General Craft & DIY discussion

I like fiddling with all sorts of projects & often use scraps of wood that I have laying around. I have a lot of those & keeping them in some sort of order so I can find what I need can be a challenge. Still, it's worth it. I've made some very nice projects out of bits & pieces.

Wooden boxes don't take much wood & can be decorative & handy. When my kids were little, the boys had to share a room. I made them lock boxes to keep their private possessions in. The wooden boxes locked with keyed sash (window) locks. Both boys still have them, but I made them well before there were digital cameras, so I don't have any pictures.

My daughter came along some years later, though. I made her this box.


It's ALL wood, not a single piece of metal. The box is pine with an orange shellac finish. The 'hardware' is walnut with home made ash dowels, including the hinges. I made all the dovetails by hand, too. I think I was inspired by Ian Kirby's article on dovetails in Wood magazine, although perhaps it was Roy Underhill gives good directions in one of his books, The Woodwright's Companion: Exploring Traditional Woodcraft, I believe.

Woodworking Projects for the Country Home is where I found the basic idea for the box in the previous post. Smith didn't have it dovetailed or use all wood 'hardware' nor did they have the secret compartment in the bottom, but the dimensions & overall look were about the same.

There is also a very nice little foot stool plan that I used pretty much as is. The stool was plain, but I woodburned a fox into it & gave it to my mother. I don't seem to have a picture of it around, although it came out well.

There are a few other interesting projects in the book, but I haven't made them. A few don't appeal at all, but most do.

A guy at work found some flooring in a rental house that the tenants left behind. I have 6 pieces made up of 1" random strips, glued up to about 1.25" thick, 12" wide, & was roughly cut into 4' sections with rabbets on either side. One piece has "Cloud" on it, so I'm guessing it was originally some of their fast flooring, sections that could be tossed in to quickly make a floor. It's never been finished & the bottoms were painted black.

Yesterday, I decided to make a coffee table out of them. I planed them down a bit, but my Dewalt 12" planer blades got dulled on the paint & had trouble with the hard wood. Even shaving off 1/32" off the face was sometimes too much. A piece would get 3' in & then the motor would overheat. Still, I got it done well enough. I guess I'll use a belt sander to finish it off.

I cut the rabbets off the outside edges on the table saw & then glued 2 pieces together for the table top. I cut up another 2 pieces for the legs & braces. I glued 2 pieces together for each leg so I have a finished 22"- 2.5"x2.5" square leg. I put the on the lathe & made a 2" diameter tenon about 3" long on the end. I have 2 - 4" wide pieces to go across the bottom of the table. I'm going to drill 2" holes in them at a compound 15 degree angle to hold the legs. After I wedge & glue the legs into these pieces, I'll attach them to the bottom of the table with screws.

The top of the table has some voids. After sanding it down, I can fill them with epoxy, but I'm not sure if I'm going to stain this nor what I should do about the shape. I was thinking of rounding the ends in a circle, but now I'm thinking that with the straight lines, I might chamfer the edges & that clipping the sharp corners at a 45 degree angle might not look better. I'll try to post some pictures later.

Consider faux finishing some time for rough pieces. My bed is about 200 years old, found in an old barn, and when I stripped the gray paint I found the pine had been faux finished mahogany with gold trim. Now with the faux finish restored you can't see the roughness and it looks great!

This has a lot of cool oak grain showing, so I'd rather not do any kind of finish that would cover that up. I might just use my home made iron stain on it. That's steel wool stuck in cider vinegar for a month or so, then strained through a tee shirt. It's a very pretty brown color on most woods, but gets cool gray undertones on oak as the acid reacts. Since it reacts slightly differently on each piece of oak, that could make it too busy, though. Well, if it looks too bad, I can sand it back off.

The biggest question is the table top shape. From a practical stand point, I like rounded ends on coffee tables. At 16" tall & positioned as they are, they're a danger to shins at the best of times. Leaving sharp corners on them just doubles the pain.

