Because we don’t want to waste any of God’s bounty, we’ve made some end grain cutting boards from the left over pieces that are too small to use in a furniture project.
Because these are end grain, they will not dull your knives. Â Move over Boos, there’s a new cutting board boss in town! Â ha ha.
Birdsmouth Joint Example
This bowl was made using Maple for the sides, Oak for the bottom and an inlay made from Purpleheart, Maple and Ebony.  The recipient wanted a tray to live by the door and be durable enough to toss everything  from keys to cell phone inside without needing to carefully place things to avoid damage.
We constructed this tray using a birdsmouth joint and then sanded it round. Â We finished it with 12 coats of high gloss urethane for a very hard, scratch resistant surface.
Our “go-to” method of  joinery (assembly) is mortise and loose tenons because it is as strong as the proverbial country mule.  The strength on this joinery is unparalleled.  If it ain’t broke, why would we fix it?    You’ll see in the pictures below, this is the method we used for base of these Garden Benches as well.
Unlike Frank Lloyd Wright, who purposefully made chairs so they wouldn’t be comfortable as to discourage long visits from guests, we want these benches to be comfortable enough to sit on for hours. Â As you can see we have a curve in the seat supports. Â The human body doesn’t have any perfectly straight lines, why should a bench or a chair? Â Â Â Each of the slats has been rounded over so there are no sharp edges to dig into people’s legs.
For some visual interest, we used a combination of wider Mahogany boards and thinner Red Oak  laminated strips for seat slats.   We used  White Oak stepped dowels to attach the slats to the bench’s base frame.  This also allowed some additional visual interest and though you can’t see it in the finished product, we drilled the holes for the dowels at an angle. When you cut off the top of the dowel and sand it even with the slat, you can’t see the angle.  This technique helps keep the slats from having even the slightest change of pulling out over the years.
All these methods worked, because we ended up with 6 grown men sitting on one of these completed bench and it didn’t even creak!
The benches are finished with marine grade spar varnish with a satin sheen. Â This should hold up to heat, sun and rain to welcome visitors for a good many years to come.
We were privileged to receive a request to restore this old lectern (ca. 1947-55) owned by a local Monastery. It was in fairly rough shape.  You could really tell the difference between the original craftsmanship which had beautiful dovetails and meticulous work throughout, and the less original ‘quicky-amateur’ repairs.
The lectern had been badly patched with some rather aggressive-threaded & rusted screws,  old cracking glue, checking (splitting), rings from something wet being left on it and some red waxy spots. It was also quite rickety. We wanted to restore the original artisan’s quality; to show the original woodworkers the respect their efforts deserved, and were therefore very excited to get to work.
We pulled everything apart and … threw the screws in the trash!  Because the upper shelf was too far gone to save, we grain- and edge-matched a new replacement piece of red oak.  Mortise and floating tenons were used to reattach the top to the upper shelf platform, and then the new upper assembly to the lower cabinet body.  We also plugged all of the screw holds with solid oak plugs.
The Monastery no longer had the original keys to the locking top, so we plugged the old lockwork mortise and keyhole with red oak and then re-mortised the new block to accept a new stainless-steel German-made locking mechanism.  We put in a new hand-cut key hole and completed it with a relief carving.
The middle shelf inside the lectern body was only a half shelf, and an after-thought at that.  It was pulled out, and replaced with a full depth red oak shelf for more storage.  We recessed and glued in magnetic catches to keep the lower cabinet’s door closed.  We were asked not to replace the panels in the front of the frame-and-panel assembly (and don’t think we didn’t beg them to let us!).
During one of the lectern’s other, ah, “repairs” the feet had been roughly screwed back on. We recut the original mortised channels for the left and right side to properly plug in to the lectern’s base studs and glued them back in place for a tight, piston slip-fit! Â There! Now that’ll last 80-90 years, and look Ma — no screws! (Honestly…..cheap screws and cut nails to try and hold the feet!! Really?)
We had been asked to use a dark cherry stain and matching dark hinges. Â We were able to find some simple yet elegant oil rubbed bronze hinges and used GF Georgian Cherry to hand-stain the entire piece.
We then followed everything up with 10 coats of HVLP-sprayed Semi-Gloss Polyurethane, each of which was then hand rubbed.  The Abbot and Monks were ecstatic with the final product.
