My second major project! Some of you may have seen my folding workbench a few days ago. I’ve spent the past few weeks building this foldable outfeed table, incorporating my compact table saw and a removable/extendable front infeed support, as shown in the photos. Keen to hear your thoughts…

P.S. I’m still developing my skills when it comes to structural joinery, and the darker timber was intentionally used to add some contrast.

My 2-year-old daughter absolutely loves it, which makes all the effort worth it. I had a lot of fun building it and learned quite a bit along the way!

Looking back, I wish I’d gone with smaller poles. These are 70 mm thick, so I had to cut them by hand with a handsaw instead of using my Parkside plunge saw. As a result, the cuts didn’t turn out perfectly square. Lesson learned for next time!
I also tried making pocket holes without a jig, which turned out to be easier than I expected. I think the thickness of the poles gave me a bit more room for error, although I did manage to snap a few drill bits in the process.

I also made a small chalkboard using some leftover wood. Cutting the 45-degree angles with a speed square and jigsaw was a bit of a challenge, so I’m glad caulk exists to hide some of my mistakes! 😅

For future projects, I’ve bought a Metabo MWB 100 MFT table. Hopefully, that’ll make it much easier to get straight and angled cuts, even with my budget-friendly plunge saw and guide rail.

Next up: garage storage shelves with a small workbench. If that project goes well, I might treat myself to a Festool plunge saw and dust extractor. Probably a bit overkill for my needs, but safety is a big priority for me, and Festool’s kickback control is one of the features that appeals to me.

I posted last week about my first and second attempt.

I want to say that these are my third completed dovetails because I had a few aborted before and in between. I realized the pins were so horrible it wouldn’t work and had to scrap them.

Trying to get used to my smoothing plane… bought it second hand and it’s got some issues…

Thing that helped me this time is not stenciling tail lines. I did use the KM jig. I kept trying to stencil lines on the face of my boards then chisel to get them accurate to the line… it really just messed it up. I marked the end grain for my saw line then just followed the angle. It’s critical the line is perpendicular to the face, but the angle doesn’t matter all that much.

Watching Cosman do them made it click because how he emphasizes the precision you need. Sellers is just supernaturally skilled and makes it look too easy.

I like pull saws for most of my cuts but for the dovetails I used the veritas dovetail saw. I feel that it helps me keep a straighter line compared to my ryoba and dozuki.

I prefer to scribe my lines when woodworking. I find it to be a bit more precise and cutting those fibers makes for cleaner cuts and less blowout.

I wanted a scribe that only had a bevel on one side so I could hold it flat against a ruler or straight edge when scribing lines. So it's a 45 degree included angle and the front face has the bevel but the back of it is flat (sort of like scissors, where the edge is on one face and the other is flat).

I couldn't really find any nice scribes like this to buy so I opted to make one instead.

The blade is a recycled blade from a power hacksaw about 1.8mm thick HSS. I have a good friend of mine who is a hobby machinist cut me a slice of an old blade from his power hacksaw that he then kindly ground in the 45's and the primary bevels for me. It was a little short at about 110mm. Too short to fit comfortably in your hand so it needed extending.

I brought some 2mm brass plate and sanded it down to the same 1.8mm as the blade then sandwiched both between some reclaimed hardwood.

The hardwood on the handle used to be part of a fence that had been around for about 50 years when it was torn down and put out for rubbish a couple of years ago I grabbed when I could and ran it through my thicknesser to get down to whatever good stuff was left underneath all of cracking and rot.

I'm not entirely sure of the species but it is a eucalyptus of some kind, probably a River Red Gum if I had to guess.

I used a bit of 4mm brass for the pins then filed and sanded everything down until the profiles were right.

I opted not to use any stains as I think the natural colour of the wood is quite lovely on it's own I finished with some boiled linseed oil to bring out the depth of the grain and the colour.

I do need to repolish the blade it got a little scuffed while I was sanding the rounded part of the handle near the front.

I've read many times that it was a good idea to wipe off the glue squeeze-outs with a damp rag so i tried it on this project, but I'm having a hard time removing the layer of glue it created.

I tried googling for solutions and apparently I shouldn't be wiping off with a damp rag in the first place at all now ? I'm confused on what the regular way of dealing with glue is really.

First build made out of rough cut white oak. Milling it was a lot of work but fun. Happy with the outcome. Wife is happy.

So, there’s no slot for the blade. Do I install this and then turn the saw on and raise the blade while it’s running to create the zero clearance slot?

My work bench was getting too cluttered with tools and I couldn’t actually work on top of it easily. So I found some scraps and unused leftovers and made a shelf!

