Making Use of a Gnarly Mesquite Burl From South Texas - Bed Build 

Can we all just give a round of applause to Robert real quick! That joinery he cut for the table base was not easy and he nailed it. Really proud of him!!

the front of that bed frame looks so good

Hey Andy not often I feel like I can offer you any advice, but on the welding side I can. Professional welder here. 1- highly suggest picking up a 75/25 (mix of argon and CO2) and running solid wire instead of flux core. Welds will be way cleaner, weld faster, and give a better appearance 2- when I’m welding a box together, I cut one of the pieces 1/4” short on all sides. That way you are an 1/8” short on each side. This accomplishes a couple things, you are welding on the actual corner and not one of the sides, it gives the weld a space to fill in, keep in mind with welding you are adding material and it goes better if the weld has a space to fill up instead of just laying on top, less sanding because you have to remove less material, and a stronger joint because you removed less of the weld material. 3- if you are butting together two pieces, leave a small gap between them to give the weld somewhere to fill into and penetrate deeper Welding tips and tricks RU-vid page is great for a guy trying to learn I’m out of DFW, Be glad to help you through and questions you may have and offer solutions on how to make things easier.

Nice job Robert! I’m jealous of the wood and jobs y’all get. Mine are boring, but I’m learning…lol

Rockler makes a portable drill press. Would be handy for big pieces. Take the press to the work instead of the work to the press.

It all looks great, Andy. Bill

I lived in Texas half my life and it always hurt my heart to see mesquite go into BBQ wood (although the BBQ tastes great). It’s such a gorgeous wood.

Man hats off to Robert on the joinery. Great projects all around. And if your a maker you have to a little crazy. It helps plus if you sane you would be at a desk and bored out of your skull.

That's one beautiful piece of handcrafted furniture!

Some sketchy drill press work haha get a portable drill press guide, highly recommend!

That's so beautiful. You guys did an amazing job. I just finished my own live edge headboard. Nothing so grand or elaborate as yours, but I'm still proud.

Being in the Pacific Northwest, we don't have Mesquite, but a friend of mine is a traveling sawyer, and when he comes back from the Sunbelt area he always has a few pieces, and I'm always trying to get my hands on it. Simply gorgeous material, and definitely challenging to play with

I am always amazed and awestruck ed by your beautiful work ❣️🙏❣️

The piece is stunning but quick question would a drill jig be a better solution than trying to wrestle that assembly on the drill press ? Big fan of your work just a question

Pretty fantastic work, guys! 😃 Stay safe there with your families! 🖖😊

The bed is gorgeous.

I was here for the argosy, stayed for ridiculously cool stuff like this. So cool! Five years ago I would of said why no epoxy. Glad it’s five years later.

Andy keep up the great work

I’m still with ya!

It would be incredibly functional if the metal frame for veneering could be hoisted up into the top of the shop when not needed & that could be purely an assembly table in those moments.

Hey Andy, I think you want to run the auger bit sticking out past the chisel by an 1/8” or even up to 1/4” so it drills first. Then the chisel just cleans up the cut. You might be getting material jammed in there and heating up. Nice work, you and Robert!

Beautiful craftsmanship on that bed! I had to skip through the vid though and couldn’t finish watching because of the shaky camera segments. But still, great job on the build

Thank you for what you do! As a video production suggestion, one of the RU-vid channels I watch started putting a black box/background behind the white text they are using. That made a HUGE improvement in being able to read their white text over their video background.

Andy,I loved the look of the headboard and foot board of that bed! Just in case you weren't aware, one thing to be mindful of with mortisers is ensuring proper placement of the drill bit. There needs to be just the right amound of clearance between the underside of the tapered bit and the inside lip of the square chisel. Too close and the two surfaces will rub, causing friction. Too much space and the bit will wander excessively and there will be misalignment of the hole the outside cutting surface of the square chisel. Another great video, so thanks for sharing with us. I'm looking forward to the detailed build video on the lecturn.

Very nice peices

Who knew Andy welded? Don’t recall seeing that before.

Sure does feel good when the joint is cut RIGHT

Ok, I'm terrible. I see a big piece of mesquite I think of a big piece of beef!

Why don't you guys use the hold downs on the mortiser? or move the table instead of unclamping the workpiece and moving it? Those are some of the cool functions of that machine. Hope you can find the double cutter mortising bits somewhere. Great project and thanks for posting

I so enjoy your videos! Could you possibly increase the font of your captions?

Thanks Andy. I really do like that joint for the skinnier catalog table you are building. What would you call it? You and Robert make a good team. I enjoy seeing the intershop banter between the two of you. As a hobby woodworker, the only talk I have is with my sweet lab Tango. She listens well but doesn't speak much.

In the meantime with the mortise machine tooling issue would it be worth roughing out some material with a handheld drill ?

Andy the problem that you are having with the mortise machine and finding good parts to do the drilling, just a suggestion for you and you never know it may help. There's a RU-vid channel called "The 2nd Empire Strickes Back" and the guy is called Caleb, basically he is restoring a victorian property that was owned and built by a gentleman who manufactured woodworking machines etc back in victorian time's. Caleb knows another gentleman who actually collects and restores this original owner's machinery among other's. I know that Caleb has purchased machines from this person for his own workshop. Basically if you can make contact with Caleb he might be able to put you in touch with the other chap in question. You never know he might be able to either sell you the exact parts you need or supply you with details of a website or even details of a place to actually buy the parts you need from. You never know if he cannot do either of these things he more than probably can help you by him restoring the items that you have that are either damaged or chipped and too dull to use back to almost original quality. I'd love to hear if you have good results from this suggestion. As always buddy 💯% 👍 🇬🇧.

Hope you don’t think I’m being an ass with my comments I love workshop joinery served a good portion of my apprenticeship in shops and I miss it as I made the wrong choice in a way to go and chase money on building sites erecting timber kits and doing the roughing and finishing work

Beautiful piece but painful to watch the drilling.

I didn't realise there were multiple projects in the video. I thought maybe its a bed for exorcisms where the priest reads the bible from an alter at the foot of the bed.

First comment lol

This sounds too eazy.

I work almost exclusively in mesquite. It is a fascinating wood.