Odds and Ends

As work has taken up a lot of my time lately I’ve found it hard to get on here and keep things updated but fear not, I’ve still been busy in the shop from time to time doing little things here and there.

Lately I was gifted a bunch of odds and ends by a couple of friends who are moving and wanted to unload some stuff they thought I could use. One of them was a box that included a ton of little wooden discs. My first thought was of Mathias and his wooden star knobs… so I made one and simple little jig to help me crank it out. In the final pic of this group you can see it sitting in place on my router table where it will be joined by another to help hold the sliding fence down with the aid of the a couple of 5/16″ carriage bolts through the table.

Something else that came out of the loot from my friends was a two legged stool, something most people would have trashed but as fate would have it, I turned into a functional spot for my hot purple haired wife to sit comfortable on in my shop by cannibalizing an existing stool that had a mishap with a circular saw and was in need of a new top. Simply removed the damaged top and assembled this elegant top on top of the legs to create a comfy little spot for my princess to sit upon. Still need to paint the legs to match but it works and it’s quite comfy.

So at the moment that ends the bits I’ve made from the loot I got off my friends and now I’ve got some other things like a purple picture frame to take care of a rather annoying problem.

Between our bedroom and the living room is this vent over the door, well when anyone goes in the living room and turns the TV or light on, it shines in through the vent and you guess it, is rather bright and annoying when you’re trying to sleep. So to that end I made a picture frame to go along with the New Orleans themed section of wall in the living room… have to say the frame itself turned out great, my wife’s choice in how to hang it however made me cringe as she just opted to run two screws right through the front of the frame… I’ll cover those with some little fleur de lis thingies here in the near future.

Something else I like to do is create stuff from recycled bits I get from work or the side of the road. My latest creation came from two creamer stations that I was given from work when we “upgraded” to new ones… I simply made a frame for them out of plywood and screwed it all together, added some wheels to the bottom and now I have a rolling bin cart.

Not sure if I covered my half-lap picture frames here yet or not but I’ve been making these for a few months now for the posters we have in the house and I love how easy they are to make… well kinda… before they were sort of a pain the butt to do on the table saw so I made a jig to make them with the router ( not going to be possible anymore since I repurposed my router to the router table ).

What this does is let me slide my piece of 1″ x 3″ wood into the slot and route is out on the ends to create the half-lap joint. Doing this on each end of the 4 pieces for the frames lets me easily get the pieces for a frame done in a matter of about 5 minutes once they’re cut to length. I was also able to make a simple little key that lets me quickly set the table to rip down one side straight for the inner edge and for safety purposes the wood gets held in place with a toggle clamp. All you do is move the router back and forth a few times in the channel at the top which has stops top keep in line and boom, perfect half-lap joints for picture frames made from 1″ x 3″ picture frames as seen below and in the purple one above.

And that about brings things up to date. The wife and I are getting ready to head over to New Orleans for our anniversary again and I’m really excited, I always find so much inspiration for things to make over there and one day I’ll have the time to crank some of it out. One a parting note, here’s a shot of my air compressor cart with the air hose and tool holder on the side I threw together to tidy up the mess on top of the workspace. I love that Wen nail gun by the way, far better than the little Stanley electric one I have and lets me get a much better bond on all kinds of things.