Small Projects in the Wood Shop

  Recently I have been idling in my shop. The woodworking engine hasn't come to a complete stop but it is not really working very hard.

 Last evening I spend time cleaning up and putting stuff away and then I spend time sanding 16 x 16 1/4 inch plywood panels. If you want to get good results when wood burning it helps to have the wood very smooth, in this case sanded to 400 grit. I volunteered to sand four panels for people in my art class. It is easier to do that job when you have a full set of sanders like I have. My final 'go to' sander is my 1/3 sheet finishing sander. 

 Another small project I did in my shop recently was make some bottle openers after the design I saw on Instructables.

  You can see that I used a couple of scraps of oak and two 1 inch nails. This was a pleasant no noise project, I shaped the wood with a shop knife and a bit of sand paper. The only power tool was my cordless drill.

 The design from Instructables has one hidden addition that I liked. 

 There is a small magnet on the bottom of the opener to hold onto the bottle cap.  That way there is less bending down to pick up loose caps from the deck.  Once I got the openers finished I had to go to the beer store and get some bottles to conduct product testing upon. (life in the shop can be hard).

 Another little job in the shop was fixing another pant hanger. The plastic part gave out on another hanger and so I replaced the cracked cheap plastic with some wood. For good measure I did a bit of relief carving on the wood part too.

As a complete aside I have a product that I recommend from IKEA company.

 This is a rubber corner bumper.  I have stuck bumpers onto sharp corners in our kitchen and my workshop. In the kitchen the sharp corners on the range hood  are at my forehead hight. In my shop there is a air circulation unit that hangs down in my storage area with a sharp corner, at head level. I had flagged the workshop unit but hadn't come up with a pleasing solution for the kitchen until I found these bumpers, which come in a variety of colours.

  Now that I have taken a bit of time to fiddle with little things in the shop I am getting myself organized to take on a couple of bigger things.