Website: carverwa.com

Location: Enumclaw, WA

Hobbyist or Pro: Pro

Experience: 10+ yrs

Project Name: The “Luv Bench”

Wood Species: CVG Western Red Cedar

Finish Used: 5 coats, wet sanded, Daly’s Sea Fin Teak oil

Project Description:
First one was a commissioned project for a wedding gift. Designed as a outdoor courtship style bench. Laminated cedar glued w/ titebond III.

Location: San Antonio, TX

Hobbyist or Pro: Hobbyist

Finish Used: Danish Oil

Wood Species: Claro Walnut

Project Description:
Thirteen months later finally finished a Hal Taylor design rocker. This was a very fun project and I would recommend it to all skill levels. The plans from Hal were very detailed and easy to follow. Although it did take me 3 attempts to get the back legs done correctly.

Website: My Facebook Page

Location: CT

Hobbyist or Pro: Hobbyist

Finish Used: For my finish I used 7 coats of waterlox. I removed the extra oil 5 to 10 minutes after I applied it. After 24 hours I used a gray scotch pad and cleaned in between coats. To me it was the longest part of the project.

Wood Species: The bench is Red Oak. The inlay is Mahogany and White Maple (dyed black)

Project Description:
My inspiration? Spagnuolo of course! His videos are very educational, made me believe I could do it. The design was in my head and as I went through the project, I made changes to make it a true one of a kind. I spent approximately 100 hrs (give or take a few hours) in my single car garage shop. I spent about $150 on lumber, sand paper, waterlox and all those other little things. However, I spent $300 on new tools so I could do the project, all of which I’ll use again.

Here’s a little slideshow Dan made:

Amateur or Pro: Amateur

Finish Used: Sanding to 150 grit. Wipe on poly with paste wax applied with 0000 steel wool and buffed.

Wood Species: Black Walnut / White Ash

Project Description:
This project was inspired by an interesting chair I saw while visiting the Halifax Citadel fort. After doing extensive research on it, I came up with a couple of names including Savonarola chair or Dante chair. I modified the design to suit some different species of wood and modern hardware to go for a more contemporary look.

At the end of the video “A Fancy Raised Panel” Marc discussed how various types of wood provide an endless palette and an infinite way for us to express ourselves and our tastes. I communicated with Marc via email as I was happy to hear someone else speak what I had long thought. At the time I was working on a woven seat bench constructed from walnut. As I was finishing that one, I looked around and saw that I had an odds and ends pile of quartersawn white oak. So I thought, I would like to see how the bench would look in a different wood. Voila! A second bench gets built.

So… are these two benches identical or are they different? I like them both for different reasons. My most appreciated critic, my wife, weighed in on the subject and found something to like for different tastes in both benches. I hope I succeeded in illustrating Marc’s point.

Finish Used: Sanded to 220 before assembly. Assembled and touch up sanding done again at 220. Mixed BLO:Mineral Spirits 3:2 and applied one coat which I allowed to cure for a couple days. Top coat with 3 quick coats of brush-on lacquer with about 2 hours between coats. Allowed to dry hard and sanded with 440. Final coat with thinned brush-on lacquer.

The story does have a cool twist to it. The wood for the chairs is door casing from a south east Iowa farmhouse. A friend of mine had this 1905 farm house and it had a pile of extra door casing in the barn. When he sold the farm, he had me load up the door casing and take it home. I have moved it twice and finally found a good use for it. I threw in a pic of the wood, there were 2 coats of paint over the old varnish but there was some nice quartersawn white oak under it. The wood is probably close to 200 years old depending how old the tree was when it was made into millwork.

