DIY Kids Remote School Desk | Woodworkers Fighting Cancer 2020

I’m once again joined by my son Ian to help build this year’s Woodworkers Fighting Cancer project – A simple to build DIY kids remote school desk made from 1/2″ plywood and 2×4 material. You may notice that he’s now a taller goofball!

Thanks to Marc & Nicole Spagnuolo at The Wood Whisperer for once again putting together this year’s Woodworkers Fighting Cancer. To learn more and if you’d like to help, visit https://thewoodwhisperer.com/wfc/.

Shop Tour 2020

It’s been quite a while since I’ve done a shop tour, and much has changed. While I did a live stream a few weeks ago, I thought it would be a good time to do a more structured tour. Thanks for watching!

I Did a Livestream Recently: “Social From Afar” – Hang Out and Informal Shop Tour

So my first live stream had some tech glitches. This was a very informal shop tour, and being live stream is a little rough around the edges. A more produced one is coming! At the end the YouTube chat didn’t refresh for me so I wrapped up thinking no further questions. Thanks John and Josh for letting me know. I got back to them after we wrapped up.  Stay safe folks!

Toddler Sitting Bench

This is a toddler size sitting bench that my coworker friend commissioned me to build for him as a gift to his niece.

There are a couple of firsts for me on this project. I used milk paint for the first time and I’m really happy with the results. Poplar takes milk paint well. It gives color without a thick layer, keeping a nice “close to the wood” look. I also for the first time did carving using a trim router. After many practice pieces using a template and spray paint, I found the lines weren’t the most crisp. That’s when I went with adhering a printout to the board covered in blue tape, which I felt gave better results. Cleanup was done with a Dremel and then some sandpaper taped to a pencil’s eraser.

Small Display Case | A Dad & Son Project!

I absolutely love that my son Ian came to me with a project idea that he wanted to build with me.

While the negative is that he broke his wrist a few months ago, after getting signatures from us, the kids at school and his teachers, it turned into a bit of a badge of honor. He got the idea for this project after seeing a trophy case, and wanted to build a display case for his cast. And as usual when he joins me in the shop while the camera is on, he is “the goofball”!

This was definitely some good quality dad/son time where he had fun and hopefully learned a few things along the way!

Simple Sawhorses

Sometimes everyone needs to do some shop builds. I used to have four of the plastic sawhorses, but I killed two of them when I built my workbench. I decided that my next set would be ones that I built.

For these ones, each sawhorse gets three pieces of 2×4 cut to 32″ for the “I beam” top and 4 pieces cut to 30″ for the legs. There are many ways to do sawhorses – this type I was introduced to by Paul Meyette. Some may recognize them as well as the type Jay Bates did a few years back. I’ve linked to both of them below.

Paul Meyette sawhorse video: https://youtu.be/YnMgYdXXLJY

Jay Bates sawhorse video: https://youtu.be/zxf6xMe_PKY