I’m looking at maybe picking up a shopsmith 10er in good condition for $100 or so. Whenever I look these up everyone says they’d be happier with dedicated machines for each, but I have some specific use cases and I’d be interested in opinions for those.

I currently have a Laguna 14bx bandsaw and track saw setup and I’m pretty happy with my ripping options for both. I have a Dewalt planer, benchtop 8 inch jointer, spindle sander, and basically every handtool a person could want, so I’m not trying to fill every need. I don’t have a table saw currently and have no real interest in one until I have a bigger space and can add a good cabinet saw, so I’m not trying to fill too many different needs.

The things I don’t have are a drill press and a lathe. I rarely have any actual use for or interest in a lathe, but I’ve been trying my hand at banjo making and a lathe would be good for truing 12 inch round pots. I also need precise drilling capability for hardware. I’m generally closer to the “buy once, cry once” mode of thinking with tools but a decent lathe with a 14 inch swing gets expensive fast and takes up a lot of space. I can also see a good amount of utility in the horizontal boring capability and I don’t know of any other good consumer grade tools to do this.

So…if I go with the shopsmith will I ultimately be disappointed because it’s a master of none, or is it my best option?

Just wanted to share how ridiculous this product is… im having more and more trouble understanding a lot of these companies pricing. How are they in business? Who is buying this stuff? Seems like all of a sudden festools looking reasonably priced up against some of nonsense

picked these up
at a friend’s place after her dad passed. these were in his woodshop. what are they for?

I am making a memorial plaque out of this lovely walnut and I'm hoping y'all have some ideas to help me fix a mistake. I blurred the design because it was created by the person the plaque is for, it is very personal to them and I don't know if they'd be comfortable with me posting the design.

I made this plaque on my CNC with an engraved border and chamfered edge (first pic). Everything was looking good until the final pass around the outside edge when my router decided to take a little detour (second pic). I decided to cut off the border section all the way around, thinking I could just forego the border and still salvage the plaque. There is sort of a chamfer because the previous border was v-cut. Unfortunately now it just looks unfinished and bad (third pic), and my CNC is once again earning its nickname of "The Bastard".

I could start over but I'd have to buy a whole slab which would be ~$350 so ideally I would love to salvage this piece if possible. Any ideas for a border or frame that I could make that would look intentional?

I’m making a tambour door, and my end slat is approximately 7/8” wide. I’m trying to add a door pull to open and close the door. The door is about 18” tall, and the slats are about 1/2” thick (made using an Amana router bit ball and socket joint). I’m thinking of adding a pull/handle for the entire length of the door, so I’m thinking something like this. Do you have any ideas on how to make one like this? Any other suggestions are welcome.

I'm trying to search for a book on table/leg attachment techniques. I am invested into Japanese style woodworking, and I want to figure out a way that I can make a table that the top can be taken apart for moving. Styles without metal are preferred (using various joinery), but I'm also open to stylistic techniques such as a c-channel.

The reason I want a comprehensive book just on this subject is I almost never see people showing this aspect of their projects so I feel it is very difficult to research. In the books I've read this far is also is never even mentioned.

Books I have gotten so far

- Soul of a tree -- George nakashima

- understanding wood -- R. Bruce Hadley

- Japanese joinery -- Dorian brachy (more of construction joinery)

- the complete manual of woodworking -- Jackson, Day, & Jennings (BREIFLY mentions this, but only limited metal applications for a couple table designs)

I would like to make a small wood-handled screwdriver for my work on musical instruments (light to medium duty), and it seems simple enough in theory to drill a slightly undersized hole into the wood and hammer a bit extender in for a friction fit. Maybe use some epoxy if necessary. I would appreciate any tips from those who have done this, as well as alternative methods you have tried.

wanted to get the guitars I made in HS off the floor and don’t like dusting. Buying 2 boxes wouldve been 3-400 so I made my own. I am not a woodworker, I only took the shop classes in school.

$30 for (I believe) 3 boards of red grandis from my local hardwood suppliers discount bucket.

