Toy Sailboat

For my son's birthday I had been wanting to make him a sailboat.  It is summer and a great time to have a sailboat.  I have done some sailing and yacht racing so have a working knowledge of rigging and the design aspects of yachts.  The hull is made of western red cedar and drilled out to make it lighter and more bouyant.  Yellow cedar(it smells wonderful when worked) and Padauk used as accents with teak decking. The mast is attached to a steel shaft that is attached to the underside of the hull. It is removable.  Sails are made of light ripstop nylon and the rigging is made of hemp string with teak stops.  The keel is made of stainless steel and attached to the hull using neodymium magnets.  I have not finalized the rigging setup yet but it does sail nicely it is just slow to adjust the sails.  I am not sure at this point if I will add a rudder.  I made the keel removable to make it so that it could be played with on the floor or table.

Teak Patio Table Rebuild

It was my wife's birthday.  She is quite a practical person and had been wanting a patio table for quite a long time.  I had been resisting but she found a deal that was too good to pass up.  A large teak table and benches.  As you can see the table was in pretty rough shape.  Joints coming unglued and the teak had been left to dry in the sun and was quite parched.  Begin the next project...  So after complete tear down and rebuild, the table has been transformed into a very nice set again. The set originally had 4 benches but I had to use one bench for parts.  The bench that was sacrificed was already broken and most of the wood was so dry that it was beyond being revived.  I used stainless steel hardware after finding that the last person had put the table together with drywall screws. I used marine epoxy to reglue and teak oil on the finish and it seems to be very water resistant.

Hummingbird Feeder

So I wanted a hummingbird feeder.  We have a lot of hummingbirds around our house and watching them is a fascination for me.  I have done some photography of them as well.  I could buy one of the standard feeders but I like to create things and I like to reuse items from other places.  I also do not like the idea of using plastic.  I ended up at a thrift store and bought a red glass bottle and a stainless water bottle.  They both have about the same size opening so I figured that I could seal them together some how.  I also went to a craft store and bought some cheap artificial red flowers.

I drilled four holes in the glass and siliconed the red flowers over the holes.  I drilled a hole in the water bottle cap and put a copper tube through to keep the nectar from overflowing out the holes.  I sealed it with a rubber washer.  The problem that I had was attaching the top and bottom pieces.  As is true to almost all of the things that I make there is a rubber wheel from the photocopier holding the top and bottom together.  It is very easy to refill, you would just turn it upside down and unscrew the water bottle.  The perch and top holder are made from computer fan guards.  One advantage that I have found with this feeder is that it is quite bottom heavy so it does not sway much in the wind.  All in all I really like this feeder and the hummingbirds seem to like it as well.

Dremel Circle Cutter

Along with the beam compass that I made I needed a way to cut circles with my dremel.  Another tool creation is born.  This time I was lucky enough to have a threaded sleeve from another dremel accessory that I could use as an attachment point.  Add a few photocopier parts and you have a circle cutter.  It is still in its experimental stage and may need some modification in the future but for now it seems to work fine.

Created January 2014.

Beam Compass

I have been working on an project that will stay unmentioned at this time and needed a large compass for it.  I began looking for plans for a compass and came across this very nice Beam Compass.  I built it slightly differently from the plans using some photocopier parts and other things laying around.  The thumb screw is the copier part here.  The brass point is a piece of brass I had sitting around.  I have found that using a dremel or grinder on a piece that is spinning in the drill press allows or some easy creation of symetrical patterns that would only otherwise be possible on a metal lathe.

Created January 2014

Marimba

This last Christmas saw me once again enter uncharted waters.  I am not really one for repetition and so do not usually repeat projects.  For Christmas, my wife wanted to get a small keyboard for my son.  I am not much for electronics for kids and so suggested maybe a xylophone or... then I had the idea that would spawn yet another period of scratching my head in frustration.  Little did I know at the time but this project would ruin many of my clothes and stain everything!  I decided to make a marimba.  I found the dimensions for keys and tuning info on a website from another DIY guy.  Enter the plans and how to design this thing.  I wanted it to be transportable but did not like the design of most of the portable marimbas that I could find.

