Most of my projects are gifts, and I seldom take pictures. But here
are a few projects
A walnut/cherry hope chest.
Oak Barrister Bookcase.
Maple
Shaker desk. (the shelf in the right pigeon hole looks out,
but it is just the distortion of the camera! ... really!)
Here's a Mission style bed, matching night
stands, dressers, and mirror ... all made out of local
Alder.
Although you can barely see the mirror!
Here is a morris chair. Note the bent
arms. Not very happy with the cushion though, I wanted a softer
look.
A chair like this just makes you want to think! I built the
bookcase behind it many years ago. At the time money was tight, and
so my goal was to minimize costs. Using various
bits of scrap, the total cost came to about $70.
Here are some little boxes and some mirrors I've made for
gifts. All woodwork is a matter of boxes and frames with variations.
A little box with inlays like this is actually harder to make than
any of the above furniture.
Here's a kitchen cabinet made of alder.
and here's a hallway shoe bench
made and stained the same way:
I made the above for my daughter-in-law, who later sold it on
Facebook Marketplace!
Before that happened I also made her the following tv cabinet
and bookcase:
This cabinet was built from several alder trees that I had cut down
and milled the year before. I'd become attached
to the precious wood, and so I was a little crushed at the request
to paint(!) the solid wood cabinet. At least the top
was stained and shows the beautiful grain. When it came time to
build the matching bookcase below, I opted for
purchased alder. One day, a grandchild is going to strip the paint
and wonder why anyone would cover
the beautiful wood. That's Tom approving.
I ended up making a matching dining room cabinet. This thing was
huge: 8 feet long and high.
I made it in two parts, and my daughter-in-law wanted it to fill
the space. So I made it tight on
the top. Too tight, it did not fit and I had to redo the
top! Amazingly, when they moved to a new place it
fit with zero room to spare.
Carving is the opposite of woodwork in many ways. No plans, no
measurements, just a knife. Here's an archer, Abe, Thor, a
preacher, and Pirate I did.
Here are some more. The T-Rex is one of my favorites. The ax man is
modeled after one of my macro colleagues.
When I was a boy my neighbor had a little sandbox "digger" that I
liked. Once my own grandchildren came along I built a sandbox
and started looking for
digger plans. None could be found that I liked, or that
reminded me of the one I'd used as a boy. Then I was told that
my dad had built a replica in 1980 and
given it to some friends. I tracked the people down in 2019,
and low and behold the digger still existed ... although it was no
longer functional.
I took the digger home, and tried to take it apart to make copies of
the pieces. Unfortunately, it literally disintergrated under the
force, and looked like a pile of junk:
I was still able to get measurements, however, and ended up building
many diggers: