From Futon to Planter Boxes

When I first moved to the US, I had about 5 cardboard boxes of stuff to my name. None of those boxes contained any furniture and so a very kind young lady lent me her futon so that I'd have something comfy to sleep on. The futon has stayed with us from one move to the next, but it's time has come. It's last incarnation was as part of the kids bed (we merged the futon base with the main body of a kids single bed) but we recently bought a loft bed for them to share and the futon was suddenly in the way.  The mattress is currently a sofa/bed in the kids room which left this lovely source of untreated pine just staring at me wanting to be used.  Rather than put it on craigslist, I gave in to my urges and decided to transform it into something we needed (and would keep for a long time to come). We've been experimenting with growing fruit and veg in our back yard since last year so it seemed like a good use of the wood to make some planter boxes.

The base was kept together with bolts and screws - no glue! which made for a fun half hour with screwdrivers for me and the kids.

Here are the spoils (except the two 2"x2" poles which were bought at Home Despot):

I figured we could make a couple of planters from all this wood.  Lin had the bright idea of using some metal mesh we had left over (from some stacking wire storage cubes) as the base of the planters and it just so happens that the 2"x2" poles fit snugly in the corners after a bit of metal snipping.

After measuring the wood and the wire mesh, it turns out that I could make two planters around 17" tall.  I cut up the 2"x4" planks into smaller pieces each 14 1/4" in length and cut 4 legs from the 2"x2" - each measuring 17".

Here are a few rough sketches I made whilst trying to think it through:

And here are all the bits cut to length and ready to be assembled:

I routed out a 1/4" wide by 1/4" deep dado around 1/2" from the bottom on 4 of the small planks so that the wire mesh fitted snugly.

I routed out a similar channel on two adjacent sides of the legs (higher up though, so that the legs stick out the bottom) and then secured the planks to each other and to the legs with wood screws.

Then it was just a matter of attaching the rest of planks. I went for an alternating spiral like pattern.

To finish off I added a lip by cutting and mitering (45 degrees) some siding from the futon and gluing it on (with yellow wood glue).  The wood already had a groove in the middle which slotted nicely in place on top of the planters.  Then  the kids personalised them with some watered down food colouring.

I put on a couple of coats of polyurethane to protect them from the elements (i.e. the kids).  Lastly, Lin used some black plastic sheeting to line the inside and attached some cheap acrylic felt to the wire mesh to allow drainage.

The green planter already has some sugar snap peas sprouting out and the red one has some pole beans.  Can't wait to start munching on them! Om nom nom!

There's still quite a bit of wood left over (all the thicker pieces and the two widest planks).  I think I'll make those into another type of planter when I get the chance (similar to the one in the bottom left of the above picture).

I must get to posting a few more 'tronics' things...  The CNC machine has been up and running for months (and is an endless source/sink for tinkering/tweaking) and I have a load of things to post about it.  But I think some charlieplexed LEDs should come first since I mentioned them so long ago, built a few prototypes and then went silent.  In my defense, building the CNC machine took a lot of time and effort and we're expecting baby#3 any day now.  There always seems to be lots going on :)  Oh, I found an old Atlas Cabinetmakers saw at a garage sale down the road as well!  I think it was built around 1959 & I've got that up and running too.  Now that I've gotten over my fear of table saws it'll be good to use it for something creative.

Kid made go-kart

A few weekends ago we popped into the city to meet up with a blogger friend of Lin's. She was working with Gever Tulley on a tinkering workshop.  We were a little late but caught the tail end of people as things were winding down and being cleared away. Carys was very excited to see that the kids in the workshop had make some go-karts. She immediately wanted to make one of her own and when we got home she drew up some plans at the kitchen table.

I was so impressed with this that, of course, I had to help her build it.  We headed out and picked up a few supplies:

1. 2' x 4' board of plywood (just about fits in the trunk of our Nissan Dissapointment)
2. 4 casters (I got ones that were rated up to 80lb)

Everything else we had lying around (some 1" x 2" wood, wood screws, nylon rope).

The base of Carys' car is a big circle, so we first drew out two circles on the plywood (I thought we were going to make two cars, but we've only made one so far).  I wanted Carys to do as much of the building as possible so we drew the circle by hammering a nail at the center of the circle and then tying a pencil to the nail with some string.  I measured out enough string to have the pencil reach the edge of the board - this gave us a 2' diameter circle, plenty big enough for the kids to sit on.

I used a jigsaw to cut out the circle - this was the only step I didn't let Carys do (partly because she couldn't stand the noise and partly because she wouldn't take off her roller-skates).  The kids then sanded down the rough edges.

Time for a quick break :)  It turns out tape measures are also good for pulling people round on roller-skates. Who knew?

Then we cut a couple of lengths of 1' x 2' wood for attaching the casters to the base (this was part of Carys' plan).  Both Carys and Ffion had fun sawing the wood (with a hand saw).  Then I marked out the hole placements for the casters and Carys drilled the pilot holes.

