Heath's Woodworking Projects

[heathicus]

Late mother's day present for my wife:

[heathicus]

Continued from this thread: http://shopsmith.net/forums/showthread.htm?t=12659

Here's the pine Barbie doll house I built for the girls (the oldest will be 7 in July, the youngest 6 in August - 13 months apart).



It's not quite yet finished, but the major work is done. I still need to do some more sanding. Ever since I told the girls about it, they've been so excited about painting it themselves and I couldn't say no. So, I'll hand it over to them (and mom) for painting. Then I'll put the back on. (I figure it will be easier to reach everywhere to paint and give them plenty of room to huddle around it for doing so if the back is off.) There's no telling what it will look like when they're done, but I imagine there will be a lot of pink.

I used dados reinforced with dowels to join the horizontal shelves/floors to the sides. I cut the dados with my Sawsmith RAS and I think that is now my absolute favorite way to cut dados!



The divider "walls" use dowels. No dados.

My two mains concerns from the previous thread was the roof and the front rail at the top. For the roof, I decided to just use a piece of 1/4" plywood. It was very lightweight and will hopefully be very stable. The roof is hinged at the peak and opens to create a storage compartment (or the attic as the girls are already calling it).



I screwed the hinges on to the wrong side and the "good" tear-out free side ended up facing the inside.

For the rail joinery, I used dowels again. Two at each end. But for the top dowel, I elongated the mortise. I used no glue on either of these dowels. I wasn't able to draw the joints tight together doing this, but that should give contraction/expansion room so it won't split and crack in the future. (I did cut off the dowel and sand it flush after taking this picture.)



The only metal on this piece are the hinges and the screws to attach the hinges. And the nails for the back when that is installed.

[nuhobby]

Great job x 2, Heath!

[bffulgham]

I'm sure your girls will treasure this for years!
My 2 are still wagging things around I made for them many years ago.

[JPG]

Late mother's day present for my wife:

Sheesh the one on the left is weird!:D




Oops! That is not thee!:o Nice looking kid!:)




Those other two must take after their mother!



Three female red heads? You are a gluton for punishment.



Very nice idea!!!!

[heathicus]

Sheesh the one on the left is weird!:D

I'm telling him you said that! LOL

Oops! That is not thee!:o Nice looking kid!:)

Yeah, I wish I were still that young! That's my oldest, Alan. He's 13.5 years old currently. In the pic, there's a window in the background that makes it look like he has a dangly earring. I didn't notice that until after I had printed the picture.

Those other two must take after their mother!

Three female red heads? You are a gluton for punishment.

I printed the pictures on regular printer paper with an inkjet printer and also did not process the photo for correct color adjustment weirdness from the lighting.

The oldest girl, Aeryn, has straight dark blonde hair. The youngest girl, Zoey, has very curly light brownish hair. Their hair is actually pretty close to the same color, but Aeryn's is lighter. (Alan's hair is darkest of the three.) Not sure where Aeryn's straight hair came from as both her mother and I have (or "had" in my case) curly hair. The blonde came from me, the brown from their mom. Unless those things skip generations or something.

Here's a picture my wife took with natural sunlight. It's on the same table as my picture. The color still isn't perfect - the girls still look like they have red hair so maybe that was the fault of the cheap printer and paper.

Very nice idea!!!!

Thanks! It didn't turn out as neat as it looked in my head. But my wife says she loves it and I believe her, so I guess that's all that matters.

[heathicus]

I didn't really get good pictures of these boxes before I got rid of them. I built them for friends of mine:



The Batman box was for one of my best friends from high school. He lives a few hours from me and we meet up every year for a science-fiction convention in Lake Charles. The last couple times we've met up he's had some comic books for me that he picked up. I wanted to make something for him and he's a huge Batman fan, so I came up with this box.



I used the jigsaw attachment for my 10ER with a scrollsaw blade to cut the interior of the box as well as the ring around the Bat-symbol. I don't have a blade guide for the jigsaw so the blade was hard to control resulting in the egg-shape and, uneven lines. It's made from Ash. For the Bat-symbol itself, I first used some ebony stain, then some black spray paint over that.



I generally take two approaches to my woodworking projects. I either have somebody I want to build something for and I come up with a project. Or I come up with a project that interests me then decide who to give it to. The Batman box was the former. This Star Trek box was the latter. After our annual sci-fi convention meetup last year, and seeing all the handmade crafts in the dealer's room, I entertained the idea of doing some sci-fi themed woodworking projects and setting up a booth. I decided against that (this is a hobby, not a job, and I still dislike the idea of selling anything I make), but not before I made this box styled after the Enterprise insignia from Star Trek.



It was really just a prototype to see how the shape worked as a box, still left a bit rough in some places, but I thought it turned out OK anyway. I tried a couple different methods for lining the bottom and finally had success with just cutting a piece of poster board to fit inside and gluing fabric to it, and just dropping it in. I had wanted to put a small rare earth magnet to hold the lid on, but never did.



I decided to give this to the guy that organizes and runs the convention. It's a very small convention, but he puts a lot of time and effort into it every year and, especially since it created an opportunity to get together with my high school friend every year, I wanted to give him a token of thanks.

The headline guest this year is a very popular anime voice actor (anime is Japanese animation; I don't quite get it but it's popular with younger people - you might have heard of Pokemon?). He's also a HUGE fan of Star Trek and is producing and starring in a web series called Star Trek Continues (as Captain Kirk - it also stars Grant Imahara from Mythbusters as Sulu). Anyway, he was admiring and praising the box so much that the guy I gave it to ended up giving it to him. Which I had absolutely no problem with. And now I can say that a celebrity (albeit a minor one) owns one of my pieces of work! I'm actually glad he ended up with it as he was a really cool guy and very passionate about Star Trek.

[newportcycle]

Those boxes are great, very nice work.

[heathicus]

I finally made this flip-top tool stand that I've had in the back of my mind for a while. I saw the plans in the Woodsmith publication "The Complete Small Shop." The changes I made were to make my own knobs instead of buying plastic ones, I added a drawer at the bottom, and the top is solid. For the top, the plans called for two pieces of 3/4" plywood separated by 3/4" x 2" hardwood spacers around the perimeter of the square. I added another piece of 3/4" plywood inside the hardwood to make the top solid. Probably unnecessary, but I just felt better giving the lag screws holding the tools more wood to hold on to.









Construction is done but I haven't added any finish to it. I don't think I will. That's a lot of surface area and I think I'll save that finish for other projects. I sanded over all the corners and waxed the bottom of the shelf so it would slide easy, but that's about it.

[heathicus]

Not much of a project here. Just a couple circles for a guy at work so he could repair his wife's wind chime. But I wanted to share because I went through a couple woodworking firsts for me.

It was my first time making and using a circle cutting jig for the table saw. That's right, the table saw, not the band saw.

It was my first time using the shaper function on the Mark 5. I used it to put a simple round over around the edges. All the shaper stuff came with my Mark 5 several years ago, but I never used it until now. It intimidated me for some reason, but turned out pretty fun.

And it was the first time I used one of the tools on myflip-top cart. It was really nice not having to drag my planer out from under something, carry it across the shop, and use it on the floor.

The circles came out pretty good. I went over them with 80 grit sandpaper, but I'm leaving the remaining finishing to him.