Category Archive: Red Oak

Nov 06 2015

Making Valances for Our Bedroom Windows

Over on ToolGuyd, I reviewed the Woodpeckers X-Mat Deluxe kit 1. One of the projects I used the X-Mat system for was to make some valances for our bedroom. In the summer, it is really hard to sleep past 6 am in the morning because the sun comes out and is very bright in …

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Feb 26 2015

Making a Cornice out of Crown Molding

When we replaced the exterior windows and doors in our family room, I trimmed the door out with a fluted casing and a cornice made out of crown molding. Now that we remodeled our family room, I wanted to trim out the double doors into the …

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Jan 29 2015

Adding a Mouse Door to Some Baseboard

You’d think my main reason for installing a mouse door in the baseboard was to add a bit of whimsy to our family room addition. You might be partially right, but my real motivation starts with trying to lay baseboard in my kitchen. A few years ago, when I …

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Jan 01 2015

Matching Pine Trim to Oak

To trim out the family room, we choose red oak colored with Minwax natural wood stain. The story would end here, but I also needed to match some pine picture rail to this trim. After shopping around, the only picture rail I could source locally came in pine. Now you …

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Jul 19 2012

Topping Off The Experiment

Not being one to leave well enough alone, I decided to make a top for the experimental finger bowel. Actually making a top let me try a few different skills where I need improvement: matching woods and turning to a fixed diameter. I chose to make the …

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Jul 17 2012

Turning End Grain

Most bowl turning banks I’ve seen are cut in such a way that you hollow the face grain to make the bowl. I’m not sure if they are sold like that because end grain turning is supposed to be more difficult or if maybe the mills just take the scraps from longer boards and …

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May 08 2012

(Mis)Adventures In Dyeing

After watching this video about staining vs dyeing over at WoodWorkWeb, I decided to give dyeing wood a chance. After making a Peruvian walnut bracelet for my daughter, she wanted me to make her a pink one. I was dammed if I was going to paint something I turned …

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Mar 20 2012

First Lathe Project: Toy Tree

My son’s wooden train set came with some lame 2-dimensional trees cut out of flat stock. I thought now that I have a lathe, I could make a much more aesthetic tree. I came up with the idea for the simple project after experimenting with the different tools on some scrap wood. …

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Nov 16 2011

Completed Flat Cars

Once I was satisfied with the prototype flat car, I wanted to make a whole mess of them at once — nine in fact. I decided to create a few jigs to make production go more smoothly. I built the first jig for cutting out the wheels. It solved …

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Nov 10 2011

Flat Car Prototype

One day, my son told me he didn’t have enough flat cars on his wooden railway. I figured that we could just buy him some more online, but I discovered that you can’t just buy flat cars, they only come in track sets (although I’ve been told by several people that the

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