Don’s Workshop – Viewer Shop
Here is a nicely organized shop for a modest space. Let’s check it out:
I’ve really been enjoying your videos. I appreciate that you take time to talk about pitfalls and how to avoid them. Thanks for the effort.
Every shop I ever see has lots of room, great tools, sturdy work table, and a dust collection system. I wish I had one too. How about featuring a guy like me who is limited to part of a one car garage? All of my heavy power tools are on two wheeled carts. When I want to cut or plane wood for a project, I have to move the riding mower outside. Then I roll the carts around or move them outside. My work table is two saw horses or my work bench. Most of my power tools are Craftsman which suits my purposes. This sure isn’t a great shop but it’s all I can do for now. It’s not easy to make anything and takes a lot of determination and sometimes good weather.
As Don’s shop illustrates, workshops come in all sizes, filled with tools from the Harbor Freight Specials to the latest in fancy Euro machines. As woodworkers, we are just fascinated by other people’s setups! So share your shops with us. We would love to see your ingenious ideas for tool arrangement, storage, and mobility.
Go with the Flow – Continuous Grain
One of the things I feel sets a craftsman apart from a woodworker is the continued attention to higher quality and detail. A very important detail that you should always think about is grain continuity. This is one of those things that the average onlooker has a hard time putting their finger on. If you could place two nearly identical boxes in front of them, one with continuous grain and one without, they would most likely prefer the look of the continuous grain version and not necessarily know why. Continuous grain imparts a sense of harmony to the piece that discontinuous grain disrupts. That’s not to say that the other box can’t be beautiful and well-constructed. Its just that it would lack that one little extra detail that would turn a home run into a grand slam!
Here are a couple of real-life examples from our good friend Google. These two boxes both have disrupted grain patterns. As a result, they fall a little short of their potential. Let’s take a closer look at the box on the left. The grain is not only disrupted where the front meets the side, but also where the lid meets the rest of the box. These are two very important areas for box-makers to focus on. 
Looking at the box on the right, we can see the front to side joint is disrupted. But this person was careful to make sure the lid was matched to the rest of the box. In all likelihood, the box wax constructed as a closed cube and the lid was sliced off, similar to the process used in this video.
Now I don’t mean to disparage the woodworkers who created these beautiful boxes. Clearly a lot of effort was put into their construction, and not everyone cares this much about continuous grain. But when I see a box as finely crafted as the box on the right, with its awesome burl inlay and fine lacquer finish, I almost expect to see that beautiful grain flow wrapping around the front.
Here’s a box from West End Woodworks that makes excellent use of grain. It is so well done that its almost difficult to see where the lid starts, and the grain from the front just wraps right around to the side. It produces the illusion that a board was just bent to a 90 degree angle! Very cool!
One other thing to keep in mind here is your choice of wood species. The more pronounced the grain, the more important it is that you pay attention to it. If you are using a wood with a relatively muted grain like the mahogany (below on the left), it probably won’t be nearly as noticeable if the grain isn’t continuous. But something like walnut (below on the right), would be incredibly noticeable.
What inspired this article was an email I received from Guild member Brandon who asked about creating a continuous grain drawer front for his poker storage box. I happen to have a few pictures of this process from several years ago when I was building a hall table and I thought it would be a great time to share this information with you.
It all starts with a board that is slightly wider and longer than you actually need (by about 1/4″). We are essentially going to cut the drawer front out of the middle of the board, and we need that extra material to make up for what we lose to the blade kerf. I like to use the thinnest blade in my collection and I start by ripping the top and bottom (lets call them “rails”). This leaves us with a wider center piece that needs to have its ends trimmed off in order to release the actual drawer front. So two quick cross cuts at the mitersaw or tablesaw will yield a drawer front and two side frame pieces. Its critical that you keep everything straight so label all of your parts and use chalk to draw reference lines if you need to. Now put the drawer front aside for later and glue the frame back together. If you are careful about it, the frame will look like one continuous piece and you won’t even see the new joints. And your drawer face will be perfectly matched to the wood around it. If you have a well-tuned bandsaw, consider using it for this operation so you can take advantage of the super thin kerf.
So do you guys have some great examples of grain flow that you can share? Post a link to the images right here in the comments area. To post a link, just copy and paste the URL into your comment.
**Gratuitous plug** – So if you like the look of the hall table pictured above, consider taking my class at the William Ng School in January.
My Humble Beginnings – Shop Tour
This week’s shop tour comes from a young science nerd living in Temecula, Ca in 2004. Yup, that would be ME. Thanks to Chris H. for reminding me that I still had pictures and a write up on ShopTours.org. So I thought it would be fun if I posted the write up and showed you my humble beginnings. Let’s hop in my little time machine and hear from Marc, an aspiring woodworker from 2004. Enjoy!
I used to have my shop in just one bay of the 3 car garage, but since we never park in one of the other ones, I started eyeing the combination of two bays. So after getting the green light to switch the garage around, I finally have a nice functional space. I was able to make some built-in bench space that allowed me to rid myself of a few annoying stands. I gained a great deal of storage space to boot. And as a bonus, our workout area is separated enough that I won’t be tempted to start assembling large furniture in that space.
I added one more light, but I have a total of 4 units in the whole garage. Each one has 4 T8 bulbs. I think I need to add one more and I will be satisfied. I painted the whole garage several months ago and it is amazing what it does for the space. It really gives the light something nice to reflect off of. It has become a very inspirational space. Looking back from the drill press area, there’s the workbench and my thinking area for planning and drawing. I even do my homework in here. (I was taking courses for an MBA at the time- Future Marc)
Looking toward the front of the shop. You can see my jointer and the exercise equipment in the background. The Jet air cleaner does a really good job of keeping the air clean. But then again, most of my tools are connected to the dust collector or shop vac during use so very little hits the air to begin with. Overall I am very satisfied with its performance.
There is a closer view of my drill press, as well as my miter saw and my oscillating spindle sander. Also note the table saw top. What you can’t see in the pictures is the small pin that serves as the splitter. It is just as effective as the full size units and has proved its worth many times over (especially when I recently ripped a 6ft maple board that started to bow as I cut it. Without the pin the wood would have pinched the blade…yikes. For now, I forgo the guard until I can get the overarm style. Unfortunately there aren’t any aftermarket, easy on/off standard models that work on my saw.
I do feel lucky to have this much room. But as we all know, we always find a way to make it messy, so what it looks like here is no guarantee of what it will look like when the next project gets going. I almost always have the TV on while I am working, but rarely do I watch it. Its kind of annoying to others because I will watch the same movies like 3-4 times in a row just because I like the background noise. But usually I put in my DVD recordings of Woodworks and Norm. It is very handy when I need to copy a technique or idea.
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