Projects For Your Shop
Improve Both Your Workshop and Your Woodworking Skills with These Straightforward and Practical Workshop Projects

By Matthew Teague

The projects in this book are no-nonsense, straightforward pieces designed to improve both your workshop and your woodworking skills. When learning to build a set of sawhorses, you'll become familiar with a circular saw. And as you build a workbench, you'll become more skilled with the circular saw and learn the ins and outs of a router and biscuit joiner as well. When you make a stand and outfeed tables for your table saw, you'll learn to join a case piece using biscuits; a task you'll encounter repeatedly as a woodworker. Building a router table, you'll learn another common method for building cases: using the table saw to cut dadoes and rabbets.

Whether you're interested in building bookshelves around the house or framing up a shed out back, this book walks you through building the basic accessories you'll need to make your shop run as smoothly as any good tool.

Introduction:

When I started woodworking as a kid, my father kept all his tools in the laundry room. He had a circular saw, a jigsaw, chisels, and screwdrivers, even a small lathe and a small bandsaw. To use them, usually on Saturday afternoons, wed move them out to the back deck and run an extension cord through the kitchen window. It wasn't elaborate, but it was a good place to learn the basics. And we spent hours there sweating in the summer and wearing long johns in the winter. Twenty years later, my one-car garage is what many would still consider a modest workshop. But its more than enough for me.

Whether you're working on your back porch or in an expansive basement shop, chances are you're there for the same reasons I am: You enjoy the peace and quiet, the satisfaction of doing it yourself, and the pride that comes from building something you know will be handed down from your children to theirs.

Whatever your shop space, you'll enjoy your time there a lot more if it has efficient workstations and smart organization. That will turn your shop into an inspiring space, where work progresses smoothly and hours pass by without your noticing. I hope this book will be a step in that direction for you.

The projects in this book are no-nonsense, straightforward pieces designed to improve both your workshop and your woodworking skills. When learning to build a set of sawhorses, you'll become familiar with a circular saw. And as you build a workbench, you'll become more skilled with the circular saw and learn the ins and outs of a router and biscuit joiner as well. When you make a stand and outfeed tables for your table saw, you'll learn to join a case piece using biscuits; a task you'll encounter repeatedly as a woodworker. Building a router table, you'll learn another common method for building cases: using the table saw to cut dadoes and rabbets.

Not only will your skills grow, but your tool collection will grow as well. A dark table in the corner of your shop is not a tool, but a workbench with a vise and a bench stop is. Likewise, a benchtop table saw will cut wood, but its precision and usefulness multiply when you incorporate it into a smart workstation design.

Whether you're interested in building bookshelves around the house or framing up a shed out back, this book walks you through building the basic accessories you'll need to make your shop run as smoothly as any good tool. And working on your own shop is the best place to hone your woodworking skills. In the process of outfitting your shop, you'll learn all the basics of woodworking. And if you make mistakes, youre making them on a 2x4 or a few dollars worth of plywood instead of that antique board from a tree felled at your great-grandfathers house. If there's a misaligned screw or an unfaired edge, hey, its just shop stuff before long itll be covered in sawdust anyway. The important thing is that you're learning and enjoying yourself.

Table of Contents:

Introduction
Tools and Materials
Sawhorses
Workbench
Table Saw Workstation
Router Table
Storage
Sources
Index

Soft-cover, 8-1/2 x 10-7/8 in., 176 pages with color photos and drawings
Published 2005

ISBN 978-1-56158-689-9