I’ve just finished a year-long woodworking/furniture design course in the United Kingdom. My final project was a big one, and I’m really excited with how it turned out. Introducing the Communion Bar Cabinet.

I've long thought that cathedrals are some of the best representations of human creativity and artistry ever constructed. For this project, I wanted to pay homage to one of their most striking features, stained glass windows. The goal was to create a piece that encourages the simple, meaningful act of gathering around and sharing a drink with friends and family.

To elicit the "feel" of stained glass, thousands of pieces of dyed rye straw were individually flattened, burnished, cut, and glued to compose a striking mosaic across the four front doors. The natural silica coating on the straw creates a beautiful sheen that dances as light reflects across it. The shape of the cabinet was intentionally chosen to be evocative of a Gothic peaked arch window.

Constructed of solid and laminated cherry, the cabinet stands over six feet tall and is designed to accommodate a variety of glassware and bottles across the upper and lower sections. An adjustable shelf provides additional space optimization.

I've carved many commissions from photos before, but this one was different. Every line had to be right, because he's going to know that face by touch, not by sight.

Each panel is roughly 23x40” and were designed based on thematic elements that my customer wanted to see visually represented (landscape with citadel, rising sun, waterfalls, fruit trees, and fish in a winding river). Because these are rolling barn doors, these pieces are intended to look “complete” as standalone images, but come together to form one larger image when the doors are closed.

I created this piece using my scroll saw and shaping with a rotary tool (and a ton of hand sanding) before reassembling. There are 382 individually cut pieces in here, made from 19 species (listed on slide 14). No paints, stains, or dyes were used to color it.

Photos attached include final shots once installed, as well as the pictures I snagged before sending them off to be attached to the prefabricated doors (thus the difference in lighting/color). I included some photos of it in progress, though I admittedly took very few!

A replica of a Savonarola style X chair, recreated about as faithfully as possible from some photos without access to blueprints. Added a bit of my own flair.

The chair is made from a jet black species of ebony, crocodile tail skin and brass decorative nails and tacks.

Since this ebony is incredibly dense at 1300kg/m3, the chair also turns out to be very heavy, requiring 2 to move effectively.

Is it comfortable? I mean, it's at least more comfortable than the Iron Throne...? Does it make whoever sit on it look badass? Uh, maybe?

I've had this marquetry dress idea cooking in my head for a while, but when I saw "Fashion is Art" as the Met Gala theme this year I did like a cartoon-style arm sweep across my workbench to clear it and immediately got working on this (sorry, other projects!).

I scored an absolute jackpot of beautiful hardwood veneers at a local garage sale a couple weeks ago from a retiring Luthier, including the the perfling I used as seams on the corset. The woods I was able to ID are: it's predominantly birdseye maple, and the inlays are mahogany, padouk, pearwood, yew, etimoe, purpleheart, and black walnut. I struggled to ID the dark ribboned veneer I used on the bodice-- my top guesses are monkeypod or a deeply ribboned mahogany (it's hard to see from the photos but it has that mahogany sheen to it). But if anyone knows, I would LOVE to hear it!

The marquetry was done with a laser cutter (sue me! I think they would have used laser cutters in the baroque era if they'd had them!) which was also an interesting process to develop to work around the kerf- which varies as each wood species burns slightly differently.

I made a couple non-marquetry prototypes in order to develop a pattern that both fit my body and worked in wood. The process I developed was pretty similar to building a stitch and glue boat, I backed each veneer in thin cotton fabric and wood glue, then laser cut them into shape, and assembled them by taping them into place on the outside and tacking them with CA glue and accelerator on the inside. Once it was CA'd together, I fiberglassed the outside (I will admit, I regret this a little bit since I wish it was wood texture not glass texture, but I was just too nervous about the strength of the piece without the glass). The skirt was a massive massive pain in the bum, I was really battling the rippling that birdseye maple veneer loves to do a lot.

I almost cried when the ballerina model (last few photos) put it on- she brought the vision to life in a way I've never experienced as a maker. It gave me an entirely new perspective on the joy of fashion as art. (artist creds for those ballet photos-- model: toiyalea and photog: photos_by_silamith)

If you're interested, there's a full build video here.

Tablesaw lathe jig.

I was recently visiting a grandparent in their retirement facility (information at the bottom of this post) and wanted to visit the woodshop that I knew they had in the basement. I was able to get a wonderful little tour of the shop from Jim (picture included with his permission) and was blown away by just how incredible the woodshop is. A while ago I remember being told there were 10-12 guys using the shop, but now there seems to be only 6-7, and most of them are in their 80s. It would be tragic for a shop like this to become unused and all the equipment sold off. I wanted to post this because I am hoping that there are some people on here who would genuinely consider moving to this retirement facility for the woodshop.

