DGM Woodworks

The Week in Review

This is the first week of the year that I feel that I have accomplished very little in the shop.  Holiday weeks are a good excuse for me to catch up on a good novel, or get a few rounds of golf in with my friends.  What little time I did spend in the shop was spent working on some new jigs for projects that I have been wanting to build.   I plan to add lazy susans to my product list for next year and I had to build a jig for my bandsaw that allows me to cut circular disks.  I actually got some circles cut out today using the new jig and I believe it will work fine for my application.

I also finished the oak serving tray for a customer.  I’ve never done one of these, but it was a fun project and a welcome diversion.  I think I am going to make up some more using a mix of contrasting woods, possibly for gifts.  I really don’t know where I would put them in my show booth if I tried to sell them.  But who knows, I may find a spot.

I mitered the corners and added a walnut key in each outside corner to add a little interest, as well as additional strength.  Once the glue dried, I cut the walnut flush with a Japanese trim saw and sanded them smooth with a random orbit sander.

The good news is tomorrow is golf day with my Son-In-Law and another good friend of mine.  The weather is suppose to be nice and we should have a great day.

Thanksgiving Week is Here!

I hope this will be a quiet week.  Last week was a little intense preparing for a large closet installation and then getting it installed on Friday.  Online sales are up right now so I am content to pack and ship this week.  I also have a custom order butler tray that I am working on for a repeat customer.  Time in the shop when there are no pressures or deadlines is something I rarely get to experience.

I’m also listing my entire inventory on Etsy in anticipation of Black Friday.  I usually list three or four items each day, but still have a lot of items to go.  These are products that were hot sellers at my shows this fall, but have never been listed online.  I never felt that I needed to sell them online because I keep selling out at shows.  I replenished my stock after the last show and now it’s time to see what they do will do online.  They are mostly face grain boards of different sizes and wood combinations.

In 28 years, our family has never had Thanksgiving at our home.  We have always spent this holiday out of state at one of two different relative’s homes.  We are staying home this year, so I am cooking my first turkey for my family.  I’m use to going to relatives and kicking back all day, but now I get to work this year preparing a meal that I have never done before.  Actually, it’s the clean up I hate. But, maybe if I take a nap after the meal, it will all go away by itself.  Happy Thanksgiving!!

Finally Sold Out

I finally sold the last six wine snack trays this week to a repeat customer.  I made 50 of these trays up this spring because I needed to add new products to the mix, plus they are such a functional and useful item.  They sold so slowly at first that when I went to the Foothills Fall Festival, I didn’t even set them out in the booth initially.  On the second day, I was selling out of some products and was pulling everything out of my trailer to fill product holes in my booth display.  I finally set two boxes of the trays out and they immediately started selling.  I sold the remaining 10 to one customer at the Avondale show the following weekend.

I had six more sitting in the shop that were cut out and sanded, but didn’t have the finish applied yet, and I wasn’t planning to do anything with them right now.  A customer emailed and asked if I had any more, and when I told her six, she bought the rest.  Sometime between now and when my first show of 2010 kicks off in March, I will be making more.  I am probably going to mix it up a bit and add contrasting woods to give them a little more “wow” factor.  These in the pictures are curly cherry and were just too pretty to add anything else to them.  I also had walnut and ash ones.

Wet Man Cave

I blogged a while back about a basement remodel I worked on for a couple of months, but never posted a picture of the final product because I kept forgetting to take my camera with me.  Well, I finally got an opportunity to get back over there the other day, and this time I took my camera.  This room was like a dungeon that contained nothing but piled up junk.  Now it is a “Man Cave” with a bar, 65” TV and surround sound system.

During all the rain in September, the customer’s ground got so saturated that water started coming into the basement through a cinder block wall.  To show how much rain he actually got, the customer has lived there for 30 years and the basement has never flooded.  Fortunately, the water only got into the front half, soaking the carpet and baseboard trim.  All the custom cabinetry I built is located at the rear of the room and was not affected.  After running a dehumidifier for about a week, it was dry enough to put the trim and carpet back in place.

The square bookcase out in the room is a wrap around, four-sided bookcase, that hides a 4″ diameter pole.  The stone wall was a bare cinder block wall that we covered with stone veneer.

I love the occasional rainy day

It’s the general consensus in Atlanta that we have had enough rain to last us the rest of the year.  However, it’s been dry for over a week and I am trying to get winter rye growing on a slope next to my house, so it was a welcome relief to wake to rain this morning.  The weather also put me into one of those modes where I just don’t feel like doing anything of any real importance today.  I have a backlog of work to get started on, but I decided to get pictures shot and products posted on Etsy and Appalachian Craftsmen web sites.  It’s also a good excuse to sit around, drink coffee all day, and aggravate friends on Facebook and Lumberjocks.

I created a lot of new board styles this year and told myself that I would shoot pictures of them when I got back from each show.  I didn’t know that all these items would sell out at each show, so when I got home, I had nothing to photograph.  I spent the last two weeks building my inventory back up and finally got all the photos shot this morning.  Now I have the ardent task of posting each one on two different sites.  There is a little urgency on my part because the Christmas buying season is on us and I have already made quite a few trips to the post office, over the last few days, shipping boxes to customers.

Photographing my products is relative easy.  It’s just setting everything up that is time consuming.   My umbrella lights generate a lot of heat, so during a long session, I tend to work up a sweat.