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For the first piece of actual furniture built from the mesquite slabs we had milled up a few years ago, I decided to build a small chest of drawers to sit by out couch. It came out really great! The top mesquite panel is the star, and just looks amazing. Of course I can point to some “mistakes” and things I would have done differently, but it really is quite nice, and should last us for decades to come.

Frame

We had a cheep set of plastic drawers by our couch with just a plank on top covered with a tablecloth. It was ‘fine’ but looked a bit trashy. Since I’ve been trying to figure out what all to do with the mesquite slabs from our tree, I thought a basic chest of drawers to replace that would be a good project.

Angela and I agreed that 3 rows of 2 drawers each would look and work best. Having just 3 big drawers would probably result in them being filled with too many random things and we’d have to dig around to find stuff. Splitting them in half gives us a nice in-between sized drawer, not too big, not too small. This did have the downside of requiring 6 sets of drawer slides, 6 drawer boxes, 6 drawer faces etc. It doubled the work on drawers, but definitely looks great as the result, so it was the right decision.

Since the drawers would mostly just be an excuse to put the awesome looking mesquite slab on top, I wanted the drawer box frame to at least look decent. So I decided to go with solid 3/4" red oak drawer faces, and 3/4" red oak veneer plywood for the sides. The basic frame is just put together with pocket screws. The main strength comes from a 1/2" plywood back panel.

Drawers

The drawers were by far the most difficult and time consuming part of this. Getting drawers perfectly sized really takes some practice and great attention to detail. Since this was going to be an attempt at a nice piece of furniture, I went with some undermount drawer slides, so things would look nicer from the sides as the drawers were opened and closed.

I messed up the first drawer box 3 separate times before getting it right.

After checking (and double checking, and tripple checking) that I had the box sizes actually correct this time, I set about cutting up 5 more sets, and some replacement sides for the first test box where I accidentally drilled the pocket holes where they shouldn’t have been. Pocket holes go on the front and back where they will be covered up or not visible. The sides are supposed to look the nicest.

After a lot of cutting and sanding and staining I had 6 sets of drawer box parts ready for assembly.

Then it was on to installing 6 sets of drawer slides. The complicated part of this was making sure the slides got installed at the correct height so that the drawer faces all actually fit and wouldn’t get in the way of the drawers above or below them. Being able to set the frame on its side, and having a spacer block cut to the right side made the actuall installation pretty straight forward.

With the boxes finished, and the slides installed, it was time to test fit all the drawers and see if they worked. They did!

Drawer Faces

The drawer faces are made from solid red oak to match the plywood. Getting the pieces all sized corretly was a bit of a challenge. Since each row ended up having to be its own height. The bottom row drawer faces needed to hang over the bottom a little bit. So that row was taller than the others. The top two rows were close to the same size, but the middle row had to be trimmed down slightly to fit. I also put a hefty roudover profile on the edges. This meant that each drawer ends up only being able to fit in exactly one spot. So I also dumbered the backs of the boxes after getting everything installed.

The faces were attached by screwing through the front of the drawer box and in to the back of the drawer face. This part was pretty much just lining things up as best I could, clamping them in place, then taking out the drawer and screwing things together.

Drawer Pulls

Angela picked out some nice looking drawer pulls for them. Since this part really had to be done exactly correct, I got a Kreg jig for attaching cabinet hardware. This was definitely the way to go. There’s no way I could have precicely drilled 6 sets of holes for the drawer pulls and make sure everything lined up correctly. In the second picture you can see the raw mesquite top resting in place before finishing.

USB Charger

Since I’m a huge nerd, I had to also include a USB charging station tucked away in the back panel. Since this was going by our couch, having some extra charging around will be nice.

Mesquite Top

The final step was finishing the top mesquite slab, and attaching it to the frame. I had the top panel assembled by Woodworker’s Source, our local woodworking store here in Tucson. It was assembled from two of the milled mesquite slabs from our backyard tree. Can’t say enough good things about Woodworker’s Source. They have good stuff, and good people to help!

I sanded down the front live edge, and put a 45° chamfer on the two sides to soften it some.

The top was finished with five coats of polyeurethane. I had planned on only four, but an ugly bubble formed somehow on the fourth coat, so I had to do one more sanding and coat to fix that.

And with that it is complete! This project really got started the week before Christmas. Fortunately I was able to get most of the drawer work done over the break, since that did take quite a bit of time. After we were all back to school and work, it was just weekends I had to work on things and get it finished. I’m really happy with how it turned out. I know we’ll use it for years to come, and I hope it has a nice long life!

XKCD recently posted a Geography Challenge to lable all the US States. The catch is that the map has a lot of extra states added. Here was my take on labelling them all.

XKCD comic showing a blank map of the United States with the title: “Geography challenge: can you label all the states?”