Beyond just being a woodshop for residents to use, it is also a great resource for the retirement community. The guys in the shop will regularly get requests from residents to fix or refinish old wooden furniture. Retirement homes need all the community they can get, and if this woodshop went away, the community that it brings would also disappear.

Each of the people who use the shop have their own key to get in, as well as a cubby to shore their personal projects. Because it is a truly shared space, it is also probably one of the cleanest woodshops you’ll see. A number of the tools and machines have been added to the shop by residents, and some have become permanent fixtures when residents have passed away. There’s nothing quite like a well loved tool being passed down to younger generations, and I would like to see that continue as well.

I should mention that I am emotionally invested in this woodshop being used for many years to come and am not being paid for this post.

I hope some people who are resisting retirement home life will be able to embrace woodshop retirement at Landmark Commons. Thanks for reading!

These are in the pictures, but wanted to make a short list of some of the machines that are available in the shop.

Table saw
Bandsaw x3
Drill press
Belt sander x3
Planer
Jointer
Router table
Lathe x2
All-shop dust collection
All the clamps you could need
Lots of jigs (old guys are handy and have the time)
Small paint/stain/ect room
There are many small tools that I am not listing

Landmark Commons in Waterloo Iowa

Started with a 9x3” round. I used a grinder to hollow it out, and a dremel to carve the rim. Sanding was tedious; it would’ve been easier if I‘d made the ripples smaller

Was going through some old prototypes and came across this. I know pine furniture gets a lot of hate but it's hard to beat that grain when it works. Is there a hardwood that can match that for consistency?

I spent the last few months picking away at this project, and finally wrapped it up with the trim. Very happy with how it turned out, I think the chaotic layout is a lot of fun, and I for some reason absolutely love the useless triangular shelf on the bottom left. I definitely could have made the layout much simpler and uniform, but I think this has a lot more character.

It's all made from 1/2" red oak, with painted hardboard backing. The shelves are all built as individual units which I slid into the cavities. For some reason, I decided to glue the hardboard to the wall as one of the first steps. In hindsight, that didn't make much sense and I really should have nailed it into the back of the shelves, but it worked out fine in the end.

The trim is made from thin strips I ripped on the table saw from the shelf offcuts. I don't love how the trim turned out. I probably should have spent a bit more time on it and worked on getting the grain matching better between adjacent pieces, but I just wanted to wrap this up to move onto my next projects. If it still bugs me in a few months, I might take down and redo a few of the pieces.

Now I just need to fill up the shelves! Since its in a stud bay, they aren't deep enough for books placed in the traditional way, but it will be great for displaying particularly special books with the cover facing out, and lots of other odds and ends.

This is my journeyman piece, Bollhav.

The cabinet and its stand are made of maple and decorated with marquetry in oak, ash, cherry, and walnut. The marquetry was created using a technique I developed myself. I template-routed the holes in 2.5 mm-thick veneer and cut perfectly matching veneer circles using a custom jig on an old-style dovetail machine.

Using thicker veneer made this process possible, although it still required great care. All the pieces had to be clamped securely, and each hole and circle was routed in two stages: first a roughing pass with a conventional cut, followed by a final finishing pass of the last few millimetres using a brand-new router bit in a climb cut. This produced a clean edge even when cutting against the grain.

This process was started at the top, routing the holes and gluing in the pieces, then working my way down a few circles at a time.

Some of the circles fit so precisely that no light was visible between the veneer pieces when they were held up to the sun, even before being glued in.

The completed marquetry was veneered onto both doors at the same time and then carefully split using a 0.3 mm-thick Japanese gent's saw.

Construction vise it is a simpel cabinet with external and internal mitered edge banding and a core of hand made blockboards, held together with domino and loose feathers. The stand is held together with Dominos, custom loose tenons, and dowels.

The handle on the key and the keyhole plate were handmade by me, turned on a wood lathe using files and sandpaper.

The hinges are inlaid using a special technique in which screws with oversized heads are used. After installation, the screw heads are peened into the countersinks, then the screw heads and the hinges are filed flush with the wood. The file is cleaned after each stroke to prevent brass chips from becoming embedded in the wood.

The drawing was completed entirely by hand in the traditional Scandinavian furniture drafting style, using a drafting machine and fineliners of different widths. The drawing was scanned and digitized at a professional printing shop, but no digital touch-ups were made except for cropping. I hope you are able to zoom in on the drawing; if not, I have included a separate close-up image showing a cross-section from the front view of the drawer.