Many of the DIY instruments out there use eye hooks to hold the cord that holds the keys.  I am not a fan of the way that it looks.  The other option seemed to be aluminum bar with a groove cut in the top and driven down into the cross pieces.  I thought that this might not be a good idea on an instrument that a child plays with because then they are able to lift the keys off of the instrument which leads me to imagine many different scenarios, most of them not really a good thing.  I also was not sure about my accuracy considering that these posts have to be driven in.  I decided to go with angle aluminum so that it could be attached easily and would hold the keys and look good at the same time :)  And of course I also included some rods from the photocopier as support for the cord.  I sourced the cord from a window blinds place that carried the heavy cotton cord.  I used a special Australian knock-down fastener for the frame that I found at Lee Valley tools.  

The keys are paduak and the frame is rock maple.  I wanted the instrument to have the styling of the large concert marimbas.  Everything turned out right for the most part.  There were several times when I had to walk away because of frustration.  As with most of my projects I make mistakes and have to fix them in ways that I do not prefer.  The marimba turned out really good and was fun to present at Christmas.

Created December 2013

Magnifying Glass

I had a very nice camera that I was quite attached to, but it came to a slow demise and had to be recycled.  It was quite fascinating seeing what all is packed into such a small package.  My mind is always going when I take something apart and this was no exception.  I noticed the lens and the magnification that this particular lens had. I found some leftover hardwood and thought that I would try my hand at a magnifying glass for my toddler.  Turns out that it is somewhat difficult to make a wooden body to hold a camera lens.

             

Balance Bike

Anyone with kids under about six years old knows what a balance bike is.  I wanted one for my then eighteen month old, but could not afford it. I am also not a fan of plywood which is what all of the wooden balance bikes out there are made of, so I decided to try my hand at making one.  I tried a number of designs on paper but was not exactly sure what I was trying to make.  I wanted some twelve inch wheels and wanted them to be regular bike wheels. I found a beat up red and yellow kids bike for free.

I wanted the wheels but this was a pedal bike and the rear rim had a coaster brake and chain sprocket.  I needed the rim to be missing these components.  I was able to find an additional rim with the same hub and so I modified the original hub removing the parts that I didn't want.  

Painting the hubs, spokes and rims was more difficult than I had anticipated and I ended up having to wire brush the rims and use epoxy paint and primer to get them black.  I polished the spoke nipples with a homemade polishing wheel on my drill press.  The axle that I used for the rear hub had very beat up nuts.  I had to search through the parts bins at a couple of different bike shops before finding some slightly mismatched nuts.  The front hub was a different story and I ended up modifying the front axle shaft so that I could use knock down furniture nuts to eliminate the axle hubs sticking out on the front forks.  

Making the frame was by far the most difficult part of this build, specifically trying to make the seat adjustable, the rear forks removable and the bike build possible. While I was building the body of the bike, my father, who was visiting at the time, bought a small belt/spindle sander for me. This made the build a lot easier.  I ended up making it harder for myself than it needed to be but it did work out in the end. Most wooden balance bikes have a steering limiter that I presume is for safety.  I made the opposite assumption that my son should be able to handle the full unlimited steering and if there is a fall or two it will just make him better with the bike. It seems that I was right as he is very good with the bike although he really didn't start using it much until he was two and a half.   

I like to pick wood scraps out of a local exotic wood suppliers burn bin.  This bike was built using wood that I had sitting around. I learned after making the bike that walnut is a good wood for bending. The photocopier parts in this bike include sealed bearings from the copier in the front wheel as well as the headset which is made from a duplexer shaft, snap rings and more sealed bearings. The headset is removable if the bearings need to be replaced.  The seatpost is notched so that the seat can be raised and lowered as needed. The mechanism for seat adjustment is a couple of snap rings and a bolt with a long cross dowel attached. I realized after I had drilled the hole for the seat post that bikes have the front forks and the seatposts at the same or a very similar angle. This was a major mistake that I made as the angle of the seat post is not the same as the forks.  I have yet to see how much this will affect my son as he grows taller.

When I was finished the bike I was not sure how to finish it so that it would be resistant to water and weather and not use varnish or other traditional finishes.  I am partial to oil finishes as they are more child-friendly.  In this case I was not sure that tung oil was going to do it.  I work quite often with three part epoxy.  I concluded that if I was to mix epoxy without the texturizer in it, brush it on and then rub it off like with an oil finish, it would be tough enough.  The difference would be that the epoxy finish would be permanent and not need to be maintained like an oil finish and ultimately be completely waterproof. 

