Productive Christmas Week

What a productive week it's been since Christmas! I took the week between Christmas and New Year's off. Whenever I've done that in the past, I've wanted to spend the time in my shop but never got the chance. Well, this year I finally did it!

The first thing I built was a ply-box for my workouts. It's 18x24x30 made from 3/4" plywood - a beast and it weighs a ton.

Next was a tool cart I've had my eye on for a while. Of course, I didn't get to use it for tools because I need it to make space in the basement. Sarah uses the TV and DVD player for her workouts and I use the receiver and speakers for mine. A good compromise and it's really easy to move around. I'm going to make at least one more so that I can use it as an out-feed table for my table saw. Now that I know how to do it, it'll come together quickly.

I made this table-top drafting table for Liz. She designed it and it came together pretty easily.

Last, I got a chance to do some cleaning, arranging, and general organizing in the shop. By putting up this magnet strip, I combined a bunch of loose tools that had been taking up bench space. So now I gained back almost 3 feet of space. Psych!

Handmade Christmas - 2015

This year was another good year of handmade gifts for family and friends.
For Helen, I made a small stationary kit. I didn't want to give her a big gift this year as I know she doesn't have a lot of space in her dorm room so this was perfect. I custom made the box for it, which I really enjoyed.

The box on the left is for Helen's kit and the one on the right is one I made for Sarah's gift tags. I really enjoyed these sub-projects and will definitely do it again!

I lined all my boxes with brown paper to give them a more finished look

One of my custom boxes under construction

This cutter was the best way to cut the chipboard for the boxes

For Elizabeth, I made a picture frame and printed out a bunch of photos that I thought she might like to put in it. This was a simple gift but well received.

Liz's picture frame

For Sarah, I made a bunch of reusable gift tags. I wrote a bit more about the project here.

I made a journal box for my sister in law, Hilary. I had fun with this one and it came out well.

The Journal box for Hilary

Plans for the journal box

Here are a couple other things I made to enhance the holidays this year.
A tree topper for the wooden Christmas tree I made for Sarah a couple years ago.

Here's our advent candle holder for 2015. I love working with gas "nipple" (a.k.a. pipe). It's quick and has a cool industrial look that I find attractive. I buy most of it at the Home Depot but this four-way junction had to be special ordered from a plumbing supply site.

Advent candles with greens

I made an arch for work to hold Christmas lights and to just generally be festive. Lots of people liked it at the office!
I really liked this project. I didn't spend a penny on it. The wood was scrap hemlock; the green paint was from one of Helen's theatre projects; and the whole thing was held together with that most awesome fastener in the world: Kregg pocket screws.

Handmade Christmas 2015 - Gift Tags

The first gift I worked on this year is a set of reusable gift tags for Sarah. A few years ago, we switched over to wrapping our Christmas gifts in reusable gift bags. We made a bunch of them and they're really quite pretty. So building on that theme, I decided to create a set of gift tags out of wood that we could use again and again rather than the paper tags we've been using.

I bought a bunch of wooden "N", "E", "S", and "H" letters from craftcuts.com. I bought 10 of each which I think should be enough. I painted them different Christmasy colors

I used 1/8" basswood for the tag part. I cut them on the table saw and my chop saw. I used a jig on the chopsaw to make them al consistent.

I also used a jig on the drill press to drill the hole in the top for the ribbon. I stacked 4 at a time to make it go a bit quicker.

I ended up with a bunch of tags ready to have their letters glued on.

After drilling I sanded each one by hand. I made sure all the edges were smooth, corners rounded, etc. This took a while but was kind of nice to just settle in to while I listened to the radio.

Getting the glueing right was tricky. I started with Testors wood glue right out of the tube but that just made a mess; then I switched to super glue but I couldn't apply enough to be reliable. So I switched back to the Testors and applied it with a brush. I had much better luck that way.

I sprayed them all with urethane to protect them and then boxed them up in a box I custom made to hold them. That was a fun little project, too.

Inset Shelf in the Basement

A couple years after we moved into our house, the furnace exhaust pipe started to leak water where it entered the chimney. The flue gases were cooling too much, which caused the water vapor to condense and rust through the flue pipe. This is due to the fact that neither our general contractor nor the mason that worked on the chimney could read and understand blueprints. Rather than putting the chimney flue inlet on the side of the chimney that's in the furnace room, they put it at the bottom of the basement stairs outside of the furnace room. Since the basement is cooler than the furnace room, the water vapor condenses and can cause trouble. (Side note here: when you own a house it's all about water. You have to make sure it goes where you want it and never goes where you don't.) We got it fixed eventually by installing a very expensive length of insulated stainless steel flue pipe. Before we got there, though, I thought that if I could equalize the temperatures between the two spaces, the condensation may not build up. So to that end, I took out a section of drywall in the furnace room wall. Of course, that didn't work, and now we had a big old hole in the furnace room wall: definitely not up to code. Hence, this set of shelves.

I used left over trim from the porch project to make these shelves. They sit right in the spot I cut out and actually look like they belong there.

I'm not sure why, but for some reason I did not fire up the compressor and use my finish nailer for this project. I went old school and used a hammer and nails. I managed just fine, but the nailer would have been helpful for those times when I was holding wood with one hand and needed to pop a nail in. To me, that's the primary benefit of using a nail gun: when you work alone, you don't have the extra set of hands to hold things together while you nail them. Being able to pop one in easily without a lot of fuss makes a big difference.

Here's the hammer I used. This one belonged to my brother Jamie and I've held on to it since we were kids. We each got one for Christmas one year; I think I was 8 or 9. Anyway, it's a special tool that I'm glad I have around and can still use.

Basically, I built a box that was half an inch smaller in height and width than the hole I was trying to fill. After making sure it fit, I added the shelves, nailed the back on, and attached the trim. Then, from the back, I used some window shims to get it in nice and snug. A few finish nails hold it in place.