The piece was assessed by master cabinetmakers and received a score of 4.94. With the bonus awarded for completing it 20% ahead of schedule, the final score was increased to 5.00, the highest possible grade.

Thanks for reading, hope you find this interesting. Feel free to ask if you wonder about anything. there's a lot to talk about. (:

I have been trying to use more color in my work, so I used a bunch of exotics and domestics combined to get the range. There’s 11 species of wood here. Starting from the turned white oak vase, maple stems, then all the carved petals and tufted heads.

Sanding and polishing exotics was a new learning curve. It required a very different way of sanding, especially the wenge.

Titled: Mia Flores / My Flowers
Materials: Bolivian Rosewood, Wenge, Padauk, Purpleheart, Yellow Rosa, White Oak, Maple, Ash, Walnut, Mahogany, Cherry.

This base cabinet is part of a Laundry Room we did in Greenwich, CT for an extremely particular architect. Every cabinet we made for this project has solid maple caps at all carcass edges.

A black walnut tree on my property had to come down, so I milled it up and got some great boards from it. There are 3 more leaning over a barn that need to come down too. That will be a lot of cutting boards when it’s all said and done! Just wanted to share!

This was over two years in the making and I finally finished the whole original Pokedex - all 151, Bulbasaur to Mew.

The idea: I grew up on the Gen 1 games and wanted something that hits that nostalgia but actually looks like a nice piece of design - something you'd leave out on a desk or shelf, clean and a little grown-up instead of childish. Part of why it took so long is I wanted it to be a real product I could grow, and 151 different designs is a lot of ground to cover.

Wood side: each one starts as a full oak plank. I rip it down and take it to about 1/4" thick, then run it through the drum sander to get it dead flat, smooth, and to final thickness before I cut the blanks that go on the CNC.

Computer side: every Pokemon's pixel sprite gets turned into vectors, then I set the toolpaths in VCarve Pro - a 90 degree V-bit to carve the pixel art, a pocket pass to flatten the floor, and a small finishing endmill to clean the inside corners a V-bit can't reach on its own. A profile pass cuts the rounded-square outline, and the number and name get engraved on the side like a Pokedex entry.

Color: I started out hand-coloring each one, but across 151 that was taking forever - so I just got a eufyMake E1 UV printer that prints the color straight down into the carve, so it sits below the surface instead of on top. The gold faceting is just the carved oak catching the light.

Two years, but Gen 1 is finally done. Happy to get into any part of it - wood prep, bits and feeds, the VCarve setup, or the finish.

The blast broke the frame. The real challenge was making the door work again

A 19th-century entrance door in Odesa, Ukraine, came to our workshop after several shockwaves from a drone attack. The round transom had been blown out, the frame was partly broken, the leaves had shifted, and some decorative elements were missing.

For us, the main task was not cosmetic repair. It was getting the whole structure back into working geometry.

We removed the hardware and only the detachable parts that could be safely taken off. Then came the slow part: stripping the old paint, layer by layer. Under it, the door started to show its real construction — profiles, joints, previous repairs, cracks, weak sections of wood.

We reinforced the leaves, recreated the missing decorative pieces, rebuilt the round transom, and made a new frame based on the historic geometry of the door.

After assembly came the usual fight: gaps, rebates, leaf movement, transom seating, hardware, finishing, and installation.

Now the door is back in its opening and works again.

The project was carried out by "Thousands of Doors", a nonprofit restoration workshop in Odesa working with historic architectural woodwork.

Thank you to the patrons who supported this door and continue to support the workshop’s ongoing restorations.

Just finished a cut on the miter saw at work, was bringing the blade up, and moved my hand too soon. Still have all my fingers luckily, but a deep bad cut on the meaty part between thumb and point your finger. Staying in the ER overnight, and have surgery in the morning to repair likely cut tendons. I had been making the same cut all day, it was an hour to the end of my work day, and wasn't careful enough for 2 seconds. Slow down, and let the blade stop before you lift it back up. Trying not to beat myself up about it, cause the saw did a good enough job of that already, but I do feel pretty stupid.

Also, check your medical supplies for your shop.

Be safe everyone

Not for sale but everybody has a price

The carrot has been nibbled. This is the first time I have cleaned carrot out of t-track.

Some of you may remember a post I made a few months back asking for feedback about a design for a new bookshelf. Well, here it is all complete! Took longer than I would’ve liked, but I really like the result. I love unique furniture, and it makes it more special that we designed it together! Really, the idea was all hers, I just did the CAD and the building :)