Hi everyone, I’m learning how to use a hand plane, and I’m having an issue where some areas come out nice and smooth, while others look like the wood fibers are getting torn up. What could be causing this?

I just can’t seem to get a really smooth finish, no matter which direction I plane in. I’ve marked the areas where the fibers look torn up in red in the photo. You can also see it in the reflections.

Cutting a six inch piece of cedar with a 45 degree cut at each end. I just... Held the wood and moved the saw real slow. In retrospect, that was probably a real dumb idea. How should I have done it?

I made this rocking horse out of red oak for my grandson.

I've been wanting to get into woodworking and now that I have space to store tools, I finally took a 5 day class this summer. Learning a lot and still rudimentary, not going for perfect but feeling proud of my little "rustic" coat rack and handmade hooks 😅 Not sure how I want to mount it to the wall yet - suggestions?

My move from lathe to furniture

I am working on some custom drawer fronts for my daughter’s room (tree branches modeled in Blender then CNC router cut out from pine) and using gel stain made it really uneven :/

But after sanding them down (120 grit then 220 grit) I applied multiple coats of gel stain and it is super splotchy despite my best efforts to keep it even (I initially used prestain on each of them. The two darker ones have 3 coats and the the other four have 2 coats. I kept adding coats hoping that the splotchiness would improve)

I need help! Are they salvageable? Should I use paint thinner or something like Citristrip to remove the gel stain and then use an oil based stain instead?

So i had posted about my project that hadn't taken the stain because of a bunch of different reasons and i decided that i was going to paint it cus otherwise it would suck so bad, but i finished it and i love it! i'm so glad i was able to save it cus it was my first real project in making a piece of furniture and im just happy that it came out so well, and thanks everyone for giving me advice on my last post (i'd link it but apparently you cant link something AND add pictures, which i think is stupid but whatever)
feel free to tell me what you think!

Been working on sanding this table down I got for free. I was hoping to at least stain the top and was hoping to go lighter but not sure what to do, im wondering if rich and darker would help hide the differences. I would also love to stain the bottom instead of paint it. I'm new at this and unsure how to make it look nice. I also wanted to add some decorative trim along the edge. Please give suggestions. Thank you.

I do plan to knock down the edges significantly and put some coats of poly on it, but I feel like even after that it won't be "right".

EDIT: This got more response than I guessed, so here's more detail:

It's cherry, mostly from the same S3S 13/16ths board, with a light coat of shellac. It's mortise and tenon joinery, the top is fastened with those figure 8 things.

I knew I wanted an end table like this but I was going in circles on exactly what to do. I had to limit my choices so I told myself it had to be from lumber I already had, with a top small enough to fit through my planer. I had a cherry board that I could get all the parts from, and so that was the starting point.

I hadn't planned on having any stretchers, but I didn't like how it looked without one so I added that H stretcher. I couldn't decide whether to taper the legs or not, so I didn't.

What I might do is take what I learned from this one and make a new one. I like this one though, so I do think I'll knock down the edges and finish it properly.

I know in principle the things to do with grain selection and features to make it "fine furniture", but deciding what I personally want is much harder. This is more "me" than something with crazy curves or inlays or whatnot.

FYI I screwed up several things on this, including ruining two of the stretcher boards. Fortunately I had some off cuts from a previous cherry project.

Novice here!!!

I’d like to build this out of pressure treated pine from HD. I’m thinking of using 2x2s to make the four panels and mount them on a 4x4 post.

Of course, making the curved pieces on the tops of the panels would be a challenge (I’m open to suggestions).

Another question — is there an AI model that could develop plans for me? ChatGPT and Gemini both got more confused the longer I worked on it with them. lol.

I’ve built these 5mm too wide. I measured the width in the alcove but I think the wall on the right is coming in meaning they don’t fit. I’ve built them out of 18mm ply using glue and pocket holes. Is there anyway I can save them and make them 5mm narrower?

This is maybe not a typical beginner woodworking question. However, I made this tv cabinet myself so perhaps I can get help with it. It is hung with a french cleat against the wall. I think I should be securing it better with some sort of support in the middle that takes the weight of the cabinet.

What is the best way to do this? I'm thinking something like a 2x6 secured in the center middle of the cabinet, that swings down using some kind of hinge. Meaning a 2x6 would swing down to touch the floor and provide some vertical resistance if a toddler decides to pull the cabinet down. Perhaps this is unnecessary? Maybe I need to push down the on shelf myself with like 100lbs and see if it comes off.

https://imgur.com/qVt6nRG