The Northern Woods Exhibition sponsored by the Minnesota Woodworkers Guild is in full swing at Southdale Center in Edina, Minnesota.

The cabinets are beginning to take shape this week with the assembly of the sides and bottom.

The Entry Hall Mirror project calls for key hooks that will be on each side of the cabinet interiors.

In a post last September, entitled, "A Place for Machines," I chronicled the refurbishing of a vintage Davis & Wells boring machine that I now use to cut slot mortises.

Curved, tapered doors make positioning the hinge mortises interesting. I must be careful to ensure the hinge mortises are parallel to the front face of the door.

Surface preparation with the hand plane and cabinet scraper is now complete.

Last week, a small diversion from the entry hall mirror had me working on this pencil holder. With a quick sketch, an even quicker mock-up and a couple scraps of wood, I found this to be an enjoyable little project with few complexities.

As I prepared the surfaces of the mirror frame and inner cabinet sides for assembly, I also bored several holes for dowel pins. This will help to keep the parts aligned during glue-up.

It's now time to make the cabinets and fit them around the mirror frame. The yellow birch parts are rough cut and machined to thickness, ready for final milling and shaping.

I especially enjoy projects when I'm able to create all the parts, even the hardware, right here in the studio. Here I'm making a pair of brass wall brackets for the back of the mirror.

The top rail of the mirror frame projects slightly beyond the vertical stiles. These end-grain surfaces are chamfered, softened and finished prior to assembly, since it's much easier to control the process before the parts are assembled.

Rough milling of the yellow birch is completed and I've gone ahead and milled the frame members for the mirror.

As the season turns, I'm returning to an entry hall mirror that I started a while back. The yellow birch wood I found for this project has a great story.

We often talk about having a proper balance between the use of hand and machine tools. I use both in my work, but today I’ll tell you about a recent find, a machine, that will be a great addition to the studio.