Catching Up - Step Stool for MCC Sale

Almost every year since I can remember my family has attended the Kansas Mennonite Relief sale held at the Kansas state fairgrounds in Hutchinson, Kansas.  The sale is a two day event that involves eating traditional Mennonite food, a huge quilt auction, various booths where crafts and other items can be purchased, and a general auction.  All of this is a fundraiser for the Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) and is used to support their programs all over the world.  I've always enjoyed sitting in the general auction, especially when my dad was around, and watching the various items sell.  They would sell everything you could imagine at this auction from tools, toys, crafts, furniture, automobiles, and everyone's favorite, the restored tractors.  My grandpa had a few cousins that were very talented and made items for this auction.  His cousin Orie Voth would make a clock every year and sometimes a step stool or something small.  He also had a set of twin cousins, Marie and Martha Voth who did amazing wheat marquetry seen Here.  They would make one of these every year for the sale and they often sold for over a thousand dollars and sometimes double. 

Warkentin Mill in Newton, KS by Marie and Martha Voth

Ever since I began woodworking I've wanted to build nice furniture that other people would want to have and buy and I've especially wanted to build something for the MCC sale.  With limited time I had so far focused on learning the skills of hand tool woodworking while making a few things for myself.  In the fall of 2016 I decided that the time had come and I would make something to be sold at the MCC sale in the spring of 2017.  I wanted it to be something small and not overly ambitious since this would be my first piece of "nice" furniture.  I had seen some neat dovetailed step stools on the internet and decided that would be a perfect project for the sale.

I had wanted a step stool for our kitchen that the boys could use instead of pulling a chair in every time they needed something so I bought enough material to do two step stools.  I built the one to keep first as a practice for the one to sell.  I really wanted to show off the hand cut joinery of the pieces and bought some nice dark walnut for the sides of the stool and some light curly maple for the steps.  Here are some photos of the process.

Sawing walnut to length 

Planing walnut for flatness

Jointing the edge of a maple step

I glued two walnut pieces together to get the full width needed for the sides of the stool.  I then cut the shapes for the two steps into the walnut sides and tapered the front and back edges.  After that was lots of dovetail practice.  I cut all the pins in the walnut sides for both steps and then followed with the tails in the maple steps.

Cutting walnut sides to shape

After gluing the steps, I added trim to the front of the steps and then a support across the back.  I then planed and scraped the entire step stool to make the joints as seamless as possible.  For durability I finished the stool with a few coats of semi-gloss polyurethane.

Then, I did this all over again, making the second step stool slightly smaller and also adding some extra dovetails.  When going to auction, my only hope was that the step stool would sell for at least $100.  Anything less than that would be a disappointment.  To my delight there were a couple bidders it sold for $250 to some family friends we used to go to church with.

 

Catching Up - Michael's Toolbox

I'm taking another stab at getting this blog up to date with my projects.  I had surgery yesterday on my knee and will be in bed for a few days, so I hope to use some of this time to get completely up to date.  Today I'm posting about the toolbox I built with my oldest son, Michael, when he was in Kindergarten.  I got motivated when reading a post Here by Joshua Klein on his The Workbench Diary blog which was one of my favorite blogs.  He had made a small 18th century style workbench for his son Eden for Christmas and I saw all these great pictures of 5 year old Eden sawing and planing and thought that if he could it, then Michael who is the same age, could surely do it.  Joshua has since moved on from his Workbench Diary blog and created my new favorite magazine, Mortise & Tenon, which you can check out Here.

We designed Michael's toolbox much like my early 20th century carpenter's job box. It is a basic dovetailed box with dovetailed trim.  The lid has a registered fit on the box making for a very sturdy toolbox that should last him a lifetime.  I was actually quite surprised and impressed at how much Michael was able to do at his age.  He did much of the sawing and even chopped some dovetails with my help.  Here are some pictures of Michael at work:

Using the saw his grandpa got him for Christmas

Learning to chop his first dovetails

Sawing dovetails in the trim 

Cleaning up the joints with a small hand plane

Using a router to make recesses for the hinges

Competed toolbox prior to painting

Michael chose a nice red pain that we had on hand

Finished toolbox

Catching Up - Spice Rack

In my goal to get caught up with posting projects, today I'm focusing on a little spice rack that I built and installed in a narrow kitchen cabinet after we remodeled our kitchen about five years ago.  The wood for this project came from a pallet that the kitchen cabinets were delivered on.  I basically built two racks.  One for wider jars and one that was thinner sized to fit standard spice canisters.  I used cabinet rollers to mount the racks, allowing them to slide out.  The thinner rack is mounted to the larger rack, allowing it to extend out farther.  I had a hard time finding the right rollers that I wanted and in the end the racks don't extend out as far as I would like (especially with the microwave extending out).

The larger rack used wood slats to keep the jars in place, while on the smaller rack I experimented with steel rods.  The rods were about 1/16" diameter and I bent them near the ends to fit them into holes that I drilled on the rack.  I rubbed the rods with steel wool to shine them up and then sprayed them with lacquer for protection.  I really like the look of the steel rods on the wooden frame  and they allow for maximum visibility of the spices.

Finally the rack was finished with boiled linseed oil.

A few things I learned from this project:
1. Dovetail joints don't work so well when arranged with the grain on the side of a board.  They are really best for use on the end grain.  Lining them up along the grain just invites them to split.
2. We use a lot of spices.  It would have been good to have a wider cabinet with a third rack.
3. Cabinet rollers are good for cabinets.  The ones I used are very stiff as they are rated for quite a bit more weight than we have on the spice rack.  If I ever do this again I will try to come up with a better system that extends the racks more.

The was a fun and very practical project that we get to enjoy every day.