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 ...

Reviewing Quiet California Air Compressor

Read Time: 5 mins

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Workshops have 2 things in common, dust and noise and the more you can reduce both of these, the healthier it is. We all know that controlling dust is a priority, but we seldom think much about controlling noise. Audiologists and Eat Doctors tell us the noise above 85 decibels will cause hearing loss and even something like a 90 decibel sustained noise, like the sound of an idling motor, over time will cause hearing loss. And we all know the the louder the noise the more damage it will do.

I always wear hearing protection (and eye protection) even when I am just making a quick small cut. It does 2 things for me, if helps preserve my hearing, and it makes me slow down, take my time so I don't cause myself an injury.
When I am cutting wood on the table saw, planing wood or jointing wood, it is often in runs. There are normally several pieces so for those I don't mind using hearing protection, but when all the cutting and sanding and trimming is done and now it's time for the assembly, NOW is the time I don't want to have wear hearing protection any longer. I want to enjoy the assembly process.

But if I am using a compressor, and one of my favorite air tools, a 23 gauge pinner, if the compressor is LOUD it's still imperative for me to wear hearing protection.  And THAT is why I have updated my compressor to one of the new Quiet Versions that have come on the market in the past few years.

I recently sold my older very loud compressor to a roofer, who uses it outside and doesn't care because it's far away from him and suits his work perfectly. For me, in my workshop it was way too loud ...

Touring The Kinsol Trestle Bridge

Read Time: 3 mins

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A number of years ago, the Canadian government made a commitment to create a multi-use trail from one end of Canada to the other. The most westerly leg of this trail is on Vancouver Island and part of the trail includes an impressive journey over one of the longest wooden trestle brides in the world. The trestle began live as a rail road trestle for carrying logs and ore from remote regions on Vancouver Island to the coast for processing and shipping. Construction began in 1911 but due to the First World War, completion was not until 1921.

Originally named the Koksilah River Trestle, but for the locals the trestle's close proximity to the old King Solomon Mine, the trestle started to be referred to "Kin Sol" trestle, and the name stock to what it is today, the Kinsol Trestle.