Handsome Craftworks

Desk Organizer

Say hello to this desk organizer block made from salvaged douglas fir. These are fun to make, and it’s super customizable. I particularly like the way the wood grain worked out in this piece. It includes enough variety of holes to store and organize all kinds of goodies on your desk.

Time to get organizized. And I realize now that this post sounds like an Apple commercial :-)

5 notes | 1 year ago

Setting up Shop

This is a sort of catch-up post, as I wanted to post some images and info on the work that I did over the summer to set up my studio work space downstairs in our garage. We live in a small, 1940s apartment complex, and our apartment fortunately sits directly over our garage stall below (most of our neighbors’ apartments don’t…their living spaces do not line up with their parking stalls). I’ve made a lot of progress since I initially started setting things up, and I will post updates soon.

The garage stall has one permanent wall, and is open on the other three sides (there is an access way between my work space and the back wall that I have to leave open so that people can access their storage closets). I built a storage loft to get all of our camping gear and miscellaneous storage items off of the floor. I scored this whole pile of wood for $10 at Whole House Building Supply and Salvage in San Mateo. What’s cool about this place is that you can pick through and choose each piece you want…specific lengths, types of wood, etc. And it’s good knowing that this wood is being repurposed for a good cause.

Who needs a pickup?!

And here is the loft in progress…

And here are the beginnings of a tool wall over the secondary work table…

I had a large 48” x 48” worktable that I broke down and used to create two separate tables instead. One became a general purpose drawing table, the other became the main woodworking bench that sits in the middle of the shop. Here is the woodworking bench getting final touches, including the spank’n new vise courtesy of my sister…

Woodworking bench made from new and reused materials.

And the latest addition: I scored this old school table saw off of Craigslist. It took some work to get it up to speed, which mostly involved getting the necessary safety gear in place for making cuts so that I would not lose any fingers or get smashed from kick-backed wood flying at 130mph. Most older saws like this have long since lost their original safety accessories because people found them cumbersome to remove/install repeatedly when switching between different kinds of cuts. More on the details of how I resolved this coming soon.

New (old) table saw.

The previous owner converted one of the table saw ‘wings’ into a router table add-on, which is kinda cool. I made this temporary router insert until I can get a proper one. Here you can see the router is mounted underneath and the bit peaking through.

Currently my sole power source for all power tools and equipment is from our bedroom. I am able to run a few incandescent shop lights and my iphone (for music and email) from a standard light socket in the garage storage closet. One of the cool things about being below our apartment is that I get a full wireless signal from our router! I am negotiating the installation of an extra power connection or two with our apartment maintenance guy….but looks like it will be awhile since he’s swamped with projects. It’s ok…I’m able to work with this for now.

Power to the people!

Ok, that gets me closer to being caught up with the early setup progress. More details coming soon.

1 year ago