On the other hand, corners add a lot of usable area & everything else about the table is square. I will probably chamfer the edges. The oak is too splintery to leave them sharp, so clipping the corners at a similar 45 degree angle might look better. How much to take off is another question. I guess I'll put it all together, set it up & then look at it for a while. How much I pull off the corners will determine where I can permanently mount the legs, too.

Yes indeed, rounded edges are good! (ouch!)

You can always just faux finish the filler to match the natural wood! I often used oil paints to create the layers for such things. The trick is, and so many people dont get it, it takes two to three coats, from base coat to grain coat or coats to a final glaze to soften and add depth to match real wood.

Sorry I haven't entered any Faux finish books yet, though by far the best I have is "Professional Painted Finishes" by Marx. While it takes much practice to get as good as the Marx family, the principles of making realistic wood are well explained.

I have a book that shows some faux finishes & they're more like paint. I want to keep the original grain. Anyway, right now I left it square & used the home made iron stain.

Here's the original flooring pieces:



This is the table upside down to give you a look at the legs. I bored 2" holes into the cross pieces at a compound 15 degree angle & they were about 4" too long. The way I fix that is by standing the table up & leveling it with shims since some legs are a hair longer than others. Then I use a Japanese pull saw that has almost no set to the teeth (flush cut) to cut them off evenly. I put a scrap of plywood that goes about 1/2 way around the leg on more scraps to give me the right height & keep the blade set right.



Then I stained it with the iron stain. There's a small piece of pine on the table that shows you what it looks like on most wood. This oak must have really been filled with tannin. Some of these pieces are positively black! Pretty wild looking. The shiny spots are voids I'm filling with epoxy.



Once I get some poly on it, I think it will look better. Should get more brown tones.

Hmmm... I liked it better before you stained it...

What, no skirt?

Closest I have to a coffee table is the stand beside my chair... though I do have a nice big 3x4 "coffee table" in the shop for assembly, now of course splattered, beaten and full of saw marks!

I prefer simple. I put a coat of poly on it tonight. It looks a lot nicer, but I'm not sure it's going to work out. The one bad thing about my homemade stain is that it is water based. On some woods, in some orientations, it really pops the grain which means I need to sand some. That could be a problem.

I think I've learned my most valuable lessons from trying something new and different, getting not at what I intedned, and then figuring out some way to make it look so nice that one might think it was planned that way!

Now we're in the realm where books ain't gonna help at all!

I sanded some with 220 sand paper tonight & I think it will be OK. I took a bit of stain off, but it just made the grain pop more. It's going to be a week or so before I get all the coats & sanding done. I have it upside down right now & want to do at least one more coat on the bottom tomorrow before I flip it & start working on the top again. I'll have to see how the coats dry. After the 3d coat, they can take a couple of days.

I wish I had enough space for a finishing room. Instead I use a corner & it's not large enough for the table. I'll probably have to make a tent for it or else I won't be able to do anything else.

Space... the final frontier.... even without a wife there's still never going to be enough!

If I can recover the old farmhouse I'm thinking the kitchen could become a spray booth/ finishing room. Until then I make do with a wall air filter (charcoal and mesh.. from you know where!) for fumes in the shop when brushing and only spray outside in the warm months, or in the greenhouse with a fan in a window for small spray projects in Winter.

Maybe I could make some collapsible walls & set them up for projects like this... Hmmm...

I never did make any collapsible walls or anything, but did finish the table up. Marg decided it would be a good replacement for our current coffee table, so it's now in the house. Looks great, although she's already got it covered with junk. Erin went to move it last night so she could use her WII & was surprised by how heavy & solid it was. Just the way I like furniture.

Have you checked out Cigar Box Nation? It's a website for cigar box guitar builders - lots of great woodworking tricks and tips, and even some great home-made stain recipes. Worth a look as there are some true artistes making their own instruments today.

