Rosalia Bed

Designed and built Rosalia her own “big girl” twin-size bed. The headboard, footboard, bed rails and guard rails are all made from solid birch. The mattress frame is made from select pine. The footboard and headboard are glued so they’re permanent pieces. The bed rails attach using fancy hidden hardware that saved me the time from pounding out mortises. The guard rails are fastened using screws, so they can be removed with age.

The bed is a solid as a tank, and I’m really happy with how it turned out. Rosalia loves her big girl bed.

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Workbench v2

Built a new workbench to replace the treated-lumber table I made a few years back. The problem with the old one was that it was made in a hurry (an hour before people were coming over to eat outside) so using wet treated lumber caused it to warp, and the casters were never really mounted in a way that made it easy to use. It just took up room and collected junk. What’s the point of having a workbench table if you don’t use it?

The goals of this version were:

  • Super mobile – I want it to be able to move around the garage to wherever I need it
  • Table saw height – I want to use it as an out-feed table. Also, I find working at the table saw comfortable because it’s just the right height (~37″)
  • Rock solid – I want to be able to bang on it and put really heavy things on there without it warping or distorting
  • Small enough to be functional – I want the table to not take up as much room as the other worktable, which just was a dumping ground for 4×8 sheets of plywood. The size of the top is just large enough to accommodate the bed project I’m designing.
  • Easy clamping  – I want to be able to clamp work pieces down to the table really easily. The 2×4 lip around the edge of the table made clamping a dream.
  • Good work surface – I like using the cast-iron top of the table saw for general working, but I don’t like to risk damaging the top. I also like the flat and smoothness of MDF, but it can damage easily. I chose this cool black melamine top, which combines flatness and easy to clean surface (one that glue squeeze-out will be easy to clean)

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Raspberry Pi Box

Took some time this last month to work on trying to make a box out of bloodwood for a Raspberry PI with integral recessed area for the LCD touch screen. The idea was to mount the screen / PI to the top block and then figure out how to latch it to the box underneath.

So far, I’ve managed to break a slew of 1/8″ router bits, even being as delicate as I can and doing many shallow passes. Perhaps the wood is super hard or I’m just being careless. Who knows.

The project was a fun excuse to practice box joinery techniques using a router jig. Had some reasonable success there, though there was some occasional tear out. A table saw jig would be better but I used what already have.

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Rosalia Crib Redux

We received an heirloom crib that many family members used. In order to use it however, some work needed to be done to bring it up to safety standards.

First, it was originally a drop-side crib. These things are deathtraps to today’s standards. Additionally, the wall slat width was substantially larger than todays ~2″ standard. Those two things combined basically meant that new walls needed to be built from scratch. Also, my father-in-law spent some effort refurbishing and paining the crib before I took it over.

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Logs to Lumber

The idea of turning the trees that fall down in the yard into lumber sounded really cool. I’m sure it’s much better for the environment than using it as firewood.

I recently acquired a 14″ Rikon bandsaw that I’ve been drooling over for a while, and it’s the perfect machine for resawing logs into lumber.

Conveniently, the winds knocked down a few trees in the yard, so I rounded up a few of the logs (box elder and willow) to run through the bandsaw.

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White Elephant Rum Box

Our company had a white elephant gift exchange where the gifts should be meaningful, not garbage. I opted to make a quick and dirty box to hold a bottle of special edition Captain Morgan 1671. The idea was to make a box that, when aged, might look like it could have held the old-timey bottle.

I made it out entirely out of scrap wood laying around the garage. Lathe strips, 1×2’s and some sort of 1″ stock on the face. Shot it together with staples and gave it a quick sand. Finished it in less than an hour, including Sketchup time.

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