The newest piece to walk out of my home workshop. A dining bench up-cycled from a bed frame. If you are interested in seeing plans, drop a line to me, my contact is below. Make it safe & keep the … Continue reading This Week In the Shop: Dining Bench Made from Upcycled Bed Frame
Earlier in the year, the great folks at Canyon Mesquite donated a number of spalted red oak boards to make furniture out of. It took a while, but we finally made some great use of them. Finished with Howard’s Feed-N-Wax. … Continue reading This Week in The Classroom: The Simple Coffee Table in Spalted Red Oak
To end the year, my students have been making simple marking gauges. My students learned to create a mortise and use hand planes to fit a tenon in this particular project. Here’s how we did it. 1. Cut a 1″ or 3/4″ square oak strip into 8″ lengths. 2. Cut a 2″ length from a maple strip about 2″ wide, giving you a 2″ x 2″ square. 3. Use the oak strip to mark your mortise in the center of the maple square. We did this by marking two diagonals across the maple square and then eye-balling the center. Mark the square … Continue reading This Week in the Shop: A Simple Pin Marking Gauge
A little while ago, I ran a book review on One Block of Wood. I recently made a pair of bookends using Ms. Tolstrup’s plans out of salvaged pine and live oak. Hope you enjoy the looksee. Read a good book this week. Especially books on pirates! Make it safe & keep the rubberside down. Continue reading This Week In the Shop: One Block Projects – Book Ends
My new “little” project obsession: try squares. These guys mark boards square. That’s it. All they do. The try, not tri, comes from the act of “trying” an angle to see if it’s square, not three, or tri. This slideshow punctuated by a few of my favorite song titles, puns and lyrics in no particular order. These tools come together quite easily. First, I rip a 2×4 into 1/4″ or 3/8″ inch thick strips. Then I flatten one side of the strip using a hand plane. After checking each strip for flatness, I rip the piece again on my … Continue reading This Week in the Classroom: Try Squares
Recyclart.org is a site dedicating to showing off recycled and salvaged projects from readers around the world. If you’ve followed WodoshopCowboy for a while, you know I make the most of the Houston ReUse Warehouse’s offerings. Here’s another shot at how my boys and I used louvered shutters and fence posts to create some pretty sweet little coffee tables last semester. Check it out there or at the original post here… Remember to make it safe, keep the rubberside down this week and like WoodshopCowboy on Facebook! Continue reading Check Out the Shutter Table Project on Recyclart.org
Since I moved into my new digs in April, my shop has undergone a number of changes. I blogged about the move-in and of course I went and changed it immediately. First, a couple bright spots. Not long after I unloaded everything I realized two very important things about home ownership. One, you can put holes in whichever wall you want, where ever you want, when you want. Two, it’s expensive. But not these lights. Remember to buy the bulbs and make sure you wire’m up according to fire code. I’m a midnight rider now. My new bench looks a … Continue reading This Week in the Shop: Plywood Storage & Lights & New Workbench
Here’s a few shots of a project build I did a few months ago. The challenge was to build a recycling container from completely recycled materials. I picked up some nice crepe myrtle branches and immediately saw a V shaped stand with a small basket to collect recyclable goods. To bad we never did finish it. We got all the way to the crossbeam. Spring break came with all the lassitude of a wilted Texas flower in August. We never stood a chance. Eventually, I snookered a student into repainting an old cabinet door into a chalkboard sign. Then I parked … Continue reading This Week in the Classroom: Swingin’ Chalkboard Signs
Students with autism, people with neurological disorders and people with two eyes and ears and a brain often need a place to talk. For my students with autism, the act of conversation can be harrowing, heartwrenching and terrifying. On a … Continue reading This Week in the Classroom: The Conversation Bench
Two projects really took off this summer – chalkboard slates and boomerangs. The boomerangs, of course, took off a little bit more. Back in the fall I built a bike barn. It’s more of a third-world shanty, but it housed the bikes and kept them sort of organized. Either way, I picked up a large number of cedar shingles as a roofing material. Time got away from me – I never roofed the barn. Instead, I used the shingles to create these cool little chalkboard slates. I used an exterior paint as primer, then covered them in green chalkboard paint. … Continue reading This Week in the Classroom: Boomerangs and Chalkboard Slates
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