally read it if you did.
@dannybeans As a retired old dude with a very large workshop, I look for projects sometime… The chainsaw art was an accident. I had to cut down a rather large old cedar tree & I thought ‘what the hell, how bad could I do’… After watching a Youtube video & switching out my skip-tooth chain to a safety chain… I dove in.
The slabs were about to get pitched onto the burn-stack when I had an idea. I watched a wood-burning video on Youtube & became an ‘expert’… lol
I don’t know what blogging is… wait… I’ll Google it.
No. I don’t blog. You would be the only one reading it. I appreciate that you like my work though.
@daveinwarsh You are talented! I do not have the patience to do that kind of stuff. I bought myself a woodburning kit as a young teen. I did not do well.
I watch a few shop channels on YouTube. These are my favorite:
/youtube woodworking for mere mortals
/youtube shop time resin
/youtube positive couple table
@RiotDemon In the early '90’s I was super-into Furniture on the Mend, which they showed on our secondary PBS station for some reason.
@RiotDemon Cool. It’ll be a shame when those LED strips fail though.
@medz shouldn’t they pretty much last forever? I mean, unless you leave your table on constantly.
@medz @RiotDemon I can’t see someone having this table and not leaving it on constantly. As far as I can tell, that’s the entire point.
@RiotDemon Yeah, theoretically so should the LED rope lights I have on my back porch that have sections starting to fail after several years of use.
@mossygreen Horse haaaarrr!
@medz those are exposed to elements. These are encased in resin. No moisture can get to them.
@RiotDemon cept where it sticks out of the tabletop. I hope that does’t get any coffee spilling off the table onto it…also seems like it would get bent back and forth if it’s just dangling there…likely to just snap off clean after awhile.
@medz
/giphy Debbie downer
@mossygreen I loved that show! It had a completely random spot in our local PBS schedule, so I only ever saw it by chance, but damn was it entertaining.
@mossygreen Also: HOLY CRAP THEY’RE MAKING NEW EPISODES. Look for “The Old Furniture Guys” on Youtube.
@dannybeans I can’t tell you how happy I am to have found the other person with a strange, complicated, decades-spanning love of Furniture on the Mend. Super-happy! Obviously, it’s not just the two of us; @walarney definitely knows the secret passwords. But yeah, the new show looks good! They sound exactly the same and don’t look that much worse (not a compliment, I guess)!
@mossygreen If anything, I’d say they look better - Ed especially. Some guys were born to get old.
And yeah, it’s a hard show to find, but an easy one to like. I think if you’re a Car Talk fan, you’ll appreciate Furniture on the Mend. It has the same vibe.
I’d call myself a handyman; haven’t practiced enough with the fancy tools to be a proficient woodworker.
Lost the shop space I used to share so my tools just take up space in the garage. I dream of a shed in my near future, a dedicated workshop in retirement.
we do receive the Handyman magazine in the mail (well, one of my cats does) and I have enjoyed refinishing some furniture (and all our doors and window frames when we remodeled) but other than that, I got nothing
I’m currently building a workshop in an unused section of the big barn on our property in my spare time. It’s about 35 feet long by 15 wide, with a dirt floor.
Now that it’s cooling off, I’m hoping to make a big push and get the floors done in the next couple weeks. I’m using all reclaimed pallet wood for the job, which is slow going. To make the floorboards, I have to get the plank off the pallet, take the nails out, rip it to 3.5", plane it smooth with the jointer, and cut it to length. The joists supporting them are 18" center-to-center, so each board is 1.5’, 3’, or, occasionally, 4.5’ long. It’ll all get a linseed oil finish when it’s done, and then I can move the big tools in and build some workbenches.
After that, I’ll pour a concrete hearth and put in the wood stove I restored this spring. I doubt I’ll be able to afford the chimney in time to use it this winter, so I’ll be heating it with a couple of kerosene burners this year.
Then I need to put up some walls to separate it from the rest of the barn. It’s actually mostly separate now, but the ends are open, so walls and doors will go in. Then I’ll cut a couple of windows for more natural light, add a few more outlets, and it’ll be done.
This is all being done with salvaged materials in my spare time, so it’s going to take a long time - it’ll hopefully be usable by November, but it probably won’t be done until next fall at the very earliest. But hey, it gives me something to do.
Oh, and a dust control system, of course - airborne sawdust and woodstoves don’t always work well together. I plan to build one out of PVC pipe with exposed copper wire to ground it, all hooked up to a 25-gallon shop vac I got at a yard sale.
@dannybeans Yeah, working with pallet wood can be a real pain in the ass - the wood is usually VERY hard & the fasteners are specifically designed to HOLD TIGHT.
I used pallets for the flooring system of a temp garage/storage shed. My trouble was water seepage around the perimeter. Eventually (4yrs) the ‘canvas’ gave up the ghost. About half the pallets had dry rot & were tossed, but the rest are still stacked out back getting weathered.
/image Harbor Freight portable garage
@compunaut It certainly is a pain, but I’ve gotten pretty good at getting the boards off in one piece. It helps if I can grab them before they’ve been outside for too long. And the price is right - my budget is such that I can afford materials or tools, but not both. So I buy the tools, use them to make the materials, and then have something to put in the workshop.
I made a big push this weekend and finished the first half of the floor. That was my goal for the season, and it’s enough that I can start moving in once the polyurethane dries. That’ll be sometime later this week, because I’m giving it three coats of high-build, and I can only realistically do one coat a day. The next step will be pouring the hearth for the stove.
@dannybeans do you haa habit for humanity restore near you? They are a great source of cheap materials
There are a couple in my area, and I love them. But they tend to be better for furniture, hardware, and fixtures - neither ever has much in the way of lumber.
I’d love to try intarsia! Anyone have any suggestions for a woodworking novice?
@llangley
@llangley that is on my long list of things I want to try as well.
@llangley no skills but i think an irk in that style would be excellent in the meh office.
I swear a lot when putting together wooden furniture. Does that count?