I'm Back!

Ok, so I've been absent for year.  Give me a break and I’ll try to be better this year.  I just got back from the “Woodworking in America” conference in beautiful downtown Covington, Kentucky.  And it inspired me to both revitalize this blog and stretch my wwing abilities.  First off, it was a great conference.  It’s always great to reunite with old friends and make new ones.  The one big takeaway for me was a class I attended by Silas Koph on marquetry.  It is defiantly something I am going to explore in the next few months/years.  For more on the conference please see my blog roll.  There are a number of great posts on WIA13 that really capture the event better than I ever could.

So, what have being doing the past year?  Well, I did build the Bob Lang boxes for Christmas presents.  Next up, was some shop improvements, namely the sharpening station and helical head upgrade for my Jet Jointer/Planner.  Below are a few pics of some of the things I've been doing.

 My on-going project for the past few months is a new entertainment/media center (EMC).  This is based on the G&G Thorsen House side-board.  This project ended up taking the place (and wood) of the Corner China Cabinet project.  Below are the SketchUp plan I came up with and the base as it is now.

The EMC is designed around my Outlaw Audio 200 watt by 7 channel amplifier.  This beast is big and heavy (approx. 100 lbs.).  I completely pre-finished all the base components prior to glue-up.  Currently, I am working on the top and the magnetically secured back panels.  The top is giving some issues at the moment.  When I returned from WIA I found that it had decided to cup by about 3/32”.  I am trying a number of solutions to correct it.  I’ll go over my results and final outcome in the next post.

Thanks for stopping by,

TexWood