The design for the chairs is my interpretation of a Stickley chair that I found and liked. The table is the same design and the stair railing I built for my new house, I added a couple of those pics too. The table is 42″ x 96″ and the base is 22″ x 72″. The legs are 4″ square using rabbets to make quartersawn face on all 4 sides. The stretchers for the table are 1″ stock and everything is mortise and tenon joints. The chairs are 18″ square and 18″ seat height. The backs are 48″ tall and 2 degree recline. The back has about 3/4″ of curve to it. The chairs are all built with mortise and tenon joints also. The seat is upholstered with a 2″ hi density foam and vinyl. I have made tables in the past but this is the first time I have built chairs.

The finish schedule is as follows:
Sand to 220 grit. Apply 1 coat of General Finishes Industrial Wiping Stain Special Walnut Color (Available from Jeff Jewitt). Sand to 400 grit – this knocks down the grain and lightens the rays. Apply 2nd coat of General Finishes Industrial Wiping Stain Special Walnut Color. Apply 1 coat of General Finishes Pre Cat 181 Urethane with HVLP conversion gun. Sand to 400 grit. Apply 2nd coat of General Finishes Pre Cat 181. Sand with 0000 steel wool. Apply final coat of General Finishes Pre Cat 181 Urethane.

Doug’s Dining Room Chairs Project
I’m an amateur woodworker with lots of passion for the craft, and this is by far my most adventurous project to date. I chose a simple mission-inspired design with mostly straight lines as I wanted to increase my odds of success. One thing worth mentioning is that I made these chairs in a 14 x 16 basement workshop that did not include a bandsaw. The wood species is red oak. I created some router template/jigs to put over the seats to rough out the contour and sanded them smooth with a sanding disc on a drill. I did screw up by making the tenons slightly too long on the slates of the back of the chairs, so the mortise/tenon joints didn’t completely close on several of them. Lesson for the future- do a better job dry-fit testing before the glue up! I tried to hide that as best I could, but it is disappointing. Any other suggestions on “after the fact” fixes for situations like this? Overall, I’m pleased with the outcome. It was definitely enjoyable and I learned A LOT in the process.

By the way, my wife put in the order for these, and she insisted that we needed eight. The matching dining room table is the next project on my list. A friend and I worked with a guy with a portable band-saw and home-made kiln this past spring to harvest and create our own lumber for the table and other future projects. I’m currently soliciting design ideas for the table, so if anyone wants to throw those at me, I’d love it.

Mark’s Mission Style Rocking Chair
This is the first mortise and tenon project that I have attempted. The plans were purchased from furnitureplans.com. The chair is 17.5″ wide, 28″ tall and 22″ deep. The mortises were made with a mortising attachment to my drill press. Setting up the mortising attachment was trickier than I would have thought. Keeping the mortise blade and the fence square to each other and keeping track of the offsets required attention. The tenons were cut on a table saw. I was surprised that it went together as well as it did. The unfinished photos are of the dry fit up. I bought The WoodWhisperer Finishing DVD, the wipe on finish went on easily and the final product looked like someone who knew what they were doing did it.

Just finished a chair project I have been working on for the last few weeks. Here are the results. The wood is American Black Walnut. I used loose tenon joinery throughout the chair. I had access to a milling machine so I used it to experiment with cutting a few of the mortises. It worked extremely well and will make it difficult to go back to the router! The back was formed in the vacuum press with 1/16″ walnut veneer I got from Veneersupplies.com per your suggestion on video #17 A Pressing Matter. The finish is an oil/varnish mixture. Thanks for the site. It is a tremendous resource for woodworkers of all skill levels.

Your website is great. I very much enjoy the videos, commentary, etc. I’m a finance guy by day and woodworker all other times. I’ve been woodworking for almost 3 years now and can’t get enough of it. It started off with Legos and Lincoln logs at age 3, one semester of woodshop in grade school and then decided to buy my own tools a few years back and am now a proud Festool addict.

I thought I’d pass along photos of a rocking chair I made out of curly and quilted maple from Hal Taylor plans and made some changes as I saw fit. It took me about 90-100 hours to build one chair after making all the necessary jigs and buying all the necessary drill bits, tools, etc. I found it to be a very interesting and fun project to build and frankly thought it would be way over my head.