The Woodshop Shed

Matchbox Toy Garage in Honour of my Grandfather for my grandson.

Furnished content.
(from Lumberjocks.com)


Matchbox Toy Garage in Honour of my Grandfather who had the COR/BP Depot Agency in Warwick Queensland from early 1930's until early 1960's.This garage was made as a Christmas come Birthday present for our youngest grandson Asher, honouring his great great grandfather, Thomas Dalgleish.Thomas Dalgleish was born in Edinburgh Scotland, coming out to Australia in early 1900's looking for work and a home for his aging unwell parents.
When World War 1 broke out he joined the Australian Army in the Field Artillery Unit serving in Egypt, Gallipoli, France [were he was gassed], England and again in France were he was awarded the Military Medal for Gallantry Under Fire.
After the war he married and settled in Warwick with a carrier business before becoming the depot/agent for Commonwealth Oil Refineries [COR] which later became British Petroleum [BP].Family history and heritage is import as we enjoy our very comfortable lives because of these hard working folk.The garage colours are in old BP livery as is the COR being even older.I've added some Warwick related memorabilia and a Scottish/Australian Flag set.The Goodyear reference is in honour of my dad who worked for Goodyear for over 20 years.Then to help with younger minds a little, some decals from the movie “Cars”.One more THANK YOU goes to Janet of BP Australia who assisted me source some of the old COR/BP memorabilia.

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Shaker Moon Bed

Furnished content.
(from Lumberjocks.com)


A few years ago, I spotted this Shaker Moon Bed made by Vermont Wood studios. I knew I wanted to make one some day.
When we moved to Georgia 20 months ago, I had my chance. I started by making a Sketchup model. I used this to my dimensions. I was very concerned about how to build a platform bed that had this simple Shaker look, so I oversized all the parts. The headboard and footboard are 1” thick, the side rails are 1 1/4” thick, and the legs are 2 1/2 square.
I really liked the look in Cherry, but the rest of our bedroom is Mahogany, so I had to go that way. Genuine Mahogany is really expense, and I don't like to work with the so-called African Magogany. I learned that Sweetwater lumber in Austell carries a boatload of of Sapele. While most of their Sapele is quartersawn (ribbon), they carry a fair amount that is flat sawn. Flat sawn Sapele looks pretty dang close to mahogany. I wanted 8/4 for my oversized parts, and all they had in stock of 8/4 flat sawn was in 16' lengths. I took my new cordless circular saw with me and ended up transportable boards. It was expensive, but about 50% of the cost of real mahogany.
In fairly short order I had the head and foot boards planed and glued up. I made the legs out of two pieces, picking out rigt sawn sections of boards. I laid out and then cut several mortises in the legs using a router and a 3/4” bit.
I usually taper legs with the jointer method, but these legs were so heavy and the taper so short that I knew that would not work well at all, so I tapered the legs with my hand plane.
I laid out the curve naturally with a center pivot stop and anchored at both ends. I made a template and cleaned up the jig saw cut wit the rother.
For the tenons on the head and foot boards, I established the shoulders with the router, cut our the sides of the tenons with a hand saw, and then sized the tenons with a shoulder plane, cleaning up with chisels.
When cleaning up the curve on the footboard, something went wrong with the template leading to a 1/8” gouge. A sharp spokeshave to the rescue.
I had chosed to use bed bolts to hold the bed together. I was pretty nervous about drilling these out, but it torned out that my best jig was the leg itself. I drilled the access holes on the side rails oversized, because I knew I would be precise enough for a close fitting hole. I was quite surprised to see how well they turned out:

The biggest engineering question was how to make a platform bed where the slats didn't have center support but wouldn't bend unnecessarily. I bought SYP floor joists, planed them down to 1 1/4”, and then glued/screwed a 1 1/4” square strip in the bottom, forming a T. I dovetailed the ends with corresponding mortises (?) attached to the rails. I cannot believe how strong these are. They're mounted 2” apart to allow the mattress to breath at least a little.
I assembled it in our den and fitted the supports to the slats. I simply could not believe it all worked!
Sapele is an open pore wood, and I didn't want to mess with something like Timbermate all over this thing. I decided to use the finishing method of using Danish Oil where you wet sand it to fill the pores. This is a great finishing method for an ultra smooth finish without a lot of fuss. I didn't want it too red, so I used one coat of red magoany, a 2nd coat of original, and a then a third coat of red again to get it to my ideal color. I have no idea if I could have changed this order up a bit, but when I it worked, I stayed with it.Here's the assembled bed in the bedroom.
I did not want to use brass bed bolts on a Shaker bed. In surfing the web, I read somewhere about someone suggesting using wood covers with rare earth magnets. This is a great solution.
It took about a week short of a year, with other commitments and projects in the midst, but we're pretty happy.

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French rolling pins

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(from Lumberjocks.com)


Crashman taught me how to make a Celtic knot. I added one to a French rolling pin for my wife. Like previous projects, she asked if I could make some for Christmas gifts. I made 11 more and also added matching bottle openers from the left over materials. Most are made from some 2 inch hickory slabs I found at the local hardwood shop with some exotics for accent.

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