Gino Espinoza

So this was my first big project and I estimated it was well over 150 hours from start to finish (seemed like half of that was sanding). The crib is composed of 140 pieces ranging from 1 ½” to 50”. I purchased the mattress spring and gate hardware from Rockler (My candy store). The crib is a little on the heavy side, but once you break it down it is very easy to handle.

The crib is made of maple with cherry accents and finished with Danish Oil.

Shop:

• Heirloom Crib Plans & Hardware Kit

So this project came about while I was having lunch with a friend from work. It was early December and as we sat a conversation began about Christmas and gifts for our wives. My friend is a very skilled iron worker so I mentioned to him how I wanted to find my wife a steel pot rack, but wanted it to be something totally unique. He sat and pondered for a bit then said “you know, we should trade our trades”. He would help me design and build a pot rack for my wife and I would build him a hobby box for a good friend. After sitting for the next hour and bouncing ideas off each other the deal was struck. He gave me some rough sketches of what he had in mind and pretty much left the rest up to me. The only requirement he had was for a set of recessed holes that would hold a small vise in place.

I had been beating the idea around of buying a dovetail jig and after very little thought I made my way to Woodcraft to make claim. I landed up with the Porter Cable 4210 12” Jig. I have to admit the jig looked very intimidating when I first pulled it out of the box, but after pursuing the user guide I started to feel a little more at ease. It took me about 30 minutes to get the jig dialed in, then I was off to the races. The joints came out amazing and made the box extremely solid.

The triple hinge setup was to say the least, super finicky, and seemed to take me forever to get them all tuned in unison. I hoped to add a locking latch and leather handle, but simply just ran out of time. I kid you not; I was applying the final finish at 2am on the day before Christmas eve. My friend was extremely happy with the final product.

The box is made of cherry and maple. The finish is multiple coats of Danish Oil that was hand rubbed to a satin finish using steel wool.

Oh, by the way, the pot rack he made was for the most part done very mickey mouse. really!

This project was just a whim of an idea that went from concept to completion over one weekend. It was all very adlib and I tried to throw in some of my newly learned tricks in to the construction. The legs are joined to the top using a blind dados and the rest was glued up using biscuit joints. Now what dog wouldn’t be proud to feast out of this?

For my second project I decided to build this shaker style hall table. This was a fun project that allowed me to explore joinery a little more in-depth as well as inspiring me to build my first custom jig. The joinery used in this project was an open mortise and tenon which I accomplished using a router table and a dado stack, and the second joint was a locked rabbit joint used to form the drawers. The locked rabbit joint was a little tricky, but after a few tweaks to the table saw everything seemed to come together nicely. I also built a tapered leg jig which gives the legs those sleek lines.

The table is made of cherry and finished with Danish Oil and Poly.

I was pretty much convinced from the start, that if I was going to take this woodworking hobby head-on, my first project would definitely have to be a woodworkers table. I had a fairly rough idea of what I wanted from some research I did on the internet. Unfortunately, much of what I found was way beyond my skill level. Keep in mind, the last time I did anything with woodworking was back in high school, and that was ummm… well, let’s just say that was awhile ago. So after a few rough sketches I came up with a basic design that focused on simplicity and core functionality. I was still tooling-up at this time and started to base my tool purchases off of what it was I needed for this project. After a few weeks of hunting down the remaining tools I was set to go. I decided to start with the top first. I began by ripping a 4′x8′ sheet of 3/4” ply straight down the center length-wise. I then stacked and glued the two pieces to form a 1 1/2” base which would later become the underlayment of the top. After taking the space limitations of my garage into consideration, I decided to trim 24” off the end, leaving me with a 2′x6′ rough top. I then glued up some 1/2″ Alder to form the finish of the top and sides. Why Alder? Honestly, that decision came down to me being the naive newbie woodworker that thought “hey, wood is wood” and “The only place you can buy wood is at the big box store, right?”. If I would have known then what I know now, I think I would have gone a different route. All in all I’m still pretty happy with it, not to mention it gets plenty of use. Enjoy!