A new year, new projects

For the last few months making gifts has been the focus in the shop and on the blog. But Christmas is over and all the gifts have been given. There are a few gifts I made and hadn't put on the blog to keep them secret. So here are some of the gifts I made and gave this year.
Of course there are the cutting boards from the "Cutting Board Crazy" post. These made great gifts, everyone who received one was very happy to receive one.

Walnut and Maple cutting board

3 Cherry and Walnut boards, and One Cherry and Maple

My sister told me my brother in law had played corn hole over the summer and that a set of corn hole boards would be a good gift idea for him. He is a huge Pittsburgh Steelers fan so I knew how I wanted to paint the finished boards. The game boards are made from 3/4 birch plywood and some 1x pine for the frame. I made a circle cutting jig for my router to make the holes. The frame is rabbeted to accept the plywood and mitered on the corners. I painted them with a high gloss interior/exterior enamel latex paint.

Assembled corn hole boards

Finished corn hole boards.

I wanted to build something for my wife since she puts up with me and my crazy hobbies.  She uses the cutting board that I made for her daily and it is stored on the counter next to the knife block.  I thought it would be nice to have a stand to hold the cutting board when its not in use. I found some nice looking walnut in the scrap pile, and decided to just make a simple stand.

Here I was mocking up a the design.

Here it is right after applying a coat of boiled linseed oil.

 Sadly I wasn't able to get it complete it before Christmas, it still needs a few coats of shellac. I always wait at least a week after applying boiled linseed oil before top coating.

I also started surfacing and preparing some maple for the next project. I was pleasantly surprised to see some spalting on the maple while processing the boards. I got about half the boards processed and will process the other half before I start cutting anything.

Spalted Maple

Surfaced Maple stacked waiting to be used.

Another up coming project is a air cleaner for the shop. It will be built with a old furnace blower and will use 20"x20" furnace filters. Hopefully it will capture the fine dust the dust collector can't capture and keep it out of my lungs and off everything in the shop. (I will still wear a dust mask.)

Future air cleaner