Time to attach the casters. Carys was really steady and accurate with the drill, but she needed a little bit of extra weight (i.e. me pushing down on the back of the drill) when using the screwdriver bit.

Et voilà!

The plans also had a rope loop tied to the front to pull the car around with.  I decided to add handles to the side to keep the kids on the car during the inevitable speed racing.  I marked out the positions and Carys drilled the holes using a 1/2" drill bit - this looked comically large with her using it!  I put some scrap/sacrificial wood under the car whilst drilling so that the drill-bit didn't hit concrete on it's way out.

By now it was getting dark and cold so we retired to the kitchen where the kids set about decorating their creation using permanent markers.

Then it was just a matter of adding the rope (2 handles and 1 long line for pulling).

Carys is immensely proud of her car. Doing all the planning, building and decorating has given her an amazing sense of ownership and accomplishment. She's already planning a ton of new projects, unfortunately this includes a death-defying bionic zip line out of the bedroom window to the reclaimed play structure... I wonder if I can persuade her that she wants to build an electric guitar or a laser cutter.

PVC Pipe Dressing-Up Rack

We started playing around with PVC piping at home quite some time ago (see the marshmallow gun post) we quickly realised that it was a cheap and easy medium for building simple things (take a look at the projects page on this site: http://pvcfittings.com/ for a ton of examples).  The kids 'building box' outside has a load of pipe and connectors in it for impromptu creative fun. Most of these bits were left over from Carys' pirate-superhero-mermaid birthday party where we put together marshmallow-gun party favour bags (If you're interested you can read about that on Lin's blog post over on FilthWizardry).

The kids have most of their make-believe/dressing-up items in a single toy box in their bedroom.  The original lid on this didn't stand up to the test of multiple children piling into it day after day, so it's been an 'open plan' box for most of it's stay.   On a daily basis we find the complete contents of the dressing up box emptied onto the bedroom floor.  I guess that's the only way the kids can find the clothes for that day's dressing up desires.

We're a bit tight on space in the kids bedroom, so it seemed like a good idea to build a clothes rack that'd fit inside the box; then we could hang up most of the clothes for easy access and keep the hats, crowns and other accessories in the box itself.  At least this way they wouldn't have to completely empty the box each time and we wouldn't have to tidy it up every day!

This is actually something I've made twice now (hence deciding to post about it)...  The first one was dismantled and used to build random things out in our backyard a few months back; we soon realised the folly of our ways when we were once again greeted with the dressing up clothes piled on the floor day after day.  Time to build another!

It's really, really simple.  The fixtures and piping are 1/2" schedule 40 PVC.  They're available in Lowe's, Home Despot, OSH, ACE hardware etc.  and they're pretty cheap.  This was today's shopping list from the local Lowe's:

1. 8 * 5' of pipe = $8.96 ($1.12 each) - I bought extra for other fangling.
2. bag of 10 tee junctions = $1.95
3. bag of 10 thread to slip adapters = 20c
4. bag of 10 elbow joints (90 degree) = $1.80
5. 4 x 3-way corner elbow = $5.28 ($1.32 each).

Ok, so $18 may not seem that cheap, but there's left over material for other projects and the rack itself will get re-used as something else when it's no longer needed.  On the other hand, good luck finding something that'll exactly meet your requirements for $18 ;).

Here's everything I used:

I measured the inside of the dressing up box (before deciding on the parts) and sketched out how I wanted the rack to look.  Then it's just a matter of measuring, marking and cutting the pipe and then sticking it all together.  You don't even need glue/cement, unless you want the final 'product' to be permanent and durable.

Here's a load of in-progress shots to give you a feel:

And here's the final frame.  I added a little nubbin afterwards for Ffion to hang her handbag collection on... you can see it in the action shot below to the left of the ballerina.  I replaced a tee junction with a 4-way and slotted in a small bit of pipe terminated with a pipe cap (all left overs from previous messing/building).

The shoes are now all paired up and hung up as well.  I think these were the main culprits of the 'toss everything on the floor' routine.  Fingers crossed for a slightly tidier bedroom from now on.

CNC Machine Build - Part III "It's Alive!"

Finally... after a lot of work and learning, the CNC machine is up and running.

I got the main machine finished and connected to a computer about a month ago, but I've been having trouble getting the z-axes working properly.  I tried tuning/adjusting it as described in the plans and I even remade the leadnut bracket, replaced the leadnut (twice), replaced the leadscrew (twice) and went through 3 couplers (these are only made out of cheap hose so that was no biggie). But, each time I put it back together, the axes would stall part way through a job (ruining the workpiece and usually destroying the coupler).  Eventually, I had to walk away for a week to cool down - at least that gave me time to make the Millennium Falcon dolls house for Carys' birthday.

