Etsy Store Updated!
Finally got a few items finished and posted up on Etsy! Back by popular demand is my Kids Flat Pack Plywood Rocking Chair (named “For those who like to Rock!”)suitable for ages 18 months to 5 year olds (for average sized kids). I love this design and plan to make more of these over the summer to keep up with demand. New to the store is the Chunky Monkey, an end grain Pine Cutting board that’s just over 2.25″ thick! There are two versions with slightly different handholds on the ends. Both boards feature rubber feet to help grip the counter as well as a food safe mineral oil finish. Why Pine? Well Pine has some natural anti-bacterial properties that make it perfect for cutting board use, and by making it end grain the soft wood is plenty durable for cutting board use. Boards come with simple maintenance instructions.
Check out all these items at my Etsy Store
Bent ply bike seat
I made a wooden push bike for my daughter last year, but I kept the seat very simple, using just a small piece of flat plywood. I wanted something nicer but I was low on time, and she was still too little to ride it, so I figured it was better than nothing.
Fast forward one year and she is eager to learn how to ride and a new seat was needed. I’ve been keen to learn some bent ply techniques, so I thought this seat would be a good small project to start on. The seat is made of three layers of 3mm Baltic birch which I sandwich between a wooden form in a large vice. Layers were glued together using epoxy, and the final shape was cut out on a bandsaw. I’m really pleased with how it worked out, next step would be to cover it with some type of padding, but the neoprene I want to use is packed away in a box with the rest of my things and might not be found till next spring…
52 Create – Wooden Push Bike
52 Create – my weekly creative output for 2011… This week has flown by! Hence the reason my Tuesday post is appearing on a Friday. Well with the wealth of cutting boards and rifle stocks as of late, I thought I should mix things up and go big. This week’s creative output is a kids wooden push bike (also called a run bike or balance bike). These seem to be all the rage lately and you can spend as much as $300 on a designer model. They are basically a kids bike without pedals, so they use their feet to push themselves along, apparently it teaches the kids excellent balance and helps them to more easily progress to a real bike without training wheels.
There are suprisingly few diy wooden bikes on the net. There is one how-to with plans out there, but that seemed far too easy for me. So I look at a ton of pictures of these bikes on google images and sketched out my own design. As usual, the wheels were the tricky part. While you can buy a brand new kids bike for $30, to buy a pair of wheels/tires/tubes will run you $90!!! I found this set at a used bike shop for $20 total, they don’t match, but my 21 month old daughter couldn’t care less… The frame is made from my favourite – baltic birch (1/2″) with a wodden dowel for handle bars. I’ve had many comments about the small seat and lack of padding, but my daughter is still in diapers so she has her own “built-in” padding. I’ll cover it with some neoprene when she is older.
After about a week of use, she is quite comfortable on it, and can go short distances on her own. I think she’s likely a bit young for it, but she goes nuts every time she sees a bike anywhere, so I figured I owed it to her…
My other 52 Create Projects
52 Create – Flat Pack Stool
52 Create – my weekly creative project for 2011. Last week I brought you the wildly popular Flat Pack Rocking Chair, which is up on my Etsy store, and getting huge traffic (don’t worry I will put up more chairs as they sell). So this week I thought I would continue on the flat pack idea and make a small stool for a toddler (ie. my daughter). Anyone with kids in the 12+ month range knows how much they love to sit on things, so why not make a little piece of furniture her size?
The stool is made out of 1/2″ baltic birch, I was going to use 3/4″ but at the last second opted for the thinner stock. I’m quite glad I did as it is still plenty strong enough (I can stand on it) and it keeps it nice and lightweight (my 18 month old daughter can lift it easily). It’s 8″ x8″ x 8″ and is just perfect for your average 18 month + child. I really like the design and may enlarge it to make some end-tables for our living room (I’d use 3/4″ and likely 16″ pieces). The entire stool collapses into a pile of wood 1/5″x8″x8″ so very easy to ship and even easier to put together (no glue, nails, screws, or tools required).
I want to tweak a few design aspects on this one before I list it on Etsy, but I think it will be a hot seller just like the Flat Pack Rocker! I’ve got a couple of commissions coming up so the next few projects may be a bit scaled back compared to the last couple of weeks, come back next week to see what’s coming out!
My other 52 Create Projects
My Etsy Store
52 Create – Flat Pack Rocking Chair
52 Create, my weekly creative output for 2011. I guaranteed something more ambitious this week, and here it is! I call it “For those who Like to Rock”. It’s a flat pack rocking chair made out of baltic birch plywood. It’s sized for a toddler (1.5-4 years) and assembles without and glue or screws. I’ve had several different variations of this in my many sketchbooks, and I even made a prototype a few years back, however this is a full finished product.
This rocking chair is now for sale on my Etsy Site, feel free to stop by and make a purchase….
My other 52 create projects…
52 Create – Milk Crate Prototype
52 Create, my weekly creative outlet for 2011. I’ve been wanting to make some wooden boxes that look like milk crates for quite some time now. Ideally I’d like to make them with a CNC, but until I build one, it looks like I’ll be making them by hand instead…
The box is made out of my favourite, baltic birch, with 1/2 inch sides and a 1/4 inch bottom so it is very sturdy. The final version would have handles cut out and possibly some design in the sides and bottom to more closely resemble a milk crate.
I was a little frustrated with the joints on this project. I used the table saw for accuracy, but found the joints didn’t line up perfectly, and some cuts were not as straight as they should have been. I feel like I was very careful with my measurements and set up, so perhaps it is a case of a low quality blade or improper set up of the fence, I’ll figure it out eventually.
Renos are pretty much finished at my house and the weather is starting to warm up so I hope to tackle some more ambitious projects in the upcoming weeks.
Other 52 Create projects.
