Here's a cutting board I made for some friends, out of a giant maple that they had to cut down.

The tree started dropping huge branches around their car, so they figured it was time.

 It took nearly 2 years to make this.  I cut the branches up on my bandsaw, let them dry in my garage for a year, then cut them into sticks to make the cutting board.

There are owls hiding in it.

Shelf brackets - clever carriage bolt holes

I'm making a set of shelves for our dining room.  It's a race between me and 9+ month old Oscar.  Will I finish them, or will he crawl first.  The fate of all our breakable stuff lies in the balance.  As of today, he's winning.


Update:  He won.  The shelves are about 50% finished, he's crawling at about 25% speed.




Here's what the shelf brackets look like:

I'm securing them with carriage bolts, countersunk at the back with nuts.

The bottom ones are quite long, so I didn't want to just use a drill as I don't have a long enough one, and even if I did, getting it to run straight would be problematic.
So I made them out of 2 pieces glued together after cutting a slot in the middle with a 90deg grooving router bit.   

This makes a lovely square hole which fits the head of the carriage bolt perfectly. 

 

trellis

I hate the standard trellises.   I think they are ugly and cutting them to shape is a pain, usually resulting in splinters.

This one is made from spruce 1 X 4 's that I resawed in half on the bandsaw, since I didn't have a table saw at the time.  The "apex" is bolted together with threaded rod and nuts, the ends are screwed to the breezeway and then trimmed to length with a handsaw.

Unfortunately the nasturtiums that we planted at the base last year didn't climb.  This year we will try morning glories, hopefully they will do better at hiding the industrial area from the residential section of our place.

I was going to use my radial arm saw to rip the boards, but because they were 8' long I would have had to swivel the saw to get enough length before then ends hit the door.  Bad idea.  Too much wiggle.  Just because you can do it with the RAS, doesn't mean that you should.