Prototypes

Handmade by Jon Palmer

This is one of the early pieces I made to see how to do furniture. One fun fact here is that I tried to visualize how to create the individual pieces of the dust panel so as to leave tenons in them. Now I know better, and build the panel first then rabbet out for the tenons. This is why we work out the details in secondary woods rather than the expensive stuff!

This is the first piece I did on purpose, designing it specifically to fit in the master bath for storage of the various things you might need there. It is based on a piece I saw in a book which the author identified as a somnae, or night table.

Here are a couple of recent fun projects: A carving desk for my son Sean and a tool tote I designed for his Cub Scout Den. The carving desk has plastic bench dogs and wedges to hold workpieces, and a tool tote will be assembled by the boys themselves. It is held together entirely with dowels, no glue or mechanical fasteners. Note how at each corner there are two dowels on each face, providing holding strength in both directions. Aside from this prototype, I ended up with 17 copies of the tote. 2 of them have pretty bad flaws, so for an anticipated group of 12 I have 15 good sets. It always pays to have extras. :-)

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