My Life

A New Hobby: Woodworking

After I moved out of the condo I was living in during the “are we going to get divorced?” phase of the marriage breakdown, I setup the garage in my new house to become a woodworking shop. There were two main reasons for this.

The First Reason: I had no furniture! Obviously over fifteen years of marriage we had accumulated lots of furniture, but I left most of that behind (I had thought my leaving our home would be temporary). I didn’t want to fill my new place with junk stuff, so I started to learn to build my own.

The Second Reason: I needed a new hobby to kill time when I did not have the kids.

The first project was an entryway organizer for the kids to keep their coats/backpacks/gloves from spilling everywhere. It turned out to be slightly too large and took me the summer of 2016 to complete.
entry

Since then, I’ve built a handful of pieces, and I’m still learning. Next time maybe I’ll post some newer work.

Hope everyone is enjoying their weekend. Take care.

Also, if you are interested, my short-story collection, “Bone Dreaming”, will be on an Amazon countdown promotion starting on Monday, the 4th.

Link: https://www.amazon.com/Bone-Dreaming-Callings-Brent-Knowles-ebook/dp/B00X1PXKRQ

Former lead designer at BioWare (Dragon Age: Origins, Neverwinter Nights). Creator of Raiders of the Serpent Sea.

5 Comments

  • Craig Dolphin

    looks good Brent. :) How are you cutting your mitre joints? I use a compound chop saw but I find the angle accuracy to be not as perfect as I’d like or furniture-level stuff. And the jigs for doing it by hand are even worse.

  • Brent Knowles

    I’ve been doing everything by handsaw (more recent stuff with a circular saw)… I definitely lack the proper tools / setup. (Though I’m researching what I need if I’m going to continue with building higher quality furniture.)

    The quality by hand is pretty much what you’d expect… I tend to have to do a lot of mucking about cleaning things up, recuts, etc.

    What do you think your ideal setup would be?

  • Craig Dolphin

    Ideal? Not too sure. Right now I have a basic workshop with cheap table saw and compound mitre saw etc (craftsman). But the fence on the compound mitre saw is definitely not straight so you have to set the angles using a square for each 90degree cut, and pray and hope for other angles. I’d love to get some more professional gear but I don’t do enough to justify it.

    One thing I do use and love are the Kreg pocket screw jigs. Great for hiding the fasteners on furniture and joing plywood etc. Worth checking out IMO.

    In any case, I hope you’re enjoying your time at Beamdog. :) Still wish all you former Bioware types there would start creating new IP’s. :)

  • Brent Knowles

    Thanks for the info. I’m looking into a table saw in the near future. I’m using the Kreg screw jigs too… I find them very useful.

    I’m hoping over time I can start building up my shop, and I’ll let you know if I come up with anything reliable. Getting more consistent with my cuts is on my “must do” list.

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