Woodworking

I'm making my own white oak door jambs. So far I did one set. I milled some rough cut oak, made two passes through the table saw to roughly remove a rabbet for the integrated door stop.

Then I ran it through the table saw again with a dado stack to get the rabbet to the final dimensions. The problem is, it's difficult to apply even pressure as the wood passes over the dado stack. I already have a featherboard pushing against the fence, but I'm thinking I could use another pushing against the saw top.

I know I can put one on my fence, but that would apply pressure to the part of the board closest to the fence only. Do they make any contraptions that can apply even pressure downwards, but over a larger surface area? Like multiple featherboards extended out over the work piece.

Finished the wooden top structure for the enclosure for the soon to come land turtle.

It will get a kind of net to it (its purpose is to keep cats and birds of prey from messing with the turtle)

Made of white oak, with plenty of joinery and braces to keep it strong and stable.

Still a finishing here or there but I think I’ll leave it more or less rough sawn an untreated.

Can anyone tell me how can I flatten a Minecraft heart please? I've put this together:

https://www.instructables.com/MineCraft-Heart-wood/

but I've noticed that it bows slightly. I've managed to get the ends to raise slightly when I've screwed it together. The top needs to be smoothed too, as there are some small differences between the pieces. Both sides are only off by a millimetre or two, but it's enough to be noticeable.

My thinking is to clamp it down at the centre, which seems to be mostly flat on both sides, then sand the top until it's level, then flip it over and clamp the edges to smooth the bottom.

Are there any likely problems with doing it this way, or is there a better way of doing it? Thanks in advance :)

I had a plan in my head for a custom end table for quite a while, something made of local wood, a book shelf, and integrated wireless charger. This is the result.

Wood is arbutus wood, treated with tung oil just need to add a drawer. Plans are entirely unique, made in Civil3d. I took the raw wood, rough cut it, planed it, sanded and polished. It's as close to scratch as you can get.

I made a quick and dirty zero clearance plate to cut some small pieces, but realised that I needed to cut a larger piece of MDF while I was working. Ok, I thought, the saw is already set up, it won't take a minute.

Then promptly cut the zero clearance board in half...

I used walnut for the box and handcut dovetails for the joinery. I had triangular offcuts that I glued together to make the lid.

I made this a few years ago so I can't remember if I used handtools or a table saw to dimension the wood.

The finish is pure Tung Oil.

Thanks for reading!

god. dammit I have to table saw this butcher block apart.

Has anyone ever experimented with Banksia wood for woodworking? The picture used by one random seller online looks pretty interesting. I’m not in Australia, so I don’t really have the wood available and don’t want to spend $$$$ shipping something that might be awful.

What it came up with is too good not to share:

Conventional wisdom regarding finishing cutting boards and other food prep surfaces is to coat them heavily with mineral oil and/or a food safe paste wax to "seal" and/or "condition" them. Seri Robinson asserts otherwise, her research has shown that any finish applied to wood decreases its natural anti-microbial properties.

I'm still not quite happy with my current toolbox, so I’ve decided to design my own. I intend to follow the “first order retrievability” principle, meaning every tool should be accessible with one hand, without having to move anything else out of the way. I’ve made fixed tool holders from PVC pipe before - it’s a familiar, readily available material for me.

I haven’t settled on the final design yet - this sketch is just to get the idea across. My main issue is figuring out how to secure the pipes to the plywood frame. I can screw the first row into the sides and central divider, but the next row would either need to be attached to the surrounding pipes or mounted from the bottom. I’ve used screws thru the base before, and while it works, it tends to deform the pipe. I’m wondering if there’s an alternative I’m overlooking - ideally something that can also be disassembled later, since the design will probably go through several iterations.

I’m also open to any tips or ideas on what else to incorporate into the design. I’m a general handyman, so I’m carrying most of the common hand tools to jobs. For power tools, I have a separate bag.

I can try to find a picture of my current tool bag so you’ll have a better idea of the setup I’m aiming for.

Here are the parts it is built from

Took a few minutes to build, and in the end it is very stiff, light and long!

I'm making a box to store a pizza. The box itself is pretty straight forward, cherry wood, box joints and basically a groove in the bottom with a piece of plywood (cherry plywood) to act as the bottom. I'm pretty happy with how the bottom went together but for the top I'm having an issue....

