And Now... For Something Completely Different

As I told my lovely wife, when the Craft Fair is over, I'll focus on the living room. It has been several weeks since we had decided that it was time to do something. Our little two year old had ripped off a couple pieces of the old wallpaper already. And by pieces, I mean sections. This stuff is older than I am and came off in full sheets. Unfortunately, it has sat that way since then as I've been a little pre-occupied. But with the show over and Christmas looming, now is the time.

I got the primer put on today after spending most of yesterday removing the last remnants of wallpaper and patching some small holes in the plaster. I have even got the first coat of paint on most of one wall. This is the same wall that is going to be receiving the new DVD shelf that I liked in one of the latest editions Family Handyman Magazine. I'm going to build this out of some Oak that I've got and coat it with my very favorite Boiled Linseed Oil. This will give it a nice warm look that will compliment the Athenian Green that we are putting on the wall.

pictures will follow...

Show Results

Well the show's over and here's how it went:

I think that overall it went pretty well. The only real disappointment were the cutting boards. To high a price or lack of interest, I'm not sure.

The cigar pens did pretty well, as did the wine bottle holders. The turned tree ornaments probably did the best, including the newer ones that were made last night.

Now to figure out where to go next.

New Stuff

Yeah, that's right. It's 11:54 the night before my show and I have just finished making several new tree ornament designs. None of these look the same, not that they are supposed to, and that's what I like the most about them. Free form designs where I can just let the creativity flow.

...and in about 9 hours we'll find out if anyone else likes them!

Nice Savings in Time for the Holidays!

I've been wanting to buy a chuck so I can start making some bowls and other items on the lathe. I've been watching for some sort of sale and I got one today!

List price: $119.99
Sale price: $69.99
gift certificate that I've been waiting to use: $25.00
free shipping on all orders through 11/29/06 saves another $10.25

brings my total cost to $44.99!

And it should be here Tuesday or Wednesday.

Sneak Peak

3 days to go...

Would you like to see what my display may look like? Ok, here we go.

First up, here's a shot of the wine bottle holders that I have talked about but have yet to get a picture of. This shot also includes the business cards that my friend Jeremy made for me.


This is a shot that shows a bit more of the table setup. The actual table being used on Saturday is two feet longer than this, so I'll have a little more room. As I was trying to focus more on the actual crafts, I bought the pen display box at Michael's... I can't build everything.


And here, you can see the very few tree ornaments that I have available...


Over the next two days I hope to get a few more things done, but I'd say that for the most part I'm ready to go with what I've got.

Enjoy!

Bang Your Head...

4 days and counting...

yesterday I prepped two new ornaments. BOTH of them broke apart today as I was working on them. BOTH of them... grrrrr. where's the brick wall... I need to bang my head.


On a positive note, my friends showed up with a small gift for me tonight. It's not my birthday, and it's still a bit early for Christmas, so I had no idea what it could be. They made me some business cards for my show! I had thought it would be nice to have something like that, but with the time cruch I'm under and all I figured they would have to wait.

Thanks Mary & Jeremy!

5 Days and Counting

The cutting boards are done!
I can make more pens, but I think I have enough for now.

Now to focus on the home stretch. I cut all the pieces I need for another eight wine bottle holders. These should go together fairly easily.

I've got two ornaments gluing up, and another smaller one piece ornament that just needs a finish applied.

A couple hours each night with some additional focus on Friday's day off and everything should be fine.

7 Days and Counting

Ok, so I've got just over a week now before my inaugural craft fair. I've finally got a grip on the cutting boards, no problems there. The cigar pens are now in full swing and I hope to finish most of them tomorrow (assuming the rest of the family doesn't think I am ditching them). I think I'd like to make a few more of the wine bottle holders. My gut tells me that as the lowest priced item, these could have a decent chance of selling well. And then there is the Christmas tree ornaments. I'm not sure I'll have as many as I initially thought I would, but I think I can still double the number that I've currently got available.

I passed out a few postcard reminders today at the real job to some people that have shown an interest in what I'm doing. That will hopefully secure a couple of visitors to my table.

All in all, I think I've got a pretty good grip on everything right now... We'll see how I feel about that come Monday!

Time to get Serious!

ok, I've got 14 days before my first ever craft fair. Let's do a quick review of inventory, shall we.

~ I have less than half of the cutting boards done that I want to finish.
~ I have a third of the cigar pens that I'd like to get done.
~ I have a few of the wine bottle holders (that I still haven't taken a picture of) done, and I think I'd like to at least double what I've got.
~ I haven't even started making any new tree ornaments...

I've always thought that I work better under pressure... I just don't know why I do this to myself!

Stay tuned, it's gonna get exciting!

Not Sure What to Say

I had mentioned once before that I was first introduced to woodworking while in school. In my junior year of high school, I built a rather large bookshelf made of Rock Maple. As with everthing else I had ever made, this bookshelf was given to my parents.

My parents are currently redocorating their house a little bit and they let me know that if I wanted this bookshelf back that I could have it. I thought about it a little bit and decided to go ahead and pick it up this past weekend.

I have to admit that I haven't really looked at this bookshelf since... well since I made it. While considering to pick it up, I had visions that this bookshelf was built with the same attention to detail that I have with my current projects.

All I can say is that my little fanasty of picking up this "antique" is not what I thought it would be. There are rough spots that weren't sanded out. There are pencil notes on the underside of shelves. I'm a little disappointed...

Thanks to my Daughter

My oldest daughter is in seventh grade at the middle school. She’s done a great job of continuing to try out for different activities at school. She’s gone for drama, track, field hockey and most recently student council. The unfortunate part of this is that she hasn’t made the cut on any of these activities yet. I give her great credit for trying though, that’s more than I ever did in school. Other than a stint in pop warner football my freshman year, I didn’t do anything.

