This weekend, I finally made it up to Vermont to grab the remainder of my lumber and I am so glad I did.

In addition to the reclaimed pine (which I left up there for use in a kitchen table for my mother), I apparently had a sizable amount of hard maple and red oak, some dimensional cherry I had forgotten about and (most amazingly)  a couple board feet of 12/4 ash that must have been off-cuts from my dining table project.  Not to mention another 40 board feet or so of pine siding off-cuts (more dovetailing practice!).  I’m fairly confident that I won’t need to buy any new lumber for a while.

One of the more interesting finds was a set of four, shaped pine legs that were set aside from the bulk lumber.

Super random!

At approximately 23″ tall, I think they were part of an abandoned side table project (which in all likelihood began as shaping practice).  I’m happy to re-purpose them (and some of the pine siding off-cuts for rails and tabletop) into a little table.  It will be a nice little project for my week off.

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I’m not immune to mistakes.  No one is.  Someone once said (I’m drastically paraphrasing) that the sign of an accomplished woodworker is the ability to hide the inevitable mistakes.

Sometimes, mistakes are minor and can be easily corrected.  Sometimes, you start chopping mortises on the wrong side of the benchtop for the mini workbench you’re making for your niece and nephew.

Like this time.

I’m fortunate to have left the lamination for the mini workbench a bit thick, so I have some leeway to skim 1/8″ off the other side to clean it up.

I left it a bit rough because it was supposed to be the underside.

So all in all, no harm no foul.  And, for the record, no one would ever know, had I not mentioned it.

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Practicing what I preach, I took a few hours off this weekend and hand-prepared some leftover pine paneling for joinery.

Pine paneling off-cuts from my cousin Gary are my main source of casual dovetailing stock.

I forget sometimes what a joy to work generic pine can be.  Fluffy, flat-sawn white pine planes nicely, saws easily, shoots smoothly and produces the tightest dovetails I’m capable of cutting (mostly through fiber compression).  And any slight cup in the boards definitely presses right out when the dovetails close.

Apparently the lighting makes the pencil marks look like terrible gaps.

The above box is about 18″ x 12″ and will probably serve no real purpose.  It’s not the right shape for a bench top chisel case and much too small for any meaningful toolbox, so I will probably just glue and nail it to a base and give it to someone for use as a junk tray (for recent mail and receipts and such).

Even I’m allowed a “look at this thing I made” post once in a while.

I haven’t yet prepared the base, but I’ve got about 24 board feet of select pine for an eventual tool-chest project from which I can borrow when I get some time next weekend. I also need to smoothing plane off the pencil marks and flush the joints, but I’ll get to that next weekend as well.

Come to think of it, I’m going to the Mets game on April 19 (a Matt Harvey start, weather permitting), so maybe it will be the weekend after next.

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I am officially over making footstools.

This is the last one, I swear to Glob.

I finally got around to making the third of three footstools for my brother’s new house.  The first two footstools were for my niece and nephew.  This third one is for use in the kitchen.

This is very clearly a utility piece.  Made from home center Douglas Fir 2×10 (leftover from the Planing Slab project), I opted to be super lazy and left the stock pretty close to original thickness and width (after some rough flattening, straightening and squaring).  I just realized that I forgot to mark the pieces to ensure continuous grain in the three main boards, but I imagine it will get a couple of coats of paint regardless.

I think that in hardwood, I would have been comfortable with just the two sides and the top.  But in something as soft as Douglas Fir, I opted for an additional cross-support, which connects to the sides via mortise and tenon.  I did not glue or otherwise attach the cross-support to the underside of the top to allow a tiny bit of flex.

Solid as a rock in softwood.

Speaking of flex, one nice byproduct of using such a soft wood is that the entire piece has a bit of give throughout.  This means that any bit of twist or wobble the piece might have (due to an uneven floor or what have you) vanishes when the weight of a person is applied.

With this done, I am now done with footstools, forever.  Probably not forever, but certainly for a while.

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I have been pouring over potential plant stand designs for several weeks and I finally settled on what I think will work. The final height of the pot should end up roughly the same as the temporary fix (see below), which has been a useful guide.  I haven’t nearly finished the build yet, but some of the stock (scrap hard maple) is at least surfaced and ready for final dimensioning and joinery.

In my continued quest to not turn The Apartment Woodworker into a “look at this awesome thing that I made with my awesome tools” kind of website, I would like merely to share the design specs and explain some of the choices.  I am certain the design will be refined further through the build process, but for now, I am satisfied with the aesthetic baseline.

Careful readers will note the ratio of each leg above and below the cross-member is almost exactly that of a lightsaber (or, if you’re boring, a katana).

First, the piece only has three legs. While there has been much going on lately in the world of three-legged furniture, I really just wanted some practice cutting angled tenons and chopping angled mortises. Much of what I design and build is square and true, which can get pretty boring. Plus, the splay and the angle of the legs will keep it stable and the tops of the legs will secure the pot laterally.

Second, the hub design was born from how to get the correct splay angle on the legs. I initially gravitated toward a lapped t-shape (seen top right), which would have reduced the number of individual pieces but required a compound angle on each tenon. Unfortunately, the piece will be weight-bearing, and that compound angle would not place the load on the legs parallel with the mortise and tenon. The hub design, though, allows for the in-line load distribution.  I can drawbore each leg assembly to the hub for an eternal joint, even with the additional complexity.

Finally, although the drawing doesn’t show it, I will probably shape the legs a bit as an excuse to put my new spokeshave (a very old Stanley with a very new blade) through it’s paces.

In case you are wondering, this is my current, temporary solution.  River ate the crown off the left stem, which was the impetus for this particular project.

Now I just have to build the thing. I’ll post pictures when it’s finished.

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