(not) just a number

this will be just a quick one. when we moved into our house my mom gave us a house warming gift for our new wall. it was one of her early laser cutting projects, a gate number complete with the inscription "made by mom" loved this number but over time the sun had completely deteriorated the vinyl numbering. it had dulled so badly that people were struggling to find my house. it was time.

i found some old pallets at work and joined them together and shaped them to a bit of a cowboy town styled plaque. i used the jigsaw and hand cut some numbers from some scrapped plastic that we had at work. i suppose it was more like a nylon than a plastic, but i'm not really sure. it was nice and rigid about 5mm thick and looked like it will do the job. i first tried to cut the numbers on the scroll saw but the blade was not aggressive enough in removing material, making a beautiful fine cut but heating the material up to just melt together beyond the blade again. i found a jigsaw blade with teeth that were not set to the side. this did a great job of cutting the plastic. i then hand finished the numbers with needle files.

i used some more of that home made vinegar stain that i used on the sound box to get the wood darker. applied loads of raw linseed oil and mounted the numbers. 

this is strikingly more visible from the street, day or night. not made of brass, so less likely to get stolen and cost nothing but some time. i am very happy with the end result! 

Sound in a box

Our Church meets in a  local school hall. it is really a lovely venue. the building is fairly new and the facility is well looked after.

the school has some sound equipment that they use for assemblies and events that was sitting on he edge of the stage and really was a bit messy. the problem is that if equipment is left open with lots of hands and fingers around, then it does not last. the the pastor asked me if i can build a box to house all the goodies that was sitting on the side of the stage. something that they could lock to keep the little sound desk and the wireless microphones and other paraphernalia that they had there safe and neat. 

great project. i took a couple of basic measurements to make sure that everything that needs to go in will fit and then designed a little box with a lid and two doors that could lock with just one lock. 

i decided to make it a recycling project (you might have guessed this by now). so everything that was used (except for the fasteners) was recycled from something else. 

at work i once made a jig once for a colleague,we tried to make some dune boards (in lunch times of-course), used the jig once and then it sat, for years. so i cut it up and made some hinges that would allow the door to open up a full 270 degrees. in other words it would be able to fold right back against the side of the cabinet.

here are the hinges and other locking hardware right after i painted it. 

i still had some of old crates left. remember the drawers and the speaker shelves? same material: 16mm plywood. 

i cut it up and shaped it and then assembled the box. here is a pic of the assembled box.

i watched a video on YouTube once where a guy made his own wood stain using vinegar a steel-wool. this seemed to fit right in with the wholes recycling idea and i made some. you basically pour some vinegar into a container drop some steel wool in there and let it sit for a couple of days. it all ferments nicely and TADA!!! a chemical wood stain. works pretty well. here is a comparison with the box coated and the lid of the box still un-coated.

the school is celebrating their centenary year this year and i thought (since it was a gift) that we could celebrate it with them. i hand cut some lettering from the left over material used for the sign that i put up in my garage. these where spray painted (with paint left over from other projects). i then fitted them to the side of the box. i also made a little "recycle" emblem to remind everyone that the entire unit is proof of the worth of recycling. 

after varnish (i used some that i had from the restoration that i'm doing on my doors and windows at home) i fitted the box at the school. i mounted it to the side of the stage where they used to keep it and moved everything into its new home. 

i had made provision for the cables to be routed through the side of the box that was out of general sight. this worked well and there was enough slack in the cables to comfortably reach the new destination. admittedly i lucked out a bit in that last detail...

the locking mechanism was simple pieces of metal shaped to the desire shape that lined up in the front to accept a padlock. the lid fits in behind the doors and at the back, a piece of angle iron was inlaid into the plywood (keeping the back flat so the box would still mount flush to the stage). so the lid slips in under the angle iron and behind the doors. when a padlock is fitted everything is locked together and the bax cannot be opened. 

total time spent on this box from design to final mounting was about 60 hours... 

light butler

i love having a picture in my head and being able to make it real. so others can see it too.

for a while now i have been wanting to make a lamp that can light up your book that you are reading and hold the book till you have time for the next chapter.

ok sure put the lamp on a table and sit next to the table. but what if you could sit close under that lamp that had its own table.

i had 15mm (half inch) copper pipe left over from previous projects at home so that was it. i carves some feet out of some pallet wood with a jigsaw and some rasps. and made a little plywood base. this added weight and stability to the lamp that was about to grow out of it.

