Making and Arts & Crafts Style Umbrella Stand

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There aren't many woodworking projects that are nice looking and useful that you can make in one day, but this is one of those exceptions. This little umbrella stand is easy to make and even finish in one day, provided you are using a pocket hole system, and in our case we used the Kreg unit. Of course the advantage of holding joints together with pocket screws is that you don't have to wait for glue to dry, which speeds things up immensely. We love the Kreg Pocket Hole System for other reasons too, there is no glue oozing our of joints, so you don't have to worry about white spots that the finish didn't penetrate because there was left over glue on the wood, and for some projects that need to be taken apart later on, the pocket hole screws are perfect, and they really do hold very well.

To start off with we needed 4 corner posts and after fitting together some scraps and knowing that our middle cross gable pieces were going to be 3/4 inch, we finally decided that the corner posts would need to be 1-1/4 inches square and 26 inches long. See CUT LIST  in the Read More Section. When ever possible, always cut the largest pieces of your project first because what is left over can often be used of other pieces in the project, and in our case we were able to get about half or more of the spindles that were needed, these were the half inch square by 17 inch long pieces in the middle of  each side.

 

The next pieces we need to make were the upper and lower gables. We decided on 3-1/2 inch by 3/4 inch Garry Oak. The first thing we needed to do with these pieces was to run a 1/2 inch by 1/2 inch dado in one end to hold the spindles. We set up the table saw as close to the center of the edge of the board as we could, and ran the board through.

Making a "Pickers" Display Box

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If you are one of the millions of people who watch programs like The Antiques Road Show, American Pickers, Canadian Pickers, Pawn Stars and other similar shows, or if you have ever been to an antique or collectibles show and sale, you have seen these little display boxes at various sellers tables. You may have even seen them in someone's home or business to display small, featured and valued items. They are called all sorts of things, slanted display boxes, pickers display boxes, collectible boxes and sellers show boxes and so on. 

In this video we make our version of this box with a bit of a twist, our box will use box joints for the corners to make it more attractive and sturdier and instead of painting the inside or lining the bottom with felt, we are going to flock the whole inside of the box, a rich green to make items in the box stand out. This project will consist of 3 parts, making the box, making the top or lid and finally, finishing and flocking the box. 

Part 1 - Making the Box

Part 2 - Making the Top or Lid for the Box

Click below, for more details on sizes and other construction detail. 

Making Gift Wine Box

Read Time: 6 mins

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Hand made items always a welcomed gift and in this article we are hand making small gift box that will hold a bottle of wine. The box is attractive, easy to make, and when you show up at any party, anniversary, wedding of retirement function with one of these, you are going to get invited to many, many more!!! People LOVE these little boxes.
For the woodworker, it's a win-win, you get to use up little pieces of wood that we all accumulate in your workshops, and you get to use many of the tools in your workshop and end up making something that people really like.
There are many different ways you can make these boxes, what we have shown here is only one variation that you can then use to create your own unique wine gift  box (or any other kind of gift box, chocolate, soaps, spices, jams, the list is endless).

For this box we wanted to end up with a bunch 3/4" by 3/" strips of wood, 14" long. You need to work MORE CAREFULLY when you are using smaller pieces of wood, so what we did was use a little bit larger pieces and cut them down.

 We started off at the router table, with a 3/8" roundover bit. This is used to to take the edge of just 2 sides of the strips of wood that will become the sides of the box. The inner sides need to be left plain as they will be glued and possibly tacked to the gable ends.

Building a Sliding Mitre Stand

Read Time: 5 mins

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Smaller workshops are always looking for space saving ideas and projects, and this project, no matter how large your workshop is, can benefit a variety of storage constraints. Many modestly outfitted workshops these day either have a sliding mitre saw in them. These a great, handy saws, but all of the stands that are available for them are designed around the idea that the saw and stand need to be portable. If you are a carpenter, that may be true, but if you are a woodworker you may seldom if ever, have a need to move your saw. Of course the problem with all metal stands for these saws is when they are set up, they take up a lot of room with little useable storage underneath unless it is wood, which is still hard to get at.

I recently upgraded my compressor to one of the quieter models, and I love the compressor, but it's always in the way sitting on the floor of the workshop. I thought that if I could build a nice stand for my mitre saw and use the space underneath the saw to store my compressor I could solve 2 problems.

Like many woodworkers, I HATE throwing out wood, even small chunks, and my neighbors know this so a couple of years ago when one of them did a basement reno, they gave me a number of very good sheets of 1/4"  plywood that could easily be used for backing on cabinets and so on. But I had other ideas for it ...