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Hukshawn

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So, I'm a contractor/carpenter. I've been so for most of my adult life. I've spent my years working in factories when I was younger to find myself and my place in life, and at some point in that road I started doing side jobs. Always had an interest in woodworking (and later in life, metalworking). No one in my family is talented in either of these manners. My step-dad had some tools, a table saw, crappy chop saw, just regular old-guy-needed-stuff-around-the-house stuff. Im sure at some point I tried to cut my fingers off and he yelled at me cause I was always afraid to touch any of it.
Ive lived out on my own since I was about 16. At one point in my 20's I got fired from a 7 year, high up operator/employee/supervisor unionized position factory job, and life promptly fell apart. Lost my apartment, long term girlfriend took off to her mom's for some immature reason, I'm sure, and I moved in with my parents. Instead of sitting around like a bum, (ADHD/high energy) I started tinkering in the garage, and it seemed all at once just started woodworking. Building shaddow tables, occasional tables, coffee tables, etc. It all started with taking an oak occasional table my mom had a copying it.
Pretty much this.
halltbl.jpg

My mom was blown away. She couldn't understand where I learned to do any of that. AND I had all my fingers, toes, and nose, so my step-dad was impressed (impressed might be a stretch, pretty sure he just said to make sure I cleaned up, lol)

Fast forward a very miserable year, I had to get out of my mom's house. Found an apartment, and moved back in with my girlfriend. Her mom owned a dive bar which had a 3 car garage in the back which I promptly took over and started building up a tool collection. Before I knew it, I was taking custom orders for furniture and I had a small business on my hands.
And just as life goes, a year goes by and life falls apart again. Girlfriend leaves again, for good this time. Moved in with a guy she met at the college I paid for her to get into... Lol.
I couldn't stand being in the shop anymore because it was at her mom's property and everything reminded me of, well, you know that goes.
Closed up, sold everything, took all the remaining lumber and had a HUGE bon fire with friends (where my truck got stuck in the mud for two days...)
I went and got another factory job, years later, met my wife, bought house, stopped factory working when contacting became viable.
Here we are.

Anyways. The point of this is, I always say I'm going to take photos of my work and share them, but I never do. Maybe posting here, and the good, encouraging people here, will make me keep up with it finally.

So, I'll try to keep up with what I'm doing if it interests anyone. So, mind my spelling and grammatical nightmares and feast your eyes on the other half of my passions.
 
We've been working on a basement lately. This has been a long one. We don't usually so this much work. But the fellow that owns the house is a nice guy, lots of money, and likes woodworking also, and snooker.
So we finished the basement, built a pine workshop and I'm working on an oak wainscott billiards room.

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I even put a plug in the floor for his table saw and his planer. I figure he will roll the planer up to the table saw and use its gravity to push against.
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Update on the oak room. I've started staining.
I conditioned all the wood with water to lift the grain and open the pores to accept the gel stain better.
IMG_20180320_112652.jpg

And I copied a store bought plug cover. Was cheaper to just hog it out rather than buy 12.

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Also, because of the way the panels had to be sized to fit the room properly it somewhat covered the air return on the wall, making it a bit smaller. So, a custom oak air return was built.
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I was even able to incorporate the mill into this job by using a 1/2" end mill to make the flats for the screw holes.
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It'll fit here, like this.

And the custom cue rack
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VERY nice work Shawn. I appreciate how much time it takes.

Greg
 
Great job on the basement carpentry. Everything looks flawless and done with care.
 
Making some shelves and cabinets for one of my side jobs. I made two oak wall units/cupboards that I've already finished and installed, but didn't take pictures, cause in a goof.

These pine shelves are made from a LOT of ollllld pine book shelves about 25' long in a library in this 150 year old house. And they were reclaimed from somewhere else on the farm property because on one side of the fifteen 4" thick x 12" standards were old hand forged nails. Looked like in a lath arrangement. Cleaned them all up, planed them down, (2 sets of planer blades and one table saw sharpening later) I wound up with these two units.
There are two base units, 65" long 30" high 18" deep, then a 60"x48"x12" shelf that will sit on top of the base on an Ash counter top. The ash was harvested from the property. The client milled it and dried it in his front room with the wood stove. It was about 10% moisture at 1cm when I started using it. I used it as a counter top for the other oak cabinets as well. For those cabinets I sliced the ash into 5-6" rips and alternated the grain/heart direction/cups etc so it gave it the best chance to continue to dry straight and even and not check as the house is VERY dry due to the 2 wood stoves and wood/oil burning furnace.
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(Two base units stacked)
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Just a simple design indicative of pine furniture.

I don't usually work with pine. I don't much care for it. Its fussy, gums everything up, doesn't finish well. Sometimes, depending on the moisture content it would be easier to fashion the shelves from slices of bread...




Edit.
Here's the edge of one of the thick boards.
Those were all iron nails. Someone chewed up some saw blades...
IMG_20180322_233214.jpg

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There. I picked a few cut off nails out of that piece of wood.
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