carpentry

How-To:  Make a pyramid bow from hardware-store lumber

How-To: Make a pyramid bow from hardware-store lumber

Interesting Instructable from member Tool Using Animal (best ID ever) about how to buy red oak from the big orange store and turn it into a decent bow. He reports a 55-lb draw. [Thanks, Tim!]

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How-To:  Buy sustainably-managed lumber

How-To: Buy sustainably-managed lumber

I haven’t verified that last bit for myself, but I did spend a long time googling around yesterday afternoon and satisfied myself that these FSC folks are on the level. That’s their “tree with a check mark” seal in the photo, above. Now I know what to look for. And so do you. [Thanks, Hank!]

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Bowling lane coffee table

Bowling lane coffee table

William Stranger specializes in building furniture out of repurposed wood. I especially liked the massive coffee table whose top is a four-inch-thick slab of bowling lane. It’s part of a exhibit(?) called Second Growth: A second growth forest is one that has re-grown after it has been heavily logged or clear-cut. The installation of reclaimed […]

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Old-school maker workshop

Old-school maker workshop

I love looking at a well-used workshop, mainly because I don’t have one myself. This photo shows the shop of someone’s grandpa, packed with over 50 years of projects and history. What does your workshop look like? Upload a shot to the MAKE Flickr pool.

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Lie-Nielsen chain-drive shoulder vise

Lie-Nielsen chain-drive shoulder vise

There are vises, and there are vises. And there are those of us for whom vises are also vices. For we few obsessives cognoscenti, the price of this beautifully-designed chain-drive shoulder vise package may not be unreasonable. For the mechanically inclined, a remake would be totally do-able, and Lie-Nielsen is to be credited for not keeping any secrets about how it all goes together. The installation instructions (.pdf) contain all you’d need to know to cobble together one of your own.

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How-to:  Whittle a ball-and-cage

How-to: Whittle a ball-and-cage

Terry Trier has written a good tutorial on carving this classic whimsy from a single piece of wood.

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Lovely minimal garden foot bridge

Lovely minimal garden foot bridge

So I will admit, in a moment of profound, existential boredom, to picking up and leafing through the SkyMall catalog in the S80 on my flight back from Maker Faire yesterday. I will offer my standard excuse for such behavior: I was looking for clever ideas to liberate by re-make-ifying them. And one of the […]

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