52 Create – Maple Walnut Rings
52 Create, my weekly creative challenge to make a new and wonderful item each week for the year of 2011. While I made a wooden ring a few weeks ago, that one was out of Baltic Birch plywood, and while I liked how it turned out, I wanted to use some more contrasting wood. You really need to laminate two pieces together with rings so that the grain is strong enough around the full circle.
So this week’s project is made out of two pieces of 1/4″ wood, walnut and maple, laminated with their grain at 90 degrees to each other. I made the thin ring first, curious at how thin I could make the wood, it’s quite strong considering it’s only about 1/16 of an inch thick. The second ring I went for a more “bulbous” look. Not exactly what I was hoping for but it’s certainly a different look than the first one.
52 Create – Wooden Ring
52 Create, my weekly creative project for 2011. While I spent a lot of time on various projects this past week, I really don’t have much to show for it. I had many issues with the projects that pushed back their finish timeline by days, weeks, or even ever in some cases. So with all the bad luck (or lack of planning), I was quite happy for this little project to turn out so well.
In the picture you can see my latest creation, a man’s ring out of Baltic Birch plywood. Why plywood? Well I honestly didn’t have much for wood in the shop this past week, and due to issues with grain in making wooden rings, plywood is actually a pretty good choice. I picked the wood mainly because I had many scraps of it lying around, but I was very impressed with the way it turned out.
Wood has grain that runs in one direction, and that means that on a ring, parts of it would be very weak if you only used one solid piece of wood. The solution to this would be to laminate two pieces together, keeping the grain at right angles. I meant to do this, but in one of my many screw-ups, I managed to glue them with the grain parallel, which doesn’t really help with the strength much… I then realized that Baltic Birch plywood is basically many thin layers of Birch that is laminated at right angles to each other, making a very strong piece of wood for a ring. The only issue is that the layers are so thin that the outer ones have a tendency to chip off if you aren’t careful.
How did I make it? well I took a scrap of wood, drilled out a hole with a forstner bit (3/4″ fit my finger), then I went to the bandsaw and cut a circle around the hole. Then I took the beginnings of a ring back to the drill press, put a bit of masking tape on the forstner bit to widen it a little, and then forced the ring onto the bit. Turned the drill press on and proceeded to sand it round. I made the bevel with an old round file I had. I then sanded it up to 600 grit, although I had a large gap between 220 and 600… but you work with what you’ve got, and new sandpaper wasn’t in the budget this week.
I’ve never been a ring kind of guy, but I really like this ring and the way it feels. I’ve been wearing it almost daily, and it’s incredibly light and comfortable. It’s amazing how thin it is and yet is still strong (it’s less than 2mm at it’s thickest). When you hold it up to sunlight you can actually see light through the wood. I haven’t finished it yet, so I’ve been very careful not to soak it. I’ve read that Cyanoacrylate is the way to go for a durable waterproof finish. While this was only meant to be a trial run with scrap wood, I’m extremely pleased with how it went, and will try a few more out of Baltic Birch. I do now have a small piece of walnut and maple that I’ve laminated together, so I might post another version of the ring for next week, we’ll see.
My other 52 Create Projects
52 Create – Helicopters
Toys toys and more toys…. This week, a fleet of helicopters. Is it a fleet or a flock? Perhaps a squadron, who knows…. 52 Create is my year long project of creating something myself each week for the entire year. The majority of the items are out of wood, however last week we branched out into film. Check out the projects so far.
As I said above, this week I made 3 toy helicopters. Once you make one, you might as well make a few, and I’m hoping this one will be a big seller on my Etsy shop. The helicopter is made of Douglas Fir (dark wood) and the rest is maple dowels except for the baltic birch plywood rotor. They haven’t been finished yet as the weather is too cold but they will be getting a coat of polyurethane to help keep them in pristine shape.
I’ve also at long last put the two toy rangefinder cameras up for sale on my Etsy Shop. I finished them in shellac which is a food safe finish that is even used on some candies (sweets), so it’s a very safe finish for kids who may be keen to take a bite out of them…
52 Create – Toy Wooden Stroller
Oh boy, I’ve had the idea for this one for months now. When I first dreamt it up, I had no workshop/tools, but little did I know how much trouble this little beauty was going to cause me!!! For those of you just joining in, this is week 3 in my 52 Create where I create 52 projects over 52 weeks.
First, let me tell you, wheels are not easy to come by. When I was a kid, my dad and I built a soap box car. We went to our local Canadian Tire and picked up some cheap wheels and by the end of the day I was ripping down the hill behind the Parliament buildings. Fast forward 20 years and things are no longer so simple. After visiting several stores, the best I could do were some snow blower wheels which were too heavy, and $10/wheel!!!! You can buy a toy stroller in Paris for $7. I should have bought one before we left and just ripped the wheels off… Anyways, after some ebay searching I ended up ordering 4 scooter wheels from the states. Total cost was $25 including shipping which still seems like a lot for what they are being used for, but in the end I’m happy how they turned out. My daughter loves strollers and at playgroup always finds one to tear around the room with.
The stroller is made out of Baltic Birch plywood, the dowels are from an old laundry hamper that a roomate broke/left behind. I had my wife sew up the seat from some corduroy fabric (she also made the doll in the picture below). In search of a safe kid friendly finish, I ended up using shellac. It was a bit of a pain as the Lee Valley sells the flakes, but not the alcohol. They also failed to tell me that although it recommends using Ethanol, that isn’t available in Alberta and so you need to use Methyl Hydrate instead. If I had known this at the beginning, I might have saved myself a lot of driving around. Shellac is of course food safe (used to coat M&M’s) and so is a great finish for kids objects. It’s also nice that it has no real smell to it, so I could apply the finish indoors.
