If you enjoy the projects, plans, tool primers & gear reviews, curriculum, lessons and (maybe) a few of the editorials you see here, show your support by liking WoodshopCowboy on Facebook!
At thirty likes I’ll throw all the names in for a hat for up a prize – the Tea Box in maple and walnut.
So go on, throw your name in the ring…just stick around for that prize drawing.
Filed under This Week In the Shop, Workshop
Last Saturday I had the chance to introduce ten students to woodworking tools – great bunch! If you are interested in learning how to use power tools and are in the Houston area, why don’t you sign up for a class over at TX/RX Labs?
Intro to Woodworking Tools behind the tablesaws. 110 fingers.
Join me for a second class in June!
Make it safe & keep the rubberside down this weekend.
Filed under Community Watch
In the next two Tool Primer articles, I will discuss my process for finishing a woodworking project. The finishing process is the difference between a good woodworking project and a heirloom piece of furniture. When I want to really knock a project out of the park, I focus much of my energy on choosing and creating a proper finish.
Boiled Linseed Oil, Shellac, Paste Wax
So here’s my advice: sand it well and thin it as well.
In this article, I’ll focus on sanding. More after the jump!
Continue reading
Filed under Tool Primer
For those readers who are looking to get into woodworking and live in the Houston area, consider joining me for Intro to Woodworking Tools on Saturday, April 13, 9am to 12pm at TX/RX Labs.
This summer’s selection @ TX/RX Labs
I will be focusing on safety procedures for a number of common hand power tools, the table saw, router, oscillating sander, miter saw and others. Check out the link above for more information!
Filed under Community Watch
Every year, I celebrate a my student’s success (and my survival) with 250,000 of my closest friends. How do I do that? I take a van filled with students and covered in wood butterflies downtown for a little ride.
A little ride in the Houston Art Car Parade.
If you are a Houstonian maker, teacher, artist, mover or shaker, you need to fire up the welders, put on the mechanic’s gloves, break out the oil paints and get creative. It’s Art Car season!
Make it safe and keep the rubber-side down.
Filed under Community Watch
Some tools do only one thing well. Some tools do a lot of things well if you know how to use them. The jigsaw (or sabersaw), in my opinion, is unique in the pantheon of modern woodworking tools as it does nearly everything with equal parts of ineptness and frustration. So why keep it around? It’s the only portable tool that cuts curves. And that makes it invaluable in the shop when the project calls for it.
D Handled Jigsaw
Filed under Tool Primer, Workshop
This weekend I got the opportunity to enjoy a some beautiful weather & check out Houston’s Sustainable Living Fest held at Market Square Park. Houston might be the epicenter of the oil & gas industry, but it has a wonderful green and sustainable environmental underground. There’s a lot of cross-pollination too. For example, the Galveston Bay Foundation raises salt marsh grass in donated space inside a NRG power plant. The City of Houston has a number of big corporations headquartered here and its also funds the Houston ReUse Warehouse.
Lots of companies, non-profits and government agencies were represented yesterday. Hope to see you there next year!
Make it safe & keep the rubberside down this weekend.
Filed under Community Watch, Education, Outdoor & Environmental
If you give a woodworker a table saw, he realizes new vistas awakening in his craft. If you give him a table saw, he’d like a sweet router table. If he makes that router table, he’d need a bench to store his other bench-top tools. If he has a stand for his bench-top tools, he’d want storage for their accessories…..
Click to download the Sketch Up model!
Filed under Storage, This Week In the Shop, Workshop
My school spends a lot of time, energy and financial resources on project-based learning. In my experience, teachers use project-based learning as a catch-all term for anything from make-it-take-it projects which last twenty minutes to inquiry-driven, rubric-graded, long-term explorations. Calling the former project-based learning is lazy and misdirection. Creating incredible experiences for students with the latter definition is exhausting and rewarding. Most of the time, a teacher must follow a middle course. This is one of those projects.
We started off by designing and building pantographs. If you don’t know anything about pantographs – check out the video below. Also check out http://www.peter.com.au/articles/pantograph.html for instructions on how to build a professional-quality pantograph. This site contains a java applet which allows students to digitally explore a pantograph’s mechanics before use. I’ve included a Sketch Up model in my section of the 3D Warehouse.
Afterwards, my student’s worked through a number of percentage problems based on their pantograph’s working results. I don’t include a lot of variety in the type of problems, but you can modify the problem sets to reflect your curriculum needs. If this series of projects interest you, feel free to use them in your own classroom.
Make it safe & keep the rubberside down this week.
Last week, I showed everyone the biggest project sitting on my workbench. This week I completed the footboard just in time for Valentine’s Day. I celebrated its completion by buying my wife a dozen roses, and taking her on not one, but two, dates in one weekend.
Completed footboard. Click on the picture to see the Sketch Up file and examine the construction.
But I’m back in the doghouse, I mean, woodshop now.
I hope you enjoyed the pictures. I designed the footboard with dovetailed (and splinted) carcass, rear panels from birch ply floating in dados, solid wood support beams on the ends.
Finishing this guy was an adventure in and of itself. I discovered a rule about shellac: never use shellac when it’s raining. The humidity causes a white-ish blushing. I had to wipe off the shellac with a rag soaked in alcohol to solve the issue…which caused most of the unevenness you can see in the photos. It’s not terribly noticeable in real life, but the flash brings out the worst.
Make it safe & keep the rubber-side down this week.
Filed under Furniture, This Week In the Shop, Workshop
In my Applied Mathematics class, woodshop has put the shop in applied. During a unit on fractions, I asked students to build a number of these try squares, all different shapes and sizes. In order to assess my students ability to read a ruler and calculate fractions, I made all the dimensions wonky. No 8″ cuts for my students! Dimensions looked like 8 3/4″, 4 3/8″, 5 “1/16 and all sorts of foolishness. Once I felt my students had mastered the build process, we took our show to Houston’s Mini-Maker Faire!
Click here to download the File from Sketch Up’s 3D Warehouse
The construction process for a tool like this can be as complex as you want, something simpler, or something you can complete in five minutes. The five minute version sounds like this:
1. Cut your beam from straight-edged 1″or 3/4″ x 1/4″ thick stock. I like mine about 8″. You can get thin stock like this at Home Depot or Lowe’s, but I’m not sure on the widths available.
2. Cut three 6″ lengths to become your try square stock.
3. Use a speed square set the interior angle while you clamp the four pieces together with carpenters glue. The middle piece of stock should stick out of the center by the width of your beam.
4. Wait until the glue dries. Carefully use a chisel or file to remove the squeeze out.
5. Check accuracy.
“Be Square With the World, Take Good Care of Your Tools” – The Carpenter, Guy Clark
At the end of every square build, we tested the accuracy of our try squares. I used this pdf to explain the process and try to introduce proportions to my young charges. We successfully created a handful of accurate try squares. We created way more inaccurate try squares. I know, you could use those other plans and have a perfect try square. You could build ten of mine and come away with three working models!
I’ve found this is a great project for medium-sized hands. With the smaller students (or quicker builds) we screwed the stock and beam together.
How accurate will your try square be?
Make it safe & keep the rubber-side down this weekend!
Filed under Classroom Project