No, I haven't been there, but it sounds interesting. I'm pretty much tone deaf, so never thought of building a musical instrument. A long time friend of mine (we went to HS together) makes banjos out of all sorts of things. Apparently he's become fairly well known for it & is getting custom orders. I'll send the link to him. Thanks.

Jim wrote: "Woodworking Projects for the Country Home is where I found the basic idea for the box in the previous post. Smith didn't have it dovetailed or use all wood 'hardware' nor did they h..."

Ok, I can't resist. I ordered the book from the library. Even though my skills are completely nil, I keep looking for something that isn't overwhelming to me.

Re: the japanese pull saw mentioned in a post below:
I've got one and have used it in a few small projects and have really liked it. For me, I find it easier on the arm and it seems to go right along.

There's no better way to get skill except by trying. If you use cheap #2 pine for these projects, you won't be out much money if you mess up. As for the time, I can't think of a better way to spend it, even when things don't turn out. Actually, I have several shop shelves, tables, & other items that weren't good enough for the house, but OK for other uses.

I have a couple of Japanese pull saws & use them as often as any handsaw in the shop. I found out the hard way that they're not great to use on hickory or white oak. I cut too hard & yanked teeth right off them. They're cheap ones though. They're super for flush sawing, but I like by dovetail saws better for those jobs.

For years I thought about making some sort sled for my bandsaw so I could cut boards out of small logs. I finally got around to it. I'll post a picture eventually, but basically it's a flat board with a guide bar on the bottom for the groove in the table of the saw & 2 bolts sticking up. They catch in holes for an 'L' shaped top piece spaced 1/2" apart. I screw through the short leg of the L into the log. I cut one piece, then move the bolts back a hole or two, then do another. It's not real fast, but worked out really well.

I planed all the pieces out of one Red cedar log. They're straight line ripped on one side, but natural on the other. I'm making a small box out of them. I'm about ready to glue it up & tack it together with brass eustachian pins. Maybe in a couple of nights I'll find the time.

I see a lot of projects in wood magazines that use routers. I've usually managed to use another woodworking tool like a tablesaw instead, but often wished I had a nice router & table set up. It's pretty expensive to get into though.

Bosch has a really nice router set (1617EV) that I got about a year ago since the few I had were old & one died. It's one motor with 2 bases; plunge & standard. This year, I waited & finally got the matching router table when it went on sale after the first of the year. It came down from $230 to $180. I brought it home, set it up, then had to make a table for it. I used a piece of an old electric fence post to make an axle for the wheels that came with my Weber grill, so I pick up on one end of the table & can push it where I want it.

Of course, now that I have the router mounted in the table, it's a pain to get it out when I want to use it free hand. I do have a couple of old ones, but they're pretty rough, so I'll keep my eye out for a good deal on another 1617 router. I've also got to keep my eye out for some good projects to do with my new toys. All those years of stumbling across them & now I haven't seen any that are striking my fancy. Typical!

Woodworking: The New Wave
Dona Z. Meilach
no picture on goodreads, one 5 star rating, no review.

over on amazon: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0517...
no reviews, but a blurry picture.
"Today's design trends in objects
furniture and sculpture with artist interviews"
Keep in mind this book is from 1981 so the design trends might not be exactly "todays".
Anyway, the artist interviews part is interesting to me.
I think I might try to get this from the library.
I've read a few of her other books and always enjoyed them, particularly the box art ones.

Do you like this sort of woodworking, Jaye? I've always been more of a functional type of woodworker. Judging by the cover art, this looks very artsy.

I like reading about all types...functional or art related. I have no idea what that book entails. I can't see the picture of the cover clearly, so I guess I'll have to get it from the library.
I am interested in the artist interviews because I like to read about the process different people use. Sometimes I just don't understand what the person was doing, so a little insight helps. It's interesting to me to learn about what goes into a project.

