I took up woodworking with the goal of making a violin, but I’ve been sidetracked into the cabinetmaking side of things. Right now I’m trying to improve on my hand-tool joinery skills. Here are a few things I’ve made:

A Box

Finished August 2008

This is my second box constructed of hand-cut dovetails. It was going really well until I oversanded, resulting in improperly fitting joints and off-squareness in general. Then I messed up the finishing as well. Still not too bad.

A Coat Hanging Thingy

This was very simple, except for the drop-leaf door. It took several tries to get the door to open properly, and it still sticks a little bit.

A Workbench

Made out of western maple. The legs are “x” shaped, joined with cross-laps, through which a single stretcher passes, secured with a keyed tenon. This took forever because I messed up the tenons, and ended up waiting 6 months until I got a router and figured out how to fix it.

A Table

Built in the Mission style, modeled loosely after ones made by Harvest House. This project turned out to be a beast, mostly because of the large number of mortice + tenon joints. There were 40 mortice + tenons, which translates into 320 saw cuts (by hand) for just the tenons, 90% of which needed adjustment by chisel to matches the mortices.

A Small Box

Finished August 2007

Oak, with hand-cut dovetails and hand-carved top. On this one I discovered I really enjoy making boxes.