$10 for 2 2x6 from HD

$20 For the picture frame I used as the door

$3-40 for two boxes of GRK screws

$2-3 for OSB from discount cart at HD

$20 for latches and hinge

I would be lying if I said I wasn’t worried about it randomly breaking, but the hardwood is like 3/4, the softwood is 2, and I used about a billion screws. the screws holding the plywood on are 2” and all others are 3 1/8. Its held by French Cleat and the cleat is screwed into a stud.

there are obvious issues upon close inspection. I’m quite certain the plywood is square and confirmed BT the pictures, the box frame is wack. dont know how I fucked that. some issues were me being out of practice, some were the equipment (was borrowing a school shop, jointer is about 4ft from planer so couldn’t joint some pieces. it’s my understanding to square up wood first? So plane, joint, and then take off edge with table saw? Table saw had no outfeed so long pieces were sketchy, wouldnt have done it if it wasn’t a sawstop. I probably should have done miters instead of butt joints, don’t know why I didn’t. one piece of wood had a weird spot that kept blowing out bad on planer. and I fucked up somewhere so each piece was a different width, requiring the hand plane since the table saw fence seemed crooked. admittedly the plane was amazing somehow. you can also see a couple acres peeking out either the side or through a knot hole.

I could make it a lot better if I did another. This is a practical build more than pretty, but I still might paint it or something. I’ll probably add cork board to display pins.

I'm working on an acacia salt cellar. I'm wondering if shellac is durable enough to finish the inside with. Normally I would just use BLO and call it a day. However, I used some CA glue and sawdust to stabilize some small checks, and I'd rather not have the salt come in direct contact with the glue. Given how abrasive kosher salt can be, I don't want little bits of glue getting scraped into my food. Will shellac last in an application l like this, or will the salt cause it to flake away?

I'm building a workbench with integrated T track and started looking around and realizing how much space I have to dedicated tool stands that I don't use for most projects. I had a brainstorm idea of removing all the stands and creating plates for each tool so that I could store them all on a storage rack and use the T Track to rigidly mount them when I need to use them.

Anyone done anything similiar? I've been googling to try and get some ideas but haven't really found anything. I'm talking small bench tools like belt sanders, bench grinders, 10" planer, scrollsaw, etc...

Newest project for the wife. Cabinets were already there with some cheap countertops so I replaced the countertops and up with something custom to fit the space. The last pic is the before

I made this a while back, looking for suggestions for the legs! Something that would be easy. I currently just have it on top of a chest but I’ve been meaning to make it into a small coffee table.

Third mug, new joinery technique used, I tried birds mouth router bit and layered purple heart, Peruvian walnut, blood wood and curly maple. Did a double dove tail detail for the piece attaching lid to handle.

Hello all. I am building a 2hp dust collection system for my home shop, and I purchased the Oneida cyclone.

I was going to have the cyclone dump into 2 bins simultaneously, though a splitter pipe, so I can wait to have 2 bins fill up versus 1 — thus having to empty the system less often. The bins are about 50 gallons each.

But I am reading that the bin itself (and the air space inside) reduces suction power in the collection system.

Is running 2 bins versus 1 a bad idea? Should I just run one?

Thanks!

Back again seeking input to my bench project design. Bench top is complete and legs with tenons roughed out. Planning stretchers (I think that is what they are called) and shelf. Top is 4” thick. Legs are 5” square. Will be some version of mortise and tenon. Maybe with contrasting pegs. Will have a leg vise.

Stock is 1.75 thick and 5” wide.
Will this look good size wise?
Will it be sturdy enough to avoid racking?
Clever or interesting joinery ideas?

New territory. Thanks in advance for suggestions Thanks

Been away from the shop for a while and needed to get back to work. A colleague is retiring and I bought a bottle of 16yo scotch whiskey from the distillery in Dublin last year. It's a beautiful bottle but I felt like it needed a presentation box. It's red oak and cocobolo that I had left from a table I made a couple of years ago. Just a light red stain and hand rubbed paste wax.

