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!

Bug Boxed

as i have heard it said many times, its about timing, listening and talking. that is how work comes your way first.

was chatting to a friend who had an idea for her kids birthday party coming up but was a little stumped by the resources that she required being unavailable. she wanted to have a birthday party in the bush and give the kids the opportunity to to find and catch bugs, putting the bugs into a breathable easily open-and-close-able container that can breath. she had a sample of what she wanted but could not find it anywhere. i had a look at it, did some costing built a basic prototype with some scrap and we had a deal. 

i cut up some 9mm plywood for the main construction and glued and nailed it together using some brad nails after drilling a "half hole" in the one end with a hole-saw to create an opening, an "entrance to demise". poor bugs...

after a quick coat of clear lacquer the body was covered with some fly net, the kind you use to keep the bugs from coming in the window. i added two little eyelets to accept a handle. the handle was made using some brightly colored shoelaces that i slipped through the eyelets and knotted together. 

the party was great fun. it was held in a wooded park and the kids were taken on a walk. some chocolate eggs where hidden in the bushes encouraging the kids to keep their eyes open. loads of ants, 2 huge millipedes, some spiders and other bugs where examined very closely. worked better than i thought...

this, that, some births and those ones

it has been a super crazy busy time! if i did not have some sort of measure of the amount of water that flowed under the bridge since my last post i'd swear i was here yesterday!

remember the light butler? well the light butler did what butlers do and opened a door to a little something that has been a lot of fun so far! i was approached by Sonja from Shoppe who got hold of the butler (and has since given it a happy home) and asked to make more lamps in that style suited for a desk or a table and the "sitting man lamps" range was born. 

they are about 250mm tall as the sit without a lamp. they are available at Shoppe so feel free to drop them a line. my idea was to have them in a relatively relaxed positions. life is often a little too serious.

something else happened along the way, i had been cultivating a healthy amount of face fuzz and needed to maintain it. i tried all sorts of expensive conditioners and shampoos but without any really satisfying success. 

the more i researched the more i came across all sorts of beard oils. now here i just want to note that just as a designer ski mask in the alps is some thing entirely different to a designer ski mask in the bank this is oil FOR a beard NOT FROM a beard... funnies aside  this stuff actually works fantastically well to soften the coarse facial hair that sprouts on ones shin. i did some research and yet another birth occurred. Mein Herr Natural Products. 

the range now sits at 4 beard oils, various body soaps, shampoo bars and we are working on a natural underarm deodorant all of which are hand crafted vegetable oil based and enhanced with essential oils. keep an eye open for future blogs and hopefully a website that will make these products available to you where ever you are to assist you to move over to a healthier way of maintaining personal hygiene, without harmful chemicals. spend a couple of minutes and see what Enoch says in the video below. this was the source of our soap conversion.

we are currently selling to friends and using on ourselves and our children to make sure that get the best oil combinations and the difference in our skin and hair is amazing! 

here is a shot of our little "soap-shelf" in my passage where we cure the soaps. it is now completely full and the need is starting to arise for a second shelf. lets just say that my house smells FANTASTIC... 

(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...

Framed

so if you read the last blog you might have or might not have been waiting for the update on what i did with my window frames. well i have done nothing with them. it has been an incredibly busy time of year and i have been unable to accomplish anything tangible.

i have been watching a lot of youtube though. i love youtube. i have learnt so much from there. people freely sharing their knowledge, sometimes sharing mistakes that they have made. there is a lot to learn from there. i follow a couple great people on youtube. yes there is a lot of junk there too, but you just filter and then keep what you like. one of the guys i follow on youtube is called steve ramsey. he does woodworking. what i love about his projects is that they show that it is not difficult. he would take seemingly complicated things and make them simple without using complex or other than the normal tools or equipment.

i really liked a picture frame that he had made in the beginning of this year and was really keen to try it. i needed an excuse though... my sister in law got married and i had committed myself to making a wedding gift. she got married last year, so i was really starting to feel the pressure. here was my excuse.

most hand made frames' downfall are the mitered joints. if you get these wrong then the frame looks shoddy. i wanted mine to be perfect. well steve knew that and in that same week uploaded another video showing you how to make a simple jig to get yourself perfect miters every time.

these are the videos i mentioned:

and

having that ammo i made both. my miter sled is not as neat as his and i did not think it picture worthy but it did the job and that matters .

the frames started as a small sheet of plywood that i got from a crate that i picked up for free. yes the free stuff again! i stripped the crate and used its lid. i followed the same process as on steves video. "want to be any good? then copy the masters" they say. so i cut some strips of plywood. laminated them and worked them into the basic frame shape (cutting the rabbet for the picture to sit in etc.) 

then came the careful measuring of the picture. while preparing for the wedding last year, i found some owlets in a tree and took a picture of them. i had this canvas printed and blocked to A3 size. 

i'm known for making a hash with cutting so i measured and remeasured and it paid off! here is the frame around the picture for the first time:

 when i glued it it measured square without any adjustments. that mitre sled is really a neat little addition to a workshop and will be used quite a bit more in the future. i sanded the frame as smooth as i could get it and then beat it with a piece of chain i found in my workshop. making marks in the wood. i used some black spray paint and gave the wood a very light coat of black. immediately after spraying i would rub the wet paint into the wood with a cloth. i then proceeded to sand the entire thing again. all the little indentations where now highlighted by the black paint. it also gave the corners and edges more definition.  the frame then got a coat of raw linseed oil. i love the smell of linseed oil. i gave it that "not-born-yesterday" look. exactly what i wanted. 

to mount the picture in the frame i used some hard board/masonite that also got a coating of linseed oil. these where just nailed in place at 45 degrees. yes i measured each on to make sure. i also fitted some wire to hang the picture. i had to use screws to hook the wire around since the frame is fairly heavy. 

i'm super stoked about how this turned out. hope she likes it! 

i'm now getting closer and closer to being able to rebuild the engine on the honda. a little more shop cleaning and i'll be there. hold thumbs!