[ Power saw whirring ] ♪♪ I have three bright ideas for a project you can build the next time you're in your workshop.

It's "The Woodsmith Shop," and on today's episode, we're building three different candle-related projects.

They're all pretty quick to build and don't require a lot of time or materials to make them.

So I say it's time to start building.

Announcer: Major funding for "The Woodsmith Shop" has been provided by... Old Masters -- craftsman-quality stains and finishes since 1953.

Additional funding provided by... ♪♪ Titebond wood glues -- the pro's advantage.

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

Kreg.

And by... [ Up-tempo music plays ] ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ You know, I think it's a good idea to take some projects sometimes and get it done quickly, but then also be able to throw some twists and turns into it.

Mm-hmm.

It is, you know, and not only for time's sake, but also for your mental health's sake, 'cause it's good to have those projects you can really whip out in, you know, an afternoon or an evening in the shop.

Sure.

So I think that's where this one starts is a little bit of a challenge just to see what we can do to get -- can we cram three projects into a single episode?

And then maybe centered around a theme.

So we went with a candle theme for this one.

I started out with this interesting little candlestick, and it is done using a bandsaw, and using that bandsaw curve to laminate in contrasting wood.

And I think what's fun about it is that every cut you make with the bandsaw creates a unique candlestick.

So every one is gonna be different, and you can do large ones, small ones, or about a medium size like this one.

And see, the one that I picked was a classic project from the early days of woodsmith, was a wall lantern that can fit a pillar candle.

But I'm going to take what was kind of an English traditional style.

I'm going to switch up some of the details on it and give it a little Shaker flair.

Sure, and I like the fact that it's cut out so you let the smoke out of there.

That's kind of a fun little detail.

It is.

A nice door on it, and... Yeah.

It's a nice presence in a room.

Exactly.

What about you, Logan?

Well, you know, these are ones that have been floating around the office for a while.

These are three tower candle holders, and they're just kind of a cool little kind of Asian-inspired candle stand, and I really like them.

I think I'm gonna change up the material a little bit, though.

Okay.

You guys know me.

I love walnut.

And I might do something different with the lattice.

We'll see.

Okay.

But they're a fun little project.

If you'd like to take these three candle projects, give them your own twist, you'll find the plans at our website, WoodsmithShop.com.

So the first of our three candle holders that I'm going to be building is going to be this set of tower candles stands.

There's a couple of things that I really like about this design.

The first is it doesn't use a whole lot of material, especially if you only build one of them, which is what I'm going to do.

It's perfect opportunity to use that one random board that you have or maybe some scraps that you saved.

Next thing that I like is that the construction's pretty simple.

It has four sides, and all the sides are joined by a miter joint.

Into the sides, we have a square window cut to allow you to see the candle, and covering that is some lattice work.

So I'm going to go ahead and use this piece of air-dried walnut.

It's a beautiful board.

I'm gonna start by getting this all cleaned up, broken down to size, and then we'll head over to the router table to cut some joinery.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ All right, so now that I have my pieces all milled down, they're planed to thickness, and I've cut them to width, we're ready to go ahead and cut the joinery.

Now, I've left these a little bit long, and once I have everything cut, we'll trim them to final length.

Now, we could cut the joinery, which, like I said, was a miter joint, at the table saw, but I find getting that blade tilt just right can really be finicky.

So instead, especially on thin stock like this, I like to cut it at the router table.

And it's a simple process using a 45-degree chamfer bit.

Gonna make a cut on both sides, maybe make it in two passes just to make sure we have a clean cut.

And then we'll head over the bench and talk about cutting the window into these.

So now that we have the miters cut on the sides of our candle stand, we can go ahead and lay out the window.

Now, couple things to note here.

First, I've went ahead and cut everything to final length.

In this case, I'm building the medium one.

It's 12 inches.

Also, now that these miters are cut, we have a pretty delicate edge right along there, and it is sharp, so be careful with it.

Don't ding it up or else that will show up in the final project.

So, cutting the window is pretty simple, but it starts off by making a template.

I've already made one here, and this one is just 1/2-inch MDF, and I've laid out the window location, and that spacing is the same as it will be on my side panels.

