Bob DeVarney's Woodworking Page

Recently, my father passed away, leaving me a shop full of old woodworking tools. I had always been fascinated by woodworking, and had a great role model to look up to. Our house is filled with examples of his woodcraft, from built-in bookshelves, to hutches, and everything in between. Sadly, we never spent any time together on any projects; he would always say "here, let me cut that board for you" instead of showing me how to do it. I have always looked up to anyone I considered good in his or her trade... accomplished craftspeople good at woodworking, or metal work, or carving, or whatever.

A good friend, Bob Willis, WJ1Z,  helped me build a large bookcase after I split from my first wife. I think Bob was trying to help me forget about things by keeping me busy, as well as building something very functional... Bob helped me move all my belongings, which consisted mostly of books. His tutelage and patience helped me turn into a beginning woodworker. My projects no longer resembled a pile of sawdust. I still have that bookcase, and it has become known as the "bookcase from hell" for several reasons... standing 6 foot tall and 4 foot wide, and being made out of 1 inch solid Red Oak, it takes a man and a boy to move it. It also doesn't fit up the stairs at our house, where it was intended to go. Bob fertilized (sorry Bob) a seed of woodworking that had been planted by my father many years before.

    Here's the "bookcase from hell", serving me well.

    View of the end, screw heads plugged and the grain (nearly) matched.

Now fast forward almost three years. My father has passed on, and I have a shop full of old (1930's vintage in most cases) tools, and precious little knowledge how to use them. The internet has been very helpful (as it usually is) in getting me used to using the tools safely. Mostly, it's pure common sense, but reading and research on the Internet has helped make me a safe woodworker. The rest is practice. I did take a beginning lathe class from a local shop called ShopTalk Vermont which took about three hours. I turned  what was to be a bowl for a friend whose wife was pregnant, and it was to be a baby feeding bowl. Trouble was, it was long and narrow, and way too big for feeding babies. It turned out to be a vase, and it was a Mothers' Day gift for my wife. It was a sandwich of (from top to bottom) Purpleheart, Yellow Birch, and Mahogany.

I especially like the neat circle of Purpleheart on a background of Mahogany inside the bowl. It was a 3 hour class offered by Shoptalk that got me going on the lathe. They offer tons of classes, all very affordable, and also offer shop use by the hour, if you don't have a full woodshop at your disposal.

I have done several other bowls since on my own lathe at home. Here are just a few:

These two pictures are a bowl which was a glued-up sandwich of walnut (top and bottom) and tiger maple.. looks real pretty together!

One of my latest projects was a wine and cheese tray for our best man and maid of honor. They have been great friends for years, and we always like to have a glass of wine, some great cheese (Sugarbush Farms of Course) and some crackers and/or fruit. This tray features a wine glass holder at one end, a wine bottle holder and imported African granite cutting board on the other end, and plenty of room for crackers and fruit in between. It is made with bits and pieces of oak, purpleheart, and mahogany, as well as some cherry and pine thrown in for good measure.

My latest project is my most ambitious to date. It is a bedside table to hold my ever-present stack of books. I chose a basic Shaker style, but had to dress it up with trim around the top after a miscalculation caused me to nearly scrap the top altogether.

The top is birdseye maple, wrapped with a breadboard edge of walnut. The apron of the table is also birdseye maple, and the legs are walnut as well. The breadboard edge is mortise and tenoned together, and when I trued up the edge on my tablesaw after glueing it up, I sawed through the bottoms of the mortises on several sides of the table. I nearly cried when I saw it! In a desperate attempt to salvage the expensive mistake, I remembered I had some walnut left, so I dadoed it 3/4 wide to wrap over the table, and then took a router to it to give it a nice edge detail. The legs were also a learning process. They are a glueup of two pieces to get the thickness I needed, and when I glued them, I also biscuit jointed them to keep them from twisting, and also to strengthen them. Sure enough, when I ran them through the tablesaw to taper them, I sawed right into the biscuit slots on three of the four legs. I was able to save things by running the biscuit jointer in the slot to clean it out, and then mixing walnut sawdust with glue, and using it as a colored putty to fill the slot. The slot is just visible on the lighter sides of some of the legs, towards the bottom.

This picture (above) is just before I started applying 5 coats of wipe-on polyurethane. The darker biscuit slot is just visible at the bottom right of the left most leg.

Out in the afternoon sun, you can see the shine I managed to get. That's 5 coats of wipe-on poly, rubbed gently with 000 steel wool between coats. Also check out the (machine made) dovetail joints on the drawer.

The trim around the edge is definitely not in keeping with the Shaker style.

And the front:

At some point, I'll get around the glueing up a sandwich of maple between two layers of walnut, and turning  my own drawer pull for the drawer, but for now, the store bought one looks acceptable

The top looks very nice, in my humble opinion. I like the contrast of light and dark woods. I tried to leave some room for expansion and contraction of the maple in the center. We'll see if it splits the breadboard edge apart come the humid Vermont summer.