Hi Everyone!

Merry Christmas to all who celebrate and Happy Holidays to everyone else! I hope this season has been festive and enjoyable for you and all of your loved ones.

Here's a gift I made for my wife. I turned a Pizza Cutter Handle on the lathe using a dowel inlay technique in the end of the handle. I'll explain below how I did it:

I turned the handle out of a 1.5"X1.5"x7" long piece of maple hardwood. The inlay is really simple but required a few accessories for the drill press and really thick scrap pieces of hardwood to make.

I started by resawing the blank to 1.5"X1.5" using a resaw blade on my bandsaw and chopping it to length at the mitre saw. Then drilled a 7/8" diameter hole about a third of the way up from one end of the blank through using a forstner bit. The hole is intentionally off centre. I then used a 7/8" dowel plug cutter to make a 7/8" dowel out of a small scrap of mahogany that I had laying around in my hardwood scraps. I cut the dowel out of the scraps using my resaw blade and fence on the bandsaw. I then glued the dowel into the blank and let it dry.

I made two different diameter dowel plugs and wanted to cross them over. After the first dowel plug dried, I flipped the blank and drilled a 1" hole using a 1" forstner bit through the other plug. For some reason, I missed photographing the other plug but you'll see it below once I mounted it on the lathe.

The 1" dowel was made from walnut. And glued it into the blank. I drilled a 1/2" diameter hole in the centre of one end of the blank 1 1/2" deep for the pizza cutter hardware later.

next was mounting it on the lathe and starting to shape the blank into a handle! To mount it on the lathe, you need to use a spur centre and a live centre that has a taper on the end to hold the blank on the lathe and turn the blank into a cylinder. See the photo below:

The line on the right hand side is 3/8" from the end to shape the tenon for the stainless steel tang cover that goes on the end of the pizza cutter when you're ready to assemble it. I used a straight cutter to shape the tenon and tested the fit of the tang cover before shaping the handle.

Once I shaped and sanded the handle, I held the tenon side of the handle in my lathe using my lathe chuck to finish shaping and sanding the end of the handle. I applied finish (wipe on polyurethane, carnauba wax, and another coat of wipe on polyurethane) to the handle and let it dry before working on the tang assembly dowel.

With the handle finished, I needed to turn a dowel that would fit in the 1/2" hole in the handle so I could epoxy the hardware into the handle and assemble the pizza cutter. This was easier than I thought it was going to be but required a slot to be cut into the dowel to wedge the tang into. PRO TIP, measure the thickness of the tang first and cut the slot so the whole tang can fit. I cut the slot too narrow initially and needed to widen it, once I did that, I forgot to check the length of the slot.. doh! It still worked out though. I cut the slot by hand using a pull saw initially then put the dowel in my coffin clamp to widen the slot.

Remember to test your fit carefully so you can ensure that the dowel plug can be removed from the hand so it can be epoxied in place with the hardware. Due to epoxy curing in 5 minutes, I had to move quickly to assemble the pizza cutter so I missed getting photos of the assembly process. The slot was a bit too snug for the tang but everything glued into place properly which was relieving haha. With everything assembled and finished, I put it into my wife's stocking for Christmas! She loves making pizza and we've gone years without having a pizza cutter.. so now we have one!

Merry Christmas to everyone! I hope you enjoy a restful holiday season and that 2017 is heart filled and prosperous for you. See you in the next post!

ok, to start off, my daughter is not yet two but she's growing like crazy and out grew her crib much to our surprise. So, my wife asked me to build her a bed that would be closer to the ground and also would accommodate one of our several queen sized mattresses... wait. What? A QUEEN sized mattress for a toddler! Yeah. We didn't want to buy another mattress that would need to be swapped out again in a few years plus we already had the mattress so we were able to put only material cost into her bed. By the way, she LOVES the real estate! So, I started with a sketchup drawing to develop a style that would fit our needs and be close to my wife's Pinterest research.

The design is simple but really sturdy. I built the base so my daughter could sleep on it right away - she was starting to try climbing out of the crib so it needed to be done. The frame is about 10" off the ground to allow for air flow under the bed but no stubbed toes and things being lost underneath it.

The build took me a weekend to build while my wife cleared out Audrey's room to prepare for the new bed. I started with the 2x4 frame and used pocket holes to assemble the cross rails and frame together.

I built the frame to match the perimeter of the mattress first. Then I sheathed the top with some 1/2" construction grade plywood and screwed it to the frame.

I cut the sheathing slightly oversized and then flush trim routed it it match the frame exactly which worked really well.

i built the frame out of some left over maple plywood I had from the Murphy bed build. I assembled the corners using pocket holes which made for a really flimsy frame so I needed to be careful when clamping and assembling it around the bed frame. The clamps are holding the casing up so I could screw it all together. I edge banded the plywood to cover all of the plies and sanded all surfaces smooth to remove sharp edges. I think at a later time once I build the headboard, I will round over all the corners with a router. Next was taking the whole bed apart and getting it into Audrey's room!

Everything screwed back together and sitting in the feet I installed, this bed frame is rock solid! I walked all over it and jumped on it, not a squeak, shift or crack. Which impressed me! My wife and I put the mattress on the frame and we made her bed.

And there it is! Now, personally, I'm not a fan of how low it is to the floor. But, I'm 6'4" so anything is pretty much too low for me haha! The best part is that once Audrey saw the bed, she loved it! Every night since she started sleeping in her big girl bed, she is happy and plays catch me on a whole lot of space while we try to get her ready for bed and dressed in the morning. Her smiles are totally worth it! After I get the next couple of commissions out of the way, I'll build her head board and get it installed which shouldn't be too much trouble. And it will really pull the room together while removing a gap from the wall that Audrey likes to climb into at the head of the bed when she wakes up early some mornings.

I'm getting caught up with posts! Thanks for sticking with me and for checking out my work! Email me or message me for custom work you'd like to have done! See you in the next post!