So after finding out today about the outcome of the student council voting, I’ve decided that I need to push my own fears of rejection aside. I have entered into one of the regions upcoming craft fairs. If she can continue to out herself our there, I don't really feel like I have an excuse not to.

I’m going with a limited number of items to test the waters. I’m going to have cutting boards, cigar pens, wine bottle holders and some turned Christmas tree ornaments. And since I’ve got about 5 weeks to get ready for this, I’m going to have to get my butt back into the dungeon and continue sanding away like a mad man.

Wish me luck.

Too Well...

I knew everything was going "too well" over the past couple of days. I glued up four of these wine bottle holders out of some scrap oak along with another walnut/maple cutting board. I also glued the brass inserts into four pen blanks. I also started working on the cookie sheet rack for my wife that will go above the range vent/light thing.

So tonight, in an attempt to keep each of these projects moving along, I decided to focus on the cookie sheet rack. I had glued up the sides, top and bottom the other day, so it was time to route the dados for the shelf supports into the sides. Well only ONE side should have had the extra dados... and now both of them do. Dang it! It never pays to rush anything.

Back to the glue bench I go...

A Fun Little Hobby

It's the little things that I really enjoy about this hobby of mine. What started as three simple pieces of Oak this morning, has now transitioned into a new item! pictures coming soon...

You Want a Cardio Workout?

Oh, I've got the workout for you! Grab yourself a palm sander (the manual kind, not some plug in jobbie) get three grits of paper (I used 100, 150 and 220) and something roughly the size of a cutting board. I bet you know where I'm going with this! After almost an hour of sanding down, not one, but two cutting boards, I'm covered in dust and sweating like a pig. And unlike Richard Simmons, I was listening to Metallica crank through the iPod rather than the oldies.

So I've got two boards that are ready to be wiped down with a tack cloth and have the first coat of oil applied.

oh, and my interview on LumberJocks has now been posted!

You Want to Interview Me?!?!

I was contacted the other day by Martin Sojka, the creator of LumberJocks.com. He asked me if I would be his next Jock to be interviewed! Trust me, I was just as shocked as you! I submitted my interview to him today, so I would expect it should be posted sometime this week. You can click here to go directly to the interviews page.

I have to admit that I'm a bit nervous about the whole thing. I don't have anywhere near the experience or skill that the other "Jocks" interviewed have got. But to be included with such an amazing group was not something I could pass up.

More Cuttingboards

I think I might have found something I'm good at. I can glue smaller boards together to form a larger flat (most of the times) board!!

Here are some new cuttingboards that I have in progress (though I'm not sure how well the fomatting is going to look):

This is the board that I was complaining about yesterday. That 32 grit sand paper (kinda like rubbing a handful of pebbles on the board) I picked up yesterday at Home Depot helped even things out a bit quicker.
Today I got the ends trimmed and evened off and I routered a 1/4" round-over on the edges.
This board is made up of Cherry, Walnut and Red Leaf Soft Maple.





This board, made of Cherry and Red Leaf Soft Maple, is next up in Line. I've arranged for the stripes to run the length of the board on this and the next few boards.
Tonight I planed the faces of each of the boards to get this one ready to be glued up. I hope to do the glue up tomorrow.







Here's a shot of one of three cuttingboards that I have rough cut. All three have the stripes running the length of the board and are all complosed of Walnut and Red Leaf Soft Maple. The other two have the outer edges starting with the maple.

All of the cuttingboards I have done and have in progress are roughly 11" x 15" x 1.5" in size.

Why is it...?

Why is it that the second version of a project always seems to be about 50 times harder than the first? It must be the woodworking God's way of keeping me in line. Making sure I'm not getting over-confident...

It's not that the new cutting board (go figure, I'm having trouble making a flat board!!) is coming out poorly, it's just that this one isn't going as smoothly as the first. My biggest problem, looking back on this project, is that I didn't pay as close attention to making sure that each strip was close enough in height. I've had some wicked hand planing and sanding to do over the past couple days.

After some focused work tonight, it's getting better though. Tomorrow should put me back on track.

Cuttingboard

Last night, I cut the board to final width, hand planed the highspots, routered a roundover on the edges and rough sanded the whole board. Tonight, I did the finish sanding and applied a coat of BLO (Boiled Linseed Oil) for the finish. I really like how the BLO shows off the grain of the walnut (the darker stripes) in this picture:


Here's a close-up that shows off the grain in the red leaf soft maple:


This was a fun little project to do. I think I'll be making more. Christmas is coming and there were several family members that showed some interest... we'll have to wait and see.

Reincarnated

What was once supposed to be a laptop writing desk and a drawer for my daughter's dresser has now become a butcher-block style cutting board.

Wood Magazine had another version of a cutting board in the current issue, which got me thinking that here's another relatively quick and easy project that I can bang out and continue improving my skills with. And so far it's coming out rather nice. I've alternated strips of Black Walnut and Red Leaf Soft Maple and I'm going to coat it with Boiled Linseed Oil when it's ready.

Ornament #5

This is the fifth ornament that I've worked on. The first four had the Christmas tree center (though numbers 2, 3 & 4 had a slightly altered tree compared to the first).

As you can see, I've gone with a Snowman on this one. I saw this design somewhere out on the web, but not sure where. I wouldn't normally paint a perfectly good piece of Maple, but my wife has yet again make a good request. The "ball" portion of this ornament is Walnut.

Other than the hole on the bottom being drilled a little off center, I'm pretty happy with the looks of this one. I may have to try another tree and use some of the left-over paint from the NY Adirondacks project.