So I know by registering that template to the top and the sides, my window's gonna be the right location.

So let's go and lay these out.

I can register both sides and the top, make sure that's flush.

Then we will just draw our window in here.

Okay, once that's laid out, simple trip over the drill press will leave us with four corners that are drilled out.

So, once you have the holes drilled, we can go ahead and cut the waste out with a jigsaw.

♪♪ ♪♪ With a sharp blade and a jigsaw, you can make quick work of cutting those windows out.

But there is a little bit of cleanup to do to square everything thing up, and that's where we're going to use this template again.

You can simply stick it down with double-sided tape and then use a flush trim bit on the router table to trim everything square.

And that leaves us here with a nicely cut window.

It's smooth on the inside, and all we have left to do is a little bit chisel work to clean up the corners.

So the last thing we have to take care of before we can glue this together is to cut the decorative bevel along the inside top edge of each one of these sides.

Now, of course, you could do this with a router table with that 45-degree chamfer bit that we used to cut the sides.

However, this is a pretty quick task with a hand plane, so that's what I'll do.

I just laid out that bevel on top using a marking gauge.

And I marked the inside and the top face, and then as I'm making passes with the plane, and I'm judging my progress based on where my cut is in relation to both those lines.

We want it to be even all the way down, and it tells us it's at 45 degrees.

So we'll just plane down to those lines, then we'll go and get it glued together.

♪♪ Now, with something long like this candle stand with a long miter on it, I like to use tape as a hinge.

This is just normal painter's tape.

We'll pull off a length that is as long as our sides.

We'll basically use that like a hinge.

We'll line up both sides.

There we go.

Okay, now all we have to do is spread some glue, roll it up, tape it together, let it dry.

♪♪ So one of the last things we need to take care of for this set of candle stands is going to be this lattice work that covers the windows.

Now, you can see on this original it's made out of bird's eye maple, and the lattice work is wenge.

But the dark wenge a on top of walnut I think would look a little weird.

So instead, I'm gonna draw inspiration from a project from last season and use aluminum.

I really like the color combination of the walnut with the aluminum, and it will match the picture frame I built last season.

Cutting aluminum at the table saw is pretty easy.

Really, all it takes is a special blade, and that's a non-ferrous metal-cutting blade.

I already had that installed here, so I'm gonna start by setting a stop block and cutting the long uprights for the windows, and then I'll cut the shorter horizontal pieces, and then we'll notch the ends and add the half-lap joints.

♪♪ You know, the metal-cutting blade in the table saw does a really good job of cutting aluminum.

But it does leave some ridges and it leaves some burrs on the aluminum parts.

So there's two things here -- you want to be careful when you're handling them because those burrs can be sharp, and we're gonna need to do a little bit of fine tuning to get those ridges knocked away.

To do that, just clamp it in a vise and use a normal file.

Just make a couple passes, and the aluminum's soft, so it'll cut really cleanly and really easily.

Then you'll be left with a pretty smooth surface.

Once you have a set of these done, they simply snap together.

Then it's a simple matter of sticking them in the window to install them.

Now, I'm gonna wait to actually glue these in place, which will be with five-minute epoxy until I've applied a finish, and I think it'll just be cleaner that way.

So after I get all those installed, there's one last thing to take care of, and that's the actual candle stand that the candle will sit on inside the holder.

Now, in the plans, it calls for a platform to be dadoed inside of there.

And obviously, I didn't do that when I built this one.

That's because when we were looking at the originals, one of them was a little different.

This tall one here didn't have a platform on the inside.

Instead, it has a column that the candle sits on and it fits perfectly inside of the holder.

And I think I'm gonna do that with mine, so I'm just gonna glue together some stock that I have, drill a hole for the recess for the candle to sit in, and I'll paint it dark like this one is.

But after that's done, everything's ready for a finish, then it's ready to go on your shelf.

The tapered candle holders are great project.

It's a great project because it uses a simple technique which I think you'll really enjoy.

And that technique is to create a curved kind of artistic kerf with our main block and then gluing up a slip of contrasting wood.

Now, in this case, I've chosen maple, and for my contrasting wood, a piece of mahogany.

Now, I chose mahogany because it's soft and flexible.

