Merry Christmas!  Here is a great gift for your weekend wood worker, free plans for all kinds of projects around the house and yard. 

I just came across a really good resource for woodworking plans.  They have a wide selection of project plans from bed room, furniture, to yard art.  And the price is just right, free!  Most of the plans are from woodworking journals such as fine woodworking, weekend woodcrafts, and others.  The site as several hundred plans!

Most all of the plans contain materials list, tools required, and cut lists.  Some of the plans include pictures of various assembly steps to help understand what they are attempting to describe in the plan’s text.  Most all of the plans are Adobe PDF files.  Some of the plans are embedded in the html of the page.  Kind of a pain, but you can easily save the web page to disk.  Another option for dealing with these html embedded plans, is to copy and paste it into your favorite word processor.  From within there you can edit out the images and stuff that does not apply to the plan.

What are some of the plans that you are interested in building?  Feel free to leave a comment!

No, I am not talking about new power tools for the shop.  Instead, I am talking about making Christmas gifts for your kids, friends, or family.  In my case, I am working on a design for an art easel for my six year old godson.  His mom is thrilled about the gift!  It will be an interesting race against time to get it done.  In a future post I will post the project design and cut list.

My wife has wrangled me into this project!  She was talking to our godson’s mom and she said that her son is into painting and drawing.  My wife then turns to me and asks how hard it would be to build an easel for him.  My response was that it is not that hard, it is a question of time.  Do I have the enough time to design and build it before Christmas?  I for warned my godson’s mom that it might turn into a new year’s gift.

I just started a shop furniture project.  I am replacing a couple of tables with a fixed wall to wall work bench and a set of shelves that will be mounted either side of the window.  So, now I need to complete this project before I begin the easel!

In a previous post about picture frames I mentioned that I had built a set of picture frames for my wife’s birthday with a close up picture of each of our children.  Fast forward a year later and I am looking at the pictures and want to give her an updated set of pictures of the kids.  The problem is the original set of picture frames where constructed from purple heart and it will not be easy to replaced the pictures.

I could continue to make picture frames, but eventually I will run out of wall space in our bedroom!  So what to do?

I recently purchased raised panel door router bit set.  The grove where the raised panel fits in is 1/4” wide, just the right width for the glass, mat, picture and backer.  Using mahogany I routed a set of rails and stiles for each frame.  I glued and nailed two stiles and the top rail together.  The bottom rail I fastened with flat bar strip of metal that I picked up at the local home improvement store.

Anytime I want to replace the pictures all I need to do is remove four screws add slide out the bottom rail!

And by the way, my wife loves the second set of pictures of the kids.  With both sets of the pictures next to each other it is neat to see how the kids have changed over the past year.

I typically work alone in my wood shop.  Often when I am cutting long stock and sheets of plywood I need a helping hand.  For Christmas my wife gave me a nice set of three adjustable folding metal roller stand.  They are nice, but they have a significant draw back, tipping over.  If the stock dips a bit lower than what the roller stand is set for, the stand will be pushed back and knocked over.

This is a huge problem especially if a long, 8 foot or more, stock is being run through the table saw.  More than once I have messed up a cut because the stock hit the roller and did not go on the roller rather knocked it down.

Norm Abrams from The New Yankee Workshop has an interesting design for a roller stand in the ‘workshop helpers’ episode.  His design has four rollers on the stand.  The stand’s base is as wide and deep as roller head.  It is designed to be constructed out of basic materials that are available at your local home improvement store.

I will be building at least one of his roller stands.  Now, where will I store it in the wood shop?

Making a picture frame is a nice small scale project that allows you to showcase your talents while framing a beautiful picture.

There are a variety of different techniques to build a picture frame, from using off the shelf molding to milling your own molding.  The first picture frames that I built I used off the shelf lip molding.  It works, but the choices of wood types are pretty limited.  At my local home improvement store carries molding made from white pine and red oak.

Building picture frames out of scrape wood helps me reduce the scrape wood pile.  I only have so much space in my work shop! 

A little over a year ago I built a collection of three simple picture frames for my wife’s birthday.  I took a picture of each of our children’s face.  The picture is just the face of each child.  I saw that on Extreme Makeover the Home Edition show.  For one family, Ty hung in the master bedroom a set of close up face pictures one for each of their children.

The picture frame is a simple design.  It is 2” wide with a rabbit grove 1/4” by 1/4”.  A 1/4” depth allows me enough space for the glass, matting, picture, and backer board.  Depending on the species of wood I typically use glazer points to secure everything into the frame.  This technique works well for softer woods and once you put the picture in you are not planning on changing it.

The first set of frames that I made for my wife’s birthday, I build them out of reclaimed purple heart.  It was the first time that I worked with this wood.  My Delta bench top planner chewed through it fairly easily.  Granted I was taking of 1/64” per pass!  However, cutting the rabbit with my stacked dado head cutter…. That was a challenge.  It took several passes to mill out the rabbit.  My dado head cutter is not the greatest, more on that in a future post.

My joinery for the frame itself is still on the low end of the skill set.  My main method is to nail the joint with 18 gauge brads.  I have contemplated using biscuits in the joint.

Most of my picture frames are variations of 2” to 3” by 3/4” thick. 

Some other variations of the frame that I have done are:

• Rounded over the outer edge of the frame
• Chucked a ‘V’ bit into the router and run a series of groves parallel to the long side
• Put a roman ogie edge on the outside of the picture frame and also on the inside.
• Shadow box

Take a look at the tools and router bits in your shop and use your imagination.  I think you will be very pleased with the neat new ideas that you can come up with for picture frames!

Oh, by the way, my wife loved the pictures.