4 Creative woodworking projects to try this holiday season

Once again the holidays are fast approaching and what a time to start thinking of gifting our loved ones. The value of a handmade gift can’t be stressed enough. A woodworking project presents an excellent opportunity to make something for yourself, friends and family.

Consider the woodworking projects below that would make incredible holiday gifts for most people. The majority are easy and take only a couple of hours to complete. You can perhaps build some of them using scraps in your workshop.

1. Toy Train

Perfect if you’ve your kids, nieces or nephews that visit you during holidays. Kids love to ride and play with trains. The wooden toy train isn’t the real deal anyway – just a plaything – the car and engine features match joinery details.

At the mention of matching joints, the mind conjures up boxes. Dovetail jigs present an easy way to construct dovetail joint boxes, and a dovetail jig is employed to fuse two materials at right angles. Such technique also applies in the making of drawers, boxes and our case, part of a miniature train.

2. Dovetailed puzzle box  

A puzzle box doesn’t consume a lot of material. It’s lots of fun and quite challenging to construct but necessarily keep you holed up in your shop for weeks on end. A puzzle box will also fascinate anyone who attempts to open it.

Puzzle boxes are symmetrical bearing interlocking dovetail keys and slides. All sides are identical, same as the top and bottom parts.

How do you even open the box? Which is the top? The answer isn’t obvious for now, but don’t attempt to solve it, for now, concentrate on getting the project done.

3. Continuous- Grain tapered-side box

For persons keen on showing off their woodworking prowess and possess wood bearing beautiful linear grain pattern, consider taking up this project.

The continuous refined box design – as expected – is more challenging to construct compared to say a keepsake box.

The tapered-side box faces’ flow smoothly all the way through the corners and adjoining faces – and round the box without breaking – the grain thus becomes a central piece of the design.

You may enhance the design by tapering the sides, hence allowing the eyes to quickly take in the regular run of grain even at corners.

4. Wine presentation box

Supposing you’ve got a wine collector for a friend, a wine presentation box project should rank highly among projects you consider undertaking. No better way to celebrate friendship with a wine aficionado than buying him an expensive bottle of wine presented most uniquely.

Bottom line

There you go, four simple DIY projects you can work on this holiday season. As you contemplate on the woodworking to undertake in the forthcoming festive season consider employing an electric hand planer – an essential tool for both hobbyists and professional woodworkers.

Shaving off wood may seem simple to the untrained or inexperienced eye, consider the following piece on ‘why you should own an electric hand planer’.