JDW Photos and Life

I hope everybody enjoyed their Thanksgiving. If you ventured out on Black Friday, may you have a quick recovery today! I had built up a large collection of hardwood scraps from various builds over the past year. My daughter likes to mess around with them when we have an extended visit - such as the past week. We decided to build yet another cutting board - this time a chaos board. Other board builders have done similar projects and we thought it might be a neat use of the scraps. The challenge with this type board is the number of glue-ups, re-sizing/cutting/cleanup required. The extra steps certainly add to the time required. If you know our daughter, you know that once she has a project, she is persistent as heck! She kept me in the shop quite a bit this past week as we worked out details and construction. This board will be kept by me as it is a memory of time spent with her. She has a similar board we made several years ago from scraps. She and Josh use it all the time and can atte...

Wishing you and your loved ones a Happy Thanksgiving. For those traveling, I wish you all safe travels. We had a Baltimore Oriole visit our hummingbird feeder for nearly a week towards the end of September. I think he was having a sweet feast matching the pies in our house today. He chased the hummingbird off the feeder right after this shot. Thanks, Doug White https://jdwarchive.blogspot.com/

Don't ask me why but I decided to make a tree to hold a bottle of wine and a couple of glasses. The middle shelf actually dictated most of the dimensions to provide space and clearance for all three wine components (can accept a large bottle of wine). The result was a really tall structure. It sits at 30+" tall by 18+" wide (4" deep). I struggle in my mind if anyone would really like such a large decoration. There is plenty of room for garland or mini lights or other festive decorations. I have seen similar "trees" that have been surface burned with a torch and then painted red or green. I'm not sure I want any other finish than the simple wood - in this case reclaimed untreated cedar from Chris' back yard (required a lot of work!). I chose one of our favorite wines for the photo - a HEB-only red that has a kick of habanero pepper. Its sister wine is a white with a kick of jalapeno! They are great for cooking or drinking straight. I cut all of the c...

About a month ago, I picked up an old Craftsman 18" scroll saw for a whopping $15. It satisfied a couple of points: 1) cheap test of whether I would like scroll saw stuff, and 2) small and light enough to stow it out of the way in my shop when not in use. This tool is in good shape but is a beater with vibration. Fortunately, I can clamp it down to my  very heavy assembly table. I have no idea how anyone could use this thing without something very substantial to clamp it to. I played around with it on some 1/4" plywood to get the feel and then put it away for a bit. I then saw a piece I liked on a Facebook group and the person shared his template. It called for cutting 1" thick stock slightly smaller than a sheet of paper. I looked around my shop and picked up a piece of cherry and began work. In hindsight, I'm not sure such a hard wood was a good choice for my first project with that thickness. The piece needed a very small blade (#5) and had some challenging turns/...

I know, I know - it's too early for Christmas. However if you are going to make something, it is not too early. I wish I could take any kind of credit for these trees but I can't. A Facebook user posted these and I decided to make them. He gave dimensions but they really did not look right. I ended up building the trees in a 3D modeling program and found the problems. The fact is that you could just make these and adjust on the fly and that must be what he did. An old analytical engineer like me really likes the see precision in the design. My adjustments are made due to less-than-perfect skill in the shop but NOT design! I had a large plank of cedar that I used. The original board was 8 ft by 8-1/2 inches by 1 inch thick (5.7 board feet and about $35). This project consumed all but one strip of 4" x 36" of that board. The trees are all 4" wide with wood planed to 3/4" thickness. The largest tree is 15" at its base and 17" at its peak. We are tryin...

As we all recover from Halloween, I have to send out a little brag this morning. Our daughter, Lauren, is so stinkin' good at her pumpkin carving I just had to share her work this year. Her employer (KANA) had a contest this year for best pumpkin and she won! The trophy is pretty creative itself. She has carved some great pumpkins the past few years. She clearly gets this skill from her mother and my mom - zero from me. Thanks, Doug White https://jdwarchive.blogspot.com/