Matt's Basement Workshop - Audio

The beauty of owning a lathe is being able to turn small scraps of wood into fun little projects. Typically these are quick & easy to make and something friends and family love to receive as gifts (or that you can sell to customers rather than burning in a fire pit with the rest of the scraps.) Earlier this year on a trip to my local Woodcraft store with my wife reluctantly tagging along, we saw these bottle opener hardware kits. Before I knew it, I had a basket full of them and a list of friends who would be expecting one. If you’re new to the lathe, or you just want a fun project that you can knock out in no time at all, one of these bottle opener kits is just the thing you’re looking for. Help support the show - please visit our advertisers

The beauty of owning a lathe is being able to turn small scraps of wood into fun little projects. Typically these are quick & easy to make and something friends and family love to receive as gifts (or that you can sell to customers rather than burning in a fire pit with the rest of the scraps.) Earlier this year on a trip to my local Woodcraft store with my wife reluctantly tagging along, we saw these bottle opener hardware kits. Before I knew it, I had a basket full of them and a list of friends who would be expecting one. If you’re new to the lathe, or you just want a fun project that you can knock out in no time at all, one of these bottle opener kits is just the thing you’re looking for. Help support the show - please visit our advertisers

It's pretty much next to "NEVER" when Samantha wants to work on a woodworking project with me. So when she asks about us building a large table together I didn't quite jump at the chance at first, I kind of carefully asked some probing questions before I agreed to anything. Don't get me wrong, if you have a spouse that enjoys working in the woodshop with you (even only once in a while) consider yourself lucky. Having a shared hobby with your significant other is a great way to spend time. On today's episode we're building what's become lovingly known as the MattKEA table. A solid wood, farmhouse-style table that easily accommodates 8-10 people with plenty of elbow room for good food and great conversation. So why did we jokingly call it the "MattKEA Table?" While Samantha is helping with most of the assembly, and almost all of the finishing, I was the one down in the shop manufacturing most of the components (except the legs and the top, more about those in the video...here's a hint though www.osbornewood.com.) The idea behind this build is that I'd do all the milling, shaping and joinery and she assembles the final product, just like when she comes home from a trip to Ikea. All kidding aside, it was actually a lot of fun and there's even a chance we'll do more of these joint project builds in the future. Help support the show - please visit our advertisers

I don’t which I’m more excited about, the new and improved work surface I’m using for my sharpening station or the little addition I just added the other day? Sharpening my hand planes and chisels has always been one of those things that I begrudgingly did. It’s not that I didn’t get good results, it’s just that to achieve those results I felt like I was always jumping through hoops to get there. If you’ve ever seen one of my shop tours in the past you’re probably familiar with my previous sharpening setup, a re-purposed roll-around microwave cart. It did a decent job of acting as extra storage space for all my sharpening accessories and some other things, but what it didn’t do a good job at was providing enough work surface for laying out my stones so I could get to them quickly and easily. With this new sharpening station (which is actually once again a re-purposed kitchen storage item) I have plenty of work surface to lay everything out and still have room to spare. And because of this extra space, I decided I really wanted to have a setup that would make using my waterstones even easier, because up until now my biggest complaint with them was occasionally having to "chase" them across the work surface when using them. On today’s episode I’ll share with you a little upgrade I added to my sharpening station that I’ve been wanting to do for a long time now. The result will eventually be me honing and sharpening my blades more frequently! While I’m on the topic of sharpening stones, for current Chortle & Woobie-level Patrons of Matt’s Basement Workshop, it seems the perfect time to discuss how I care and maintain them, so that’s what we’ll be discussing in this episode’s bonus content. Not a Patron of the show? Please consider joining. For more information visit www.patreon.com/mattsbasementworkshop. Help support the show - please visit our advertisers

I've been trying to distance myself further and further away from product reviews. Since they consist entirely of opinions they can be a little tricky to pull off successfully. This is especially true if you've had plenty of time to try the item out and can navigate your way around it like a seasoned pro, and forget to mention the number of times it took you to get to that point (I promise I've never done that on this show...tempted to do it, but never have!) One tool in the wood shop that doesn't typically have a built in dust collection system or necessarily a great way to capture dust at the source is the drill press. Sure there are different ways to go about pulling the chips and dust out of the way*, but one new option on the market is the Drillnado. The Drillnado is a dust collection accessory for the drill press that slips right over the chuck, the bit and clamps on to the quill. According to the folks at drillnado.com it's designed for use with most floor-model drill presses, but can be easily adapted to many bench-top versions also thanks to the included components in the kit. (**NOTE: After recording the video and sharing it with the folks at Drillnado.com I heard back from them that they’ve started manufacturing the sleeve that fits over the drill bit without the narrower nose at the bottom. They’re now pre-cut to work with the larger diameter forstner and spade bits you might be using.) I haven't used it for more than demonstrational purposes, but given the early success I've had with it, I don't have a problem recommended it to anyone who's looking for a great way to add dust collection to their drill press (there was one little hiccup involving my Festool dust extractor, but I'll explain more about that in the video.) Drillnado is a Chortle-level Patron of the show. *Patrons of Matt's Basement Workshop at Patreon.com will see more about other options in the bonus content just for Chortle-level patrons and above Help support the show - please visit our advertisers

