Teardrop Travel Trailer

Dave from Juneau built this beautiful teardrop travel trailer which proves the Shopsmith can take on a project of any size.

The trailer itself is wood strip western red cedar, alaska yellow cedar and purple heart with steam bent ash trim. The strips were ripped on the table saw, and planned to 1/4 inch on the SS. The cabinets are ash and cherry with hand caning...of course, all built on the SS. The whole trailer is fiberglassed and sprayed with Dupont Chromaclear auto clear for UV protection.

I don't really have a shop, so the trailer and tools occupied a large part of the garage. That's one really nioce thing for me about the SS. On a project this size, I tried to do the majority of the ripping and planning of the strips outside in the summer to keep the dust down. It took about three winters to complete as a hobby.

This pic of the front shows a little better detail on how the cedar strips are put together.

The trailer has a front shelf and rear cabinets in this cherry with ash inlays/caned theme.

Open Sided Bookcases

Forrest from Huntington Beach, CA sent in pictures of these great bookshelves he built for his wife.  Great job, Forrest!  My wife recently asked me for something similar so I might steal some of your design.

This bookcase was my first.  It is about 4 ft tall made of mahogany with shellac finish.  The top is frame & panel.

My wife then wanted 2 bookcase, white, each 3 ft tall.  The prototype turned out to be too short for her needs.  Poplar with brush painted Behr interior acrylic.

She liked the 'open' look and wanted 2 at 6 ft.  Also polar but spray painted with Sherwin-Williams pigmented lacquer to match the window cornices.  To enhance the 'open' look, I painted the back the same color as the walls.  The mouldings are store-bought and the reeding with a hand-held router.

FOR ALL FOUR:  I used the SS table saw, jointer, planer and drill press not only for the cases, but also for the several jigs that I made to ease machining.

Model Car

Considering the craftsmanship on this model car as well as the size, I don't think it's fair to call it a toy!

Here are some photos of my homemade 'Rolls Royce,' my "Project Heavy Roller."

The Shopsmith and its Bandsaw were my main tools.  For patterns, I mostly scaled-up a tiny antique bookend I have, which has a miniature classic car on it.

I roughly cut and bored some walnut wheels to accept some 6203 bearings I had on hand.  After initial turning on the Lathe, I epoxied the bearings inside the wheels, then used a simple jig to turn the glued bearing/wheel combinations against the 12" sanding disk, so that their perimeters were dead true and concentric.

The Drum Sander was very helpful for shaping the wheel-wells of the fenders in a ganged fashion.

Horizontal Boring is one of my favorite operations on the Shopsmith. When using drill-bits, I probably do 70% of my jobs in horizontal mode and 30% in drill-press vertical mode.  Using horizontal-boring allowed me to put dowel-holes in my "headlight blank pieces" prior to turning them, and put dowel-holes in the "engine cover & hood" block, all at precise orientations.  After turning my headlights on the lathe, I just doweled them to the body and they aimed perfectly straight with no fuss at all.

Some steps of the assembly are shown while the woods were fresh (walnut, padauk, cherry, maple, zebrawood, myrtle).   There is also a "aged one year" photo showing how the cherry and padauk have darkened while the walnut has lightened slightly.

Best Regards

Chris
Indianapolis

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Child's Rocking Chair

This great little rocking chair was built by Bob S. in St. Louis Missouri for his granddaughter. 

This Teddy Bear chair for my GrandDaughter was built with my ShopSmith. Using the table saw, jointer, bandsaw, router function disk, belt & drum sanders.