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Cylindrical tealight holders
A quite simple project that involved turning an old balustrade post, cracked and riddled and cutting wine bottles. I used my recently built router turning jig to turn one cylinder, slightly bigger in diameter as that was reduced later on by sanding. I noticed that there is actually no need to rotate the piece all the time, and what worked was to route it all the way through, from one end to another and then rotate it clockwise a little bit, do the pass and so on. That didn’t apply to the recesses at both ends. Once it was done…
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Quick bowl
To cut out the disc I used 1 flush trim router bit, 2 base plates and reversed parallel fence. The first cut was done halfway through to prepare the groove for the bearing, which was obviously the same size as the bit. Once I had the disc done I reversed the parallel fence to its original setup, I swapped the base plates and installed my bowl router bit. I took a couple of passes for the outside groove and then I used my plunge base to remove the centrepiece. I flipped the bowl over and used a round-over bit for…
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Burnt tote box
A piece of scrap wood was cut to size on my table saw. I then prepared the router table and the system of fences. It actually worked very well, but it was only set for a shallow, first pass, to route the recess for future processing. I then clamped the piece down and used another flush trim bit to deepen the groove. It looked quite nice at that stage, but I decided to round off all the edges with my round-over bit. It looked rudely before sanding, quite bad and I had second thoughts… But after sanding it got a…
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Router turning jig
Buying a lathe is not very expensive, but it takes space to store. That was the reason to build that jig. It’s easy to store, and it uses my router tabletop. The square log pictured below was another reason that I built this jig. I started with the metal elements. Cutting to length, drilling holes and countersinking them. 2 types of screws were used as this jig is fixed on one side and can be adjusted on the other side in the future. Larger screws had too big heads for this project, so I resized them down with some grinding.…
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Where am I sign
I used an old toilet seat – yes … a toilet seat … to make the sign. The plan was simple: contact adhesive for the print and the smallest router bit for the lettering. Once the routing was finished I removed the paper and used black spray paint to cover the grooves. One, heavy, dripping coat did the job. Once sanded it looked a little better: I used my jigsaw to cut out the arrow shape and then moved to my sanding station to smooth out the edges. I also prepared the aluminium tube which involved cutting, grinding, drilling holes…
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Coffee table for one
It had to be easy to move and quite small, but big enough to accommodate a cup of coffee and a TV remote. I started up by cutting the timber to length. Then I cut dados using my table saw. Not too deep, as they will only prevent the parts from spinning around. Pocket holes were next. Once drilled, their edges were cleaned with little rasps and sandpaper. Every joint was reinforced with glue. Fixing the last one was a little tricky, I managed by using my ratchet spanner. I also used additional screws for the bottom pieces – having…
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Earring hanger
This one is very like a regular picture frame except that there’s no artwork and its substitute is loaded from the front, not the back. That was the goal, to expose the whole grille and keep all these little squares visually equal. The timber was rough cut to length on a table saw. It was then ready for routing. To complete the task I had to use 4 router bits, a DIY-ed router table-top and a fence (for the bits without a bearing). The last step was to put chamfers on the bottom edges and deepen the recess for the…
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Coffee wall art
To make the board I used pallet wood. Planks were cut in half, then rip cut to width. The board was cut to length on a table saw and that was followed by sanding. I left some saw marks and a couple of stains. I used a homemade wood dye (vinegar + steel wool) to age the board. Then I used spray paint to darken the edges. Always use the right screwdriver for the job, no matter how small the job or the screwdriver is. PZ1 is small. Cutting MDF with a jigsaw couldn’t be postponed endlessly. It was done…
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Shed shelves
I needed some place to store my timber and plywood/MDF sheets. Something quite small, to save space in the shed and big enough to accommodate a 4′ x 2′ sheet. All elements were fixed inside the shed except for the one that I started with. I didn’t have an extra hand so I improvised with temporary supports. Once the frame was done I prepared for pocket hole joinery. The lower shelf is built for shorter material (shorter spacing) and the upper one for longer pieces of timber. It has the right size and it’s very sturdy. It will help me…
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Low stand
Scrap plywood was used to build the box. First I cut everything to width and length. Then I set the blade to 45º and removed the corners from all 4 pieces. The glue-up wasn’t as easy as I expected. My corner clamps were too big for this project and I had to do some overlapping. This seems to be every woodworker’s problem – we all need more clamps! The glue squeeze-out was cleaned with a damp cloth but some hardened glue had to be removed with a chisel. I built a provisional thin strip ripping jig and cut some timber…
