Just to try something different, I used some 1/2″ TigerPly EDGE and some 3/4″ TigerPly EDGE to make this unique board. I cut both sizes of plywood into 1″ strips and then glued them all together on their sides. I think there was about 40 strips that I had to glue together. Then, after smoothing the surface of the new panel, I proceeded with my normal process to make the game board. I am very happy with the result! What are your thoughts?

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I have this game board available for sale on my web store!

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We decided to take a leap of faith, and we are about to find out the answers. The Woodworking Maniak Store is now open in historic downtown Shelbyville, KY, with the support of the Mayor, our regular customers, and both the local Arts Council and the Main Street preservation society.

Front Door at 545 Main Street | Woodworking Maniak

Over the last three years, Tim has been making his hobby a business. He had always dabbled in woodworking, but when we moved to our current house, he finally had the space for a workshop. He started by making cutting boards for parents and grandparents for Christmas three years ago, and then started making things to sell at the local Farmers Market that next summer.

The past two holiday seasons, Woodworking Maniak has set up as a vendor at various craft and art shows. While we did sell some things (more at some, nothing at others), traveling from show to show took its toll on the products. Tim was getting tired of scratching and denting everything as he would transport it back and forth to the market and shows. We needed a consistent place to sell our products. We also wanted a place to showcase larger furniture items that we couldn’t take to shows.

We searched for and found the perfect little storefront in our hometown. We primed and painted, swept and mopped, put our logo on the door, and arranged the sales floor. We have the Point of Sale system, the bank accounts, and the office supplies. Tim built the sales counter himself, which is an awesome show piece with a cherry frame, maple panels, and a live-edge cherry slab top. Tim still has display shelving and cabinets to make. He will be building lots more products to fill those shelves throughout the holiday shopping season. We have a lot of work ahead of us, but we are excited to take on this new adventure. It’s going to take our whole family to make this happen.

You are most likely to find Amy working the store on weekdays and Tim there on Friday evening and Saturday. There will also be random days we might need to take off. This is a family owned and operated store, after all. We have no employees, just a husband and wife, and our family comes first.

Ribbon Cutting hosted by the Shelby County Chamber of Commerce and Mayor Hardesty | Woodworking Maniak

Ready or not, we opened on Saturday, October 22, 2016. Send us your prayers, your good vibes, and your positive thoughts. And join us if you are ever in the area!

Woodworking Maniak
545 Main Street
Shelbyville, KY 40065

The post Retail Store Now Open! appeared first on Woodworking Maniak.

Here is the drilling jig I used:  Cheese Slicer Drilling Jig Plans (29442 downloads )

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It doesn’t take much lumber to make one of these cheese slicers. All in all, the board needs to be around 9 1/2″ x 5 3/4″ or so. You can make it shorter or longer if you like. You can even change the shape up a bit if you are feeling frisky!

For this board, I pulled a few boards from my scrap bin and decided to go with some Curly Maple, a piece of Curly Cherry, Redheart and a little more Cherry to finish out an edge. This is just angle of that cut… Cutting large sheets of plywood on my table saw without any sort of infeed support or and outfeed table is quite a chore. I ended up putting my workbench up against my saw to use as an outfeed table for this project because of working with these long cuts. Next, from the strip that was left over, I cut off a 1″ strip to use later as a foot for the plywood storage area. Because pretty much all commercial grade lumber you buy from big box stores are not all that consistant in size, I decided to joint the edges. Just like I would normally do, I had already cut the boards down to rough length. With the board jointed on one edge, I made all of my 2x6s 5 1/4″ wide and all of the 2x4s 3 1/4″ wide. Currently, because I’m currently in a bit of a shop-transition phase… I have not assembled my new dust collector and ductwork yet. So my jointer is just creating a nice pile of shavings. I setup a stop block toward the end of my fence at the length I wanted to cut in for the top rack storage above the sheet goods. Because I had the sheet goods portion set back at around a 5 degree angle, I needed this cut to be here so there would be enough lumber to support the upper racks.

The post How to make a Cheese Slicer appeared first on Woodworking Maniak.

It has been a while since I have posted a shop update. December was rough for our household. All four of us were battling a virus and it kept me from producing any videos. It also kept us away from extended family during the Christmas holiday.

