More great drawers

December 18, 2009 by Al Navas (Sandal Woods) · 4 Comments 

Glenn, one of the readers of my blog, saw the following photo of the first great drawer I made for the stand-up desk. The joinery on the back of the drawer is shown, with no glue, and the surfaces not yet planed even – in other words, pretty much as the the dovetails came off [...]

Fine furniture deserves great drawers

November 16, 2009 by Al Navas (Sandal Woods) · 2 Comments 

Drawers are a critical part of a project. Mario Rodriguez shared his insight into making and fitting drawers during a terrific session at the Woodworking in America conference in Valley Forge, PA. You can view a 19-minute video I shot and later edited, at this link.
As I work on the stand-up desk and prepare for [...]

My entry in the Winter 2009 Woodworking Awards at Lumberjocks

January 24, 2009 by Al Navas (Sandal Woods) · 2 Comments 

I entered in the Category A Knot Like No Other. If you click on the link, it will take you to my entry at Lumberjocks.
This is a half-scale table I made to fully visualize proportions. And I got away with hand planing the bevel, as the grain reversed at the knot near the corner.
This little [...]

#39. WIA: Advanced Dovetailing with Frank Klausz

December 16, 2008 by Al Navas (Sandal Woods) · 2 Comments 

Download High Resolution
Run time: 1 hour, 51 min., 47 sec.

Frank Klausz returns in this episode on Advanced Dovetailing, to share how he makes half-blind and mitered dovetails. He shares tips that are crucial to get excellent joint fit with a minimum set of tools. I filmed this during his wonderful session, at the Woodworking [...]

Hand-cut dovetails: “Cutting to the line”

December 11, 2008 by Al Navas (Sandal Woods) · Leave a Comment 

This one is for Betsy, at Lumberjocks.com.
Betsy has had trouble cutting to the line when hand-cutting dovetails. Therefore, she would like to improve the fit, by making sure to better cut to the line. I promised I would try to document how I do it.
I found that using either the index-finger fingernail, or the thumb [...]

Graduation day: Hand-cut dovetails 101

December 10, 2008 by Al Navas (Sandal Woods) · 2 Comments 

I started my hand-cut dovetail journey this past September. In this post I share my graduation from Hand-Cut Dovetails-101. What a terrific day!
As I have mentioned in those previous posts, I have been hand-cutting dovetails every chance I get. I prepared sycamore stock so that it would be at the ready when I have a [...]

#35. WIA – Scrapers: History, Preparation and Use, Part 3 of 3

November 27, 2008 by Al Navas (Sandal Woods) · 2 Comments 

Download Quicktime (*.mov)
Run time: 23 minutes, 02 seconds

This is Part 3 of 3 of the session on Scrapers: History, Preparation and Use, with Christopher Schwarz. Part3 concludes the series on scrapers.
To get some continuity from Part 2 into Part 3, I included the last 3 minutes from Part 2 as the introduction to this [...]

Next Page »