CutWood Workshop
What Can I Build For You?
Will Roberts
Owner
For the past fifteen years I have been honing my design, fabrication, and problem-solving techniques in a variety of museum settings. I have worked on dozens of exhibits for a variety of museums. This work ranged from historical furniture reproductions to full-scale natural history dioramas to public computer kiosks to interactive elements for a children's museum and all points in between. As more and more people saw my work in museums, they began to ask me to bring these skills to the unique ideas that they have for their homes and businesses and CutWood Workshop was born! My goal and passion to using my skills in design and fabrication to make your spaces truly yours. I can build you a bookshelf to fit that weird-shaped place under your stairs, or I can create a series display cases for memorabilia from your company's history. Bring me your idea and we will find the way to make it happen!
New Shop Space
Fall 2016
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In August, 2016, my family relocated to Chapel Hill, NC. With this move, we were able to buy a new house with a generous shop space on-site. This is particularly exciting for me because I have always had a commute of some sort or another and this will allow me to escape that once and for all (for now)! The pics above are of the space as I renovated it and a few of the new fixtures I designed and built based on my experience working in other people's space. You'll notice at the center of the shop is a shiny new SawStop 3hp professional cabinet saw. With the long move, I said 'goodbye' to Old Eddie and Young Andy (see below) and once we arrived I purchased the new saw, a new Incra fence system, and built the runout/router table. I also upgraded my dust collection system to rigid NordFab quick-connect ducting. Other than that, the tools and machines are what I had in Denver, just rearranged in the new space.
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Old Eddie
Table Saw
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Old Eddie gets his name from my father, who owned and used this saw for most of five decades before passing him on to me. Mom bought him second-hand for dad as a gift sometime around 1966 or 1967, and we think he was about ten years old at that time. Dad moved him from Richmond, VA to Chester, VA then to Charlotte, NC, Chattanooga, TN, and back to Davidson, NC in 1978. He stayed in dad's basement workshop in my childhood home in Davidson until 2013, when I moved to Denver and dad decided to begin downsizing his own shop.
Old Eddie is a Craftsman model 113.29991. He has had numerous home-made upgrades over the years and remained a reliable tool throughout. The table extensions date at least to my childhood, probably much earlier. Dad added an Incra fence maybe ten or fifteen years ago (good call!). One table extension had an opening and plate to mount I believe a Craftsman router. I modified the opening and replaced the plate with a Rockler router lift in 2014. The large table size and overall heft of Old Eddie makes him good for large glue-ups and finishing as well.
Old Eddie still had his original motor until the spring of 2013 when it finally had to be replaced. I'm sure there's a main bearing to be replaced in the not distant future as well. Other than that, a little routine maintenance from time to time should keep Old Eddie in the CutWood family for quite some time to come!
**UPDATE - April 2016 - Well, about a week after I wrote this lovely piece about Old Eddie I got a call out of the blue from an old friend who lives a few miles up the road that he was about to pull the trigger on a shiny black SawStop table saw since he has young children running around these days and felt the added safety features were prudent. Lucky for me, he had a ~5-year-old Steel City table saw that needed a new home and he was willing to take no more than peanuts in exchange. So, I rented a lift truck and sped up to Louisville to relieve him of his burden and now Young Andy (sorry) has a place in the CutWood Workshop. I've spent the winter making various improvements and additions to the saw, there are photos of these below. Old Eddie is still in the family, but for the time being he's in mothballs in the corner.
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