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woodworking Archives - Page 2 of 5 - The Year of Mud

Check This: The Completed Roubo Workbench

By Woodworking
Split Top Roubo Workbench

The newly finished Roubo workbench, made of ash

Our attempt at building a split-top Roubo workbench is, more or less, complete. We put the finishing touches on it over the weekend, and suffice to say, things are feeling pretty good right now. This workbench is going to enable us to do some serious woodworking not just immediately, but likely for a long, long time…

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Mini Workbench Photo Update

By Woodworking
Jointing Split Top Roubo Workbench Top

Sending one half of the (heavy) workbench top over the jointer

During my five day Roubo workbench building marathon with Jacob, I didn’t take much time to pick up the camera. But I did snap a few photos when I could. The days were rather long. Now that we’re home and the workbench is painfully close to completion, I thought I would share a few from our recent expedition.

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DIY Woodworking Workbench Plans

By Woodworking
split top roubo workbench plans

Roubo-style Ash Workbench

The time has finally arrived. After almost two years of dreaming about building a workbench for woodworking, and sitting on a cache of wood for the project for nearly a year, we’re building a Roubo workbench. This style of bench is named after André Jacob Roubo, a French woodworker who lived during the 18th century and wrote a massive three volume series on the subject of working wood called L’Art du Menuisier (The Art of the Joiner).

One of his particular drawings of a workbench design has become newly popularized by the likes of Christopher Schwarz and other current day woodworkers. Lost Art Press, a small publishing outfit is actually translating Roubo’s writings into English. Schwarz’s book on workbenches and blog probably helped catapult the Roubo design to the point where you can find many, many images and videos of different people’s own Roubo workbench designs.

Having only been recently exposed to this type of workbench a couple of years ago, it’s hard to imagine wanting to build anything else. The beauty of the Roubo workbench lies in the sheer simplicity, versatility, functionality, and heft of the design.

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Winter is for Making New Windsor Chairs

By Woodworking
Sack Back Windsor Chair 01

Up close look at one of the new sack back Windsor chairs

During our recent annual winter pilgrimage to Greg’s shop, I made two new Windsor chairs for our growing collection. The first year, I started with a simple hoop back, and last year I made a continuous arm Windsor. This winter, however, I decided to make two chairs simultaneously — both sack backs. This proved to be a really valuable learning lesson for me. Doing two at the same time really cemented in some of those many detailed steps more firmly. It was twice the practice in one go.

Here are the results.

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Building a Cherry Shaker Blanket Chest

By Woodworking

Cherry Shaker Blanket Chest PlansWhen April mentioned the idea of building a little chest this winter, I thought, “Sure… that would be fun. Maybe we can use it like a coffee table, too. You know, throw books and our feet up on it.” Needless to say, I didn’t quite have the expectation of building a bomb-proof, beautiful piece of furniture.

Once we got the bug in our heads, and once Greg started showing off his amazing cherry wood supply, things started looking a bit different. We ended up finding a set of Shaker blanket chest plans we really liked, and all of a sudden the outlook was looking a lot more refined than I would have originally imagined.
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Way Too Much Woodworking Fun

By Woodworking
Oiling the Cherry Shaker Blanket Chest

Ziggy oils the newly finished Shaker-style blanket chest

We’ve been having way too much fun for the past two weeks. April, Jacob, and I just spent the latter half of December with our great friend Greg Pennington of Hendersonville, TN. Greg is a world class Windsor chairmaker with a killer timber frame workshop to boot. When we met two winters ago, Greg graciously invited April and I to make chairs with him and so began on winter woodworking tradition. Since then we’ve learned a lot of new woodworking skills under his most expert guidance (though he would never claim any of his amazing skills as such himself.) This trip, we embarked on a pretty ambitious series of projects, which I’ll preview here!

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Build Yourself Some Decent Sawhorses

By Woodworking, Design, Carpentry
Simple Sawhorse Plans

Build yourself a decent pair of sawhorses this year!

Everyone needs a pair (or two, or three) of sawhorses. It certainly helps if they are not wobbly and can stand on their own, and are beefy enough to support more than a box of matches. There are way too many subpar (or worse) sawhorses out there, and if yours look like they’ve been run over a few times… you deserve better, really.

On DIY and owner-builder construction sites, they are often the primary work surface for all sorts of carpentry work, and they are likely to be used as a ladder, table, a place to sit, a tool table… you get the point. They’re pretty essential, and if they actually work well — heck, you will likely be a more efficient builder.

I am happy to follow an existing design when I can, and these simple sawhorse plans fit the bill for our myriad building projects this summer. It’s nice to follow instructions sometimes, you know?
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Serious Score of Ash Lumber for Workbench

By Woodworking
Ash Wood For Workbench

Part of our recent haul of ash for the workbench projec

This is probably some of the nicest wood I’ve ever owned, hands down. We really got lucky here with this rough sawn ash lumber for the workbench we’re on our way to building. It’s stunning stuff, immaculately sawn and largely free of flaws. Part of me feels strangely guilty. But the other part of me knows we’ll put it to excellent use, as I expect this workbench we’re about to build is going to last many, many years.

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Spoons of Winter

By Wood Carving, Woodworking
Carving Spoons

The recent carved spoons of winter 2013-14

This winter has been a cold one. With a chopping block and my shaving horse set up inside, it’s allowed me to do a good bit of woodworking and carving work despite the cold, and without taking up much space in our new transitional home. I’ve had more time to finally dive a little more deeply into carving spoons, and it’s been thoroughly enjoyable. Above are some recent examples my carved spoons.

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Anticipating the Spring, Workshops, and More

By Natural Building Workshops
Carving wooden bowl

Carving a giant dough bowl, a current side project

All of a sudden, things are getting really busy around here. Springtime is coming on fast. This week has been so busy I don’t even have time to write a proper update here, but I promise I will quite soon. We have a lot of exciting projects in the works, and some of which may involve you. There’s a couple natural building workshops we’re currently planning — these are the first workshops we’ll be offering in our new home location of Berea, Kentucky! Oh, let’s not forget to mention the full-on straw bale cabin we are helping a couple to build this year up in the woods, too. Things are rolling along.

This week has been so full that I haven’t had even a minute to continue work on some of my recent carving projects, including a huge dough bowl, pictured above. I’m excited to get back to this once I have a moment. And then there’s building that workbench, too. We’ve got the wood, and now it’s a question of finding a way to mill some of it up.

Anyway, you should expect to see some exciting updates here quite soon detailing our newest natural building workshops this summer. Keep posted. Exciting times are ahead.