[ Power saw whirring ] [ Mid-tempo music plays ] -Hi, I'm Phil, and this is "The Woodsmith Shop."

On today's episode, we're focusing in on some home office essentials.

Well, maybe not essentials, but at least fun-to-make projects.

Logan is going to revive an old turning project and turn it into a lamp instead of a candle stand.

You'll find some really great turning tips on how to make a large project in several pieces and bring it all together so that it looks great.

Then Chris is going to take a piece of oak, and he's going to make a pencil box that has a sliding lid and a pivoting section that opens up to reveal several compartments for your favorite writing and drawing essentials.

There's even a little space for a pencil sharpener in there.

And then I'm going to work on a desk set.

It's going to feature a caddy for holding a variety of drawing and writing utensils, scissors, compass, that kind of thing.

And then also a notepad holder with some storage on the inside for your other office gear.

Or maybe it'll live in the shop.

We'll see.

If you're ready to build along, the plans are at our website, woodsmithshop.com.

And I say, let's build.

Announcer: Major funding for "The Woodsmith Shop" has been provided by... Old Masters -- offering wood stains and finishes for the woodworking enthusiast and professional.

And by... Kreg -- from the first cut to the final assembly, providing woodworkers with products that help to simplify woodworking challenges.

Kreg.

Additional funding provided by... Titebond Wood Glues -- the pro's advantage.

And by...

Here at Grizzly, woodworking isn't just our business, it's our passion.

We love what we do.

Thank you for the opportunity to support "Woodsmith Shop" TV.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ You know, there's a lot of times I find myself working late into the evening, and I like to turn my lamp on at my desk.

The overhead lights can be a little harsh, but the nice, soft light from a lamp is really welcome, especially in those late-night working sessions.

And the lamp is one of those projects that you can build either with flat stock, as you would a normal project in your shop, or you can turn it.

So that's what I'm going to do today.

So I've loaded up a blank of ash here.

And this is going to be just for the pedestal.

So first order of business is going to be to rough this into a cylinder.

Now shaping this center pedestal is going to happen in a couple of steps.

And what I've done is I've drawn a couple of lines here that I'm going to use the parting tool to cut down to a certain diameter.

What these are going to do is they're going to act like gauge lines.

So to make these cuts, I'm going to set my calipers to whatever measurement I need.

And then I'm going to bring the parting tool in and start making that cut until the calipers slip down over the running workpiece.

So then I can start turning away the waste material until I bottom out on these kerf cuts.

And that's going to give me my rough shape.

And then it's just a simple matter of smoothing those out with a spindle-roughing gouge or with a spindle gouge.

All right, this is starting to shape up pretty well.

Now I have a couple of things left to do.

I did cut a tenon on this end, and that's to hold this in the four-jaw chuck in a few minutes.

That's because we have to drill a hole clear through the center of this.

And I want to take care of this top, because this does get shaped a little bit as well before we put that final top piece on.

But down here at the base, I have to create two separate details right here.

The first is I have to create a bead on this lower section.

This is going to mount on the base in a little bit.

But this is going to be a bead.

Right next to that is this section that is actually a cove.

And these bead and cove cuts are the two foundational cuts when it comes to spindle turning.

Any combination of those, you can make most shapes as you are turning.

All right, I've sanded through the grits and I've mounted it in the four-jaw chuck.

So what I'm going to do here is same thing we did to shape this.

I'm going to make a parting cut to guide me, and then I'm going to create that half-bead for that round-over.

Drilling the hole in this pedestal is going to be a two-step process.

I'm going to turn the lathe on, and then I'm going to feed the quill in by hand.

And after 1 inch, 1 inch and 1/2 or so, I'm going to stop, back it out, make sure it clears the chips and then keep drilling.

Once I get this first bit pretty much all the way buried, I'll switch over to that longer bit and continue that hole all the way through.

So now that the pedestal is done, we need to turn the base to mount this to.

I'm going to do that with a different type of chuck called a screw chuck.

Now in this orientation, this is considered faceplate turning.

This is the same way that I would turn a bowl.

So I'm going to mount it the same way I would a bowl with this screw chuck.

And we have a couple of things to do here.

The first is to flatten this bottom.

This is going to become the bottom of the base.

I'm also going to put a recess down here.

And that's how I can expand the jaws of that four-jaw chuck into that and hold it to work on this top side.

Now, with a recess, the jaws open up and expand inside of that to hold the blank.

That's in comparison to that pedestal where we actually pinched down on it.

Here we are opening up, and that's going to hold it.

So now the two things I have to do are to create a recess that's going to fit that tenon that's on the pedestal.

And then I want to shape this.

And I'm going to put a simple ogee profile on here.

And because this is basically a bowl blank, I'm going to use my bowl gouge for that.