The catch is that the map contains 64 states. Here are my new states:

• Andegon (between Oregon and California)
• Noregon (to the east of Andegon)
• Metah (to the northeast of Utah)
• Northwest Dakota (west of North Dakota)
• West Dakota (west of Middle Dakota)
• Southwest Dakota (west of South Dakota)
• Kan’tsas (west of Kansas)
• Middle Dakota (between North and South Dakota)
• Newer Mexico (east of New Mexico)
• Aren’tkansas (south of Arkansas)
• Outdiana (east of Indiana)
• Elevennessee (north of Tennessee)
• Southeast Dakota (north of North Carolina, I mean why not all the Dakota?)
• What The Hampshire (east of New Hampshire)

About two years ago we had a large mesquite tree removed from our backyard. It must have started as a volunteer some twenty or more years ago. It was here and huge when we bought the house back in 2007. The tree was a vicious thing with thorns up to 3 or 4 inches long, and it aggressively hated you. It would drop little spiny sticks all over the place you would step on with your shoes, drag into the house, then step on without your shoes.

We were not sad to see it go.

I had the idea to turn it into furniture.

After felling the tree in the summer of 2022, I left the logs just sitting in the back yard for nearly a year. In April of 2023, we hired some guys to come take out the stump of the mesquite tree, since the original crew who chopped it down couldn’t get the stump out. The guys who took out the stump had a little backhoe and a flatbed trailer, so I had them also haul the two logs I decided to have milled up over to King Mesquite Mill here in Tucson. They milled up the logs into a nice little stack of slabs and leftover bits. Most of the slabs are an inch and a half thick, and a couple are one inch thick.

After dragging the slabs home, I stickered them up and cinched them down with straps and left them to finish drying out. One good thing about Tucson, the dry heat really helps dry out lumber fast!

I really had no idea what the grain pattern would look like on the slabs after milling. The saw marks were really coarse and I knew there would be a lot of sanding involved. I decided to make a rustic outdoor bench first with one of the edge pieces that still had the bark on. I figured this would be a good piece to practice working with it.

I really haven’t done anything yet with “real” wood. It’s all been plywood and construction grade lumber so far. After sinking a fair bit of money into milling the mesquite up, I wanted to make sure I didn’t ruin some of the nice large pieces. So the edge piece seemed like a good one to start with. Worst case is I lose a not-so-great piece. The ends are also really thick, anywhere from 2 to 5 inches, so if I ruined a finish I could just sand the heck out of them and try again.

I started with sanding down the good side of the log. The first session was about 3 hours of slogging through sandpaper discs. I used up two 80 grit discs, a 120, a 180, and a 220. But after all that initial work, I had managed to sand out the saw blade marks, and get it down to the grain.

And the grain looked GOOD.

In the spirit of keeping this project “cheap”, for the legs I decided to make them out of a redwood 2 x 4 from the home center. I squared up the board, cut some basic tapers on them, ang glued them up. I was really pleased at how well these turned out for being an off the shelf $12 2 x 4.

To attach the legs to the bench seat, I cut slots into the underside of the log’s bark side. Then I drilled a deep hole through the center of the legs and screwed them into the seat from below.

With the slots cut and the legs glued up, I was ready for a dry-fit.

Since the bench will live outside in our garden shade house, I figured I would just finish the piece with several coats of polyurethane. After getting the first coat on the bench seat I was stunned with the color that popped.

After a total of four coats of poly, sanding between them with 180, then 220, then 240, and buffing the final coat with a crumpled up paper bag, I was done!

I was really just thrilled with how this project turned out. This was my first foray into milling up lumber, and I know that when you mill a log, you can’t know what the inside will look like until you’re done. I’ve been biting my nails for the past 6 months waiting for the wood to finish drying. So after getting this first piece sanded and finished I am really looking forward to working with some of the flat slabs. Since this first piece was only flat on one side, I decided to just sand it by hand after propping it up on blocks. For the other slabs that are flat on both sides though, I plan to take them over to Woodworker’s Source here in town and have them plane and sand it down on their large equipment. 3 hours of sanding per-side is something I don’t really feel compelled to keep doing myself. :)

Pie Rates of the Caribbean

We headed over to San Diego again this summer for the week of the 4th of July. Mostly hanging out with Angela’s family, hitting the Zoo and the beach!

We stayed in a small hotel on Shelter Island. Breakfast in the morning by the pier with hot cocoa!

There is a little beach right nearby, of course the girls immediately ran off and got soaked in the sand. Weeks afterwards, when you ask the girls what they liked most about the trip, its the beach they remember.

We went to the San Diego Zoo on another day for the first time. This place is huge! Were were there about 6 hours, and we maybe saw 30% of the place?

We did get to see the pandas which was pretty cool.

And of course, we had to stop by the petting zoo :)

We also went to the ships of the maritime museum. They have a ‘brand new’ old ship there which is a modern re-creation of a 15th century ship from the age of exploration.

For Angela’s birthday we went to the Fishmarket and stuffed ourselves silly!

All in all, an excellent trip with a wonderful family.