I finally made it through this one. It’s a copy of a Stickley #72 magazine stand, and it only took me 7 weeks and much fussing and cussing. I learned a lot though, including the lesson that I prefer hand tools for most precision work. I screwed up the legs on this piece twice and had to make them over due to router mishaps. I bought a plow plane, and things finally made more sense. The primary problem with power tools is that you can’t really see what you are doing most of the time and when things go wrong, it’s almost always fatal. There are some botched spots on this, but they didn’t mean starting over— they just meant accepting that I’m human.
I like the way the top finished up:
I pretty much followed the plan from Popular Woodworking’s Arts and Crafts Furniture Projects except I did curve the sides to match an actual Stickley piece from an auction site. I thought it looked a bit better that way. Next up, I think I’m going to build a Limbert bookcase with glass doors. I have most of the panels glued up and the pieces rough cut already. I’ve been sticking to cherry wood for this crop of projects. I actually worried that it was longer than seven weeks since the last finished project, a faux Arts and Crafts bookcase from the same book:
I didn’t write anything about that one, because it was pretty basic. Nonetheless, it did involve 24 mortise and tenon joints and was a good thing to practice on. This magazine stand, however, marks my first attempts to use the router plane, the plow plane, and the spokeshave. Of course it’s got its rough areas, but eventually I think I might actually become passable at this furniture building stuff.
