New Tools for the Shop

Well it was a pretty uneventful week as far as furniture building goes. Working on some designs that aren't quite worked out yet and finishing up the drywall in the garage consumed most of the week. I did manage to spend more than my tool allowance this week on some serious tool upgrades for the shop. First up was a General International 8" jointer, this thing is almost twice the size of my last jointer and it is in like new condition. Then yesterday I picked up an old Powermatic 100 planer. This things is built like a tank, I think it was built sometime in the early 60's and has all american made parts. It tips the scales at over 600 lbs and was a royal pain getting it out of the guys basement where I bought it. It came with a neat attachment that allows you to sharpen the knives on the machine in place.

Mahogany End Table Prototype

I posted pictures of an end table I was working on a few weeks ago. I finally got around to taking some pics of it. This is the first prototype or full scale mockup of the piece I'm getting ready to make a few more and I'm going to change a few minor things to help the piece look a little better. The top is a little to thick still I think so I'm going to make it a little thinner. Here are some quick pics of it. I think the Mahogany really shows through nice on the black and white images as well.

Mahogany Bench

I finally got around to taking some pics of the bench.

Working on an Endtable

I built a little end table on Thursday and Friday. First I went through the pile of Mahogany and picked out several pieces that had a similar color and really nice grain. I then jointed and cut them down to the same thickness then glued them up for the table top.
I cut a taper on the legs and used the Domino to join the legs together.

Since the tabletop was larger than my planer, I had to handplane the top down. It took me about 30 minutes, but I got the top all nice and flat and removed the extra glue.
I had to make a little jig to cut a circle on the bandsaw. It works really well in theory but cutting a 18" circle on 1.5" thick Mahogany is not an easy task. This was by far the hardest part of the whole thing.
After some extensive sanding I put a coat of finish on the top and the base. I took this picture just as I poured some of the finish on the top, you can see the really nice grain show through immediately. I still need to get some finished pictures of the bench I helped Eric with and the finished little table. I think I'm going to make a couple more, so I will have some for sale if your interested.