A couple new CNCs, a new drum sander and a big ‘ol stack of plywood. I’m looking forward to making some new videos. Also, I have a giveaway going for the month of January and there will two lucky  winners. Sign up today HERE!

Today is Sarah’s Birthday! She’s a year old! My wife has been running a family blog that we have just announced. She is posting updates about Sarah,

New Family Blog: House Of Maniaks

homeschooling my 9 year old and other family events. Also, she loves to cook, so she posts about that as well. Check out http://www.houseofmaniaks.com

Click the Read More link and watch the video!

The post 2016-01-06 Shop Update & It’s Sarah’s Birthday! appeared first on Woodworking Maniak.

I made a quick upgrade to my shop that will save me some money on my heating bill for many years to come. It cost me less than $60 per kit and it only took me about an hour and a half to install for both of my garage doors. Check out the short video below to see how easy this was to do.

The kits that I purchased were from The Home Depot – Unbranded Garage Insulation Door Kit. They were the best price I found and they even had free shipping!

The post Adding A Garage Door Insulation Kit appeared first on Woodworking Maniak.

I made a beautiful brick pattern End-Grain cutting board out of maple, cherry and walnut. It was finished with a good soaking of mineral oil and then a final buffing of my mineral oil & beeswax mixture. Check out the video below to see how I made it!

I stated by flatening all of my rough cut lumber on my jointer.

And then made all of the boards the same thickness at the planer.

At the table saw, I cut one strip of maple at roughly 3 1/4″ wide and two strips at 3″ wide. Then one strip of cherry at 3″ wide. and one at  roughly 1 3/4″ wide.

Then I cut strips of walnut at 1/4″ wide to create a dark “mortar” look in between the lighter bricks.

Then I glued up all of the strips to make the first glue-up panel.

Then I cut a few shorter strips of walnut and made a panel just as wide as the previous panel.

Then I cut all of them into 1 1/2″ strips.

I cut the walnut into 1/4″ end-grain strips after that and then glued it all into a brick pattern.

I then put a good size chamfer on all four corners.

After that I lowered the bit and put about a 1/8″ chamfer around the whole board.

Then I moved on to sanding… Lots and lots of sanding. I started with 80 grit. Moved on to 120, 220, 320 and then wet the board. After the board dried, I went back and sanded again with 220, 320 and then 400 grit. Wetting the wood raises the fibers of the wood and allows me to sand to a much smoother final finish.

I brand all of my work. Here I’m showing how I use my logo burning brand tool.

I soaked the board in mineral oil and let the board take in as much oil as possible.

Then I heated up my mineral oil & beeswax mixture and applied that to the board. As this began to dry, I buffed that in to a final finish.

Here are a few more final pictures!

The post Brick Pattern End-Grain Cutting Board appeared first on Woodworking Maniak.

I was recently setup at Highlands Festival in Louisville, KY and I wondered into Vic Miller’s local bike shop. While I was in there, he caught on that I had a booth at the festival and I was a woodworker. He had a job for me… Vic had a vintage wheel truing stand that he could not find a base for. So, he asked if I could make one. 

I made the base out of solid oak so it would be substantial per his request. The finished product ended up weighing in at 11lbs. I cut in custom spots for the spoke wrenches and a pocket for parts. I also engraved Vic’s Classic Bikes logo in the wood and completed with a satin finish.

Vic has a great selection of bicycles at his shop on Baxter Avenue in Louisville, well over 300 classics in fact. Check out his website at vicsclassicbikes.com.

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I have been needing to get my lumber in one place for a while now. I’ve had lumber stored in so many places around my shop for a long time. Now I have a large cart that holds a ton. Check out how I built it! 

To build the base, I started by cutting a 40″ strip of plywood and set that aside. This will make the overall footprint size of 40″ wide x 96″ long once assembled.

This is just angle of that cut… Cutting large sheets of plywood on my table saw without any sort of infeed support or and outfeed table is quite a chore. I ended up putting my workbench up against my saw to use as an outfeed table for this project because of working with these long cuts.

Next, from the strip that was left over, I cut off a 1″ strip to use later as a foot for the plywood storage area.

