I
started woodworking out of necessity when I was a master's graduate student and
Cyndy and I had no furniture. I have never had any formal training in
woodworking, I just read a lot of Fine Woodworking magazines and messed up a lot
of projects at first. I have setup a shop in most of the locations we have lived over the last 20 years
including a single-stall garage in
a condo, a rebuilt barn, a basement in a home we were housesitting and a variety of
other garages like the one below at a farm in Minnesota.
It is great when I have lots or room for tools. I have used lots of different machinery. I started
out with Sears stationary power tools, but have had Powermatic, Delta, Davis and
Wells, Northfield, Inca, Hammer and others. I especially liked getting old
vintage machinery and rebuilding them. I have gone through phases where I like to work with
different woods, oak, walnut, mahogany, and now cherry. Below is a mahogany
dresser with hand cut half-blind dovetails I designed and built in the early
1980's.
I have a shop setup in the garage on
campus, but have not been doing many projects lately, mostly speakers and some
miscellaneous furniture projects, but I have good intentions. There are a number of
furniture projects pending, but I seem to not have gotten the time to build much
in the last few years. My current shop includes a Hammer-brand multipurpose
tool that includes a jointer, planer, shaper and sliding-table table saw in one
unit.
In 2011 I finally got around to machining up a pile of
birch that has been sitting in the shop for years into a bed to match our bedroom set. I
made a series of cutouts
in the headboard for
cold-cast bronze plaques of the four seasons, fun stuff.
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Raw Lumber Sorted
First Machining
Two sanded coats of Watco