Table Saw push stick
Surprisingly, I don’t actually have a push stick. All these years I’ve usually just grabbed whatever scrap was lying around. For awhile I had part of an old hockey stick that did a pretty good job… but today I figured why not make one, probably safer than what I’ve been using!
Pretty simple design made out of scrap 3/4″ plywood with about a 3/8″ lip at the back to grip the wood. How does it work? Well I had nothing that really needed cutting so I didn’t try it out, but I’m sure it’s just dandy…
52 Create – Biathlon Stock #2
52 Create – my weekly creative output for 2011. It’s been ridiculously busy, which might be evident in my post being a day late, forgot it was Tuesday, honest. As I said before, I’ve got several orders for biathlon stocks due to my past career. The latest bunch are for my old team that wants sturdier stocks to replace the old cracked and broken ones they currently use. This design is a bit of a compromise between being the right size and shape, being simpler to make, and being indestructible.
So it’s a simpler design, made of maple, and a bit thicker than usual. In the end it adds less than 100 grams onto a rifle/stock combination that weighs close to 4kg, so not much of a difference overall. Stock is varnished and should last longer than the originals… Stay tuned for next week, should be really awesome…
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.
52 Create
When I originally started this blog it was supposed to be about crafts, photography, and design. Over the past year I’ve kept up with the photography and the design, but crafts have suffered greatly. It didn’t help that I was overseas with few tools or materials, but now I have a plan.
Starting this week I’ll be doing what I like to call “52 Create”. Each week for the entire year (ie. 52) I’ll be making a craft of some sort and posting them every Tuesday for all to see. The crafts will range from toys to furniture and everything in between, and while many will be wooden, some other materials may sneak into the mix too. I’ll be making these items for myself and my family, however if some turn out particularly well or are popular on the blog, I”ll make some extras and put them on my Etsy site.
I plan to keep up with the Photo of the Week (with top photos also being put onto Etsy), and there’ll be the odd post on cool stuff I see on the web, but the focus is really going to switch to the crafts and photography for the next year. The design part of the blog will come out of the crafts I make.
Stay tuned, I’m already excited about this week’s 52 Create…
Anatomy of a Chair
Black Forest Wood Company offers many wood working classes and I’ve always been interested in taking one or two of them. Unfortunately my previous line of work had me away at night and on weekends, which ruled out just about every class they have ever offered. The class that interested me the most was “Anatomy of a Chair” taught by Doug Haslam. Doug is a local furniture designer and maker and has been teaching this class for several years.
The class is limited to 8 students so you get lots of one on one time with Doug. He has a great wealth of knowledge and what I really liked about the class was that he would give instruction, and then let you go and figure it out for awhile. He was always around for questions and you really got the most out of the class by asking as many as possible.
The weekend was spent learning the various geometries of chairs, then designing and finally building a prototype chair out of poplar using screws to hold it together. You were free to do whatever you liked, however the chair was meant to be of the kitchen/dining variety. At the end of the second day we were taught about mortise and tenon joints and shown how to make one. My only criticism was that we didn’t actually get to practice this.
I was quite happy with my chair and how it turned out. It’s not necessarily the style of chair I would make for myself, I chose the design in order to best learn the various techniques needed to build it. It’s incredibly comfortable, and while I never meant for it to be used in my house, it is currently attached to my daughters booster seat high chair as it’s far more stable than our crappy Ikea chairs. I highly recommend the course, it’s well worth the money and you don’t even require a whole lot of woodworking skills as Doug can teach you as you go (a couple of guys in the class had only ever used hand tools but were quickly brought up to speed on the bandsaw, jointer, table saw, and drill press).
Innovative Wheelchair Design
Duncan Fitzsimons has designed an incredibly innovative wheelchair which greatly enhances it’s portability. In a previous line of work my main clients were in various types of wheelchairs and moving them in and out of vehicles was a logistical nightmare. Each wheel would have to come off and then all the pieces put into the trunk like a game of tetris. The biggest issue of course was the large wheels which not only took up a lot of space, but were often dirty from the winter roads.
Here we have a new design where the wheel collapses, and apparently is the same weight as a solid wheel. I’d be curious to know what type of tire is on the chair? I would assume an inflatable one would not work so maybe it is a solid rubber compound?
via Guardian
Mobi Boom – Modern French Furniture
Yes, this was the actual exhibit poster, I kid you not… I love furniture design, it’s something I’d like to do one day, so when I saw an advertisement for Mobi Boom, French Furniture Design from 1945-1975, I could not turn it down. The exhibit was at the Musee des Arts Decoratifs, which is right beside the Louvre. Personally, I’d rather go to this museum than the Louvre any day.
After the second world war, there were major reconstruction projects across the entire country, and not only did they need new houses, but new furniture. This caused a huge boom in French furniture design and the founding of many great names (Knoll and Roche Bobois to name a few…)
The exhibit focussed on the great array of furniture that was produced and some of the innovative techniques that were used (plywood moulding, foam injection, etc.) The displays were truly terrific, although somewhat disappointing in that you couldn’t sit on any of the items…
The exhibit continues till January 2nd, 2011, highly recommended, and afterwards, head up to the 7th floor for the permanent exhibits with more furniture design.
Rhino for Mac OS X
While I have yet to start buiding my DIY CNC machine, I have started to learn some design software so that I can use the machine once it gets built. While there are numerous programs out there, I’ve switched almost completely over to Apple right now, so I needed something that would work on my computers.
Rhino is a very well respected design software that is just getting ported over to OS X. Because they are still in the process, they need feedback, and your feedback is worth free trial copies of the software. There are bugs of course, but the price is right, and since I haven’t really picked a software yet, this lets me “try before I buy”. So far I’m still in the tutorials, which although good, are written for the PC version so the menus don’t always seem to match up, but on the whole it is fairly intuitive.
The other cool thing is that they have an App for the iPad that allows you to show your projects on it, even letting you rotate and zoom. I think that could be key in dealing with clients, being always able to show your product to them.
Rietveld Exhibit – Utrecht
One of the greatest Dutch furniture designers is being honoured by an exhibit in Utrecht, Netherlands. I’m a huge fan of his work and hope to check out this exhibit when I visit the country in November. Design Boom has a great post on the exhibit and his life’s work.
Centraal Museum – Utrecht
illy Y1 Espresso Machine
Here on Craft Collective we love coffee, and the only thing we might like even more than a coffee, is a coffee machine with a great design. While I’d love to have the concrete machine we featured before, the new illy Y1 is certainly more compact, and likely less weight… Great designs are always coming out of illy, it’s unfortunate that it’s a capsule machine as they do create a lot of waste.
