Category Archives: Furniture
What to Do with an Old Treadle Sewing Machine
My wife and I were cleaning out one of our storage spaces, and she dragged out a very old treadle sewing machine. A decade in the heat and humidity had not been kind to its wooden parts, which hadn’t been … Continue reading
Trash –> Treasure, or New Spoons from Old Furniture
When I sell my spoons and spatulas at craft markets, people always ask me, “Where do you get the wood?” I often laugh because, truth be told, practically ever piece of wood has a story behind it. More often than … Continue reading
Then Disaster Struck: Dining Table Repair
We had been eating around our new dining table for about week. Then one afternoon my oldest daughter and I were sitting in the living room when we heard a tremendous crash from the dining room. We ran out to … Continue reading
Building a Dining Table, Part Three: Assembly and Inlay
Each stage of building this table has had its unique challenges. First it was cutting usable lumber out of some pretty seriously damaged boards. Then it was surfacing everything by hand. Now, after the final glue-up, I was faced with … Continue reading
Building a Dining Table, Part 2: Clamps and Pegs
The majority of my time on this project was spent surfacing the boards for the top. I hand-planed all the boards from the rough-sawn stock, and I must have carried out four or five garbage bags of wood shavings in … Continue reading
Build a Cedar Bench in an Hour
One summer afternoon not long ago, my wife and oldest daughter had gone out, leaving me to mind the little ones. We decided to make a fire in the fire pit and roast hot dogs for supper. We lit the fire … Continue reading
A New Door, a New Bed, a New Daughter
My summer ended with big woodworking plans for the coming year. (Most people’s year begins on January first, but being a professor, I think as much in school years as in calendar years, so my year effectively begins in mid-August.) … Continue reading
Building Bunk Beds in Burma
Not long ago, my brother led a small team of Americans as they completed a major woodworking project for an orphanage in Myanmar (formerly Burma), in Southeast Asia. The orphanage, which houses approximately 120 children, had no proper beds for … Continue reading
Timber Framed Bunk Beds, part 5: A Ladder
A good bunk bed needs a good ladder. I’ve never made a proper ladder, but I’ve read up on wooden ladder construction. Many traditional wooden ladders had threaded rod under top and bottom rungs to make sure everything didn’t come … Continue reading
Timber Framed Bunk Beds, part 4: Mostly Finished
The last bed frame I built, I learned a valuable lesson: always measure and re-measure the mattress before settling on exact frame dimensions. Although there are “standard” mattress dimensions, individual specimens can vary by as much as an inch bigger … Continue reading