from here i started to build a little man with cross-overs for knees and combinations of 90 and 45 degree elbows for the hips shoulders elbows and neck.

it holds a little table made from an off cut i had int he shop. the base was stained and all the wood was given a coat of boiled linseed oil. the copper was cleaned off and also rubbed down with some linseed oil.

the cable runs up the left leg, up the spine and the light is operated by a foot switch. this was loads of fun to build! and i'm loving the end result.

best of all, the light butler is for sale... 

still alive

i have always thought that people that say that they don't have time for stuff just need to prioritize. i would like to apologize to those people... i have been extensively prioritizing the last little while and thus managed to both eat and sleep (a little). at least that is what it feels like. 

but i have been able to get my hands on some goodies and to make some other goodies and have been having fun. 

my automation for my gate, the gate motor, died. it gave us little notice and i found it rather rude. we had not other choice to replace it. like most diy jobs its always a quick and easy "little"' project until you get started. lucky for me i had ll the power cables and intercom cables conduits in place for the new installation. shock and horror thought when i removed the old motor to find that the conduit was coming up out of the ground int he wrong spot. it  was a long week, working on the installation after the kids went to bed every night but may i say, i wish the old unit had died earlier. it has been a lovely upgrade! i even installed safety beams so i no longer run the risk of my gate closing on my visitors cars! 

with the ground sloping quite a bit towards where the motor is placed, it is always a problem when it rains. loose soil gets washed into that area, grass cuttings joins the fray and regular cleaning around the mounting area was regularly required. this new installation was special and did not deserve that kind of invasion. 

so i tried my hand at bricklaying for the first time. i guess that is why i waited so long before posting anything about it. it was the first time. i needed to make sure that wall stays standing before i tell the world who built it... it sis also the only picture i have of the entire job. don't think it is too bad for a first go... 

drawing closer...

so back in the studio!

we needed some packing space in the studio. nothing is a better clutter hider in my opinion than a good set of drawers. dump it in close it up and the place is neat. big drawers are even better. instead of buying some loose drawers we decided to that i would make some. in steps the old crates once more. i was determined to try and use as much free / scrap material as i could to make this set of drawers.

on deciding this i quickly set up a Sketchup drawing of the carcass for this unit to get an idea of what i'll be looking at. at first opportunity i cut the wood for the carcass and assembled it. the whole thing is held together with glue and pocket hole joinery.

i'm really liking this whole pocket hole joinery something i saw on YouTube and had to have it! my wife bought me the tool for my birthday last year and i imported it (with the aid of some international forum friends) on her behalf. was cheaper than buying it locally... check it out here.

next up was the actual drawers. did i say this was the first time for me making drawers? when you make drawers is ti relatively important to get the gap perfectly right for the drawer runners. if not your drawers are going to be stiff or not working. not nice. these drawers being the first ones, was an ordeal to say the least. and having a serious head cold while making them did not help. i made the mistake of pushing on the runners while measuring them. the pushed in 1 mm. over two drawer runners that makes 2mm - can you see where i'm heading. it ended up up with my assemble drawers being 2mm too big for the gap.i was elated to say the least...
long story short i managed to fix it by removing one of the ends and slicing 2mm if with the circular saw, free hand, and then sanding it flat. i got them all precise. 876mm. yes these drawers are 876x350mm big. they are big drawers!

that was a horrible day of struggling and sweating to get the drawers made mounted and working. worked well in the end though.

drawer fronts. had loads of wood off-cuts from the fence project that i did before and has luckily not had the time to throw any of it away. i took these off-cuts and ripped them to thinner strips of about 15mm and if what was left was a decent thickness i used that too. i then just roughly cut all of them to various different lengths. the little pieces where then glued to a sheet of masonite. and left to dry. i cut the faces to the correct sizes from this sheet i created and fitted it to the drawers. 

i made the handles with scrap from the scrap box at work and the just bolted into the drawer. the whole unit was coated with some linseed oil. i'm loving this! 

and so the blur continues. we are not quite done with the studio. drawing closer to the end of this chapter now.one small little thing left and then i might just be ready to move on... 

