Category Archives: This Week In the Shop

This Week in the Shop: End of Summer Program

The summer program wraps up today.   Our summer program acts as an experimental zone, a transitional buffer and a slice of consistency for both teachers and students.  Personally, I love summer programs – no grades, no pressure, just the chance to provide as fun and therapeutic educational experience as possible.  Anyways, this summer saw the returnContinue reading “This Week in the Shop: End of Summer Program”

This Week in the Shop: Cardboard Prototypes

This week’s word:  Prototypes.  Brought to you by the letter C for cardboard. What a week!  My students spent last week drawing and planning and designing and planning and planning.  We got outside this week! My chair group is off to a fast start.  Both “makers” have created cardboard prototypes for their chairs, while theContinue reading “This Week in the Shop: Cardboard Prototypes”

This Week in the Shop: The Cajon Drum

This week, I prepped for this summer’s woodshop classes.  The students will be building these benches, mending and designing chairs and constructing Cajon drums.  I’ve secured enough lumber for the benches, pulling plywood chair designs from various sources and built this example project.  Look to the above link for construction details. I finished the sidesContinue reading “This Week in the Shop: The Cajon Drum”

Tool Primer: Painting A Room

In February, I learned the necessity of insurance, family, cash-in-your-pocket and good-quality plumbing.  My house flooded – and I’m talking spectacular water-from-the-ceiling, I-hope-this-never-happens-to-a-house-I-own flood. Every room in my house received flood damage.  We moved out for a month and the landlord gave us a new house (ok, his insurance did).  I will say this: weContinue reading “Tool Primer: Painting A Room”

This Week in the Shop: Children’s Picnic Table

This week in the shop, I got the chance to use up a few of the pine boards laying in the woodpile.  My son got a picnic table out of the deal.  The table is 24″ L, 11″ W & about 11″ H. The table: The chair (the rails are too close together): The resultContinue reading “This Week in the Shop: Children’s Picnic Table”

This Week in the Shop: Reading Stand from Salvaged Wainscoting

Here’s my latest workshop creation.  It’s a small reading stand for my wife’s grandmother (or rather, mine too, I guess).  The curly flame maple isn’t actual wood, but some sort of printed-Formica laid over some pretty expensive chipboard.  The Formica/chipboard came off a local office’s wainscoting, and I just had to grab a coupla panels. Continue reading “This Week in the Shop: Reading Stand from Salvaged Wainscoting”

This Week in the Shop: A Granite Trestle Table (for Grillin’)

There’s a saying in electronic/maker/hacker circles. Sometimes, you just need enough junk before you can start doing cool stuff. You need a “critical mass” of stuff.  This trestle table came together because of a “critical mass” of junk.  The pressure treated base was scrap pieces from a variety of sources (work, my own projects, etc)Continue reading “This Week in the Shop: A Granite Trestle Table (for Grillin’)”

This Week In The Shop: Jewelry Box

One of my MasterClass students finished a jewelry box just in time for Mother’s Day.  He’s been working for close to three months on it. We began with a design consultation, in which we researched various box designs on the web.  I want to give a big thank-you to Andy, an extremely talented and generous woodworkerContinue reading “This Week In The Shop: Jewelry Box”

Bookshelf in Mission Style

This bookshelf recently left the workshop at school.  The bookshelf started life as an illustration in The Project Gutenberg EBook of Mission Furniture, by H. H. Windsor, otherwise known as the good fellows at Popular Mechanics. Which the student modified to suit the schools current needs.  The CAD mock-up looked like this: In the end,Continue reading “Bookshelf in Mission Style”