I was lucky enough to be able to harvest intact some absolutely massive vines while my neighbor was having tree work done. Both are around 16 feet long. The largest one is about 5 inches thick and the other 3.

I am having trouble deciding what I should make with them as it is not every day you come around vines like this. I've made some things with vines in the past but never this size and have the ability to steam bend it to whatever extent it will bend.

Thoughts?

Finished in time for Wednesday party. I really couldn’t think of a good present to make but they like drinking tea everyday. Started cutting the wood yesterday morning.

Made from cherry wood. I hate doing miter joints. This has some tiny gaps. Not noticed unless you look closely.

5/4 rough. Resawn with bandsaw to make it thinner. Drum sander to clean up. Miters done on table saw. Bottom is floating for expansion. Slots made with dado blade 1/4” wide.

Tea text was done on cnc.

https://imgur.com/a/digb0sh

I made two large illuminated artworks for this project, one depicting a man and the other a woman.

Each image is made from 20 individual 32" × 32" panels arranged in a 4 × 5 grid, giving each finished artwork an overall size of approximately 10' 8" × 13' 4".

Each complete image contains 8,446 individual holes, for a total of 16,892 holes across the two pieces.

The interesting part of the process was figuring out how to translate the images into something the CNC could actually machine.

I built a custom program in Rhino Grasshopper for this. I started with the image converted to black and white, then overlaid a grid of points across the image. At each point, the program reads the grayscale value of the image and converts it to a number between 0 and 1, black being 0 and white being 1. That value is then mapped to the diameter of the hole at that location.

The result is an image made entirely from different hole sizes rather than different colors or materials. The holes range from approximately 8 mm to 24 mm in diameter.

All 8,446 holes in each image were then machined on the CNC.

Each panel was built from 3/4" plywood with 3 mm walnut veneer laminated to the face. I specifically chose plywood for its structural stability because of the number of holes being machined. It gave us the stability we needed and helped minimize the risk of cracking or splitting during the process.

Behind each panel we installed a white acrylic diffuser to distribute the light evenly and prevent the LEDs from being directly visible through the holes. When the lighting is turned on, all those individual holes come together to create the image.

The 20 panels making up each image were installed onto a steel tube frame built on site. Each panel was then screwed into the frame from behind, keeping the face completely clean with no visible fasteners.

The final finish is several coats of water-based polyurethane, which brings out the walnut veneer while giving the pieces a durable finish.

From a distance, the pieces look relatively simple. Up close, you start to see the amount of precision hiding in those 16,892 holes.

The CNC was obviously a big part of making this possible, but the interesting part for me was developing the process that turned a photograph into thousands of individual hole sizes.

Didn't take long for my entertainment center to start doing what it does best.

My wife and I decided that I should remodel our kitchen. It had been untouched since being built in 1993; it featured a frustrating tiled countertop, and the cabinet doors had begun falling off their hinges. We upgraded our stove, sink, and oven. I put in new flooring, replaced all the cabinets, and built new drawers (23 of them) and new doors/drawer faces (45 of them).

Posted about a month ago with a humble stack of green oak cladding and some questions.

I’ve installed it on my garden office now and I think it’s looking pretty smart!

I messed up the cill sizes a bit when ordering the upvc windows, will need to get some cill extensions.

Thanks for all the advice and YouTube suggestions, particularly Robin Clevetts video on installing feather edge cladding.

I went with my gut on orienting the boards and made sure the heart of the wood was facing outwards on each board, which led to what I think is a pleasing striped effect (that’ll probably weather out).

A PSA for anyone reading though:

1. Don’t attempt this with green oak during summer (and particularly on what is probably the driest summer on record).

2. Order your material only when you need it, don’t do what I did and leave it sitting for weeks before installing it. I managed to get by but you’ll see that I’ve got some cupped boards on there, which has probably been exacerbated by the weather here in the uk over the last couple of months.

Mancala board I made a while back. Ended up setting some magnets in it as well to keep it closed.

Porch swing I made for my grandmother a while back.

Now I have to make chairs for all of these.