Woodplaying (formerly known as Woodworking)

Here's one of my recent hobbies--woodworking. Or perhaps it is more accurate to say "recently re-activated" hobbies. I have enjoyed working with wood and designing little furniture items since I was a kid. However, this is the first time I have really had a chance to get into it.
The project I chose to get back into it with? A video rack. Not just any video rack, but a double-wide, take-up-the-whole living room kind of video rack. Thing is, my wife and I are movie nuts, and we have stacks and stacks of DVDs and videos. So I set out to make as big a rack as I could. I quickly found myself limited by the length of dowels (which I had planned to use as tape shelves), which come in 48" lengths. So I sketched it out--the rack was going to be 50 inches wide, with one center support for extra support. This was going to mark the first time I had ever built a piece of furniture bigger than myself!

Now it had been a few years since I'd last attempted anything. And it had been many many years since I had attempted any joinery. That's where you create mitered corners, and fasten them together with nails, screws, and/or glue. There are all kinds of joins one can use, each of varying difficulty to cut, and all of varying strength. The one unifying factor they all share is that I suck at them all. I've never been real good at joinery.

Then I started reading up on biscuit joinery. It looked a little more forgiving for those of us who are router-challenged. So I bought a Ryobi biscuit jointer saw, and proceeded to give it a try. First I joined a few scraps of wood together. Then I set out to make a big box. It's a cool box, with a hinged lid, inner compartments for storage, and strong enough for me to stand on (very important, since I am fairly average in height, but my workbench was built by a previous occupant of this house, and the dude must have been a pro basketball player).

I quickly got the hang of working with biscuits, and emboldened by my box building, I set onto the task of building the video rack.

The build took about five weeks, consisting mostly of evenings. It went pretty well, with a few slips and mishaps along the way. The worst part was waiting through a couple of weeks rain, wind, and super cold so that I could paint the thing. (Perhaps starting on such a project in November was not the smartest move.) I had originally planned on spray painting, but the wind never let up--so I switched to brush. Oh, and those dowels. It was like herding cats. I don't want to try anything with so many dowels for a while. But in the end, I ended up with a pretty sweet rack.

That was done around the end of 2006, after which I decided to take a break for a while. Now I've been getting the urge to build again, and the next project is my desk organizer. Here's a diagram of it:

So now I am in the initial cutting phase of that. I am trying to work with stains and finishes for this one, attempting to match my desk's finish. That is turning out to be a challenge. (Scotty, we need more RED!!!)

Both the rack and the organizer are designs I came up with. I really enjoy designing furniture. It uses all my 3D talents, but the end result is something you can pick up and use, as opposed to just being some cool imagery on a video screen. Not that I have anything against the latter, but every now and then it feels good to "get tactile".

I just wish I had made better choices in high school. I had a choice of several types of industrial arts classes. I could have taken metalworking and woodworking, but I took autoshop instead. Of the three, I probably took the worst one. You see, between the time I took that class and the present day, the automotive industry made a radical shift--the complexity of automobile engines went through the roof. In autoshop, I learned the basics using 8HP lawnmower engines. I studied distributors, camshafts, and carburetors. Now everything is electronic systems and fuel injection. As a result, I open up the hood of my car, and I'm helpless. If something goes wrong, I'm taking it to the dealership.

Woodworking, on the other hand, is pretty much the same now as it was back in high school. A miter cut is still a miter cut. A board is still a board. I wish I had taken woodworking all those years ago; I wouldn't have to be learning and re-learning all this stuff now. I might have been able to knock-off dovetail joins effortlessly. Instead, bring on the biscuits! Oh well, at least it is fun trying out new things!

Of course, all of this is in preparation for the projects that I have been mulling over for almost ten years: The Coffee Table. I am hoping to make that happen sometime in 2007, but it's goig to be a complex build. It's a pretty cool design though...it bloody well should be, since I've been sketching it out for nearly a decade!