Best Ideas

Here are some pictures of the sanding process before staining and finishing. I have a total of a day and a half wrapped up in just sanding. This is an important step to get the look and feel of the door just right, and alot of the finish look depends on how well the sanding is done. The first picture is a "before" picture, and then there are two "after" pictures (one of each side).
An easy way to determine if you are sanding everything to one level, is to make light pencil marks on the surface, and continue to sand them out until they come off evenly. It is a good and simple technique, although it takes longer with white oak because it is such a hard wood. I prefer Norton sandpaper over 3M - just seems to last a little longer...

The last of my tool panel up-grades will be the chisel panel. In an effort to save little fingers, but not take up more space, it will actually be a shallow cabinet with a tambour door. Ive never made one of these before, and I thought it might be wise to experiment a bit.

Heres a shot of the bench after messing about for a little while:


One piece of the tambour (do those parts have a name?) is lurking under the left holdfast. The tracks were made with compass, knife, gouge and router plane. The first was sized for 1x8 stock, but I decided that would stick out too far from the wall, so I tried a 1x6 size. Seems like it will work fine, unless I want those chisel handles angled out, in which case itll have to be deeper. Hmm. Decisions, decisions...