Not only does it need to bend to the kerf, but it needs to conform to the somewhat irregular cut that a bandsaw is going to make.

And so with the softer wood, when we glue it up, it'll be a nice tight glue line.

To start the process, I've created a template out of Masonite.

And so this is the profile of my candle holder.

I'll place that profile on my wooden block and I'm going to trace the outline.

Now, you'll notice I've made my block plenty oversized.

We're going to go through a couple of glue-ups.

And during those glue-ups, things can move just a little bit.

So we want everything to be a little oversized, and we'll trim it later.

Now, with my profile in place, I now get to lay out my lines where I want that contrasting where to go.

So I'm going to use two slips on either side.

I've got a very flexible steel ruler here, and I'm just gonna go ahead and lay them out.

Now, there's no rules here.

You just have to do what looks good to your eye.

I think it's kind of nice to do one "S" curve and then one gentle curve.

All right, there you go.

So you can see I've got my two accent lines and my profile for our candle holder.

So with that done, I need to go to the bandsaw and make my first cut.

Well, I've made my bandsaw cut, and it's time to glue things up.

So one thing I want to show you is that I've had this slip of mahogany in a plastic bag, and I wet it beforehand.

So it's been absorbing moisture for a couple of hours.

That additional moisture will help make it a little more flexible and make the glue-up go easier.

The only thing you have to remember is since we've added additional moisture to this wood, it's going to take a little longer to dry.

So leave things in the clamps overnight.

Now, as with any glue-up, I want to apply glue to all the surfaces.

♪♪ I'm going to begin clamping with a single clamp directly in the center and just lightly draw things together.

As you can see, things are reasonably well positioned.

And so with that done, I can go ahead and apply additional clamps and really put the squeeze to things.

♪♪ ♪♪ Well, as you can see here, I have four contrasting pieces of wood glued into my block.

So with that done, our job now is to go ahead and cut the profiles of our candlestick.

I'm going to do that on one side first.

Then I'll take these off cuts, tape them in place, and then I'll be able to flip my block, and it'll be fully supported and I'll have profile lines on the other side.

Well, sending our candlesticks can be done in a number of ways.

You can use a drum sander or a belt sander if you like, but I think maybe the best way is to just simply make a sanding block curved to match the shape of our candlesticks and use a little PSA sandpaper.

Now, I'm starting with 80-grit and I'll probably go to 120 and finish with 180.

So we'll work all the sides, get things nice and smooth, and then we'll be ready to drill the hole for the candle.

The last step in constructing our candle holder is going to be to drill a hole for this decorative brass liner.

So I have a 7/8-inch Forstner bit on my drill press for a nice clean hole.

[ Drill whirring ] The last step with the candle holders is going to be to add a little wipe-on finish to really see that contrast between the two woods pop.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ For my part of this episode, I'm building a little different candle project.

This one is meant to be hung on the wall.

Now, originally, we called it an English wall lantern.

And the reason was, is all these profiles on the back, along the top and the bottom, and on the doors have a real traditional English feel to them.

And I thought that I would make a similar project, but I want to change things up a little bit.

Rather than go with these traditional details, I'm gonna try taking things in a Shaker direction.

So that'll mean changing some of these shapes, but the overall proportions are going to stay about the same.

What's not going to change, though, is the materials that I'm going to be using to make it.

I have a cherry board here that's been sitting in my shop for a while just begging for a use, and I think I found it here.

I'm pretty sure I can get all the pieces that I need out of this one board.

The first thing that I'm going to do is to measure out my pieces in rough lengths.

Then in my home shop, what I often do to break down boards is to reach for a hand crosscut saw, and then I'll cut all the pieces to their rough length.

Then I'll head to the table saw and slice and dice everything up to their final size.

When you have all your pieces cut to final size, you're ready to tackle some of the joinery.

Now, the main structure of this wall lantern consists of three frames.

There's two sides and then the door.

Now, these small pieces are joined with mortise and tenon.

When you're working with relatively small pieces like this, the router table is where I head to take care of the joinery.

All the pieces are assembled with mortise and tenon joinery.

I'm going to cut those mortises using a 1/4-inch spiral bit that I've installed in the router table, and I've taken some time to center the bit on the thickness of my long vertical stile pieces.

