French Cleat Storage – Clamp Holder

Last week I described how I built a new french cleat storage system for my workshop. One of the main selling points of a french cleat system is the ability to build custom storage holders specific to my needs. My first custom storage system is a clamp holder. Prior to this, I didn’t really have a great place to store my clamps. They were stored in my garage on a few nails. Not exactly an ideal system, especially because most of my building work occurs in the workshop. With the french cleat system, it was extremely easy to rectify that situation. The design of these clamp holders is fairly straight forward. It consists of 4 right triangles attached to a rectangular backing. I cut the points off of the triangles to soften the edges and make them a bit safer as I’m moving around the workshop. I measured my clamps…

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DIY French Cleat Storage System

Recently, I wrote a quick post about how important it is to appreciate the little things like an organized workshop. This week I get to write about one of the keys to my newfound organization: the french cleat. It’s a simple build and allows for lots of flexibility in storing almost anything in my shop. My workshop is tiny (10’x12’), so using wall space for storage is critical to keeping my tools organized. A french cleat consists of a 45°-angled wood strip mounted to the wall. A corresponding 45°-angled wood strip is attached to the back of a tool hanger or bin. Then the hanger cleat slots into the cleat on the wall. French cleats sometimes come installed on the backs of picture frames or mirrors. For a workshop, french cleats provide a lot of weight capacity and allow for custom tool hangers, bins, and more. They are similar to…

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Weekend Build – Raspberry Trellis

It’s another edition of Weekend BuildsTM! In this episode we’re talking about building a raspberry trellis. Or is it raspberry trellises? Trellisi? Hard to say. Anyways, we built a system to keep our raspberry plants from collapsing! This was a relatively simple process that only took a day or so to do. That is, if you order the correct number of wire vises (visi?) the first time around. We ordered half of what we required, so it technically took two weekends (don't tell anyone). The cedar raspberry trellis system is simple. Two 4”x4” posts put into the ground on either side of the raspberry bushes. On each post there are two cross beams, one near the top that is longer than the other located just under halfway up the post (think telephone pole style). Two wire vises on each cross beam and a bunch of wire and it is all…

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The Little Things – Organized Workshop

This was a very busy weekend for projects. I was able to finish up a raspberry trellis for our backyard garden. This took most of Saturday morning. After that I spent the rest of the weekend working on the last bit of trim for the workshop. I just finished getting it hung up about 1 hour ago. It still needs to be painted, but it looks great!  Posts on both of those projects will be coming in the next couple weeks, but I wanted to write a quick post before calling it a weekend. I’ve been trying hard to keep my super small (10’ x 12’) workshop organized. This means that at the end of a project or weekend of work I take enough time to vacuum up all of the sawdust, sweep the floor clean, and put all of my tools and workbenches away where they belong. It can…

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Rolling Miter Saw Stand

It’s the second edition of Weekend BuildsTM! Last time on the program, I built an assembly table for the workshop. This week, it’s all about a rolling miter saw stand. My workshop is only 10’ x 12’, so I need to keep everything as compact and organized as possible. Not something that I would call one of my strengths, but I’ll give it my best effort. I’m hopeful that the miter saw stand will help me out a bit in this regard. I began by measuring out the dimensions of my miter saw. I focused on the height and width of the saw, along with how much space the full swivel of the saw took up. Based on those measurements, I went with a 23” x 25” stand. Once the measurements were made, it was time to cut everything to size. I had a bunch of random scraps of plywood…

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Faux Beams

Allyson likes to call this project the “faux beams” project because it sounds better than fake beams. Whatever you want to call it, the same goal exists. Cover old, ugly 2x4 cross beams from the roof trusses with pine made to look like a fancy thick beam. I think Allyson was talking about the messy parts of the shiplap ceiling in this picture. But the exposed 2x4s are also pretty messy. The plan to cover these 2x4s was to build a 5 ½”x5 ½” box made of pine as a shell around the beams. To start, I have to decide what sort of joint I would make on the corners of the box. Option one would be to have the sides butt up to one another. This would be a really quick and easy way of building the boxes, since the joint wouldn’t require any angles to be cut. It…

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Dining Table Build – Final Assembly

It is final assembly time for the dining table! After many weeks of ripping, routing, glueing, and leg assembly, the table was ready for a drive up to Fort Collins, CO for final assembly on location. Unfortunately, I had a continuous brain fart for about two hours and did not take any photos of the table packed in the CR-V for the drive. Let’s just say that it was majestic and impressive that the entire table fit in there. The back window was open for the entire ride and it was fantastic. Live reenactment After getting to Fort Collins the final assembly process was pretty straightforward. The first step was to reassemble the table top into one piece, since I had to take it apart for “shipment”. I then attached the base to the table top using the figure 8 fasteners I discussed last week. After getting the table top…

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Dining Table Build – Table Base

We are chugging along in the dining table build. Last week covered building the table legs, and this week will cover building the rest of the table base and attaching the table top to the base.  The base itself was fairly quick and easy to build. Using 2”x6” boards for the outside runners, and 2”x4” boards for the perpendicular supports, I built a rectangular frame for the table top. Simple design from SketchUp I used pocket hole screws to both build the frame and attach it to the table legs. I only glued the inner perpendicular supports to the table legs. I do not have any experience with building something like this, but I left the outside supports unglued to allow them to expand and contract across their width. Since the piece is only 5½” wide, the wood movement should be small enough to not cause any issues within the…

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Dining Table Build – Table Legs

I’ve spent quite a bit of time talking about the table top of the dining table build. How I made the mortise and tenons, glued together the table top, created the breadboards, and drilled the holes for the breadboard pins. It’s probably a good time to start talking about the legs that make that table top stand.  The design of the table calls for two slightly beefier legs to support everything. In order to get the beefier leg size, I used 4”x4” lumber that was ripped down to 3”x3” to get rid of the rounded lumber edges. After ripping the pieces and then cutting them to size, it was time to attach them together. The simplest way to do this was to use pocket hole joints on the inner three cross pieces to attach them to the outer posts.  I'm pretty much a pro at photoshop. The red arrows show…

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Dining Table Build – Breadboard Pins

Back to back weeks writing about the dining table build, crazy! This week is all about drilling the holes used to pin the breadboard in place. Once again using my favorite diagram, the pins are used to hold the breadboard tight against edge of the table, while allowing the wood to expand and contract along the length. Source: https://www.woodcraft.com/blog_entries/breadboard-ends All of the pins go through both the breadboard and tenons on the table top. The middle pin hole is sized exactly the same as the pin, locking that point in place. Then the rest of the holes are elongated along the length of the breadboard. This allows the table itself to expand and contract separately from the breadboard. In order to drill the holes for the pins, I had to first attach both breadboards to the table top. This was not an easy process. Unfortunately, across 8 feet the breadboard…

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