Letter box

i got approached by someone that saw the bug boxes. she had a specific requirement for a post box and could not find anything in the shops. we agreed on a time and we met at her house to see the space and to take some measurements.

she needed the postbox to be fastened to the existing steel palisade fencing above a short column next to her pedestrian gate. the problem was that the gap between the palisades did not allow for any of the horizontal letter openings that were available in local shops. could not get a box with a vertical opening.

we had a short discussion around the picture in her head, combined a couple of quick ideas and i went of to go and draw. a couple of design adaptations later and we settled on an idea.

the main construction is plywood that is covered in a product to keep the weather out. the sides are to be clad in aluminium creating a loop at the top to allow bigger articles like news papers to be delivered (gulp - my first time doing this scale of sheet metal work on my own). the exposed edges gets painted a colour that matches the rest of the fence.

the box construction was pretty straight forward cutting and gluing. the joints were held in place with some brad nails and clamps till the glue dried. i made a little "tunnel" around the letter opening to help keep water out and make it more difficult to retrieve items from the front of the box. i hope this is sufficient.

the door that covers the opening at the back is hinged with piano hinge to spread the load of the screws on the wood. the door needed to be latched in the closed position, i bought a cupboard latch that would hold the door closed. this latch usually gets operated from inside the the cabinet but this was not possible with the completely closed box. i made a hinged handle on the outside that gets connected via a piece of thin brass rod to the latch on the inside. lifting the handle unlatches the door. this was too much fun to design and make and it works like a charm!

after checking that there where no gaps in the joins and sanding the box it got treated against bugs and then coated with "Aqua shield". this stuff seems pretty cool, in the hardware shop product display there is a chipboard box that is coated with this stuff. it was then filled with water and left. there is no swelling in the chipboard and it has been standing like that for months. the shop has actually covered the top of the box with a piece of see through plastic because the water was evaporating... My postbox got coated inside and out.

i painted the box with a green coat of enamel and then started to tackle the unknown. the sheet metal...

i decided that the easiest way to get the curve on the top was to create a "buck". a form over which the material can be shaped. so i cut some  circles to the right diameter out of some scrap plywood and cut some notches. i held them together with some hot glue while cutting.

i then assembled the whole thing to match the size of the top of the box. its all held together by brad nails, i was not worried about what this looks like since it only got used to shape the material and then it gets discarded.

the bending process took some thought since the buck had to be held in place but i could not screw it onto the letterbox in anyway since it would then damage it. i tied it on using tie downs making sure that ratchet is located at the bottom of the box. this worked pretty well to get the preliminary shape. for this i carefully marked all the screw locations on the aluminum and drilled it. all the holes got counter sunk from the outside to get the screws as flush as possible. tricky when working with sheet that is only 1.5mm thick. i then rough cut the this side and fastened it to the side.

with the buck in place it got bent over. i used the heat gun and a rubber mallet to provide a little persuasion to the the curve the right shape. i then removed the straps and marked and drilled the other side. ( this makes it all sound so quick! )

the unit got rough cut again using the jigsaw to get as little material possible sticking over the edges.

after a little research online to make sure that it will not damage my tools i decided that the quickest way to the sheet flush with the sides of the wooden box was to use a flush-trim bit in the router. this work very well, taking slow cuts and clearing the bit when it got clogged.

i buffed the outside of the box to get rid of the little scratches on the outside. and gave the whole cladding a coat of clear lacquer to try and protect the shine.

since the box was going to be fastened through the front panel i needed a "foot" to hold it up in the back. i found some scrap stainless, and tried some YouTube acquired blacksmithing skills. and put together a foot that would go under the back of the box, getting fastened to both the underlying column and the base of the letterbox.


for the inside i cut and drilled a little piece of flatbar to spread the load of the screw heads.

installation went really smoothly - i really focused on the measure twice cut once principal and it paid off. the box mounted dead straight in the gap! the over all picture was good. the mounting is nice and sturdy and it blends well with the rest of the fence. the numbers where cut with the jigsaw. it felt so wrong leaving the completed letterbox out in the weather like that!