So for the top I have a 3/8ths piece of roughly 10x10 with basically a dado around the edge so it insets slightly into the box. The problem I'm having is that when a pizza goes in, it bows a bit. I'm guessing it's the steam from the pizza but so far I've been able to put something heavy on it and it comes out but I want to prevent it in the future.

I'm thinking a couple strips on the underside (basically across to U that forms) might help (with some glue and a couple of screws). I've also "sealed" it with a food grade oil but I'm looking for thoughts if this will or won't help and any possible alternatives.

Could have sworn I had more 6" & 24" trigger clamps for stuff like this

I'm trying to do my very first table top out of hardwood but it proving to be quite the learning curve. I acquired a small benchtop jointer and a lunchbox type thickness planer and I've more or less successfully made my boards. What I'm struggling with now is getting a nice glue up without gaps. My first try turned out so so, and i was afraid i didn't use enough glue so I re ripped the joints with my tracksaw. I think my boards are evenly thick but they seem a bit hourglass shaped if that makes sense. They'reb about 170cm long and they join up on the ends, but there's about a 1mm gap towards the middle on some joints and its too much to squeeze all the gaps together on the panel. I first tried jointing on the benchtop jointer but got horrible results with the small bed. (Could also be lack of skill as this is all new to me). I then went with a tracksaw and parallel guides instead,which is better but still giving me a bit of a gap. So I guess im asking how more experienced woodworkers would proceed.

Would it help to glue up two boards at a time so there's maybe enough strength in the clamps to squeeze the gap shut. Or should i rip the bigger boards down so they all fit upright in the thickness planer and try to get two really parallel sides that way? I have rollers to extend the beds of both the thicknesser and the jointer but have had better results with the thicknesses. Is there something else I'm not thinking of?

Plywood for the main box (3/4" sides, 1/4" back, rabbet and dado joints). Cut the door 1" too narrow so I added a handle from cedar scrap. Shelves and sheet pan brackets are reclaimed bed slats, planed. Window hole is routed with plexiglass insert, my first time doing any significant router work.

First bake came out well:

The brackets for the baking sheet have a cutout to accommodate two bowls. My goal was either two bowls or two baking sheets.

An obvious improvement would be to install an under-counter outlet so the cord is less prominent.

Heating is from a 45W incandescent bulb (which was the hardest part to find). It's in the top of an old desk lamp. Adding an 8x8" pan of hot water kept the humidity high so I didn't have to cover the rising bread. Temperature/humidity logging is from an SHT30 (plus two DS18B20s) running Tasmota and reportig to HomeAssistant, viewed in Grafana. I expected to have to cycle the light, but just keeping it always on seems to give me the right temperature range.

Hi woodworkers

I've recently picked up a few tools to get into artisanal woodwork, and I want to do 1 or 2 projects that entails hollowing out natural branches.

The "perfect" outcome would be something similar to bamboo shoot, which have a narrow edge and hollow center. I'm not really expecting to be able to do this by hand with millimetric accuracy, but it gives you an idea of what I'm aiming for.

I own a high-speed rotary tool that is "technically" able to carve wood, but the bits I own atm are more of a finish toolkit. I successfully used a sanding head to carve out some wood, but I don't think it's remotely optimal for projects any bigger than what I was working on.

So all this context leads to this question: What would be the optimal tool to efficiently hollow out a branch? I can't reliably use a drill, because there's no certainty that the branches I'll work with will be remotely straight, I'm guessing that a mill file could get me some mileage but it sounds like a last resort kind of tool.

I’m thinking of making something similar to these stackable shelves. But I want to do it using hand tools only so it seems plywood is out of the question (searching online said it would damage my Japanese hand saw). So I’m looking at solid wood instead and getting pine hobby boards that I won’t have to plane seems to be the easiest and cheapest alternative. The shelves will mostly hold records and books and the largest will probably be 30x30x75cm but stacked on other shelves. Am I in for a bad time?

For a small musical instrument I need a thin sheet of spruce (1.5mm). Normally I'd just buy a guitar or lute top, but for this one I need the highest quality I can get, with very narrow rings. So my idea is to saw down a blank for a violin top (25mm at its thickest point). I need to do this with as little waste as possible, because a good spruce top can cost 100-300€.

Is there a way I can do this with hand tools?

I'm a renovation contractor that builds a lot of decks and I've been having the worst results trying to find a product to seal/stain cedar. It turns grey quite fast so most clients want it sealed and or stained. Any recommendations would be appreciated.