Because I Wanted to.

 I've been wanting to try my hand at this phase of woodworking for some time now.

Which is of course incorporating logs of various sizes on the front of the shop as well as hand railing and all the in between parts.

In order to remove the bark from the logs I needed a way to securely hold the pieces while using a draw knife to scrape away the bark, and shape the pieces somewhat.

Thus I built a Shaving horse.

I sit at one end, I can adjust the lower clamping jaw table by moving a block shim in or out to fit the size of the work piece.

My feet rest on the clamp arm pegs below, and as I push forward, the top jaw will clamp solidly on my work piece while I shape and clean it up.

I could cover a lot more in the use of the shaving horse but the main purpose was for cleaning up the necessary parts logs,  for the porch project.

                       Now just a few photos of the shop porch.

Now there were two other tools that had to be made once the bark was removed from the smaller log pieces.

Tenons had to be cut on the ends of the logs, { tenons are the profiling of wood for insertion into another } so one tool was built to do that in conjunction with the use of the table saw. Now because some log pieces were curved or crooked if the tenons were just cut on the ends, the tenons would be pointing off in different directions, and would not insert into the mortise { mortise is a hole or recess cut into wood to receive the corresponding piece= a tenon }

So in order to to take a log with curve and make the ends point at each other, I built a line boring tool, which in conjunction with a drill, I could drill a pilot hole at each end, and the pilot holes would be pointing at each other, which the above mentioned tool would work with for the tenons.

Enough said.

GOT CEDAR

 All right. An opportunity had come up where Robin and I could acquire some cedar logs, which in turn we would mill into lumber of various dimensions.

This customer had bought a peninsula lot in Crystal River which had to many Cedar trees on it and in the wrong places.

So it was agreed that we would drop the trees, delimb the trunk's cut up the canopy's and haul away the logs.

I have proven time and time again that a tree is a lot bigger on the ground then it is standing in the air.

So a LOT of work, and numerous trips to Crystal River we have acquired a small mountain of Cedar.

Country Style Set Of Tables

 O.K. I had a customer approach me on doing a set of tables.

She said she would like a coffee table about 54" X 54" square,

I said that's big, she said I got a  horse farm and the house has room for it.

Soafter a bit of discussion, and a photo that she texted to me, it was decided that 2" thick yellow pine was the wood of choice for this large country style coffee table.

She also needed 2 end tables to match.

Now what is different on these tables is the legs had to be a bit beefy, and that the end grain of the legs needed to be part of the show of the table top.

                                     The end tables of course smaller.

A CYPRESS FRONT ENTRY DOOR

A while back I had a Customer who was a Nurse up in Gainesville

approach me about building a new door for her house.

It had been a while since I built an entry door, so this was a nice challenge I was willing to take on.

The door is built of cypress. 

The main frame is tongue and grooved with the T&G being 3/4" thick, which adds quite a bit of glue surface area, making for a strong joint and door.

With the cypress panel insert, I did a V joint tongue and groove on multiple pieces, then glued them up as one large piece, then cut it to fit the top section and the lower section, keeping the wood grain pattern running together from the top to the bottom.

The customer is beginning to apply there clear coat to there new door.

The door from the front porch.

Nicely installed too, with new hardware.

And of course from the inside too.

Be sure and click on the picture to enlarge.