I did not take many pictures during the build so I have taken some pics of the bike in it's current finished state.                

Created June 2013                        

High Chair

This is what happens when you don't
have the right tools for the job.

When my son was about 6 months old we decided that we needed a high chair.  My wife asked how long it would take to finish it and of course I said, "Oh, maybe a few days..."
He was 9 months old by the time I finished. I usually underestimate my timeline by about three months on average :)

I looked at current designs of wooden high chairs and decided that I really liked the design of a European made highchair as it is very easy to adjust and looks sturdy.  What I didn't like is that the chair is made partly of plywood and that it was out of our price range.

So it should not be surprising that I went about planning to build my own.  I wanted to make the chair two tone to give it an interesting look and decided to use some fasteners that I found at Lee Valley tools.  The wood that I used was walnut and dogwood.  Dogwood is an endangered wood and not available for sale in stores.  I stumbled on a local guy that picks up wood blown down from the street trees in our area and mills them up.  He introduced me to the dogwood that he had rescued.  I discovered that it is a very dense wood and very heavy which was great for the chair since I don't want my son tipping it over backwards.

The seat back was laminated up from pieces of walnut that were steam bent.  This was a poorly laminated piece because I have limited knowledge of steam bending principles.  The seat back turned out pretty good in the end though.  I used epoxy for gluing and tung oil for a finish because it is an edible oil and I figured that my son would chew on it at some point.

So where are the photocopier parts? If you look at the middle and lower part of the chair you will see a couple of black rods.  These are roller rods from the copier and just happen to be a width that seemed good for the chair.  The width of the chair is actually based on these rods.  I was able to tap threads into the ends of the rods.  I built this chair before I had a drill press and did not want to just drill the holes with a hand drill so I built a portable drill press which you can see here.

Created April 2012

Drill Press

I have found over time that on occasion I do not have the specific tool that I need for something.  Usually this is a result of not having the money to buy specialized tools, but sometimes this means that the specific item that I need does not exist or at least not in the format that I need.  I suppose that I will admit that it may also be because I am not aware of every tool there is out there.  One day, I needed a drill press but didn't have the money and had some holes that needed to be drilled that I knew a drill press was not ideal for.  So the construction of my first homemade tool began.  It is not an ideal tool by any means but the part that is lacking is simply the ability to hold the drill securely. Made entirely out of photocopier parts, this will either amaze you or confirm the suspicion that I am a little crazy.  If you take a look at the high chair post you will see that it did a good enough job on that project.  There is an attachment for the base that allows me to clamp a board on and drill into the end grain.

Created April 2012.

The Story

It all began several years ago in a garage with two men and a photocopier. The two men were my husband, Remy, and his dad. The photocopier was Dad's bright idea after Remy mentioned wanting to learn more about electronics. "Let's take something apart," Dad said. "Something big." Through a series of calls, they soon found themselves with a very large and very heavy photocopier. Fast-forward a few hours and the garage was covered with photocopier parts. Needless to say, when Mom opened the garage door to call them both to supper, she was much dismayed. Fortunately for her (and me), Remy is very good at cleaning up after himself and soon the scrap metal was disposed of and the other pieces were sorted and put away. Remy didn't know it then, but that was the beginning of the Reincarnations. I guess this special photocopier must have been Very Very Good to merit so many more lives. You see, Remy has a knack for using things for other than their intended purpose and is a natural upcycler. He calls himself a woodworker but I think he's beyond woodworker, he's an artist. I have been telling him that since I met him. When he finally decided to make some of the pictures in his head come to life and do more things with wood, many of his projects required some metal thing that ended up being a piece of The Photocopier that worked perfectly after some shine and modifications. As he created more and more things, The Photocopier became our inside joke. It almost became a game to put a photocopier part in a project. I have been documenting these things that he has made in an album that I have labeled My Husband's Mad Creations and I am so glad he finally listened to me and started this blog so you can follow his creative journey. Everyone, meet Remy. I hope his work inspires you to create some of your own Reincarnations.