Garden Swing

This past summer we removed an old playhouse which I didn't build that had reached end of life. If I had built it myself I might have considered saving it. This left an area of our backyard that was lower than the rest of the yard and looked quite blank. The decision was made to put in a small retaining wall in the back, a curbed area surrounding a garden and a pergola with a swing. The hardest part was clearing out some excess soil in the garden area and adding in some gravel as a solid base for the curbing. The retaining wall was just a single block and was made with channel block filled with concrete. It works great as its easy to construct with limited equipment.

The swing was from a plan from Lee Valley. I've wanted to do some Adirondack style benches for a while and this hanging swing seemed like a good start. Since it's such an established style I didn't see the need to try to design my own. The plans were pretty easy to use though I found the templates weren't always the right size. I chose cedar for materials because it was a cheap option from the home centre. For my next chair I'm planning on something longer lasting like white oak or cypress. I used a solid stain that has worked well for me and the hardware was all from the home centre. A nice quick project.

The final piece of the puzzle was the pergola. No real plans here. I sized it to fit the space and wanted something that I could grow vines up the side. I found some stainless steal 6x6 mesh that I drilled holes in the posts to fit. It seems quite sturdy and shouldn't rust. The only troubles I had were with attaching the post anchors. I was in a hurry with the concrete and didn't put them in at that time. Instead I drilled and used epoxy to set them later. I waited a month so drilling wasn't easy. The other thing I wasn't thrilled about was the height. I think the full 8 foot posts are a bit tall. We'll see how it looks once the vines fill in.

Bat House

When I was building my shed a few years ago I briefly thought that the gables would be a perfect spot to place a bat box. At the time I assumed bats were not that common where I lived. We're in the city on the coast of Canada and I had never seen any evidence of bats in our area. This changed last year when I was in my living room watching TV. Something fluttered in from outside and at first I thought it was just a fly, then it seemed bigger and I assumed a butterfly. Things got dicy as it got closer as it was now more bird sized but flying in a rather erratic matter. It was a bat! My gable and local wildlife were now coming together for my next project.

I am not a bat expert and I only just built this so I have no idea if it will be successful or not. I got the basic design from www.bcbats.ca. I took two of their plans to come up with my own design. My criteria were
1) I wanted it to have chance for success so bigger than a single chamber.
2) I didn't want it too big.
3) It was going to be installed on my shed so I wanted the back piece to help with the install in a way that would not damage my siding.
4) I am a woodworker so I wanted there to be slightly more craftsmanship than some of the plans I was finding online.

The back piece is about 38 inches long by 18 inches wide. This allowed for a roosting space of about 18 by 24 plus the top triangle bit for attaching at the eaves where I have some trim that I can easily patch if I remove it. It also allowed for a landing strip of a little over 4 inches at the bottom. The back piece is 1/2 inch plywood and I had a scrap piece of 3/4 inch plywood for the front. The interior slats are 3/8 and the sides are made out of 2x6s. I felt I would end up with a much longer lasting product if I did 2x6 with dadoes. I also dadoed the back piece where the roof attaches. This should help make it more waterproof.

I cut grooves in the bottom landing strip as well as the first couple inches of all the partitions and front piece. All areas are 7/8 inch wide. I figure once the bat gets in the tiny space they need less grip. It's all rough saw plywood so they can shimmy. I also included some holes in the top of the partitions so they can move between chambers. I was lucky enough to have some charcoal coloured paint from a previous project so it heats up in the sun. The last item was the most important part. The bat signal. How else will the bats know it's intended for them? The whole project took about 4 hours from start to finish. Looking forward to shining a flashlight inside during the day and seeing beady little eyes.

Dutch Shuffleboard

What is Dutch Shuffleboard? I had no idea either until a night of drinking with some friends and reminiscing about childhood games brought forth a game from his youth. A small down payment later to ensure he was serious about wanting to play again and I was off to the internet to figure out how to build one. It's not an extremely popular game in North America and I had some trouble finding plans. I did manage to find good dimensions however and after a bit of thought figured out how to make some of the key parts of the game.

