sutton073

Well my mother wanted a new bookcase to go in her living room. She dreamed up a simple and a bit modern design that featured full overlay drawers and a smoothe clean look all around the piece. Pretty simple but nice. I used 3/4" and 1/2" birch plywood for the construction and some 3/4" poplar for the face frames. I bought some full extention drawer slides from a local wholesale supplier for about $13 a pair, talk about a deal. I was paying somewhere around $20-$25 a pair, I'm glad I found these! Anyways, I finished it will some red mahogany stain after I applied a bit of prestain right before. It was my first time using prestain and I think it may help a little bit, but not a really big difference. I then aplied 2 coats of high gloss poly to finish it off and seal the piece. I don't have a photo of that at the moment but I will try to get one up soon.

I just saw this morning on the news that nearsightedness in the US has risen by 41% since 1971. Thats a pretty big jump and no one really knows why, it's a fast we must live with. Another fact that is a great one is the advances in eye surgerys has advanced greatly since 1971. Sadly, I am definitely a near sighted person although it's not bad enough yet that I have contacs or surgery yet but that time will soon. One of these surgerys is Lasik eye surgery. Not only is Lasik surgery the most performed surgery in the US, but it can reduce or eliminate the need for contact lenses. For me this would be great, because I love spending time on and in the water and contacts aren't the best things to have around water. You can find many eye centers across the US who perform Lasik surgery but one in particular stands out, Stahl Eye Center. Stahl Eye Center has been serving their patients for more than 35 years, they have been independently verified by nonprofit Lasik patient ad...

I finally built myself a simple but effective lumber rack system. I built it entirely out of 2x4's and it took me probably three hours to complete, not to bad by myself. It is large enough to store 12' long boards, and plenty of them! The way it is designed, the lumber is supposed to be slid in and out on end. This works perfect in my shop because it is shaped like a "L". The lumber rack is right on the top of the bottom, flat part of the "L". It was definitely the best spot for my lumber rack and I will go into more detail of why in a later post. I have drawn a little set of plans on sketchup that better shows how it was put together. I built each unit with pine 2x4's and I nailed them together on the floor with a pneumatic nail gun using some old ring shank nails that I had laying around. You can use screws if you want to take the time but I think the ring shank nails will hold just about as good as a screw would. I spaced the units 16" apart to p...

Just today, I finished building my third set of cornhole boards. The first two sets that I built were for myself and the third set is for a freind who is also addicted to cornhole on Friday and Saturday nights. The boards are made of 5/8" plwood trimmed in 3/4" select pine grade boards with 3/4" oak legs. I used pockethole-joinery to join the pine to the plywood and screws to attach the hinges and the legs. Glue was used on all joints. The first two sets of cornhole boards I made where not as good of quality as these boards are. I used 3/4" plywood and 3/4" pine for the first set but I didn't join the pine to the plywood flush with the top like I did with these boards, that should make the edges of the board more durable and it looks great also. Also I just screwed the top down into the pine framing leaving the screws exposed in the top of the boards. On my first set I used a simular hinge setup for the legs which never gave me any trouble. On the seco...

Browsing the LumberJocks forum, I have found that Hitachi sells reconditioned tools for pretty good deals compared to buying brand new. Reconditioned tools are pretty much new tools, they are tools that have been returned by customers to the retailer. They are all tools that could have had defects, been returned by an unsatisfied customer, returned after a weekend project, some returned brand new just because. When a tools is returned to a retailer, they cannot just put it back on the shelf, instead they have return it to the company. When this happens the company, in my case Hitachi, fixes whatever was wrong with the tools and sells them at discounted prices. I think this is a great way to buy like new tools for great prices. The tools come with the full factory warranty. I ordered two tools from Hitachi, both of which have great reviews on different websites like Amazon and LumberJocks. I bought the Hitachi DS18DFL 18V 1.5Ah Lithium Ion Driver Drill for $109 and the Hitachi NT50AE2 2...

This past Tuesday when I arrived at my shop I realized it had been broken into in the night. The burglar broke a set of aluminum double doors on the side of my shop and stole about $600 worth of tools out of my shop. They stole -Senco Framing Nailer -Senco Brad Nailer -Bostitch Roofing Gun -Dewalt RO Sander -Dewalt 14.4v Cordless Drill -Case of Kreg Pockethole Screws -Face mask Respirator I was so disapointed when I realized what was stolen. I hadn't gotten my insurance finalized yet so none of the items stolen where re-inbursed. Not much I can do about it now except hope that the police find my tools or that I find them in a local pawn shop. Now I am getting insurance as soon as I can!

There is a small church next door to my shop and the pastor asked me if I could make them a simple offering table with a couple of drawers in it. I said sure! My first paying job, although it didn't really pay anything just materials since I am pretty new at this stuff. Anyways, here is how it turned out, this is the first time I have ever really built drawers into a piece and I think they came out great. They are just on some wooden slides that I fabricated since the chuch didn't want to spend much money at all. The poplar was great to work with and so is my kreg pockethole jig system. It was used to joint pretty much every piece on this table, although you would never know just looking at the table normally.