I've started reading Understanding Wood Finishing by Bob Flexner. I'm not too far in, but very impressed, so much so that I ordered another copy to give to a friend. (It was $3.47 used delivered via AbeBooks.) He & I were discussing some of the points this book makes last week.

My friend doesn't have much experience finishing & I noticed some issues that Flexner addresses immediately.
- Using old sandpaper. It's not gold & wears out. Trash it, get a new piece.
- Flexner tears a sheet into thirds, then folds each into thirds for hand sanding, although he recommends a sanding block when possible. I do the same, although I quarter the sheets to start.
- Skipping grits. When hand sanding, it's important to clean well in between grits & sand with each grit. Jumping from 80 to 150 costs time.
- Sanding with too fine grits. Flexner says he rarely goes beyond 220, not even that with some woods & finishes because it's just not noticeable. It can even mess up how the wood takes stain.

Then he gets into the best explanation of types & uses of scrapers that I've ever read. Wow! I didn't know anyone else used them any more. I picked up a couple of great sharpening tips from him, too.

I made each of these points to my friend, so to see Flexner make all of them so quickly in his book gave me a lot of confidence in it. It's worth the price even if the rest of the book is awful & I doubt that.

Jim wrote: "I've started reading Understanding Wood Finishing by Bob Flexner. I'm not too far in, but very impressed, so much so that I ordered another copy to give to a friend..."

Your points made this sound like a very useful book.
I'll take a look at it from the library, then if I like it I'll get myself a copy.
Thanks for discussing it.

Thanks, Jaye. I finished it & my review is here:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

I gave a copy to my daughter & have another to give to the friend. It's inexpensive used from AbeBooks.com & totally worth it. A lot is advanced stuff, great reference for specific projects, but the first part is applicable to any finishing. Wish I'd read it years ago. I figured most of it out the hard way.

While I'm certainly not finished with it, I've decided to mark By Hand & Eye as read. Walker & Toplin are well known woodworkers & they tried to fit a lot into this slim volume - a bit too much. It was quite frustrating at times, but I think my designs will be far better for getting through & continuing to work with it. I gave it 4 stars here:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

I just got a 28 volume set of books for my granddaughter for Christmas.
Sounds big, but each book is very slim.
I want to make a box for the set.
I figure, allowing for a bit of expansion of each book as it's read and no longer in pristine condition, I need a box about 8" by 8".
Something sturdy, but not too heavy.
And I'm not doing dovetails or anything drastic, just a basic box.
What wood do you suggest I get?

( I love this group and often come back to review suggestions on tools and such.)

That's not a simple answer. It depends on what you can get, what tools you have, how you're going to build it, & finish it.

An 8"x8"x(8"?) box is pretty small. Using stock 3/4" wood might make it look clunky. If you can get thinner stock or have a planer, that would be great. If you use a something soft & weak like White pine, 1/2" might be good, but maple, oak, or plywood could go as thin as 1/4", depending on how you join it & what sort of finish you want.

For something that small, you don't have to worry about wood expansion, but plywood might still be a good option, especially if you want to just glue it together. I wouldn't try staining it, but would paint it. I'm too sloppy with glue & thin plywood won't allow much sanding. Doesn't need it, either. Most 1/4" Luaun has 2 very good sides with one already sanded & is available at most Lowe's & such in 2'x4' sheets cheap.

Just miter the corners & put the base inside, glue well, & clamp. It will hold up fine with a good wood glue or epoxy. We made dozens of these (6"x6"x4" deep) for keeping screws & nails in one of our trucks. They lasted for years with a couple of coats of polyurethane on them. Not terribly pretty, so I'd paint it.

I prefer the real wood look & that should glue up just fine, too. I'd put a thin layer of glue on the end grain, let it sit a few minutes, then put on a bit more before clamping it together. You can sand real wood more & just put polyurethane on it. You can try staining it & if the glue makes it ugly, just paint over it.