In today’s episode we wrap-up this epic nine-part series on the construction of the 8 Drawer Tall Dresser for my daughter Madison. It always seems to happen no matter how hard we try to avoid it. As we near the end of a build there are plenty of small (and sometimes significant) details we have to tackle before we can move on to the finishing process, and this build is no exception to that rule. For this project those loose ends include the final dimensioning and installation of the top, and the finessing of the reveals around the drawer fronts, a task that can sound harder and more complicated than it actually is. Unfortunately at this time my daughter hasn’t picked a color for the paint, nor have we even begun to consider pulls for the drawers, a task I have a feeling is going to be even more tedious than the paint. But I’ll keep everyone up to date in a future blog post or revisit to see the final outcome. Thanks for watching! A full set of detailed plans are available for sale on my website, thanks to Brian Benham of Benham Design Concepts. You can find them by visiting our new "Digital Downloads Store" by clicking here. Help support the show - please visit our advertisers

The end of the tall dresser build is almost here. One of the final things left to do, other than apply the paint, is to build the drawers. So that’s what we’re doing in today’s episode, it’s all about drawer construction. We’ll discuss dimensioning the Baltic Birch plywood for the drawer box sides. Fabricating the drawer runners that the boxes will ride on to keep them centered in their openings, not to mention how they’ll help to make opening and closing them much smoother. Then we’ll follow that all up with the construction and fitting of the pinned rabbet joinery we’ll use to assemble the sides to the solid wood drawer fronts. After today’s episode we have only one more to go and the entire construction of the 8 drawer tall dresser will be wrapped up and ready for the paint room. A full set of detailed plans are available for sale on my website, thanks to Brian Benham of Benham Design Concepts. You can find them by visiting our new "Digital Downloads Store" by clicking here. Help support the show - please visit our advertisers

When I first came up with the basic design for Madison's dresser I knew I wanted to incorporate turned feet into it. I'm still as novice a woodturner as anyone can be, but as I've learned over the years the quickest way to becoming better is to be at the tool rest as frequent as possible. So for today's episode it's all about my time in front of the lathe turning and shaping the four tapered feet that support the entirety of the dresser. Originally I tried to convince myself that a much simpler form would suffice, but once we had the plans together there was no doubt in my mind a tapered turned foot was a must. I'm sure this style of design has a given name (they all do,) but whatever it is, it just appealed to me as I thought about what my daughter would like for her own piece of furniture. The turning and tapering process is really simple, as you'll see when you watch, but it wasn't until I started the fourth foot that I finally found I had been way overcomplicating the process. I obviously spent way to much time overthinking, and being overcautious (don't confuse this with being flippant and cavalier about my safety) in how I was approaching it. The difference in time to accomplish the same task from the very first foot to that last one dropped dramatically. Too bad I didn't film that last one though. Still, the technique I demonstrate achieved the same result and was only about 1-2 minutes longer in overall time. My take away lesson in all of this? "Don't be shy with hogging away the material." Get right in there and get to work removing the waste quickly (and safely) so you can start finessing the final shape quicker. A full set of detailed plans are available for sale on my website, thanks to Brian Benham of Benham Design Concepts. You can find them by visiting our new "Digital Downloads Store" by clicking here. Help support the show - please visit our advertisers

With all the drawer frames built, and assembled it’s time to glue them into position in their corresponding dados between the two sides. Glue ups aren’t all that bad on a small scale, but when you have this many pieces to put together in a short amount of time it can be downright scary if you let it. But if you take the time to do a few practice runs to anticipate where things might get sticky (pardon the pun) it’s not that difficult to formulate a plan for when you finally breakout the glue bottle and actually get started. In today’s episode we only have three things to discuss. First is a slight alteration to the existing plan, second is cutting and installing the drawer guides and third is the massive glue up itself. The first two are only a small portion of the episode, but the third is almost all the footage I shot to give you an idea of just how long it took me and all the little steps that went into it. On the bright-side, it came together better than I anticipated, but next time, I think I might ask for some help from the family to speed it up. A full set of detailed plans are available for sale on my website, thanks to Brian Benham of Benham Design Concepts. You can find them by visiting our new "Digital Downloads Store" by clicking here. Help support the show - please visit our advertisers

Just when you thought you were finished, they pull you right back in again! Actually I was never really finished, once I had the drawer frames glued up I still had a little more work to do on them before we're ready to assemble the entire body of the dresser. So in today's episode we're going to finish the construction of the drawer frames. This involves cleaning up the dried glue and tweaking the joinery to insure the drawers will slide in and out smoothly every time. And it also involves cutting a dado down the center rails to accept a drawer guide we'll install later to help keep the drawers perfectly centered. Unlike the dados we cut for the sides of the dresser body, these dados are a stopped version. So this requires a little more planning to make sure they don't show on the front face and a little chopping with chisels, followed by some tweaking with a router plane. All of it can sound a little complicated, but it's not as bad as you think it will be. A full set of detailed plans are available for sale on my website, thanks to Brian Benham of Benham Design Concepts. You can find them by visiting our new "Digital Downloads Store" by clicking here. Help support the show - please visit our advertisers