Most woodworkers I meet always started the same way; you need to do a project or two around the house, so you buy a tool or two and it just escalates form there. Thats how it started for me and I’m guessing that if you are just starting out that’s how it is for you too.
One of the most basic projects that always seems to be made are frames. Whether it’s for a picture or a mirror it’s a great starter project. Personally around our house right now we have 4 rooms under renovation. One of these rooms had an old mirror with no frame that had just been glued to the wall. Water from the sink had worked itself up under it and ruined the edges of the reflective material. Additionally years of sloppy painting has left the edged looking distinctly tie-died.
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For the last 3 years since I’ve gotten into woodworking I’ve made do with an old 1HP Grizzly dust collector. It worked well enough when connected to one tool at a time. Up until recently that hasn’t been a problem. I left it connected to the table saw and used my shop vac on the router table. The only other power tool I had was a thickness planer with very poor dust collection anyway.
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I finally made the leap from a desktop as my main computer to a laptop.
I’ve been waiting ever since the 11″ MacBook Air was introduced, for Apple to put a decent processer in it. Finally that time as come and I jumped in and grabbed an i7 11″ Air.
Unfortunately my desk needs some rearranging to work with my new mobile lifestyle. I had to dump one of my monitors, and I need to make a stand to raise and angle my Air a bit, and maybe mount a few USB peripherals, we’ll see…
I haven’t had much time in the shop this summer as I’ve been building a coop for our ducks, managing a large garden and doing numerous outdoor things; but I had an itch to work with some hardwood so I decided to throw together a quick iPhone dock. I had some scrap Wenge and Cherry laying around so here is a quick gallery of the process. Read more…
Not that anyone cares enough to stalk me. But if you are going and want to hang out in some classes together here is my schedual: Read more…
Every project I start with begins 1 way… sketchup. The irony of me using this is free tool is I have a degree and certification in 3d modeling in Autodesk Maya (a high-end modeling and animation package used for movie production). But, for rapid modeling and design work it’s hard to beat the simplicity of Google Sketchup. (besides I’m WAY out of practice with my “pro” 3d tools)
This is my first “furniture” project out of hardwood and using traditional joinery. I started tinkering around with woodworking a little over a year ago and after a very intense first 6 months of learning and rehabbing old tools I managed to burn myself out. Read more…