Miters are great if your cut is perfect, but they look really ugly if anything is out. By putting the base inside the box, you'll square them out & it will help even out any inaccuracies. Small nails help, too. You want all corners to be out the same amount (none preferably) rather than have 3 corners tight & one far out.

If I was making an 8" deep box by hand, I'd probably use butt joints because miters that long are tough to get right by hand. I wouldn't use plywood or 1/4" wood with butt joints, though. I'd want at least 1/2" for the glue to hold in the end grain.

What sort of tools do you have? A tablesaw really opens up the possibilities. Rabbets are easy to make even without a dado blade. Then you could use pine on 2 sides, walnut on the other 2 & show off a neat joint. You can also make finger (aka box) joints in real wood (plywood tends to splinter out). It takes a bit of setup time to make a jig. Once done, they're far better looking, stronger, & more forgiving than a miter joint. If you make a simple jig, it might dictate the depth of the box a little since you want all the fingers even, but the same jig will last for years & do a lot of different projects. Google "table saw finger joint jig" for more, but here's an easy, simple one.
http://www.finewoodworking.com/worksh...

Jaye,

It might help if you told us about the books and your granddaughter. A fine wood case would be perfect for a collection of first editions. But a complete set of Doc Seus for a small child might be better paired with a simple rugged box and latex paint pictures of her favorite characters.

Jim,
Thank you for your lengthy consideration and reply.
I realized I forgot to put the 3rd measurement which is 6". Good thing you mentioned the glue as I would have forgotten that.

J., Thank you for your reply too.

I think I'm going to go with a thin pine board.
Rugged box (which is about all I am capable of), painted.
I have no electric tools so I'm going to use the Japanese hand saw that I have used before. I like it very much.

You're more than welcome. It's good to write things like that out occasionally. I have the same internal conversation every time I decide to do a project, generally complicated by what size scraps I have around, too. You never would have thought people could complicate a simple box so much, would you?
;)

Speaking of scraps... I'm getting overwhelmed with them again. I wish I could figure out a good way to store them so they're easy to see & put my hand on when I want them. I tend to several piles around the shop. Long ones (generally narrow) are against the wall with most of the regular boards. From 3' or so down, they're stacked under the table saw. There's a bunch of others around the lathe, a stack on & next to the woodworking bench. I even have small, even ones in a small box on the bench since they come in handy for gluing, clamping, & such.

Some are nice wood like clear maple, walnut, & cherry. Others are just chunks of 2x4, but they're all handy at times. The problem is, they keep multiplying so I have to get rid of them. It was easier when I had a wood stove in the shop since I'd use them for kindling or just occasionally toss them directly in. Out of sight & mind, but I was happy not to have a stove in this shop. They take up a lot of space & don't keep the shop an even temperature without a lot of work.

So now the scraps accumulate, go into feed bags, & eventually go out into one of the brush piles. I have been known to go back out & salvage some on occasion, so I'm slower to toss them out in the first place. Then I usually get into a mood, fill up the pickup, & dump too many.

I recently had to cut down several redbuds that were shading the driveway. I hate wasting lumber, so I read up on redbud and found out something curious. Apparently, the red veins in the wood glow yellow under a black light. So I think that I'll make some sets of live edge coasters out of the trees.

I have two questions.

1.) Would it be better to slice up the logs into the individual coasters or leave them whole when drying?

2.) Can anyone recomend a good waterproof finish which does not contain a UV blocking agent?

Thank you.

I didn't know that. How cool! I have a blacklight around here somewhere.

Keeping a slice from cracking as it shrinks is tough. The problem is that if the wood shrinks evenly throughout, it has to pull apart on the outer edge. Sometimes you can get around this by drilling out the center or you can replace the water with something. They make commercial products to do this, but I can't think of their names. I tried one that was made with a cedar extract & it didn't do spit. Salt water can work, but too much salt will migrate out afterward. I've heard of others using dish soap to do this, too. I've never tried it, though.

