WoodMarvels Blog

It took us but a few months but we have reached a new milestone here at WoodMarvels.com… our 50th model! We have thus launched two new portraits, one called “Waves of Hope” and “Freedom” which essentially describes our motto here at WoodMarvels. There are many options in life, but spreading hope and the idea of freedom are always in style. Enjoy building and showcasing these great looking wooden portraits at your home or woodshop.

Well, we are starting yet another new series here at WoodMarvels.com… Portraits! Nothing shows your dedication to the craft of woodworking like your very own wooden art lining the walls of your home or cottage. There are great projects to get very well acquainted with your scroll saw or jig saw. These are unique patterns of which there are many more to come. You can find both of these wood blueprints in the “Portraits” category.

We hope to have the animations for these two wood portrait plans up shortly, Revver is undergoing some headaches at the moment so we are unable to upload the related animations.

Well, as you can see, we are done streaming all our animations so not only what your new Marvel will look like but also how it’s constructed. Each new model we release now will have the streamed animation tacked on as well, just go to the product listing or information page to see the 3D animation.

We have been rather busy over the past few weeks but now that this streaming business is behind us, I am pleased to announce the release of a few more Wood Marvels. The first, a great looking Centrosaurus to compliment our other fossilized friends in the Dinosaur category. There are also two new showcases being released that can help show-off all your cool stuff to any visitor within your domain and even better, a very functional organizer. You can find each of these new product lines in the newly created Display and Organization categories.

At WoodMarvels.com, we pride ourselves with providing great plans at an affordable price but even better, we try to make our wooden marvels as easy to produce as possible using the fewest steps from start to finishing. Unless otherwise indicated, most of our joint cuts are at 90 degrees and usually require no more then a good jigsaw, sharp woodworkers chisel, some glue and a drill as equipment. You will notice that we rarely have a need to use nails in our plans, the reason for this is:

• our models aren’t usually supporting a load or under heavy stress
• we use each piece of wood to re-enforce the other where they join, you will notice a heavy use of pins to achieve this
• we tend to over-build our models, this is done on purpose so that they last as long as possible

What is the difference between pins and dovetails?

Although both are used extensively in the furniture building industries, you don’t see these types of joints very often in other applications. Basically, a pin, as illustrated above, are straight 90 degree cuts while dovetails are at an angle. The reason why they are used is as a re-enforcing mechanism, especially for drawers and they also look great. Other more advanced methods of creating structurally strong joints are by using biscuit joints, mitered joints, mortising chisel (using a drill press), mortise and tenon joint, lap joint and dowel joint. WoodMarvels.com has stayed away from these advanced methods so far in our models but we do use dowels in many of our plans to act as both a guide and re-enforcing method across multiple pieces of wood.

How do you make pins without a router?

Here is the easiest method for achieving the pin look using only the simplest of tools. Of course, if you do enough of these freehand, you will want to get yourself a jig and router but they aren’t essential. So far, none of our models are built using dovetails or more advanced joining methods because our goal at WoodMarvels.com is to keep things as easy as possible for the woodworker with a limited tool set.

Remember the rule, measure twice and cut once… well, always mark your cuts before you cut them.

Drill a pilot hole or as many as necessary for the length of the pin you want. This will save you a lot of wear and tear on your jig saw and nobody wants to chisel for hours on end. The reason why you drill your pilot holes FIRST is because you want to drill into a solid board, not one that has been cut before which is prone to vibration and shearing.

Now you are free to clear out the material within the outline you made previously. The easiest method is to cut 90 degrees into the board followed by cross-cuts. You can then use the chisel to get to harder to reach areas followed by rough sand paper if needed. Be sure to watch your hands during this process so as to not add a red stain to your wooden marvel!

Conclusion

That wasn’t so hard was it? Well, be sure to get lots of practice using scraps from your scrap wood pile before jumping onto a project, of course, there are other methods of producing these which we will cover another time.

The Bottom Line

If things seem as simple as they look, they usually are.

After a lot of hard work improving every aspect of WoodMarvels.com, I am pleased to announce the launch of our Woodworking Tools & Equipment Shop has now been launched. You can now purchase all your shop equipment from the comfort of your computer and have everything shipped right to your door!

Our Woodworking Tools & Equipment Shop offers you a way of supporting WoodMarvels.com on it’s continuing mission to release great woodworking project plans at an affordable price, utilizing the best technologies out there including preview 3D animations. You also save a lot of money and enjoy a convenience that is hard to beat.

We have some other great advances planned in 2008, expect the great news to keep rolling and thank you for your support.

Things are progressing very well, I expect the entire process of streaming all of our current wooden project plans 3D animations to be finished by sometime Monday. Only a few more are left to be done and we have also taken this opportunity to update ALL of our blueprint template files with a an easy to use grid format. Being able to see a 3D animation of what you are about to build is invaluable… and we are more then pleased to offer this to EVERYBODY! This has been an incredibly hectic time and all of our products are now better then before as a result! I would expect to launch some new models starting again on Monday
Here is another animation that just finished, how to build a wooden submarine! Step-by-step construction guide for this submarine is available in the “vehicles” category.

This is currently our only Level 3 model but we have plans on building a number of more complex wood project plans in the very near future. Stay tuned and enjoy this animation.

We are now about 40% through streaming all our 3D “how to build” wooden animations, things are progressing very nicely and we look forward to seeing the positive impact of this on our site well into the future. Here is the stream of how to build a wooden crab, you can purchase the wood project plans for this under our Crustaceans category.

Things are progressing very well, we have added streaming 3D to 15 percent of our products now. So far my favorite is the streaming video of our Mayan Temple Bank.

Ever since the seed behind WoodMarvels.com began to take root, I wanted to stream all the animations for our products online for both clients and guests. The major obstacle to this was bandwidth costs but now, thanks to Revver, WoodMarvels.com can now offer this to everybody (clients and guests alike). We believe it will better help you understand what you are purchasing and 3D animation is a fantastic tool to follow along with our wood building project plans to better see how pieces fall into place.We need to re-render all our animations to the new format which will take at least another two weeks but afterwards, we will be releasing new models at our regular frantic pace as always. Here is the WoodMarvels.com animation of how to build your very own 4-in-a-Row Game whose plans you can purchase in the “Game” category. You can see these are they become available at our Revver account. If you wish, here is an explanation as to why we chose to go with Revver over Youtube.