I try to get the boys into the workshop a couple of times a year and build some smaller projects. It seems that it is an easier sell for Ben than for Will. However, Will does get into the projects once we get started (he just gets distracted easily – but who doesn’t).

This project was a pair of Japanese toolboxes. The boys picked out lumber earlier this week. Ben picked out a piece of maple, and Will picked out what appears to be pine.

The boxes are constructed with a simple box joint and cut nails. We are finishing them with shellac and wax. We were able to get Ben’s box completed today, and hopefully get Will’s finished tomorrow.

We cut the joints on the table saw. The boys probably could have cut the joints using a hand saw in the pine, but the maple was way too hard to cut by hand. All the pieces were assembled using 2″ cut nails by Tremont Nail Company. I picked up some decorative rose-head nails to add to the character of the box. The battens on the top were nailed and clinched.

The first box turned out pretty nice. Now to find some nice handles to attach to the ends.

Last Sunday I delivered the second toy box to Susanna’s preschool. The third box is in the shop mostly completed – hopefully I’ll get it out the door in a week or two.

The roof on the first box is in pretty rough shape after being exposed to the weather for the winter (as I had expected). I finally got the preschool to agree that a better roof is needed (than just cheap plywood). I’m going to put a corrugated PVC roof on the third box, and will retrofit the PVC roof to the first two boxes.

It is nice to start reclaiming my workshop from the piles of plywood that have been taking up space for the past 6+ months.

I put the last coat of wiping varnish on the charging station last night. This morning I hung it in mud/laundry room.

I think I should have made it a little bigger, but it works. I think I’ll also add a power strip in the top section and try to hide the wires a little better. But a new power strip will have to wait until another day.  I’ll also need to order a couple of shorter (maybe 12″ long) lightning charging cables to keep it a little less cluttered.

This week is a good woodworking week. I finished a quick home project and have a toy box sitting in the workshop waiting for nice weather for delivery to Susanna’s school.  Two projects finished and it isn’t even February. Not a bad start to the year!

After a couple of evenings in the shop, I have the charging station nearly complete. The glue-up is finished and the piece is mostly sanded. I do have to decide if I am going to add a piece on the top to hide where the power strip will go.

I also have to route two groves in the back to allow wires to run up and down the box when it is hung on the wall. Which leads me to the final decision I’ll have to make. How to hang this on the wall… But I don’t have to make that decision today.

I added short wood pegs on the front edge of the bottom shelves to keep tablets from slipping out. The third shelf will hold phones, and the top is for the power strip.

I’ll finish the piece with a coat of shellac topped with a couple of coats of wiping varnish.  I should be able to hang it early next week.

I’m not 100% sure on how it looks, but I’ll have to wait to see how it looks hanging on the wall. I tapered the sides, but think maybe a larger taper would look better. And the shelf spacing isn’t perfect. I think the top shelf could be maybe an inch higher. Though maybe I could just clip the top inch off of the sides to make it look right. Thoughts?

Today was a good workshop day. Normally workshop time is alone time, but sometimes it is nice to have company. While, I did get most of the day alone in the shop, Susanna joined me after she came home from work. I had put the first coat of varnish on the toy box last night, and she sanded and put the second coat on this afternoon (while I glued up the charging station).

I took the morning to get started on the charging station for the new mud/laundry room. Our kitchen counter is a tangled mess most of the time (and all the time when the boys are here), so I’m constructing a simple wall mounted charging station.

The design is pretty basic. It is just a couple of shelves to hold iPads and phones. No hand cut dovetails or drawers. No back. About as simple as you can get.

The first step was to pull out a piece of cherry. The board I pulled out of the loft was about twice as much wood as I needed, but I didn’t feel like digging for a smaller board. Anyway, I have lots and lots of cherry, so no need to stress.

I milled (half of) the board into two sides that are 5″ wide and 30″ long. I milled the lumber to a little less than 3/4″ thick – I think it will look nicer just a little lighter than the normal 3/4″. The sides taper from 5″ wide at the bottom to 4″ wide at the top. I milled four shelves at the same time, varying from 4 1/2″ to 3 1/2″ in width and about 12″ long.

I clamped the sides together (back to back) and cut four stopped dadoes for the shelves. The dadoes are 3/8″ wide – I picked it because 1/4″ seemed too small, and 1/2″ seemed to wide and I happened to have a 3/8″ router bit.

I set up the router table to cut the tenons to go into the dadoes. I was wanting to use the table saw, but my dado blades had a carbide tooth fall off (so I’m stuck having to get the blade repaired or order a new dado stack). Anyway, the router table worked fine.

Finally, I cleaned up the tenon cheek with a hand plane and chisels. I cut off the front of the tenon (for the stopped portion of the dado) with a hand saw and glued up the sides and the top and bottom shelf. I’ll add the two middle shelves tomorrow. I can’t do much work in the shop while the varnish dries on the toy boxes.

This is the first real project I’ve made from cherry (I made a bookshelf from cherry veneered plywood but that doesn’t count). I can see why everyone likes cherry – it is an easy wood to work with. My hand tools love cherry. It isn’t as soft as pine, but it is much easier on the tools (and me) than oak.

I was looking for a quick project to build with the boys in the workshop. I needed a project that they could do most of the work on – they were planned to be gifts.  I saw an idea earlier in on Matt’s Basement Workshop – and it seemed like a pretty simple quick project. Our lives this fall have been pretty crazy, and I didn’t think that I could get them to put enough work into a much more complicated project to finish in time.

The clipboards only took a couple of nights to finish in the workshop.  We built a total of 4 clipboards, they took one each and left two here.

The project required picking out some scrap – we found a piece of yellowheart in the wood pile. The lumber was milled and glued up into panels.  We then cut out 4 boards from the panel – in hindsight I think we should have made the boards a little smaller (though it is never too late to remove wood)- a 5×7 picture seems a little small on the clipboard.  The keyhole hanger was inserted in the back (we removed the waste using a drill and chisel). The boards were finished with a coat of varnish and the hardware was installed.