Woodworker's Journal June 2022

Here at the Journal, we aim to provide a broad range of projects that will appeal to all sorts of woodworking interests. In this issue, for instance, you’ll find articles covering space-age guitars, multicolored epoxy pours and fun-tomake outdoor planters. We do our best to make our content interesting and informative for beginning woodworkers and experts alike. With that in mind, you may have noticed a new department in our pages this year: Skill Builder. Shaping and joining wood together is central to what woodworking is all about. I like to call it “making little pieces from big pieces and then making big pieces from those little ones.” How you go about doing that will vary from project to project, but it all boils down to joinery. In our Skill Builder…

Conover’s Windsor Stool Here’s my version of Ernie Conover’s “Four-legged Windsor Stool” from the December 2021 issue. The seat diameter was too large to turn on my lathe, so I glued up a flat seat from contrasting pieces of board lumber, rounded it on a disk sander and routed the edges. The 1/2" tenons on the stretchers were too small (I broke one), so I made them 3/4" instead. I used my band saw to cut kerfs in the tops of the legs for wedges. I really enjoyed the project! Wes Demmon DeWitt, Iowa…

HELP US SHARE THEM IN SHOP TALK Everyone loves a good story. We humans use narratives to put the world around us into a form that makes sense — as much as that is possible. And often those stories are about interesting people or events that spark our imagination and sense of wonder. That’s what we are trying to do in our Shop Talk department. We are perhaps the only woodworking magazine that has a regular department that explores the “human” side of woodworking. So whether it is a story about an organization that teaches boatbuilding to at-risk youths, shines a spotlight on an up-and-coming woodworker, talks about people replanting a forest or showcases an amazing piece of woodworking, our Shop Talk department is about woodworking writ large. Take this issue, for instance,…

Storm-salvaged Success Four years ago this October, Hurricane Michael brought down several white oak trees on my property. I had them milled into 1"- and 2"-thick boards and waited several years for them to dry. Recently I built this coffee table for my daughter from some of that oak lumber and Rockler’s hairpin metal legs. She enjoys it as much as I enjoyed building it. Tim King via the Internet Tambour Cabinet Promise Fulfilled I promised this walnut-and-maple tambour cabinet to my wife for Mother’s Day, and two years later, I finished it. I had to equip an entire shop to build it! It’s an adaptation of your August 2019 “Tambour Console Cabinet” project, finished with orange dye, four coats of dewaxed shellac and two coats of Briwax. Peter Besen Somerville, Massachusetts…

We asked about domestic and non-domestic wood species as well as how adventurous woodworkers are about trying something new. 1. What species of domestic wood do you build with most frequently? Here are the top four answers: a. Oak 34% b. Pine 15% c. Cherry 13% d. Walnut 11% 2. What species of non-domestic wood do you build with most frequently? Here are the top four answers: a. I don’t use non-domestic wood species (40%!) b. Mahoganies (African, Central and South American) (18%) c. Purpleheart 8% d. Padauk 5% 3. Do you ever try a new wood species as an impulse buy? a. Yes 57% b. No 43%…

Spalted woods … are a nightmare to a freshly sharpened edge. This is because the black zone lines in spalted wood are not really wood anymore. Instead, they are mineral-based deposits left over from the spalting process as the fungi crept through the wood, destroying cell structures in their wake. As far as the tool is concerned, cutting these zone lines is more like turning seashells. One good slice, and the edge of your favorite [turning] tool is gone. That is the reason I never run spalted wood through my band saw. Sharpening the teeth on my chainsaw is lesson enough. David Ellsworth Ellsworth on Woodturning Fox Chapel Publishing; ISBN: 1565233775…