I'm new here

[chris carter]

I’m new to the forum and wanted to introduce myself. I’ve been woodworking as a hobby for just over a year now when I discovered how cool hand tool woodworking was. I went from not even knowing what a plane was to being able to make some usable stuff in large part by searching this forum so I decided to join (so I can ask questions!!). The amount of good hand tool info on here is amazing!

I’ve had the typical homeowner power tools (cheap tablesaw, chop saw, various corded tools) since we bought our house 8 years ago, but I could just never get into woodworking. I didn’t like the noise (ear muffs all the time), dust (mask all the time and sawdust ALL OVER the basement), spending more time adjusting settings than actually cutting, and quite frankly many of these tools scare the crap out of me (particularly the router). So I just never really did anything other than fixing stuff around the house or utilitarian things. Then I bought a smoothing plane and it was like a runaway train!

Here’s a couple of projects I’ve made – a folding table for my wife and a chest to organize small toys for my son. The table did use a table saw for some cuts because I didn’t have a rip hand saw yet at the time and a power drill for the large holes for the nuts because I only had an egg beater and no brace at the time (both problems now rectified thanks to ebay!). The chest was all done by hand.
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[Frederick Skelly]

Welcome Chris. Glad to have you join us! Ask away.....

Nice projects! Look forward to seeing more of your work. Howd you like cutting the dovetails on the chest?

Fred

[Brandon Speaks]

Those both look really great.

[chris carter]

Welcome Chris. Glad to have you join us! Ask away.....

Nice projects! Look forward to seeing more of your work. Howd you like cutting the dovetails on the chest?

Fred

Thanks! I will be honest, in the beginning on the case I was loving doing all the dovetails. By drawer number six I was starting to really hat them. The good news though is that I had so many to do that I was able to experiment a little on technique from drawer to drawer and make some improvements to my dovetailing.

@Brandon Speaks - thanks!

[Jim Koepke]

Howdy Chris and welcome to the Creek.

Good looking dovetails on the chest.

jtk

[Chet R Parks]

Hello Chris, As the others have said, Welcome and great job on the chest and dovetails. I like the way they match up from drawer to drawer, puts another dimension in there. I really like the table with the light/dark contrast and the way you carried it through to the legs. I think you found a talent you might not have known you had. Keep at it.
Chet

[lowell holmes]

I suggest that you buy a rust bucket rip saw, take it apart, sand and clean the rust off while saving the etch, sharpen it and set the teeth.
After you do that, you will cease having issues. Don't get weird like me though, at last count I have 15 hand saws hanging in my garage shop.

I know that I am the only one that does this. I never saw a saw that was too rusty to work on. Making a new curly maple handle for one is fun.

[chris carter]

I suggest that you buy a rust bucket rip saw, take it apart, sand and clean the rust off while saving the etch, sharpen it and set the teeth.
After you do that, you will cease having issues. Don't get weird like me though, at last count I have 15 hand saws hanging in my garage shop.

I know that I am the only one that does this. I never saw a saw that was too rusty to work on. Making a new curly maple handle for one is fun.

Actually, I did just that! I bought a rip and a crosscut for $10 each on ebay. Cleaned up the handles, removed rust, sharpened them up (that was quite a learning experience) and they work GREAT! I haven't used my table saw since I got them.

[Steven Mikes]

I'm still pretty new here myself so this might be totally wrong, but aren't your dovetail joints on the drawers backwards? I thought they are supposed to pull against the mechanically strong direction when opening; this way you are just relying on the lateral strength of the glue (which is probably fine of course).

[chris carter]

I'm still pretty new here myself so this might be totally wrong, but aren't your dovetail joints on the drawers backwards? I thought they are supposed to pull against the mechanically strong direction when opening; this way you are just relying on the lateral strength of the glue (which is probably fine of course).

That was intentional. These drawers will never see enough force to benefit from any mechanical advantage putting the tails showing on the sides would provide. Actually, “drawers” doesn’t really accurately describe them; they really are intended as “removable boxes.” The chest was born out of my wife’s request to go purchase an IKEA organizer for my son’s Legos, which I was opposed to. So I made this, which will obviously store a lot more than just his Lego collection. The idea is for him to completely remove whichever boxes he wants and carry them to whatever room he’s playing in (the “lid” from the front also becomes a stable surface for Lego building since much of our house is carpeted). By putting the tails showing on the front the grooves for the bottoms are visible only on the side, where they are plugged (something I learned from this forum!).

[Joe A Faulkner]

Welcome Chris and well done on both projects. Every time you can make something that SWMBO wants to buy from one of the big box stores is a good opportunity to divert money that would have been spent on cheap furniture to tools or lumber. The day will come when your son will likely box up the Legos in plastic containers and put them in the back of his closet or up in the attic, but that chest is something that he likely will have well into adulthood. Pretty cool in my opinion. Keep up the good work.