Custom Project

I excersize alot but I am not a memeber of a gym or anything like that. I dont want to have to spend the money on a gym membership when I can get a better workout at home.

My older sister has moved out of the house and I now have the upstairs to myself. I have turned her old bedroom into my excersize room, how great! My personal gym consists of; 7 dumbells (2 45lbs, 2 35lbs, 2 10lbs, 1 40lbs), a basic weightbench that can be adjusted to various inclines, a balance ball (the big beachball thing), a pull-up bar that hangs in the door-frame, and an eliptical machine. Other than the eliptical, everything is pretty cheap. The only reason I have the eliptical is because my mother wanted to start excersizing so she bought the eliptical but NEVER even go on it, so I have it now.


With this meager bit of equipment, I think I get a great workout.

Freeweights (dumbells) give you a better workout than the gyms fancy excersize machines. The machines kind of "assist" you in the movements, the guide and balanace the weight. With free weights however, your muscles have to work harder to balance and steady the weight which gives you a much better workout and builds a wider variety of muscles. With machines, specific muscles are targeted rather than a large number of different muscles.

So, if you want to start working out without having to spend much money, then dumbells are definately the way to go!

This past weekend I was lucky enough to head down to Atlanta and attend Designing and Building Chairs with Jeff Miller at Highland Woodworking. The class was a blast and Ill be sharing more about it here and on the Highland Woodworking blog in the coming days.

The class was awesome and resulted in the great chair prototype made by the class.

While I was busy in Atlanta, my friends on the interwebs were busy posting videos and other great content. Here are some of the best things Ive seen on the web lately.

The Highland 35th Anniversary Limited Edition Scott Meek Smoothing Plane
+Scott Meek has been a longtime friend. In this video +Mike Morton unboxes and reviews one of the really neat 35th Anniversary Edition plans which Scott is making for +Highland Woodworking.


A Moment with a Planemaker - Scott Meek Woodworks
Keeping with Highland videos for a moment, this is another recent video of theirs featuring Scott. This video about Scott and the planes he makes also features the debut of our good friend +Christopher Adkins behind the camera for Highland Woodworking.


Toshio Odate
This video goes back to Woodworking in America 2009. +Tom Iovino took it of Toshios Japanese Plane class. Its a brief review of adjusting Japanese Vs. Western hand planes and is a fascinating watch, regardless of which you use.


Woodworkers Fighting Cancer Mug
+Marc Spagnuolo has given in to popular demand and introduced a Woodworkers Fighting Cancer mug. It features the great logo +John Funk created for the cause. If youre not familiar with Woodworkers Fighting Cancer, you should be. You can check them out here.

Dont forget about the +Modern Woodworkers Association Podcast. We talk woodworking with Guests from around the world of woodworking every other week. Subscribe to the RSS feed or iTunes today.

This project grew out of an assignment my teaching partner and I gave our 7th grade students: create a "me box". A "me box" is a shoebox with carefully selected items that represent your interests, hobbies, goals, personal history, family etc. After gathering their items, and decorating their boxes, each student gave a presentation to share their box with the class. Of course, we made our own "me boxes" too, to share with our students.

I believe that regular readers of this blog will be familiar with my propensity for complicating even the simplest project. Well, it happened again. I found myself with some extra time and thought, "Wait. I have a great idea! Instead of all the "me" stuff being in the box, what if it IS the box too! That would be cool!" And right there, my weekend got swallowed up.

This was a "design as you go" project. No plans; other than a vague dimensional goal. Heres what I started with:


I added the shorter piece, as the longer, nicer piece was too short to make all six parts of the box in the size I had in mind. The grain and color didnt really match, but I planned on using it for the bottom panel, so I didnt care.

The sides and ends of this box have two grooves each for the floating bottom panel and the sliding lid. I actually remembered to plow the grooves before cutting the parts to length. I always forget this, and it makes the job a lot easier if you do it all at once.

My tool of choice for plowing these groves - the mighty Stanley 45 "seven planes in one" combination plane:


Mighty useful, mighty complicated, mighty finicky, mighty annoying, mighty heavy, mighty...

Really though, these things are great at plowing grooves. Make sure the cutter is sharp, and the skates adjusted correctly to support both edges of the cutter.


The extension on a folding rule made adjusting the depth stop easy:


After the 45 was adjusted, and the board held securely with holdfasts, it was quick work to plow the grooves. The chalk marks on the board were to remind me which side I was grooving. After mistakenly plowing the grooves on my chosen "face" side on numerous occasions in the past, I finally got wise and adopted this system.


The shavings from the plow are on the thick side, (I set the cutter more for speed than a smooth finish) but they do curl nicely.


After plowing the grooves, I cleaned up the board with a smoothing plane...


...making my favorite kind of shavings.


At this point, the project was moving right along and I was actually on schedule. Of course that would change...

Continued in Part II.