All right.

Now, I think that's shaping up pretty nicely.

When we put that pedestal in place, everything looks like it matches and the shape flows really well.

So we can apply a finish to this now, and I'll show you how I'm finishing this particular lamp.

And it's kind of my standard turning finishing, because it's easy to do and it looks really good, especially on figured wood.

So the first thing I'm going to do is hit this with a coat of dewaxed shellac.

Now it's important that it's dewaxed so that this will soak up any additional finish that you're going to put on.

This is really just a seal coat.

It's going to soak down really deep, especially in the figured portions of this wood.

Now I'm going to give this a minute to dry before I apply a sanding paste wax.

And I'm going to apply that with the lathe running, buff that on, and the sand grit in it is actually going to polish this up pretty well.

Then I'm going to follow that with a high-gloss wax finish.

So the top of this lamp is basically a tulip shape for lack of a better term.

What I'm going to do is exactly what we just did on the pedestal, and turn this round, hold it in the jaws, and then I'm going to turn it to shape.

I'm going to drill a centered hole and create a tenon to fit in the top of the pedestal.

And then we can head over to the bench and see how it all looks put together.

All right, now that the turning is all done, we can kind of see how everything looks.

And I feel pretty good about these proportions.

So now let's talk about lamp hardware.

Lamp hardware comes with a couple of different things in it that you need to be aware of.

Obviously, first, we have a power cord.

Now that center hole we drilled in all these parts is what we feed this through.

And here on the base, I went ahead and punched a bisecting hole in it so that this cord can feed through there, come out the bottom, and then feed up through the rest of the parts.

Now of course, you could run it just straight through the bottom, but then you're going to have to cut a groove in here for the base to sit flat to the table sill.

However you want to do it works great.

Then, connected to the other end of the power cord, we have the bulb holder and this is connected to the top of whatever your lamp is with a small little piece of pipe nipple.

And to hold the lampshade, we have what's called the harp.

That's this guy.

This mounts in between the top of the lamp and the bulb holder.

And sometimes there will be other connectors here that connect a couple of these nipples together.

Depends on what your setup is and what hardware you order.

So when we put everything together... ...that's what it looks like.

And then once I get this entire thing glued together, I will actually use some five-minute epoxy to install this pipe nipple in the top of this tulip here.

But I think for right now, this is going to work just fine.

And then the harp sits over that.

And I'm just going to use this little connecting nut right now to hold that in.

And then another piece of pipe nipple would stick the bulb holder on there.

And then comes the lampshade.

Now choosing lampshade is personal preference.

There are some rules of thumb to follow though, as far as proportions go.

So the width of the lampshade, ideally, should be about twice the diameter of the base of your lamp.

And then the height of the lampshade is really dependent on the height of your lamp.

You want the proportions here to be about 1/3 lampshade, 2/3 lamp base.

So sticking this on there...

I think that looks about right.

I could maybe go a little bit shorter on this shade, but overall, I think it works pretty well.

The first step in making the pencil box is going to be to route a recess in the very bottom layer of the box.

So the way I'm going to do that is I've got my blank here, and I've made a simple template for the router to follow.

And my work base just kind of fits in here snugly.

I'm going to flip it over and clamp the part in the vise.

And what that gives me is this outline of the recess for my router to follow.

So I have a top-bearing bit in the router.

And that's going to make this super easy.

And as the router bit descends, it may end up actually following the recess that we've started to create.

Now I'll need to do this in a couple passes.

It's a little messy, but it works great and it's so easy to do.

Well, we finished up the lower level of our pencil box, and now it's time to go to the next level.

This part here is the second layer.

Now this has been cut into two parts, but we're going to make it as one part initially.

What you see here is I've been to the drill press, and I used a large Forstner bit to hog out a little bit of material down to this level here, and we've drilled out a space here which will retain this pencil sharpener.

With that done, I'm going to use a jig very similar to the one we used earlier.

And I'm going to go ahead and route out this material in here.

Well, next up on our middle layer, I'm going to need to route two slots.

And those slots will be a little extra compartment for pencils or whatever.

Now the way I'm going to do this is I have two stops set up so that I can take my middle layer here and drop it on my router bit and move it till it hits the other stop.

Now it's a 1/2-inch-deep plunge in here, so I'm going to need to take this in stages.

And I'm going to do it in three to four passes, raising the bit up a little bit each time.

With our storage compartments all routed out, now is the time when we're going to think about the sliding lid.

And I have a special bit in the router table.

This is a small slotting bit and it's flush on top so that I can use it to cut a slot at the bottom of our route here for the lid to go into.

I've already made one pass and I've lowered the bit.

I'm going to make a second pass to open this up to 3/16 in height.

With the slot completed in our box, it's time to think about the lid.

