lorafa

Very interesting looking piece with amazing craftsmanship,but a little creepy.

Very nice. Top notch job.

BEA-U-TI-FUL...great job.

One of my very first woodworking projects was a mahogany coffee table with storage cabinets on each end. It took me weeks to build. I built it in the wood hobby shop on the Air Force base that I was assigned to at the time. Unfortunately, the shop did not have a dust free area to apply finishes. I decided to take the table home to our apartment and finish it there. The apartment had a detached storage room so I figured that would be a good place to apply the finish. Well, the storage room turned out to be way too small, so I ended up applying the finish just outside of the storage room. It was a nice sunny calm day in California with no breeze at all. I was using Deft, a brush on lacquer, and everything was going great. That is, until the sun had moved through the sky enough so that now the table was sitting in the direct sunlight. All of a sudden I notice that the finish was starting to bubble up. Boil, might be a more appropriate way of describing it. My head starts feeling light, questions are going through my mind, I'm panic stricken. I just couldn't believe that this was happening, what a disaster. Well, I ended up having to scrape all of the finish off after it dried and sand the table again to prepare it for finishing again. When I applied the finish the second time I was careful to do it in an area where the sunlight would not come in contact with the table while the finish was still wet. In the end the table came out nicely and a valuable lesson was learned.

This is a great idea, but it must have costs a fortune to build. You must have built quite a few chairs to be able to cover the costs. How did you get your wife to go along with (approve)this idea? I would love to have this shop at my house. I use my garage which is about 250 sq ft, and there never seems to be enough room. Is there such a thing as a wood shop being too big? I don't think so. Are there any plans available for the swing drawer you made under your work bench? It looks like it comes in quite handy. If plans are available, please let me know how I would go about getting them. Any, great job and GREAT shop.

I have to walk with a cane from time to time. This looks like it would give a lot of ideas for a custom cane. It would also be a nice addition to my woodworking library. Hope I win. Thanks

I realize this is being posted a bit after the fact, but here it goes. One of the live audience members asked if it mattered which style of dado blade you use; the stack dado or the dial in dado. I have used both and personally I prefer to use the stack dado. With the dial in dado I found that when it is set to the maximum width, it tends to cut a "tapered" dado. The bottom of the dado is not flat; it has a sort of ramp or taper to it. With the stack dado; no matter what width you have it set up for; it will always produce a flat bottom. So, I would recommend a good stack dado set.

Very ingenious and impressive use of jigs and shop space. The final products look very nice too. I am in the process of putting together a little shop myself. My wife and I recently had a detached garage built at our home, so I am playing with different ideas on where things should be placed. One of the things in the slide show really caught my eye. The way Brad had one of his routers set up so that it could be stored up against the wall making room for another machine or table. Brad I hope you don't mind, but I think I am going to incorporate that idea into my own little shop. Thanks.