Blur

the last little while has been a making, busy, blur! in the beginning of the year we set up a list of things that need to be repaired, restored, fixed etc. we have climbed into that list with a monstrous fervour. most recently my wife's music studio got attacked.

originally it had about 6 different colours on the walls. being a small little space this made it look messy and cluttered. if a place looks cluttered when its empty, adding furniture often then makes it worse. the room needed help.

in stepped a fresh coat of paint. this made a phenomenal difference.  having all the walls the same colour makes the space seem a little bigger. this is opposite to what i have heard but the solid colour makes the walls seem longer. strange but in my mind its cool. anyway...

something that was taking up lots of floor space was the speaker stands that we use whenever she gets a gig somewhere. these speakers also double as the sound system in her studio. shelves where needed. no i don't have progress photos for any of these things. remember the first statement? everything just happened. we don't even have a before picture of the studio. i had some plywood from some old crates that got thrown out at work. the speakers where going up in the corners so measure the angle of the corners. (nothing is square at my house...) cut a circular sector out of the plywood. i also just drew a nice pattern and made the brackets (i don't know what you call those) that hold the shelves against the wall.

those 'brackets' are held on with pocket hole joinery. go search it its pretty cool.

 at work one of my colleagues needed some beefy tent pegs. the little ones that came with his gazebo where just not doing the job the our coastal winds. i agreed and went scratching in the scrap box at work. i found these 8mm stainless steel rods.

cut them to size

welded and bent them to shape using some acetylene heat.

these are some beefy tent pegs but they ended up being too thick and did not fit into his gazebos peg slots, so made some thinner ones that i did not take a picture of.

i got to do some sand blasting for another friend who is busy restoring a radial arm saw from the 70s, i think. etc and so on and so. the projects are now piling on! lets keep going...

Privacy settings

i love being at home. my workshop and garage are places where i relax. two hours in my garage - even just cleaning, has a similar effect to a day or two leave from work. what i do not like is an impromptu audience.

my garage faces the road the. when i open my roller door then the entire shop is exposed to the road, and as any human being would, passers by always have a nice look inside. unfortunately, crime makes us skeptical of every stranger. terrible, i know but hey... having just recently had the paving in my driveway repaired and leveled my kids were aching to ride their bikes in the driveway. because of the a fore mentioned skepticism i'm not comfortable with every passerby having a little dialog with my toddlers... point was the steel palisade fence was far to open.

closing it up completely is not a very safe option either - i have been told. i decided that i'll go with an idea that i had ages ago to put wooden slats in between the galvanized steel palisades. leaving a gap between for two reasons: 1. there will still be a level of visibility through the fence, but looking in will no have to be deliberate as the small gap will not give a clear view to the moving passer-by. the second reason was wind. the steel palisades are only bolted into the clay brick wall that it it is standing on and a proper coastal storm ,m like we occasionally have will create some unwanted diy if i were to make the fence a complete barrier.

i shopped around somewhat since everything is done on a shoestring budget. the hardware shop prices were ridiculous. i found a place that treats the timber and mostly deals with round poles. the wood was pressure cooked in a chemical i only know as H3. it is rot and bug proof. (if the timber is in contact with soil then you need to use the ones treated with H4)  i used 75x25mm pine fence slats of various lengths for the different parts of the fence.

after catting all the slats to the precise lengths required, i cut the corers off the tops at 45 degree angles. i used the miter-sled that i used to make the picture frame. i simply cut one corner flipped the wood over and and cut the opposite corner. adding a stop to the sled (i just nailed it on temporarily) made the cute repeatable for every slat.

i then drilled holes (roughly 25mm) in the tops as well. i like adding a little detail to stuff. it removes the "homemade" factor. but i did not take a picture...

now it was the job of fitting the slats to the fence. my initial idea was to drill through the galvanized angle iron and bolt the wood to the steel. after careful consideration i realized that making a hole in the galvanizing would introduce rust. and that would kill my palisades fencing. so i went back to the wood shop and bought more slats. i ripped these slats down the center and used then behind the fence. putting a bolt through the fencing slat and through the wood at the back fastening it with a nut. this effectively clamped the wood to the metal without damaging the galvanizing. the bolt holes where drilled after getting the slat in place. turns out the gaps in the palisades are not nearly as accurate as they look...

and there is was. the wood was given a coat of boiled linseed oil, only because it makes the grain pop out, and that is nice. the effect is great, my kids are loving being able to play in the driveway! and i have not set foot in the garage since i finished...