Mike's Woodworking Projects
Villa Park, CA

I'm amazed that people have found this web site - I'm always surprised when I receive an e-mail from someone who wants to ask a question about one of my projects.  If you found this web site, I'd really appreciate if you would send me an e-mail letting me know you found it and how you found it - from a Google search for something, or from a woodworking forum site, or...  Just send me a note at mike@mikes-woodwork.com.  I promise I won't use your e-mail address or send you any e-mail, unless you ask me a question.  And if you'd like to tell me where in the world you're located, I'd be interested in that, also.  Thanks!

Every now and then, someone contacts me to ask if I will build a piece of furniture for them.  I'm happy to build furniture for clients but the problem is shipping - it's very expensive and is usually a deal killer if you live far from me.  If you write me asking for a price on a piece of furniture, please tell me where you live (I'm in Villa Park, California).

And if you would like to visit my non-woodworking web site, you can find it here.  While this has nothing to do with woodworking, my wife's web site is here.

Visit my "Tutorials" page.  I have tutorials on a variety of subjects.

04-13-2012 I'm doing a project right now that will require a number of marquetry panels.  Here's one that I thought came out nicely.  The field is figured white oak in a half radial pattern (I discovered that oak veneer can be quite difficult to work with).  The marquetry woods are holly, cherry, mahogany, bloodwood and dyed woods.  The banding is dyed (adobe) veneer and holly and the border is figured white oak.  I want to do each panel in a different primary wood and in a different design - which is challenging me.  I'll just have to see what I can come up with.

And here's the back of this panel.  There's no finish on the back so it doesn't stand out as well as it should.  I chose the cut to produce the "star" effect in the center.

01-04-2012 My niece, Linda, asked me for a jewelry box so I made this box from wood I had in the shop.  I never really thought about what's really needed in a jewelry box so I don't know if this will be a good jewelry box.

It's made from walnut with the inside lined with cedar.  The tray bottom is claro walnut veneer laid in a radial match.  The sides of the tray are walnut.  I put a center divider in the tray to give something to grab on to to lift the tray out. 

I built the box as a solid, then sawed the top off to make it into an lift top box.  The joints are mitered with internal splines.  The hinges are quadrant hinges which are always difficult to get installed.

[Since I posted this, I've receive a request for instructions on installing quadrant hinges.  I'll try to take pictures next time I do a box and post it as a tutorial.]

[Update: I did do a tutorial on how to install quadrant hinges.  You can see it here.]

12-20-2011 I had promised Judy that I'd do a couple of projects around the house.  One was to build shelves for two storage closets.  I made them adjustable by putting in panels on the sides with a bunch of 5mm holes in the panels, about an inch or so apart.  The hard thing was to get those side panels shimmed so that they were parallel (and plumb) and parallel and square front to back.  Walls in houses are just not straight and square.  Below is a picture of one of the closets with the shelves installed.

I made the shelves from 3/4" Baltic birch and put angle aluminum on the front and back to reinforce them.  They're about 52" long and about 22" wide so we can put a lot of weight on them.  I made 8 shelves for each closet but we only used seven.  The picture below shows the angle aluminum on the front of one of the shelves.  There's another one on the rear of the shelf.

The top shelf is about at the top of the door so I had to make the shelf sort of U shaped so we could get things up on that shelf.

The shelves were finished with a primer, them sprayed with white latex (house) water based paint.  I used an HVLP gun with a 2mm tip and thinned the paint a bit to get it to flow well.  The finishing took quite a while because I had limited space for doing the finishing - so I'd spray a couple of shelves, then I'd have to wait until the paint dried.  I did both sides of the shelves and I put three coats of paint on the shelves.  But I was very satisfied with the finish.

The other project was to build four pullouts in one of the kitchen cabinets.  I used the cutoffs from the closet shelves to build them.  Nothing special, just ordinary box construction.  The house projects are not finished yet - I have another house project in progress with a contractor.  He's doing things that I'd find difficult or that I don't know how to do.  More later, including pictures.

11-21-2011 Here's another tray panel I'm working on.  It's my half of the partner project that I did while in Paul Schurch's class on marquetry.  My partner had a panel like this but with a light background.  This one came out better than I thought it would.  The background is walnut in a 16 segment radial match (sunburst), the flowers are bird's eye maple, the branch is Chilean laurel and the leaves are dyed veneer.

Later, I'm going to do one with the same design, but with a light background, maybe maple, and darker flowers, maybe mahogany.  I'm just starting the finishing process on this panel.

11-13-2011 I spent the last week in Santa Barbara taking a class in marquetry with Paul Schurch.  The picture shows the panel I did in the class.  I'll eventually make this into a tray and will post a picture when I'm finished.  Overall, I enjoyed the class and was satisfied with the panel I made.

10-17/2011 Here's another marquetry tray I'm doing in preparation for my class in November.  On this one, I did the drawing myself, based on a picture of a water lily flower I found on the web.  There's several problems with this piece: the lily pads should show more depth, which I could have done by darkening the pads in the background, I should have used a darker green veneer for the pads, and I should have put a black strip between the yellow banding and the maple border, but I thought the flower and it's reflection came out well.  Working with very light and very dark veneers is a challenge but I'm learning.  I used some figured maple for the sides to match the figured maple in the border.

For the back, I did a bookmatch of tiger maple to match the rest of the figured maple in the tray.  The figure will become more pronounced as the maple ages.

10-13-2011 I've been working on learning marquetry and am planning to take a class with Paul Schurch in Santa Barbara in early November.  I preparation for that class, I bought Paul's DVD on marquetry and did the project covered by that DVD.  His project was to do a top for a jewelry box, but I used his design for the bottom of a serving tray.

The materials are:  Walnut burl laid in a half sixteen segment sunburst (the points are at the center of the upper edge), san shaded holly for the petals of the flowers, cherry for the center of the flowers, mahogany for the branch, green dyed veneer for the leaves, holly and bloodwood for the banding, and walnut laid in a 45 degree pattern for the border.  The sides are 1/2" walnut.

Here's a couple of close-ups of the flowers.

For the back, I did a sixteen segment sunburst in walnut burl.  Note the pattern towards the outside of the sunburst.  To me it looks like the face of a big cat (maybe a cougar), but if  you're  a dog person, I suppose you could see a dog's face in it.  Although I've laid a lot of sunburst, I had trouble with this one.  The veneer was very old, in bad shape and didn't work well.  And I don't have a lot of experience in working with burls in sunburst.  But I learned a few more things from this project so that's what counts.

08-22-2011 Here's another tray I did for a friend.  Seems like I'm stuck on trays right now.  I did a twelve piece sunburst of bubinga in the center, with bloodwood as banding, and cherry as the border.  The cherry is pretty light right now but will darken as time goes by.

On the back, I did an experiment with a five piece match of cherry, with the points in one corner.  While it looks okay, I think next time I'd do many more pieces to make it more interesting.

07/10/2011 I'm gradually starting to be able to get back in the shop.  I still have a number of things to do around the house and in setting up the shop, but I am getting some projects done.

I teach veneering and decided to do a couple of tutorials on veneering, one basic and one advanced.  In the tutorials I make two different types of serving trays, with veneered panels as the tray bottom.  You can see these in the "Tutorials" section of this web site.

My projects continue here