No idea on the second problem, either. I'd stay away from anything with 'exterior' in its name, but couldn't say anything else. If you do figure this out, please let us know what works.

https://www.antiquesjournal.com/month...

I saw the above about a counting house bowl and thought it might be of interest.

Just realized that this part wasn't included in the link:
"It's a nice little fruitwood bowl, English, less than five inches in diameter, and with a thicker than usual rim that made it unsuitable for drinking. It had a very specific purpose and it's one that you probably never thought wooden bowls were used for."

Nice. Thanks!

Damn. I just deleted my post after previewing it. Grrr.

I spent the day working on a gun rack for my SIL, Josh. We bought Kentucky Coffee Tree wood for it a few months back. It was kiln dried, but I like to let wood settle in for a while. It was rough cut 4/4. It's a light brown color & reminds me a lot of sassafras, but it's got more pores like ash. There isn't much sapwood, but that is very obvious, a light yellow, with a sharp delineation between the two.

The rack will look something like this, but a bit fancier.


The sides will be scrolled & another will go across the top. I plan to put a door on the shelf at the bottom with a lock on it. It will fold out to form a shelf. I resawed some 4" wide pieces & planed them down. They're only 5/16" thick which is disappointing. The grain made the bandsaw blade wander more than I liked. I was hoping to get 3/8" thick pieces. I plan to frame them to fill in the back against the wall.

I planed most of the wood smooth at 15/16" thick & ripped it to about 3", then edge planed & glued up 12" pieces. I have one more to do tomorrow. Once they're dried, I'll plane them down to 3/4".

The weirdest part was edge planing them. I use a hand plane to do that so the grain direction is important. This face grain seemed to be just the opposite of normal. I clamp it it in the vice so it rises away to my left since I plane right handed. When I did that, it grabbed, though. I'm fighting a sinus thing, so I'm a bit fuzzy, but not that bad. I'll have to look at it better tomorrow. Must be the way the wood is flecked that causes an optical illusion or something.

J. wrote: "I recently had to cut down several redbuds that were shading the driveway. I hate wasting lumber, so I read up on redbud and found out something curious. Apparently, the red veins in the wood glow ..."

as to your question 2:
I was reading about this recently somewhere, but found this link. as to the UV blocking agent...you'd have to read the technical data sheet at the link.


"About Liquid Repelling Treatment

Rust-Oleum® NeverWet® is a two-step product system designed to create a moisture repelling barrier on a variety of surfaces. It is suitable for use on metal, wood, aluminum, galvanized metal, PVC, concrete, masonry, asphalt, vinyl siding, fiberglass, canvas, most plastics and more.

Not intended to be applied to electronic devices or clothing
Dries to a flat finish
Durable formulation, ideal for indoor/outdoor conditions
Dries fast — 30 minutes to touch"

The reason I looked at the product was a neighbor was looking for something to use on a vintage baby chair/swing that she is using as a plant hanger from a tree limb.

http://www.rustoleum.com/product-cata...

I was reading further on the FAQ page:
http://www.rustoleum.com/pages/homeow...

". Will NeverWet breakdown if exposed to the sun?

NeverWet is formulated with UV inhibitors that protects it from degradation caused by the sun's rays. NeverWet does not offer UV protection to the treated surface."

Jaye,

Thanks, that may work. And I do have the redneck love of rattle cans. The big question I have is from the last FAQ, which said not to expose it to solvents. I'm wondering if that includes acids and/or alcohol. I'll email them monday to ask.

Didn't it give an example of coating a mountain bike?
(I don't feel like looking at it again...lazy, but I'm tired.)
anyway, it mentions don't use mineral spirits on the product you coat with NeverWet. It also says using detergents can make the coating less effective. So you can't wash your bike?
I think it mentioned oil products too. So if you used WD40 it would also be a problem?
I'm confused.

