Going to try and add to all the great info around here instead of just lurking all the time! So here is the staircase, railings, newel post, and balusters I made in the house we built a couple years ago. Finally finished the post, balusters and railings recently. Just put a few coats of clear finish on it all. The wood is some wormy red maple that we came across during our small timber harvest. I brought it up to an Amish mill nearby (sawed all the timber I kept for .10/board ft!). I planed, joined, routed, whole 9yds . Have some other projects done/going with the other lumber from here...
Really really!!! nice work there man. Just preparing this stock is a lot of work, before you even start making anything out of it. Did you have it kiln dried?
Nice job...always wanted to have the tools/time/talent to do fine wood work. Built a few sheds and decks, but making furniture, etc. would be SWEET!
Thanks fellas, it does take a lot of time prepping the stock, but I enjoy running lumber through a planar a heckuva lot more that stuff like Sheetrock or grout! I'll get some pics of other projects up soon. And hopefully I'll get some stack pics too , been waiting till I can get 2 yrs ahead!!
It is satisfying to take a rough piece planning it, jointing it, and ending up with a nice flat square piece. It,s even better when you can do it without any snipe
HD I did have it kiln dried. We have a bunch of pine and about 200ft of cherry air dried. I'm thinking about trying a farmhouse style table with the cherry. I couldn't afford a jointer with everything else going on, so the treads are joined off the tablesaw with some carefully placed featherboards! I was worried about it but ended up working great with a new sawblade.
There is always more than one way to do it, there are some pretty easy jigs you can make to do it on the table saw, when I started out I used to use a router table to joint. Cherry is nice to work with besides the fact that the burns easy
Nice job Dutch. Very nice, attractive grain there. I am very partial to craftsman style finish carpentry work, so I appreciate the simplicity and clean look of the work. I am looking forward to what else you have going on there.
That's some beautiful wood and very nice craftsmanship! I have some pretty big red maple logs out in the woods that I want to turn into kitchen floors in a few years. Not sure when they came down, but I'm hoping the lumber ends up looking something like that! Great job! Looking forward to pics from some other projects!
Thanks Shawn. If you're looking for a wormy look a guy who runs a local sawmill told me he sometimes drops the logs and leaves them on the ground for a while. He said that gives it more mineral streaking, I bought the stringers from him (I didn't have any lumber big enough for the stringers) and they look pretty good, not as wormy as the other boards, but definitely more character than usual.
I was playing around with the bandsaw last winter and I sawed up a couple firewood rounds from some down maple. I think these logs are going to turn out much like that.
That'll look awesome. Especially since they're you're own logs! I try to use any of our lumber for projects when I can, projects always seem better to me when it's from your own land. just convinced the wife to use our pine for mouldings and casings instead of MDF...
dutch, I tried that after mine had sat in the yard stickered for 2 years. It wanted to move too much, so I'm pulling it down. I did use a bunch as siding for the woodshed.
Ahhh man, I already ran off around 80 or so pieces and put up around 30 so far. Did yours end up looking awful Dave?
Yeah really , I wouldn't even try to build a table out of that air dried cheery ,to much work to have joints separating and have your beautiful table look bad .I have had it happen Kiln dried is much more stable, doesn't mean you can't use it ,just have it kiln dried ,cheaper than buying, even rough kiln dried cheery
I always hated it when Norm Abrams would build something and make it look easy. I'm sure it had "nothing" to so with the $100+k of tooling haha! Try and do that with a $49.99 tablesaw that almost cuts straight... sometimes...
I had the whole wood shop setup when I was younger. You couldn't get me out of the garage when I was 30 yrs old. Edger joiner, surface planer, shop table saw and even a shopsmith multi function tool. I miss it. When we do finish on our construction projects we usually bid out some of the 'built-ins' to local wood shops. In better times I would have gone home after work and built them myself.
