Category Archive: Maple

Jul 06 2015

New Bathroom Cup

A few years ago I made a small bathroom cup on my lathe. I turned it from a glued up block of maple, purple heartwood, and walnut. The cup lasted me about a year and a half and then the glue failed. I had used Titebond to glue the blank together …

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Sep 10 2012

Checkerboard And Checkers

It happens to all of us, you start a project, something more important comes around, and you forget about the first project for a while. I started gluing up a checkerboard in March, then something came up and I ended up leaving the finished glue-up sitting flat on my bench for about a week. When I …

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Jul 26 2012

Wooden Engine Garage (Sodor Steamworks)

My son has amassed quite a few engines in the few short years he’s had his wooden train table. The problem is that there just isn’t enough track to play with all of them, so they end up all over the table and floor. He has a garage that is attached to a round house, …

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Jun 18 2012

Turning Some More Glue-Ups

I decided it was either time to either throw away part of my growing pile of scrap wood or make something with it. Since I have a hard time parting with toothpicks, my only option was to make something. I’ve had good luck contrasting purple heartwood with maple, so laminating a turning …

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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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Apr 10 2012

Homemade Dowel Cutter

A few weeks ago, over on G+ Matt Ricketts posted a dowel cutter he made. This was a timely post for me because I was looking to make a few purple heartwood dowels for a toy car I’m in the process of finishing. His dowel cutter was a series of holes drilled …

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Apr 02 2012

Toothbrush Holder

We needed a new toothbrush holder. Our old one, a clear plastic tube with duckies floating in a mysterious blue liquid, was leaking. Also with it’s tiny holes, it just couldn’t hold the thicker handle toothbrushes that my children use sometimes use. I thought, “I could actually make a something useful on …

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Oct 17 2011

Crossover Track (Curved)

Click picture for slideshow My original idea for a crossover track was to have a connecting track that curved out of one track and into another, but it took me a while to figure out how to make one, so I built the straight crossover track …

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Oct 10 2011

Big Curve, Little Curve

Click picture to see slideshow My son’s preschool teaches writing with a system called Handwriting Without Tears. It is a much simpler character set to learn and can be represented by four simple shapes: big curve, little curve, big line, and little line. You can buy sets of …

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Sep 22 2011

Making Another Toy Car

I’m taking a step back and showing how I made the wooden car I recently posted here. I first got the idea for this particualr design by looking at some of the wooden cars on the Arizona Wooden Toys website. I liked the design of their “Zoom Racer;” I thought the …

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