What I've done here is I've got a 3/8 inch piece of oak, and what I need to do is cut a rabbet all the way around the top of it, and that will create a lip, which will then slide into that slot we just created.

So I've got it cut to the correct width and I went ahead and radiused one end.

So I've got a rabbeting bit in the router table.

I'm going to go ahead and get this cut.

Well, here at the table saw, our next step is going to be to cut this compound angle in this part that we've been working on.

That compound angle really works out well in that it traps two pieces together neatly and allows our top to slide into place.

So I've got everything set up.

It's 14 degrees blade tilt, 14 degrees on my fence.

Once we cut that, we'll be ready to start some assembly.

Well, after leaving the table saw, I went ahead and took this small block and glued that firmly in place.

The balance of the piece pivots, and it pivots using this threaded insert.

It's got an 8-32 threaded opening in it, and this 8-32 machine screw.

You can see the screw up top here, and our threaded insert is hidden away on the bottom piece.

Makes for a nice smooth connection.

Things come together just beautifully.

Another thing I did is I took the top and I went ahead and made a little finger hold.

And I did that using this 1-inch core box bit in the router table and just lowering the part onto it with a stop block on this end.

And that made a nice finger hold.

So what about finishing?

Well, there's a lot of options.

One thing you may want to think about is all these cavities.

You might want to put paint in there to give a contrasting color.

Or you could consider flocking.

That's always an easy thing that really dresses up any box.

As for me, I think I'm going to probably go ahead and leave them plain, because I think they turned out very clean, minimal burning.

And then I'm going to give my pencil box about three coats of oil, and I think it's going to look just great.

My project for this part of the episode is to make a desk set, and by that I mean a couple of small accessories that you can put on your desktop.

One of them is a little canister, so to speak, that you can hold pencils and pens and scissors, narrow tools, things like that.

And then the other one will hold on top, a notepad -- one of those peel-off adhesive-backed ones with a couple of spares down on the inside.

For that, we need a lot of small, narrow pieces.

So I wanted to find some material that would go well with it.

What I ended up with is Douglas fir.

What I like about it is that it's got a great smell when you cut into it.

Second, the grain lines when it's cut quartersawn like this or vertical grain, can be really tight together.

And I think that matches the design of this project as well as the scale.

So what I've done is ripped and crosscut a bunch of parts, and I'm going to start cutting up some of my pieces here.

I'll rip the pieces to their width, then grab a miter gauge and then cut all of my parts to their final length.

I have the side pieces here for the canister part as well as the little notepad holder.

You can see these are little and when it comes to little pieces, it's nice to have a router table to go with it.

This one is designed for a small, compact router and works really well for these small, little pieces.

And I have a straight bit set up in the router table here to cut a rabbet along each edge of all of my side pieces.

Now, when it comes to these guys, they're wider than they are long, so it's tough to hold on to them.

My solution is a small piece of MDF that I can use as a guide block, and a backer to support that work piece as I push it through.

Going on a side quest here, I have an extra-long, extra-wide blank for some corner molding pieces that will kind of cap off the sides of our two projects.

They consist of narrow pieces with a rabbet that wrap around the corners.

Now, I don't want to do that on really small pieces.

That puts my fingers way too close to the router bit for comfort.

That's why I have an extra-long, extra-wide blank here.

So I'm going to route a rabbet along each edge of these two pieces.

And then over at the table saw, I can then cut this to it's final width and be all set up.

Our next step here at the router table is to cut some grooves in the side pieces for the canister project.

What I've done is replaced our wider straight bit with a narrow one -- 1/4 inch straight bit here.

It's set to the same height as the other bit was.

Now these two grooves that I need to cut on the sides are symmetrical, so I can route one with one edge of the side against the fence, then just flip it around and route the other side.

All right, for the next stop, I've swapped out the router table for a spindle sander here, and that is to form a little cutout on the top edge of the dividers on our canister project, as well as the front of the little notepad holder.

I've laid that out and formed it on one of the pieces, and then just traced them onto the other ones to use that kind of as a pattern.

I'm just going to use a coarse grit drum on the spindle sander here, and then just slowly work my way down to the layout line.

We're getting so close to assembling these two little projects here, but there are still a few steps that we need to take care of.

One of those is to make a lid for the notepad holder.

So I have that glued up here in the end vise on the workbench.

It's a thin panel with two thicker side pieces.

What I want to do now though is to cut those corner molding strips that we made.

Now, since they're small, again, and made out of Douglas fir, which can be a little splintery on the table saw, I'm going to use a shop-made miter box and a hand saw.

Now this particular miter box has a stop block on it that I set to match the length of those divider pieces.

So what I can do is just slide the molding strip into place, hold it against the back fence with my thumb, and then just cut these to their length.

I'm ready to glue up the cases here for our little projects.