So what I'll do is slide the workpiece into the bit, creating an open-ended mortise.

Now, to control the length of that mortise, I'm going to clamp a stop block on the outside end.

The mortise depth is gonna be 3/4 of an inch.

That's a lot of material to try and blast through in one fell swoop, so what I'll do instead is set the bit for about half the depth.

Then I'll make the mortise on each end of all of my stiles.

Then I can raise the bit up to its final height and make a second pass, completing the mortises.

Okay, we've reached a fun part of this project, and that's to get to some assembly.

One of the things that I've done already is to glue up a couple of panels here.

Now, they're pretty small, but I needed to get the right size from that board in order to make both the top and the bottom of my wall lantern.

I'll cut those to final size, take care of those details on them later.

Now what I want to do is glue up those three frames.

I have the two side assemblies and then the door.

Now, you'll remember that in cutting the mortises, we used a router bit, and that's gonna leave a round end on one end of the mortise.

But when we're cutting the tenons, and I did that at the table saw using a dado blade, that leaves a tenon that's pretty square all the way around, and it's not going to seat tightly.

What you want to do is round the end of the tenon to closely match so that it fits in place.

You don't have to be real specific here.

I just use a small file and basically started by making a chamfer on each of the edges and then rounding it.

All you really need it to do is be able to slip into place and have the end of the stile and the top of the rail be flush.

With that all set, I can apply some glue to all the tenon faces.

Spread that out just a little.

♪♪ ♪♪ After these are dry, we can take care of some other details.

Now that we have the three frames all wrapped up, it's time to take care of a little bit more joinery work, and that all centers around this back panel for the lantern.

Now, the back came from that same board, and I just planed it to a 1/2 inch thick and cut it to its overall size.

What we need to do now is take our two side frames over to the table saw, where we're gonna cut a rabbet along their back edge to wrap around the back of the lantern.

In a similar way, we're going to use a dado blade to cut a notch along the back edge of both the top panel and the bottom panel to wrap over that edge, as well.

That's going to create a pocket for the door to sit on as we move along.

Once we have these joinery details taken care of, we'll come back here and start working on making this look nice.

♪♪ ♪♪ I'm taking my cues from some Shaker furniture, and since this isn't an exact replica, I can be a little loose with the interpretation.

Now, one of the things that I see in Shaker furniture and objects is the use of circles or portions of circles.

So let's see how this plays out on this project.

Now, on the door, I routed a roundover profile at the router table, and I created a little step on there.

And to me, that echoes that thumbnail profile that you'll often see on Shaker doors.

Carrying through with this quarter-circle motif, I used the larger roundover bit to round over the bottom of the lantern, and when I did this, to me, it echoes the way that base molding is often shown on Shaker furniture.

Now, let's flip that into a reverse shape for here at the top, where I used a cove bit to create a deep cove on the three sides of the top.

It's a nice echo and creates a nice top and a bottom for this lantern shape.

Now, before stepping away from the router table, I switched to a rabbeting bit to create a rabbet on the inside faces of the door and then the two side panels.

And that's going to hold the glass panels later on.

On the back, I cut a half round shape on the top end and on the bottom end at the bandsaw.

And then while I was there, I created another cove shape for the support for at the bottom.

And you'll see that that cove echoes the cove on the top.

Finally, you want to just install the door with brass hinges.

Just take care, because those hinge screws can be pretty soft and break easily.

Thankfully, I got all eight of mine in without breaking them.

Take that, Logan.

So what I'm left with now is to apply some finish, get the glass in there, and put my knob on the front.

On today's episode, we built three fun projects, all centering around a candle.

And in the process, we learned some woodworking techniques that I'm sure you can apply to other projects.

So whether you want to build one or all three of these projects, the plans are at our website, WoodsmithShop.com.

There you can join us for even more woodworking information, project plans, videos, and tips that you can use every day.

I hope to see you there, and then we'll see you next time 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 -- craftsman-quality stains and finishes since 1953.

Additional funding provided by... ♪♪ Titebond wood glues -- the pro's advantage.

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

Kreg.

And by... [ Up-tempo music plays ] ♪♪ ♪♪