One of my hobbies is woodworking. Here you'll find info and pictures of some of my projects.

The most recent big project was for my brother and his wife on their wedding.

This is his desk:Quite a piece of work, eh?

No, I didn't build it. I built this:    
It's a stereo/tv cabinet to match the desk. It's solid oak, throughout. There's no plywood except for the back. Even the drawer sides and bottoms are solid. There are also no fasteners. The entire thing is held together with glue. The only metal parts are the hinges and pulls. The carcase uses dado joinery. The skirt is rabbitted so that the base of the carcase sits on it rather than next to it. The drawer sides are set in mortises in the face and the bottom is held in by a continuous dado around all four sides. The drawers are supported at the front by their sides and at the rear by dadoes in their backs that straddle runners top and bottom.

Those three holes in the back are for cords. There are both blank plugs and cord plugs which match the cabinet, but they were left out of the picture.

The blue plastic over the knobs is the packaging they came in. Once I had the knobs installed, I stretched the plastic back over them to protect them during moving.

That's real leaded glass, by the way. Individual panes too, not just surface leading. That beautiful contribution was from Jennifer, the other sibling. She made them by hand, at home, while simultaneously dealing with a newborn and a two year old. Then, as if that wasn't enough, she also hand made a beautiful quilt for the newlyweds. Come to think of it, I oughtta put a picture of that quilt up here too.

Speaking of the newborn nephew (who's a year old now), I've got a picture of his new truck. It's unfinished at this point, but I had the digital camera on loan, so I snapped one:

Here are a few of the home-made features of my shop.

Cyclone dust collector:

This little number was featured in Wood magazine in 1998. The design is theirs except for the blower. I couldn't afford the blower they used, so I got an old squirrel-cage blower and built a box for it. The pressure isn't great, but it partly makes up for that   with volume. It can't pull in debris thrown the other direction by a tool, but it still does a very nice job of picking up sawdust where it lays and keeping the air clear. I also could not use a garbage can as they did, due to the added fan height. Under that yellow "elephant's truck" is the cardboard barrel from a very old shop-vac. The motor was shot, but I knew I'd find a use for that barrel with the metal top!

Sheet-goods and board rack:

The board rack is three 6' steel standards supporting adjustable brackets. It was reasonably priced at Menard's... especially since they were having a 25%-off "bag" sale at the time!

The sheet-goods rack is my own design. It's made out of 1x2 lumber, so as not to be too bulky. I've yet to add the wheels to the bottom of it, but my plan calls for them. It's an 8' rack in a 12' room, so I need those wheels soon!