Crealbilly Wood Working thread

[CrealCritter]

Speaking of tables... My wife came home with one of those big cracker barrel checker sets. She knows how much I like to play checkers. So I built this table out of black locust, i cut with my sawmill to go with the rocking chairs I also built for the front porch several years earlier. The window frame and real working shutters I also built and the porch that the table sits on -: lol but my wife made the most important part... The cushions, so folks are comfortable playing checkers.

Of course all tables need a Eastern Red Cedar Drawer to keep the bugs out of the drawers.

 

[CrealCritter]

When one of my kids gets married, i build them a very simple table set as a wedding gift. They are quick knock down style for easy moving. Second oldest daughter wanted black. This set is quarter sawn red oak with a black satin finish.

24x36

24x28

24x28

Youngest daughter wanted Cherry

 

[CrealCritter]

My wife and I built this 100% eastern red cedar pool deck. I bought a tractor trailer load of nice eastern red cedar logs that here destined for the wood chipper to be made into hamster bedding. I sawed it all out on my sawmill and planed and routed all the boards. We dug holes 3' deep and set the posts with cement. We also bent the inner banding around the pool and set the joists to the square out the banding. I don't recall how big the deck is but the.pool it'self is 30 feet diameter.

If I had bought all this cedar at the.lumberyard I would have had to take out a loan. Eastern red cedar lumber is expensive... I saved a ton of money sawing my own from logs. Stained with Benjamin Moore cedar stain. No nail gun used here - it's all beat together with galvanized screw shank nails and galvanized construction screws.

 

[CrealCritter]

Here's my old nyle dehumidification wood kiln. I used to have a pretty good small business in North Carolina before Oboma was elected president and the bottom fell out of the economy and nobody wanted to buy anything anymore. Lucky for me all of my equipment was paid for and I had no credit lines. A lot of my business associates (friends) had to file bankruptcy, lost their homes and had their equipment repossessed... It was horrible to watch your friends go down the drink like that... It's something I'll never forget. And one of the.main reasons we moved to southern IL to become more self sufficient...

The kiln is a old shipping container i insulated and finished with water proof panels. If recall correctly it was 52 foot long.

Some of the beautiful lumber I used to sell and trees I used to harvest.

I've been thinking about starting up the business again but honestly I took a big hit when the economy went South and I really don't know if I could stand to have that happen again (although I had it better than a lot of my friends). I'm going to wait a little bit longer and see how the economy looks under president trump first before I decide to start the lumber business again or not. Starting a new business is a lot of work and I really don't know if I want to do that again or not...

 

[CrealCritter]

My next commission.a coffin bookcase...the one pictured is 3 foot tall the customer wants it 7 foot tall and made out of natural finished cherry instead of plywood finished black.

Kind of morbid but hey what the heck - I'm not scared -:lol

 

[sumi]

Your work is absolutely amazing! If we lived closer I'd seriously consider commissioning you to make me a whole lot of furniture!

 

[milkmansdaughter]

Beautiful work @crealbilly!! I

 

[CrealCritter]

Youngest son wanted a captains bed. He had dreams of being a boat captain. So I discussed the design with him and came up with this.

If you notice all the drawers in this bed is crazy and it weighs over 300 lbs empty and that's no joke. It has thick rubber suction cup feet on all four corners and honestly I don't think it would move in the roughest of seas. You'll notice how thick all the red oak wood is the headboard sides are 3 3/4" thick by 10" wide and that's some heavy stuff right there. It's assembled with 1/2 x 6" hardened steel lag bolts that I actually had to use my impact wrench to first drive them in. All is wood glued together with water proof polyurethane wood glue and finished in marine polyurethane also. This is one heavy duty solid bed. You would not want to fall and bump you head on this bed, it won't move...

 

[CrealCritter]

I needed something to store egg cartons in the chicken house. What's better than eastern red cedar for keeping the bugs away? So I built this little cedar cabinet to store egg cartons in and have a dorm room refrigerator set on top to store full egg cartons in. It had been a while since i did any large sized book matched panels so I decided to have a little fun building it with book matched panels - why not... right?

I left it unfinished to further deter bugs

 

[CrealCritter]

Ok one more for the night... Sawmill art sometimes you can get the craziest looking stuff out of a log. If you just think about what might be hiding in there and imagine how to get it out

Sawmill book matched boards. No body likes knots but you might want to rethink that - what do you see?

Found this piece of figured hard maple while cleaning up around the sawmill.

This is perhaps one of the coolest pictures I ever took while cruising for timber out back of my house here in southern IL. What a beautiful boy he is.

Then there's wild turkeys at the end of my driveway that I had to get out of the truck and yell at in order to get them to move out of the way. Really nothing to do with wood working other than one day I'm going to scroll saw out this picture on a thin piece of wood and frame it. Lots of dinners standing right there -:lol