Last weekend I went back to it.  I replaced the lead-nut and lead-screw assembly (again), this time making sure to buy some new threaded rod that was straight. It turns out that the previous ones were slightly warped and this was causing most of the drag. I guess that's the problem with building a CNC machine with bog standard threaded rod as a lead-screw, they're not meant to be used in applications where the rod has to be straight... I also updated the coupler tubing - I'd been using clear vinyl tube from Lowe's (the kind used for irrigation) which is weak and slippery. I bought some fuel pipe from Kragen and this works a lot better.

I did a couple of test runs on some kitchen cutting board and quickly realized that I'd have to work out how to hold/clamp things down whilst cutting.  I have a few clamps, but none of them fitted well between the slats so I made up a few hold downs using some left over wood and some bolts (you can see them in the picture below).

If I were to start this again, I think I'd opt for the more expensive ACME lead-screws/nuts and associated couplers. I spent a lot of time over the last few weeks tuning the axes and I think a lot of this would have been avoided if I'd gone with the better rods and lead-nuts.  All in all though, I'm very chuffed that this is actually working!  Last year Lin did a detailed pumpkin carving of our CSO, this lead to some geeky conversations at work about how you could automate the process but we ended up deciding that it was too complicated (mainly due to the issues of mapping an image onto the surface of a pumpkin in order to carve it).  I'm wondering if I can actually achieve that this year using the CNC machine - just like this guy did.  I bet all the CNC carving time gets eaten up with hearts and unicorns though... you know how it is ;)

DIY Millennium Falcon

Carys was turning six at the beginning of October and had recently become StarWars obsessed (we let them watch the original 3 movies a few weeks back and they loved them).  Lin and I like to add a few home made presents to the mix on the kids birthdays; So, we decided to make a few StarWars themed things for Carys' birthday.

Lin started out making a set of StarWars figures using wooden craft pegs (more about that on her post here).  We were going to make a Millenium Falcon using a couple of plastic frisbies, but then thought it'd be nicer to create something a bit larger and more durable so that they could use it with the figures for some make-believe fun.

It took us a little while to decide on the components to use.  We found this weird wooden board at the local thrift/charity store.  I think it's used for carving meat and the grooves capture the juices (there's even a "patent applied for" stamp on the back).  I forgot to get a picture of it in its original state; the picture below shows it after a little bit of modification.  It was originally symmetrical - I rounded off one of the handles/ears and cut a groove in the other in preparation for adding the front prongs.




Here's a quick overview of the components:

There's the weird carving board, a plastic lid (another lucky thrift store find as it fits perfectly in the groove of the carving board), some PVC pipe (2" diameter) and a 90 degree elbow joint (both from Home Depot).  There's a dollar tree airfreshener case (the white tear drop thing by the black pipe) and some wood.  There are some other bits and bobs that aren't in this picture (I hadn't figured out what was going to be used at the time): a hinge for the cargo bay ramp, some more wood for the internal walls, screws, nuts/bolts, wood glue, some grey spray paint, a few plastic bottle caps, and the outside case of a CD spindle.

From the 'ingredients' picture you can see that I cut and sanded the carving board first and then made the front 'prongs'.  For the prongs, I looked at a few online plans and scaled the dimensions to fit the cutting board.  I used a scroll saw to cut out the shapes and then screwed and glued them onto the main board.

While the glue was drying I made the internal structure.  It's made from the outside of a CD spindle and some wooden boards (2" hobby board from Home Depot).  I cut the CD spindle to fit the height of the lid and then measured out the boards to fit up to the edge of the curve.  That was a bit of a mistake as the lid didn't fit with the boards that long and I ended up having to sand the ends down a bit.

I thought it'd be fun to have internal doors but didn't think the spindle would survive with large chunks cut out of them, so I just put some painters tape where I wanted the doors and then painted it all leaving some see-through areas after the tape is removed.

I gave the lid it's first coat of paint, bolted on a few bottle caps and wood disks to mimic some of the structures seen on the original, and then gave it all another coat.  The lid needs to be cut in a couple of places to make room for the cockpit attachment/corridor and for the cargo bay ramp.

I used a miter saw to cut one end off the PVC elbow (so that the cockpit would face forward) and to cut an angle into the corridor (makes it easy to screw the pipe into the base). My first attempt failed as the corridor was too short, but I had plenty of pipe left over for another go.  Everything was given a coat of paint.

I cut the airfreshened body down to a size that would fit snugly over the pipe and then used hot glue to attach it.  I like the fact that the cover comes on and off so we can put pilots in there.

 Here's the final set-up (with cargo bay ramp attached with a hinge):

Lin made some ace characters for Carys' birthday and the two presents go really well together.  I love the fact that Darth Vader's helmet comes off to show his pale splotchy face :)

And, just to finish off, a gratuitous set of action shots: