Finish Used: 3 coats of Sherwin Williams Hi-build pre-cat lacquer applied with cheap turbine HVLP. Only the floor panels were dyed to add some contrast using a powdered aniline dye.

Project Description:
It all started on vacation last year at a children’s play place called “The Trailhead” in Crested Butte, CO. Inside was a large Cedarworks play set that caught my eye (and the attention of our 2-year-old). It is from their Rhapsody series (check them out online at www.cedarworks.com). The play set was really cool, but when I checked the price to build the configuration that would work for us, it easily fell into the build-it-yourself category.

I wanted to take the elements I liked and morph them into a more custom feel. Their system is fully reconfigurable and pre-drilled to accept all sorts of accessories. We will probably never change the set-up (due to the space where it exists) and all the holes and screws didn’t appeal to me.

I hopped into Sketch Up and began with their 2-foot-on-center post idea and changed to slats with sliding dovetails. I don’t like all the floor screws, so I made mine screw in from below. They have some nice routed wall panels, but they fit in grooves in the posts. I went for something more suspended (gives a more airy feeling) with clips holding the walls in place. The Sketch-up design evolved a lot during the process and gave us a way to test ideas out before committing to them in wood.

I did satisfy my desire to have no exposed screws, as long as you don’t climb inside and see how the floors are held together.

Here are the details of construction. The 14 posts were made from 10/4 ash and are 2 1/4″ square and 78″ long. The ends have the female dovetails to receive the slats. The slats are 3/4″ ash with male, stopped dovetails on both ends. The ~150 clips were made from various thicknesses of ash, routed in long strips and cut to length. The panels were cut from 5 sheets of 4×8, 1/2″ Baltic birch ply (with very little waste). The routing took a long time. 1/4″ bits break pretty easily when you are in a hurry. I made a jig for the trees and clouds. Sanding the grooves was a knuckle-buster.

It took a few sessions to get the wood cut, a few more to route the panels, and lots to sand to prep for finishing. I sprayed 3 gallons of lacquer (had to wait for warm days–luckily we get those in winter in Colorado). Everything was finished apart and construction took most of a day.

I am posting the basic play set, but it will receive a ladder on one end and possibly a slide on the other. We are already scheming several add-ons to make it even more fun (lights, colored steps for the climbing panels, etc).

Website: Charles-Christian-LLC.com

Location: Fort Wayne, IN

Amateur or Pro: Pro

Project Name: Police Call Box (TARDIS)

Wood Species: Poplar and Maple

Finish Used: Bin primer custom color matched by hand, hand brushed applied then shot with top coat.

Project Description:
A client for my remodeling business asked if I could build a TARDIS model from the sci-fiction show “Dr. Who” I said first of all, “what is a Tardis?” and then decided to go for it. Found original prop dimensions from the show online and then scaled down 1/4. The outer posts are solid maple, the panels, rails and styles are poplar. The small trim around the windows and signs (Lexan sanded to diffuse light) are maple as well. There is a three light LED puck in the hip roof ceiling that back lights the interior. I matched the color with paint tint and brushed on the interior white and exterior blue and then applied urethane for durability. The top beacon light is actually a stainless steal drain pipe from a hardware store and there is a slot in the top to allow coinage to fall through. I have a hand cut dovetailed cherry box that I am going to give to the clients to collect the coins.

When I first approached my husband about building an arts and crafts table for our 2 year old girl, Gracie, I thought he was going to say, “here is your $200 go buy her a table”. I am so glad he didn’t do that because what she is got for Christmas is a priceless heirloom that will be treasured for generations. Not only did he create a table based on what she needed but also added some details that I would’ve never thought of, like the bow pulls on the drawers, the bows on the tabletop.
The tabletop is made out of solid soft maple with walnut inlays and then dyed reddish brown, and then spray lacquered. The legs and frame are also solid soft maple with walnut inlays that protrude out 3/8 of an inch on each outside leg. There is one walnut large bow-tie in the center and a smaller one in each corner.

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 thought I’d send you some pics of some of my more fun projects. I made a rocking horse from some online plans for my first daughter for Christmas a few years ago and it has now become a tradition that each kid gets a rocker on their second Christmas. Daughter number two got a rocking airplane based on a store-bought toy a friend of mine had but with a few modifications. My son got my first attempt at an all from scratch rocker design: the rocket. This one was a little more fun since I came up with the idea and just made it work; without any plans, dimensions, or influences. It was also more challenging to figure out how to do some of the joinery. One of my favorite parts of the rocket was making the moveable control stick, thrust lever and the dials on the dash. In hindsight there are a few areas where I could have improved, and I guess thats why people make prototypes! At least I got some help from his sisters with figuring out dimensions! Anyway, enjoy, and feel free to suggest ideas for the next rocker design.

The Chest of Drawers

My wife’s sister asked that I build her son a chest of drawers similar to one that she had seen in a furniture store near her house. It was a painted item of poor quality. This would be my first opportunity to design and create a piece from start to finish.

I started with the overall dimensions and began creating the shop drawings for the piece. I am a Professional Land Surveyor by trade so I was able to utilize Autocad for the drawings. I went through every piece in my home to get different ideas on how to design the case for the piece. The design I ended up using seems pretty simple once I broke it down into the components. The sides are a frame and panel between the two legs. The supports for the drawers are a simple frame design and really worked well. The top is an edge glued panel of the best stock I had on hand.

The drawers are constructed using a type of locking rabbet joint in front and dado in the rear. As can be seen on the photos I reinforced all interior corners with small mitered pieces just to add more strength to the joints. This piece is going to a small child and I wanted to be sure he could not pull the drawers apart. The drawer slides are full extension glides. A little unusual for a furniture piece but again I wanted to make sure that if he was to lean down on the drawers or to climb on them that they would support the load and not give way.

The drawer fronts for the top three drawers and the middle two were cut from one piece of stock to insure grain continuity across the piece. Really makes the piece stand out when completed. All joinery on this project are Domino’s from Festool. Thanks again to Dennis Kent of Woodcraft for suggesting this tool for my shop. It is an awesome tool that makes quick, strong and accurate joinery.

The finish was lots of fun to watch come together. The cherry really comes to life during the finishing process. I started by sealing the raw cherry with a wash coat of shellac to help control blotching. This was followed by two coats of Minwax “Cherrywood” gel stain. The gel stain was easy to work with and ended up being very transparent. It really allowed the grain to show through on the completed project. The second coat was when the character of the cherry began to show. The top coat is lacquer sprayed on with my Earlex HVLP system. Multiple coats were applied to allow wet sanding and hand polishing up to the desired sheen. I think the top came out nicely once the sanding and polishing were completed. Antique brass hardware completed the look and matched nicely with the cherry.

The Doll Desk

My daughter Sarah has several American Girl dolls and loves to play school with them. She asked daddy for a desk for “Julie” and I set out to see what I could come up with.

This project was built pretty much on the fly. Sarah had seen an old type desk at our church and wanted Julie’s to be like it. I decided that since I had some nice Red Oak left from from another project I would use it. The desk compartment is a simple box with a slant top that opens to storage below. A pencil groove was routed in the flat area near the top. Corners are simple rabbets and the bottom is tempered hard board floating in a groove milled into the sides.

The chair is sized to fit Julie and utilized some thin stock that was left over from another project where I had resawn some oak for another use. The sides utilize a half lap joint and are surprisingly strong. The seat and back stretchers are the thin resawn stack that I mentioned earlier. The chair support and desk support is again built from some scrap pieces I had around the shop from larger pieces. The original thought was to have the vertical support for the desk and chair be the only pieces under each. Once the pieces were assembled it became obvious that more support was needed laterally to prevent each from racking. I added the mitered braces to help with the flex of the thin stock. I finished the piece with two coats of satin polyurethane.

Now Sarah and Julie can play school in style!