I have 3 woodworking projects in the works now. The most complex is a gun rack for my SIL, Josh. That's coming along pretty well out of Kentucky Coffee Tree wood that we picked up at a local lumber yard a few months ago.

My daughter, Erin, wants a 'wall box'. This is a 12" deep, 24" wide, 30" tall box that hangs outside a stall or in the grooming area to keep medicines & other small stuff. It has just one shelf in it & a door that can be locked. Typically, it needs to hang securely, yet be easily moved in case things get wild or the horse changes stalls in a boarding situation.

Last is a set of 3 cavalettis
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cavaletti
for Marg. They'll be the easiest to make since they're just rough work. We don't have a good source for commercial jump poles around here, so I'm just making them up out of treated 4x4's. I have them about half done after a morning's work.

It's expensive, though. For the hardware & the wood for Marg & Erin's projects, I spent $240. The wood for Josh's project was over $100. If I could have even found it at a regular lumber yard, it probably would have cost 3-5 times that.

Jim,

On the cavaletti, could you cut the standards out of plywood, and use landscaping posts for the rails? If you double up the ply for each side, you should get at least one standard from each sheet of say 1/2" ply.

It's probably a bad idea for a finished product, but it might be good enough for prototyping. I don't know if this post will be of any help, but I hope that it will be.

I got the cavalettis done & out in the field. Marg is tickled. Indy tried to help & Chip decided they were too heavy to bother rolling over more than one. I keep thinking that I should get rid of my old radial arm saw since it's a bit out of whack for fine work, but then I run into a project like this & it's so handy. I used it to cut the dadoes in the X's. It's far better for that job than anything else I have.

J., thanks for thoughts. I don't like using plywood for exterior projects unless just the face will catch weather. Any time water can get to an edge, it deteriorates quickly. No need for prototyping. I've been making jumps & such for... I don't know... 40 years, anyway. I don't even bother to look at plans or make material lists for them.

The crosses at the end are simple to make using either 2x4's or 4x4's. Either can be used, but 4x4's make for a greater change in the height depending on the orientation since the rail is attached to the side of the junction. I just dadoed them to half their thickness, put two together & ran a 3/8"x4" galvanized hex bolt through the center. Then an 8" bolt holds the rail to one arm of the X. It didn't take long to do.

I ripped the sharp corners off the 4x4 rail using my tablesaw. That way it won't cut them if they clip it & we're less likely to get splinters when we move them. I use hex bolts rather than carriage bolts so I can tighten them occasionally or take them apart in a few years when/if they break. (Believe it or not, but a horse can & will break them.) Carriage bolts are nice to put together, but hate to come out after a few years.

Things did not go well in the shop last night. Kentucky Coffee Tree wood is very splintery. I tried to rout a rounded edge on a piece & it splintered out badly. Luckily, I had another piece I could replace it with, but that took a while. I don't think I'll use this wood again, even if I do get the opportunity.

Josh wants it stained dark, too. He picked Moorish Teak. Such a dark stain hides many ills, but it also hides the wood. Not much sense using this wood. It wouldn't have looked any different using Red oak or ash & the wood would have been better to work with. I haven't worked with a lot of sassafras, but it seems even more splintery.

We're up to 2.5" of rain for the week. It was another cold, drippy day yesterday & promises to be again today. Not much more rain, but I don't think it hit 50 yesterday & felt really raw out. I spent most of the day in the shop.

I put the final coat on most of Josh's gun rack. I'm waiting on the door lock for the base to come in before I can completely finish. I got the stain & first coat of poly on the outside of Erin's wall box. The inside has 3 coats of poly inside it already.

Since I couldn't do much else in the shop without stirring up the dust, I spun up another bobbin of alpaca roving. 3 bobbins can be plied together into yarn.

You are so industrious.
I feel like a slug compared to you!