Making Dowels

I've been practicing my hand tool skills over the past week. For a fun project, I decided to build a couple of 'marshmallow crossbows' that Steve Ramsey featured on his YouTube channel. I have a lot of wood left over from various projects, so I decided to make two complementary crossbows - one for me and one for my daughter. Instead of shooting marshmallows around the house, I'm going to use small foam plugs cut from dense pipe insulation. The crossbows look to be the perfect size for Nerf darts, so I might pick up a pack of those as well to see how they work. Since this is a project that I'm doing for fun, I thought it would be a good opportunity to work on my hand tool skills. I did use the band saw and the combination belt/disc sander a bit, but most of the cutting and shaping has been done with a coping saw and chisels. For this post, I wanted to document my effort to make dowels.

Table Saw Cabinet Complete

I finally completed the table saw cabinet. It took a bit longer than I anticipated because real life circumstances dictate that some of my woodworking has to wait until the weekend. Still, after a small delay I completed the cabinet. I still have a bit of future work to do; I plan to build a small drawer which will sit above the blade caddy, a door to cover the blade caddy area, and possibly a couple of doors for the cabinet. I also will eventually add a couple of hooks on one side to hold the folding outfeed holder. However, those will wait for another day because I have some other, better projects in mind.

Blade Caddy Progress

I've been making some progress on the blade caddy. When I left off, the core pieces were cut to size and I had made the dados and rabbets. Rather than letting it float, the center shelf is held in place with a simple mortise and tenon joint. I designed the center shelf this way so that the shelf could double at the top of the blade caddy, as well as finishing off the small box in which I plan to place a drawer. I decided the best way to cut the mortises was to use my router and a 3/4 inch straight cutting bit for the right hand side, and a 3/8 straight cutting bit for the left side. The left side is only half thickness because it also forms the rabbet for left side of the blade caddy. The mortise and tenon joints are 3/8 deep, and setting the proper depth on my router is easy with my cutting depth gauges.

Table Saw Cabinet With Blade Caddy

My current table saw setup is less than efficient, so it's time to update it to provide additional storage and better access to all the accessories. This is a project that I've been meaning to do for a while, and I'm finally getting to it. Right now I'm using an old fiber board book shelf (the super cheap kind you find at big-box stores) to store table saw blades and miscellaneous things. We used it in our first apartment so many years ago, but after we bought our first house and acquired real furniture it found a home in the garage. You can see how crowded and poorly placed it is in the following image:

Fast forward to today. I want to build a dedicated cabinet to store all of my table saw blades, table inserts, arbor wrenches, and any other accessory that fits. The primary function of the cabinet is to serve as a place to store blades, so the design will be built around that. This is an old problem, so I started by looking around the web to see what other people have come up with. Why reinvent the wheel, right?

I think I'm ready

As promised, I'm beginning my blog with an older project, but one that has some significance for me.  It was one of the first involved projects that I took on without any mentoring from my father, from who I learned almost everything I know about woodworking.  It was also significant in the message it delivered to my wife.  This first post is a bit long and probably has more personal information than future projects, but it's one of the more meaningful projects I've built.  The back story necessarily comes with it.  With the exception of some older projects that I didn't fully document, future posts will lean more toward actual woodworking.

And then there was me

I've decided to start chronicling my various woodworking projects.  I realize that I'm terribly late to the whole blogging thing, but when I decided to start keeping a woodworking diary of sorts I came to the decision after much thought.  The first question naturally was, "Do I want to do this?"  Realizing the answer was, "Yes; yes I do," the next question was, "Why do I want to do this?"

The 'why' question proved a bit more difficult to answer.  Woodworking for me is a hobby.  In a way it's catharsis - a way for me to relieve the stresses of life in a creative and constructive way.  It's not my intent to teach or provide great insight into the craft of woodworking.  In that respect I'm not only too late but I'm still very much an amateur.  Instead, I'll relate my experiences while I learn as I go.  I'll share my progress for all to see.  Along the way, I'll use the space to write my thoughts while they are still mine to remember.

I don't know how often I'll post (that depends on how many projects I do) or how quickly I'll complete anything I begin (that depends on how much of my precious free time I can dedicate to any given project).  I think I'll begin with a few of my already completed projects.  I'll use those to set the tone of the blog, and to work through basic issues such as layout and style.  Stay tuned, and thanks for reading.