slowman

Thank you for sharing, the bench is a beauty! I have some 3 inch thick slab of eucaliptus or cypress (I think). would the extra thickness allow me to use finger joints for a bench of the same basic construction, or the dovetails are still a must?

The change in souond is easy - it goes from "Tuck, Tuck, Tuck" to "Doonk".

Cogito pose, Madona smile, Vini air and all around,
I should have known that all those fumes
will go up to my head sometime!

Hey Matt, its good to hear that you escaped with a slight injury and did not lose your finger.
When I was 14, My parents had a large house with about 100 meters of hedge that needed trimming often. that was my responsibility. I was a very causios kid with a family full of engineers and ex army men to tell hair raising stories and teach me the proper way to do stuff.
So I bought the best trimmer on the market, German made, with all the safety gear. it had a two handles, for good leverage and so both hands will be in a place accounted for while the blade was running. the left hand handle was pivoted to allow for easier storage, and secured with two nuts while working. one day while trimming it suddenky swung with my hand still on it directly into the blade, which pinched and cut to the bone three fingers on my left hand like so many grapes, faster than I could let go of the safety. almost 30 years later I still cary the scars and the lesson - even when you do nothing wrong, shit still happens.
After a trip to the hospital and a painfull healing process, I bought a trimmer with a fixed handle and to hell with storage efficeincy, but the idea that you are playing with forces greater than yourself and sooner or later something will happen, is a very sharp reminder of our true place in the world.

try downloading adobe reader and reinslalling it. after that the plan should load just fine. it did for me. I still need to read it and see if its the right one for my needs, but it looks good at first glance!

Regretable, sad and thought provoking. A great shame for the young life lost. Accidents cannot be eliminated, only made less likely. investigating the matter to such an end is good. giving in to the spirits of blame and guilt blowing our society appart with great force for the past few decades, is not. closing the entire building and clamping down hystericaly and with no real benefit on machine shops is realy silly and should be avoided. Beacuse in the long run, ignorance kills a lot more people than accidents.

Now lets see The Fonz do THAT with his fingernail!

Beautiful, well done, and inspiring. such apparent ease that hides the bear of the technique. truly worthy of praise, total control over the art. for me, this is heart moving. Thanks!

Apostolos, happy to see you are well enough to talk about it. I came to woodworking from metalworking. 17 years ago my turning teacher told me to come to class with short sleeves. as we were learning to turn hard metals using specialty bits the tiny pieces were flying off the lathe at high velocity and at about 300 degrees centigrade. the tiny burns on my forearms were brutaly painfull. he said better this than get your sleeve caught on the lathe. Gues this is what he meant...

real nice and thanks for showing it. lovely, spacious and inviting. nothing wrong with old machines, I would buy all of mine from specific old marks if I find them in good condition. they were just made better. I wish I could say that I want to have a shop like this one day, but sadly it will never happen here - I just heard today that our dear government no longer will sell lotts over 350 square meters for private use, and that would simply not fit a house and a workshop on the same lot. maybe some day I will be fanatic enough about my woodworking to immigrate for this, but not today.

About 2.5 years ago I went to work for a company just opening on a new site, as a marcom manager. they were planning a new show room for their wares and learned that I was kind of a serious weekend woodworker so they asked me to help in this project. they then went on to enlist the lowest bidders for the job, a fact that became painfuly obvious as soon as the plans from the interior designer came in - they were all the wrong measurements and absolutely counter ergonomic in every possible way. It took me two weeks to convince them that the 5000 $ worth of plans would produce cabinetry they will never be able to install, let alone use, and 2 days to come up with better plans. than I went to the carpenters shop, rented his place from him with all his best workers, and proceeded to produce perfectly fitted built in cabinetry, trimmed in white oak and zebrano, all 160 linear feet of it fitted into a room with no straight corners using a two man team in under 3 days, and saving them almost 20,000 $ along the way.
But that is hardly the odd point about this story. the best is yet to come - 1 year later the CEO calls everyone to the conference room, and announces that as we are not doing so well, half of us will be let go and the others will move to a new, smaller facility. he then proceeds to say it will be done in one week, and then goes and cuts down the power saying we cannot afford it. Since times were hard and my pay was OK, I was willing to do much to keep my job, So I end up dissasembling the entire show room cabinetry that took three men to install three days, alone, using a headlight, in pitch dark and no AC 2 floors below ground in dead winter. and without breaking anything, so I will be able to reinstall it in the new place. and in 5 days, while also dissasembling and packing all the other furniture in the building. and then we land in the new site, and I get the worst shock as I see the new place for the show room, which is half as large as the last place and the movers have thrown all the cabinets into the place in one big heep. I played moving blocks with 40 pound cabinets for 2 weeks trying to sort everything out and had to canibalize and remake many of them to fit into the new place, using just a skillsaw, a straight edge, cordless drill, screws and glue. after all is done I felt realy good with myself and then comes the real surprise - the CEO marches into the room, ignores the miracle I have literaly performed for him, looks up, and says: "havent you noticed the empty space above my office?" while poining to a dark opening 3.5 meters above the floor in one of the walls. "why have you not done anything to use that?" and storms off, clearly unsatisfied. Fearing for my income with a new baby on the way and my wife not working, instead of telling him to go to hell, I borrow a ladder from the bouilding's maintenance crew and climb up. indeed, there is a small room beyond that opening that can be used for storage. but the opening is in a position imposible to get to by a conventional staircase, especially one that you have to navigate safely with heavy and cumbersome loads. then an article about torsion boxes and shelfs with no supports from fine woodworking comes to my mind, and I decide to build a torsion box from the wall just under the opening out into free space and connect the stair case at right angle to it. I make all the calculations and produce a 4 by 5 foot square torsion box out of 2 by 8 clear pine with inner bracing in a full diamond patern with a double layer of 3/4" hardwood plywood top and bottom outer skin bonded with about half a galon of yellow glue and 200 deck screws and hook it up to the cement wall with 12 3/4" by 10" cement anchors. this platform could bear a load of 400 pounds on its lip, and over double that on its middle, without saggging even 1/16", to which I attach a single flight of stairs with 18 steps, 4 more than local building code allows without a landing, and then proceedn to invite the building inspector, explain the situation, show him my calculations and receive a special permit for the entire job.
were they satisfied then? of course not. a swine will not become a gentleman even if you deck him with gold (or oak, zebrano, and miracles) I am now in a better place and sewing them for the last few months they have never paid. I believe this is what they mean by a hard earned lesson. or maybe I am just a slow learner. should have read the signs and all that.
hope you enjoyed my (long) short story, thanks for reading.

Have any video footage been taken? I am sure its not just me that would love to see some of those intriguing descriptions come to life, of sorts.

Thanks for a most enjoyable sharing of experience and may you have many more!

The most powerfull memory from my woodworking mentor, who was also my grandfather, was the simple ladder back easy chair on his front porch. The photo on the cover realy brings some good memories. It would be a joy to read and maybe build one just like that...

I just saw this, and was amazed that no on thought about
"Kind of Blue (and groovy...)"
no one listens to jazz while woodworking any more?
with greg's expression it sort of jumped to my head...
the winning caption is a bit too long and also somewhat mocking. I prefer gentler and more concise humor. but thats just me. any way, great idea, and hope there will be more.

Plywood is fine, if you can get good quality, just like any other type of wood. I just cant stand particle board. thats a no no for me.

This is realy nice piece, it does not look like a first. I like the clean look and the balance of the parts. great work! keep going!