Furniture Making Videos

Making a 3 Legged Milking Stool

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Sometimes I like to make things just for the experience of learning how to make them, which is exactly what I did with this Milking Stool. I have made some stools in the past but not like this one, and so I understand the techniques and how the spline wedges that will hold the legs in place need to be placed at 90 degrees to the angle of the grain of the top of stool otherwise the pressure will often crack or split the seat of the stool.
What I had never done before was to use Arbutus or Madrone or even Madrona as it is also sometimes called, (species name- Arbutus Menziesii) in making the legs. Working with Arbutus is always a challenge, and in this case the wood was aq bit green so I wanted to see just how it turned and how much shrinkage there would be when it dries.


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I have worked a bit with Arbutus in the past. When it is dry it is very hard and tends to be chippy to work with. In my experience it doesn't often crack as it dries, as long as it is allowed to dry slowly, and depending on the thickness, this can take months or even years to air dry fully. It's that dense a wood.

Making 2 Arts and Crafts Style Bedside Tables

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I  can't remember the first time I saw Arts and Crafts style furniture, but it was love at first sight. I'm sure I must have been 9 or 10 years old, I didn't even know it had a name, I just loved the furniture that my Grandparents had ... and as it turns out, it was Arts and Crafts furniture. I wish I had it now.
There is a huge following of people like me who love the look of this bold, square furniture. In this video I am making a pair of bedside tables from the plans from a book by Robert W. Lang called "More Shop Drawings for Craftsman Furniture" - 30 Stickley Designs for Every Room in the Home. ISBN 13 - 978-1-892836-14-4 and should be quite widely available in book stores and often in better woodworking stores as well. I do not know where the drawings came from or how they got into this book. I have not been able to find a picture of these exact bedside tables so perhaps they are in a private collection somewhere, but I would love to see what the Stickley version of these look like.

Watch this and other similar videos on YouTube - https://youtu.be/FBI6U55_sy8

Although not in the traditon of A&C, the tables I made will feature some splated alder that I collected myself from the forsest ... you can watch that VIDEO HERE

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Like most Stickley furniture, in an ideal world, these should be made from Red Oak but in my case I used Red Alder as that is what I had on hand and it's a wood I love to work with ...

Building a Natural Edge Wooden Sitting Bench

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Sitting benches have been around in various forms for perhaps thousands of years. They may well have been one of the first forms of formal seating as they can be made from very basic materials and utilize a many different kinds of options for legs or supports. I have long held a love of live edge wood and try to incorporate it in as many things as I can, and especially when the project lends itself to using this kind of wood. This build, the natural edge sitting bench has been on my list for quite some time but finding the right piece of wood for the top was more elusive than I expected.  When I spotted this spalted maple, live edge board I immediately envisioned a sitting bench with contrasting woods.

 
Watch this and other similar videos on YouTube - https://youtu.be/Rduh4YoFPZU

The board was still fairly wet when I purchased it and wasn't much longer than it is now so I didn't have a lot of wood to waste on the ends. It already had a small crack in one end when I got it, but hoped that drying it slowly would preseve the crack from creeping. .... It did not .... the crack continued to grow as the board dried ...