Back to woodworking.....

Things are rolling pretty good with the lectern. Even with all the distractions it is coming right along. Maybe I'll be able to deliver it before Thanksgiving.

Tonight I was able to dry assemble the sides and front to the top of the base. I chose pocket screws for ease of use. I wanted to use biscuits, but that was gonna require a lot of figuring.

Anyway, here are the pics of the mock up. I will glue and assemble after some much needed sanding.

Lectern for my church

This is something I have wanted to build for a few years now, and I figure now is the time to get started. The pics are pretty self explanatory. The first two are 2D exports from Google Sketchup. If you aren't familiar with Sketchup, check out the link and they can explain it better than I could.

I am building this out of cherry, mostly solid. The sides and top will be cherry ply. I plan on finishing with a wipe on poly since I have had amazing results with the stuff on some other small projects and really want to get more familiar with it. It's also a lot easier to apply than a brush-on finish.

These are the base pieces after mitering and just stacked to get a sense of scale.

Here you can see the pieces glued up and waiting for the next step.

I built spacers that would fit in the recesses of each level and put it 1/4" above the one below in order to lighten the appearance of the base a bit.

I think it looks lighter... Now I need to bullnose all of those.

But first let me mock up the front panel and place it there to get a perspective on the size and scale of the whole thing. I think the proportions seem correct/good to me.

Here is the glue-up of the front panel. Notice no clamps, only tape.

Bullnose complete! Looks good if I do say so myself.

Another view.

And now with the newly glued-up front panel in place.

And from the side.

Over all this is going pretty much according to plan. I drew up a full sized template before I started and that has been my guide for the odd angles, especially on the pieces for the front panel. This week I hope to get the sides cut and fit and put together with the front. Then I have to make the same thing (only smaller) to fit inside of the main stantion. I am designing this lectern to be adjustable for different speaker's preferences. That is not on the sketchup drawings and pretty much only resides in my head how it's going to work. I need to try to get it put on paper somewhere....

Bathroom Cabinet Done!

I finished the bathroom cabinet pretty quickly. Once again, I deviated from the plans and didn't put the door on. This is mainly because the cabinet is only 6" deep, take away nearly 3/4" for the back and another 5/8" for the door, and you wind up with a pretty shallow cavity for anything useful, so it made more sense to make it an open shelf instead.Corner detail. The bathroom is too narrow to allow a shot of the dovetails.

The whole thing.

Cherry Bathroom Cabinet

This drawing is about the most in depth drawing I ever do. Most of my plans are in my head. This is actually (for me) a very detailed working drawing. For the most part, whenever I build anything, I work from a VERY rough sketch with dimensions penciled in. Rarely do I stay with the actual design. This can be discouraging to my wife. I promised her a coffee table in white oak; very country looking. This evolved to a more contemporary design in cherry and walnut. She wound up with a pine blanket chest for a coffee table instead. I know it can be confusing for some, but to me it made perfect sense and turned out exactly as I thought (eventually).

This is a rough drawing of the cabinet I am building for my half-bath to hang above the toilet. This drawing has the door with two panels (I'm using bookmatched spalted maple with the cherry) but I decided to do a single bookmatched panel instead.

Glued up and out of clamps. The shelf is just set in place for now and will be glued in after the back is installed.

Here's a little bit of a perspective view.

And from the other side. The dovetails are hand cut. Partly because I'm too cheap to buy a dovetail setup for my router, and mostly because I want to be able to do them by hand. This is actually the third set I have ever cut. I do have some improvements to make to my technique (mainly patience) but each set gets better.

And here is the book matched panel for the door I will be assembling soon. Am I the only one that sees the eagle bottom center?