Band saw tuneup project

I went down to Woodcraft and bought a 2 inch by 2 inch by 12 inch long piece of rosewood for $10 to make a pencil box. Heavy piece of wood, it's sitting on my desk. I changed blades on the band saw to a 1/4 inch blade, but didn't reset the blade guide blocks. The guide blocks wore out the teeth on the saw in about two minutes. Live and learn.... Bought some more band saw blades from Sears and replaced the 1/4 inch blade and carefully reset the blade guides. Cuts well now, but it makes a squealing noise when it cuts.... very irritating.... Decided to make a practice pencil box on a two by four piece of pine. The fence that came with the band saw is not very good, and the saw blade has a lot of lead too. The top and bottom cuts on the two by four wandered all over... Oh, the humanity!.... I cut out the body okay and glued bottom and ends back to make a pretty decent body for the pencil box. I made a beveled cut to cut the sliding lid out of the top.... what a mess.... I couldn't get the semicircle on the end to cut sharp enough... very ugly. Also, the wandering beveled blade doesn't facilitate a nice straight cut for the sliding lid. After gluing the top to the body, the lid wouldn't slide in. After sanding and filing to get the lid to slide, it was so loose that it almost falls out, bevel cut or not.... It is obvious to me that pencil boxes of this type must be made with a router.... I'll post a photo this evening.

Band saw tuneup project

Here's the pencil box I'm going to make as a starter project to learn how to use the bandsaw. I plan to build it out of a piece of 2 inch by 2 inch by 8 inch long poplar wood.

The master plan for my back yard.

Here's a photo of my back yard along the north side which faces the street. We live on a corner lot, so the other side of the fence is a street, with a small park and tennis court on the other side.

Compost bin

Here's a photo of the completed compost bin:

Another:

Compost bin plans

Here's a sketch of the compost bin I'm planning for the garden.
It's two bins side by side, together 2 feet high, 2 feet deep and 3 feet wide each.
I will be made out of cedar 2 by 4's and 1 by 4s.



The lids are not attached and sit on top, centered by cleats. In the figure below, I've tilted a lid back to show the cleats. Shown also, the front boards are held vertically in channels made from cleats.



The basic structure is made from three squares formed from 2 by 4's, joined by lap joints, as shown below. I am planning to cut the joints on my table saw using a dado blade.

Workshop area in my house

Here's a floor plan of my house. The garage is my workshop. I'l ltake some photos tomorow.

Here's a Sketchup drawing of my house. I'm really getting to like Sketchup, it's easier to use than Solidworks and still looks good. In this drawing I traced out the wall of my house from the scan of the floor plan. I haven't added all the doors and windows yet.

You can see my workshop area, the garage, in the lower part of the drawing. The work area is about 400 square feet.

Nightstand drawer

This is the design of the drawer for the nightstand.
Click to enlarge. The drawer has lap joints front and back. The bottom is 1/4 plywood or hardboard. The drawer box has a false front mounted on the front of the box. It gives 1 inch clearance around the box. An xray view of the box is shown in the lower figure.

I'm trying to decide whether to build it from some cheap wood like yellow pine, or to go the full monty and buy some oak or cherry. Expensive wood would be a waste on such a basic unadorned design.