Doing What Comes Naturally

  Much of what I make in my shop is designed to fill a need or serve a purpose. Some times the purpose is to preserve a moment in time for someone that is too young to understand how important that moment was.  

  
  Sometime, long ago we made Captain in the shop.  Last fall I repainted the boat and last week I put it in our pond.  Kieran remembered making that boat,and the many other boats we've made in my shop. That moment is just about as satisfying as a moment gets.

  What else have I done?  I dragged out my old friend 'Contact Cement' and added some leather to customize my shoulder bag and to add some heft to the flap.

  If you have the glue and some clamps and someplace to let it dry, (like a shop). You can add detail and ruggedness to something you bought at the store like everyone else.  I include this sort of thing to remind folks that a home shop can become integral  to your life and life style.  We mustn't dismiss 'craft' projects as less important than 'wood working' projects.  I admire many of the 'Makers' I see on-line that are doing lots of different things, not just wood work.

  So that you can see that I am still working with wood.

  Under the stairs coming down from our deck is dead space.  Into that dead space has drifted garden related stuff.  You know the sort of thing, chicken wire, stakes, flower pots etc, etc. However you can't see most of that stuff because it is hidden by the screen that I knocked out from some left over lattice and 2 x 4. The only thing that is semi-interesting with this screen is that it is easily removable.  I drove two 3/4 inch dowels into the frame of the stairs leaving enough dowel proud to hang the screen on.  The job was dead easy since I have a table saw and cordless drill. It is great to have a few tools on hand and a bit of wood laying around waiting to be employed.  In fact 2 x 2 lumber from the box store would save you from having to use a table saw. This is almost a 'craft' project.   Get out there and make some simple stuff, come on, make something.

   On my bench currently is an actual wood working project.  

wheels 

  I am designing and building a steam train with coal tender and one car to be a set of planters.  The first stage is to arrive at a design that is balanced looking. I am not trying to make anything to scale but it does have to look right.  I decided to begin with the wheels since that is the most labour intensive and difficult part of the project. (after the design is done)  These wheels are being cut from 2 x 4 stock on the band saw, since these wheels don't have to roll much.  I am going to put them on 1/2 inch dowel axles so the planter can be nudged around of the deck if need be, but they wouldn't be a toy.

After the wheels, everything will be cedar fence board.

  The weather is good, the days are sunny and I am spending time in the garden.  For us life is good, I hope it is good for you too.

 

cheers, ianw

  

Flower Box

  Yesterday my friend David came to my shop with the detailed design of a planter box for their front porch.

  I like building projects for David and his wife.  She always provides a very detailed and useful plan for their projects. 

 We began this project with four 2x3 by eight feet.  We cut the 2x3's into 1 1/4 inch square boards on the table saw.  My table saw acted up again and the ripping of the boards was finished on the band saw.  This time the table saw's troubles became obvious, the wire in the plug end had shorted and burned. Today I replaced the plug and the saw is fine. 

 Anyway, I joined two edges of the 2x3s and ripped the boards to size and used my sliding mitre saw to cut the pieces to length. With a well drawn plan it is easy to create a cut list and prepare the material for assembly.

 

one side screwed together.

  The project is going to be painted black so all the joints are butt joints, held together with 2 1/2 screws and glue.  This is quick and easy project.  Another thing that makes the project easy is having David's pair of hands. Usually I work alone and everything  has to be clamped while I work. With help the entire project took less time and needed no clamping. Those extra hands(apprentices) were the back bone of traditional shops. Machines are good, good people are better.

 The off cuts of the 2x3s were kept and used in three different places on this project.

  The short side connecting pieces were ten inches long and rather than cut into another long board we glued two of the off cuts together to make a wide enough board. We glued and nailed the boards together and  screwed the planter together.

  We opted for vertical slats to match the vertical lines on their porch.  The slats on the side and bottom are the off cuts from ripping the 2x3s in the first place. The back of the planter is to be against a wrought wire railing so it didn't need slats. It took David and I and a couple of hours to built the unit. It went home to be finished: sanding and painting will probably take as long or longer than  building.

  I was thinking of this project with hand tools.  It would have taken as long to prepare the materials as it did to build the whole project. I guess we would have bought 2x2 lumber instead of 2x3 construction lumber to reduce the amount of time spent ripping the material and maybe changed the design making the upright slats heavier. It could be done.  If I were making this project by hand I would have used nicer lumber, used dowels or floating tenons as fasteners and used stain and varnish for a finish. A cedar planter box could be pretty nice....

cheers, ianw