What I'm going to do is put glue on the rabbets on each side here, fold them up and put the front and back pieces in place, and then wrap a couple of rubber bands around them just to hold them in place.

I have my pieces, the glue, and the rubber bands, all set up for the notepad holder, but I need to do one last detail.

On the back piece, I want to put a bevel on the top edge, and that provides a little clearance for when the lid opens up on that back side.

In order to form that bevel on such a small piece, I'm using a miter shooting board that has a fence that I can hold the work piece against.

And then this side fence here guides a hand plane and holds it at 45 degrees.

Then the assembly goes just like the other case, just on a smaller scale.

I'm going to put some glue into the rabbets, fit the front and back into place, and then add a few rubber bands, making sure that it stays square while the glue dries.

After the glue sets a little bit on the main assembly, the next step is to add the corner molding.

So what I'm going to do is put a thin bead of glue on the inside of the molding pieces, brush it out, and then stick it into the corners, and then, again, wrap it up with some rubber bands while we wait for the glue to set.

The top of our project are called caps.

They're just simple little strips that get secured over the top along the edges.

Now a couple of little details on here.

Over at the drill press, I used a Brad point bit to drill out some pilot holes that we'll use for securing those.

And then the other thing is I drew in a curve profile along the edges, just to echo that one that's in the dividers on the pieces.

And to soften the look a little bit.

And I'm going to shape that with a block plane here.

I'm going to take strokes closer to the end.

First, multiple ones, and then I'll work long-ways, establishing a smooth, even curve.

The cap pieces for the notepad holder require a little bit more work, because it has to interact with the lid that goes on there.

So to start with the lid, over at the drill press, I drilled some holes on the edge of the lid to accept some hinge pins.

Now for those I'm just using some small dowel here, and what we want to do is register where those holes need to be in the cap pieces.

But I also want to be able to have enough clearance for the hinge and the lid to move up and down.

For that to happen, I'm going to use a spacer block.

This is just a thin piece of aluminum, 1/16 of an inch thick.

And I'll register that against a straight edge I've clamped here to the workbench.

Now I can take my cap pieces, pin those back here, and with everything kind of held in place, press these two together... ...which creates just a little bit of a dimple on the edge of our piece, so that I can use that to drill the hinge pin holes on the cap pieces before we install it.

The cap pieces are attached to our projects in two stages.

First of all, I used a little bit of glue to hold them in place just to fix it.

It's an end grain glue joint for the most part here, so it's not super strong, but I wanted them held in place for this next part.

And rather than using wood plugs and screws, I'm using these cut head nails, which look like that.

So what I have are the clearance holes that I already drilled into the cap pieces.

Then I have a much smaller bit that I'm going to drill a pilot hole down into the sides.

Now the cut nails are tapered so you can see they're narrow at the bottom, wider on this middle part here.

And I want to install them so that they're not going to split the sides this way.

So I'm going to put them in like that and then just tap them in.

I think my desk set turned out pretty nicely.

The way the cut nails work with the Douglas fir.

And over time, that fir is going to take on an even more mellow and amber tone to it.

Ah, let's be honest, these aren't going on my desk.

They're probably going to end up in my workshop.

I'll keep some small tools in here, and the notepad is really handy for reminding me where I left off on my project.

So whether you want to build the desk set, or maybe Chris' pencil box or the lamp that Logan turned, the plans are at our website, WoodsmithShop.com.

There you'll find inspiration for other great plans, tips and techniques to help you become a better woodworker and everything that you need to prepare for another great session in your own home shop.

And then for another project, we can gather right back here in the Woodsmith Shop.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ If you'd like to get more video tips and techniques, sign up for the free weekly Woodsmith eTip.

Every week, you'll receive an e-mail with a video tip to get more out of your table saw, router table, and more.

Sign up at WoodsmithShop.com.

Everything in today's show comes from the newly expanded Woodsmith Guild Edition with shop projects, plans, tips, and techniques.

To get a free preview issue of the Woodsmith Guild Edition and a free Woodsmith book, go to WoodsmithShop.com.

In addition, past seasons of "The Woodsmith Shop" are available on DVD, or you can watch them online from your computer, tablet, or mobile device.

For more information, go to WoodsmithShop.com.

Announcer: Major funding for "The Woodsmith Shop" has been provided by... Old Masters -- offering wood stains and finishes for the woodworking enthusiast and professional.

And by... Kreg -- from the first cut to the final assembly, providing woodworkers with products that help to simplify woodworking challenges.

Kreg.

Additional funding provided by... Titebond Wood Glues -- the pro's advantage.

And by...

Here at Grizzly, woodworking isn't just our business, it's our passion.

We love what we do.

Thank you for the opportunity to support "Woodsmith Shop" TV.