Because pretty much all commercial grade lumber you buy from big box stores are not all that consistant in size, I decided to joint the edges.

Just like I would normally do, I had already cut the boards down to rough length. With the board jointed on one edge, I made all of my 2x6s 5 1/4″ wide and all of the 2x4s 3 1/4″ wide.

Currently, because I’m currently in a bit of a shop-transition phase… I have not assembled my new dust collector and ductwork yet. So my jointer is just creating a nice pile of shavings.

I setup a stop block toward the end of my fence at the length I wanted to cut in for the top rack storage above the sheet goods. Because I had the sheet goods portion set back at around a 5 degree angle, I needed this cut to be here so there would be enough lumber to support the upper racks.

Then I used my taper sled to cut the angles from the corner down to my other cut line.

Then I used a hand saw to finish up the cuts that the round table saw blade couldn’t match up…

Now, this step is one that I should have done before cutting the previous angle. I had planned to do so, but had already gotten into the process of the angles and forgot about drilling the holes until I had already started…

Using a forstner bit, I drilled holes to allow 3/4″ EMT conduit to fit 2 3/4″ deep into the wood. This will provide plenty support for a lot of weight.

I attached a scrap piece of 2×6 that I jointed the bottom of to my miter gauge. With my dado stack cutting at the widest I have, I cut a zero clearance strip through that 2×6.

This allowed me to use either side of that to reference and cut large dados out of the vertical stretchers.

Here is an overhead view of this cutting process.

Here you can see the line that I had drawn on my board to be cut. I needed to side the board all the way to the right to clear out all the material to the left of that line.

Let the chips fly! I just thought this was a pretty cool view of the chips flying at the camera…

I did the same process for cutting large dados for the stretchers for under the base.

Now to get started on the base storage. I cut a long strips of plywood at 22″ wide to make the vertical panels.

I then cut 7 of those panels all at 16″.  I also cut 5 shelves at 15 1/2″. This left me one shelf short, but I did that on purpose… We’ll get to that in a bit.

I then proceeded to cut a dado 1/4″ deep into the center on both sides of these panels. Two of the them only got a dado on one side because they will be the end panels.

I setup my Kreg Jig® K5 and drilled pocket holes on one side of each of the panels.

I only put the pocket holes on one side, so I could move my way down one by one adding a shelf and a panel.

Here I’m adding the second panel and squaring it up.

This process went very smooth and before I knew it I had all the panels in except the last one. I knew that the dados, not exact 3/4″ thickness of plywood, etc wouldn’t give me an exact measurement to know for the final panel until assembly. So it was at this point that I measured to see how wide I needed to cut this shelf.

A quick cut at the table saw and I had the correct size shelf to fit into place.

With a few final taps I was ready to put in the last few screws into the top!

Then I brought over the 40″ wide bottom I cut at the beginning and flipped this assembly over onto it. Lined up to the front edge and screwed it into place using the pocket screws.

I moved it down to the floor and started putting on the vertical stretchers.

I lined them up with on side and inserted 3″ deck screws from the bottom. And also used pocket screws from each of the panels.

I placed the 2×6 cross members that will support the casters. I wanted these to go all the way across the assembly for added structure.

I bolted on 6 4″ casters that I later replaced with 5″ solid metal casters. After putting a couple thousand pounds of wood on this cart, these smaller casters didn’t do the job…

I screwed in all of the 2×4 cross supports

I used a sheet of MDF to line the sheet goods side of the cart. However, MDF comes in a length of 97″. I built the cart to be 96″ long and I didn’t want the MDF to overhang, so I used an edge guide and a skil saw to cut off an inch of material. Dusty dusty mess…

I then attached the MDF to the stretchers and countersunk the screws so the heads wouldn’t touch any sheet goods placed on the cart.

I used a portable band saw to cut the EMT tubing. It sure made the job a lot faster than using a hacksaw…

I cleaned up the rough edges of the EMT with a file.

42 bars of EMT conduit used to provide plenty rack lumber storage on this cart.

And here it is! Complete!

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Lots of work has been done over the past few weeks. So much more work to go. Check out the video and see! 

The post 2015-08-01 Shop Update appeared first on Woodworking Maniak.

While in my shop, I just happened to think of a quick tip to share. Check out the video! 

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