Learning a thing or two about woodwork

I am not sure if I am ever going to consider myself a "real" woodworker.  I am not that talented and everything I make is a bit of a struggle because I don't exactly feel like I know what I am doing but I am not going to stop because I really enjoy it.

• I love building useful items and seeing them in my house all of the time.  It makes me a feel a bit proud.
• I love the physical aspect of working with the materials and really love working with my hands.
• I love creating things from wood
• I love thinking about the projects and figuring out how design what I want that will fit our home.

But here is the honest moment, I am really not that good at it.  This takes time and there is so much to learn.  I am impressed by what guys with experience can do.  When I was younger I never had a much respect for woodworkers and what they really do-  now I am a bit blown away.

Anyway the babbling is over now-  If yo follow me you know that I have been working on the bunk bed I designed for Marcus for a bit of time.  It is actually really getting close to done now.  I have been working on building the hard part (or at least I think it is)- adding the side rails for the bed. It has been really hard to figure out how to get these on straight- we have a ton of clamps but none big enough to get the side rails in place.

When I was at Home Depot the other day the guy recommended a right angle clamp and when I got home I looked it up.  It looked like this was the perfect tool for the job and even better it didn't look that difficult to make one.  I grabbed some scrap wood from the bunk bed project and started sawing-  I ended up using the compound miter saw, the band saw, and and drill bit.  It was pretty awesome and only took about 15 minutes!

Here are some pictures of me using it to get the boards in place-  it totally worked and I was amazed and so happy!  With their help the bunk bed will be finished in no time at all!

Do you need some of these for your woodshop?

Here are the directions I used to make them.

Right Angle Brace Directions