I'd like to use this as a way to hold myself accountable for pursuing a goal I am particularly excited about.

I've had an interest in woodworking for quite awhile now, and I find myself having access to an extensive workshop and materials, for a very fair price. Comparable to a gym membership.

But I have otherwise been in school full-time, and it is an intense workload, that I'd like to decrease to something more manageable while maintaining my financial situation.

So, I'd like to set a goal, at the end of this current semester, I will spend my time pursuing a living through woodworking and other interest driven mediums that is equivalent, or better, than my current financial situation.

Tuition for 4 credit hours at my university is $3,399. One semester is ~16 weeks, so 4 months of education benefits, $1950.

= 11,199 total over 4 months

= 2,799.75 per month


I want to reach this goal by August 1st. From now til then gives me roughly 4 and a half months to learn as much as I can, build upon my skills and potentially create something that could make me a living.

A nice round $3k a month, while completing part-time school, by August 1st 2019.

Part of what I am currently working on. This is how I am constructing the apron for my desk.
I hope to learn a lot throughout this process. Provides me an opportunity to use a few different tools to help work on joinery.
I plan on having the corners of the table legs come up through the top of the table so the joinery can be enjoyed from a normal view as well.

Currently I have the table top cut and glued, I chose poplar.
The apron is cut to length, but no dados or angles cut for the ends. The shop didn't have anymore poplar so I chose ash instead. I like the slightly different look.
I plan on either finding a dark piece of another wood for the legs, to contrast the table top and add to the design, or I will stain the legs different colors than the top/apron.

Spent a few hours today working on my current project.

I purchased cherry for the legs, I'm hoping it creates a nice contrast on the poplar table top when they poke through.
I cut the dados for the apron, but not the legs. It took me awhile to figure out good lengths, dado depth and thickness.

In the end, I chose to go less than half way through each portion of the apron, and I left those pieces 3/4" thick, which may bite me in the ass when it comes time to doing the 2" legs.
I don't like the idea of having a + 3/4 x 3/4 " intersecting a 2"x2" leg, i worry the corners will be weak. Guess we'll find out tomorrow when I go back to cut those out lol.

I overestimated how much time I have to spend thinking and measuring 4-5 times before I am confident I have things right. Nonetheless I am learning quite a bit, and it is beyond exciting for me.

Hopefully I can finish up this project with only 2, maybe 3 more days at the shop. I have 3 days a month with my membership, and I am not too keen on increasing it to the next membership level. Becomes quite the bill and I'm not even making money yet.


/e

Here is an image from solidworks that I drew up last night/this morning. I didn't finish mating the pieces correctly, as you can see from the completely fucked leg corners coming through the wrong spots on the top.
I believe the error is in the hole placement on the top, i can readjust using the mates from the apron + legs to find the exact spots some other time.

But i think this image shows the idea pretty well. I will have a darker wood as the legs, 4 corner squares for each leg, poking through the top so as to kind of show off the joinery.





This post was edited by Genniv on Mar 15 2019 04:42pm