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...

Play house

A couple of months ago I got given a pile of crates that required a better end than the scrap heap. so i stripped them all into sheets and designed a little playhouse for my 2 year old girl. I bought some 38x38mm batons that were treated for insects and cut slots in them. i then slid the sheets into the slots and made a basic box with holes for windows and a door.

Needless to say this Impressed Emily to no end! she was running screaming with her hands above her head lie the woman that get stuff on the Oprah's favourite things show.

I lined the door and window holes with more slotted batons. making the structure stiffer and stiffer as I went.

No house is complete without a roof, so up went some trusses and i made a little patio outside the front door. i had paint left from  painting my house and covered the entire structure with a couple of coats to seal and cover the wood.



With it being easier to paint a room where you can stand up straight, i decided to get most of the painting done before the roof went on. All the trusses got a coat of Plascons "Carrot Muffin", and i painted the inside of the house the same colour as Emily's bedroom.

Had to putt a tarp over the top since it started raining and the roof was not up yet...

I took some more of the sheets and cut them into strips fr the roof. A friend let me use his nail gun to get the sheets onto the roof. After being very sceptical of the nail gun idea i must say that after having used one, the sincere need to have one in my tool kit settled on me in earnest. Now I just need to convince my wife. the entire roof got coated in a water based bitumen type product and then painted with roof paint.

Things got a bit busy and the house stayed like this for a couple of months. Until last week when my wife reminded me that the house still needs a door. I remembered an old folding desk that we converted into a shelf by removing the desk top. I thought that a solid pine stable door would do the trick and proceeded and cutting up the old desk top. I routed a lip so the doors could hook into each other and made a heart shaped peep hole in the upper door. these then got hung with some cabinet hinges, and it looked pretty cool.

Everything then got taken off, sanded down and varnished. In anticipation of this door i had turned some door handles on my little lathe and made something up so that there would be some way to grip the door.

The handles got mounted on the door with some sliding bolts on the inside to connect the upper and lover door and to "lock" the door into the door frame. I added a little piece of off cut wood to the lower end of the door frame to ensure that the door could not be pushed past closed by an over enthusiastic little one.

Inside of the house needed some touch ups so i repainted the ceilings and the touched up the trusses. the skirtings also got painted. no little cottage under a fig tree is complete without some terracotta tiles so next i taped some masking tape on the floor and painted the floor. .

The end result was pretty pleasing, Emily loves it and all her dolls have had a meal in her "new" house.

Covered in clay

So my mom in law turned 60 a couple of weekends ago and we signed up for a visit to celebrate. The visit turned into an early Christmas because we will not be seeing that part of the family over the actual Christmas time. 

This year moms house was full and we got to stay with my wife's dad on the farm just outside the village. He lives in a house that he literally built with his own hands. 

Cob, a mixture of clay and dry grass, is rolled into balls, slapped in place and shaped with your hands making the wall. This is done in a circular fashion, working your way around the wall until you get back to where you started, by which time the cob should be dry enough to start the next layer.

This process is followed until the desired height s reached. After all this you need to seal the clay from the rain, else it will just become a neatly washed pile of mud. To seal it, it gets plastered with a mix of clay and lime. Then you roof it, floor it, furnish it and move in (in short that is).

What a lovely place. Because of the thick natural walls the temperature is beautifully regulated inside, summer and winter. None of the walls are perfectly straight, giving the house a lovely natural feel.

At night everything settles due to temperature differences, making the house feel alive as it moves at night. A huge porch gives a lovely farmhouse feel and give a great vantage point to enjoy a stunning view over the farm and of the surrounding mountains.

The only thing missing is a line up of motorcycles and some sort of a test track... LOL!! I don't think that dad will bite though... :)