Roland Rolson

It had to be done, sooner or later. I stared at the empty and unused space just above the radiator and realised I had some scrap material that would be perfect for a shelf. So I checked if there were any pipes or cables using my wall detector and moved to the shed to cut the timber. Using a 12 mm bit I drilled 2 holes for the bracket pins. I installed a fence to my router and cut grooves, perfectly parallel to each other and of course to the board edges. With the fence removed I routed out the…

It’s made of 3 parts joined together with glue and nails. There were a couple of reasons I built it that way, without using mouldings cut at 45º and without chamfering the biggest, main element at its top. If I used the most obvious approach the post would be shorter by a couple of inches (~70 mm). My build was fast and easy. It was also safe – the biggest part was too big and heavy to be cut over my table saw, the mitre gauge fence was too weak to hold it square at all times. That’s why I…

This is part 2 of the build, making the leg is shown in this post. This part will show the process of making the capital plate, the top, 4 transition blocks and the final assembly. For the capital plate, I cut the timber to length, flattened it with my router flattening jig and then cut the rabbets on both ends using my table saw. For non-through cuts like rabbets, it is OK to use the fence as a stop block. Next, I rip-cut the parts to width and sanded them by hand. I cut the half-lap joints and glued everything…

This project is entirely built with scrap material, 3.3 mm (1/8″) MDF board and the idea was to stay at home and build at home, without going to a shop. So I used what I had on hand. I cut all 3 pieces using my jigsaw and filed down the edges with my mini files. I put the assembly together with a bit of contact adhesive, and just in case I used clamps to hold them tight for a minute or two. The decoration is exactly the same size as the frame and stays in place by itself, but I…

I am a big fan of one-leg tables, it shows. I also love the colour and the texture of the wood finished with the shou-sugi-ban technique. This build is part of a bigger project, but due to its size and complexity, the process is shown in 2 separate posts. I started by cutting the leg to size using only a circular saw! Not bad results at all! In the meantime, I replaced my mitre bar with a new one that I built myself. I was then able to do the rest of the cutting on my table saw. I cut…

This wood comes from the tree I cut down over 1 year ago. I saved this piece from burning in a fireplace because I had that vision, straight away when I saw it first – a wall art. But just until now, the front side was the one originally facing out the tree. That made sense to me but when I cleaned the piece for further processing I realised it looked like … an arse. So the vision changed. I had to flatten both the front and the back, just a little, to nail a picture hanger. I clamped the…

Templates first! Due to the bowl router bit size, its height and the bearing position, the template had to be quite thick. That would allow me to make a whole range of depths from 0 to 1/2 inch, maybe deeper. I know from my experience that cutting curved lines with a jigsaw can go wrong, and the blade can bend. To avoid that I cut close to the line and then removed the rest with the same blade by cutting perpendicular to the line. That consumed more time, but it was the thing to do. If you don’t have a…