The first challenge was the disks. They needed to be from a wood that would take a beating and ideally the would be end grain vertical. This meant I had to find wood that was wide enough for the 54mm disks. (I should mention that since it's Dutch, all the dimensions ended up being in mm.) I only needed a small chunk of maple for the disks and the most cost effective way of getting it was to take a natural edge shelf I found at the wood working store and cut it into slabs of the right thickness. I set up a jig for the drill press to hold the slabs and quickly had 30+ disks ready for the next step.

Since this is a form of shuffleboard you want to minimize friction. This meant that the disks needed to be concave so they had a minimum amount of surface area touching the playing surface. I'm sure the professional use some sort of router bit. My plan was to use the table saw to dish out the middle of each side of the disk. I was a bit nervous with the first disk as I figured there was a high likelihood that the disk would go flying across the shop. I tried to clamp the first one but found that if I put the disk into the hole on an angle and then dipped it down slowly and twisted I got the dishing with no surprises.

The table saw did a great job creating the dishing effect however it left a fairly rough surface. Maple end grain is not easy to sand and after some failed attempts at using a palm sander I turned (no pun intended) to the lathe. I have a four jaw chuck and I put a rubber band around the disk to protect it. I then used a drill with a sanding attachment with a foam backing to do the sanding. About 30 seconds per side and all tool marks had disappeared. I finished things off at the router table putting a chamfer on the edges. A lot of steps for a lot of disks.

The design portion I could not wrap my head around was trying to make a sturdy playing surface without being too heavy. I considered a 3/4 inch bottom but it seemed too heavy. In the end I went with a 1/4 inch bottom with cross braces every foot or so. They are rabbited into the sides and screwed in. I considered gluing everything but by the time you have screws in all the pieces running in different directions the end result seems very stable. I'll check in after 10 years or so and see how things are holding up.

I also considered getting fancy with the joinery and dovetailing in the cross pieces. The issue was that I had never seen a dutch shuffleboard and didn't want to get too far down a particular path without being able to reset. This mean the joinery is relatively simple dadoes and screws though as mentioned, screws from the side and bottom into maple make for a very strong joint. The only 'fancy' woodworking was the point system marks on the gates. Walnut dowels into maple holes sanded smooth.

The final result turned out well enough for my first (and likely last) attempt at a dutch shuffleboard. I don't often do a project twice. If I were to do it again I think I would commit to dovetailing or box joints on the sides and maybe turn the back portion into a compartment with a cover to store the disks. The nice thing about screwing everything together is that you can technically remove the playing surface and refinish it. I put on 6 coats of wipe on poly followed by a carnauba based wax. I also have some shuffleboard salt however the wax seems pretty good for a drinking game. Maybe one day I'll got to the Netherlands and check out a tournament.

A Trebuchet

Let's call this a prototype. I've wanted to make myself a catapult or more precisely a trebuchet since I watched a show on PBS when I was a kid. The idea that an elevated weight could be used to propel large stones at a castle was incredibly intriguing. I got even more interested when I found out that there is an annual pumpkin tossing competition that has a trebuchet category. The opportunity arose for me to make one myself when my son decided he wanted to do a medieval themed birthday party. We had also just recently painted our fence and taken down an old playhouse in the back yard. I had everything I needed. I won't go into the details of angles and dimensions as there are plenty of more detailed resources online. I effectively started with the length of the arm and all dimensions were ratios from there. When I started I was too impatient to figure out the exact ratios so I made it 'adjustable'. I learned later on in the process that the ideal dimensions are fairly consistent as you scale up and down so I didn't really experiment with any of the other settings.

Since I only had three days to put this together and the goal was to use it in a party game it's far from perfectly tuned. I managed to get it to toss a tennis ball about 100 feet. With a larger weight I think I could have tuned it to a distance closer to a soccer field. The only real trouble I had with it was figuring out how to 'release' at the right time. This is the only adjustable piece that I did take advantage of. I put a ring on the end of the string and hooked it on a nail. I adjusted the angle of the nail until it released perfectly. The other not so obvious piece was how to arm the ball in the sling. I started with the leather pouch horizontal but quickly realized vertical was the right way to go because it would release and get out of the way.

This was a fun project. Now I'm ready to build a pumpkin tossing version.

A Painted Desk

After my son got to design his desk it was time to build one for my daughter. She's three years older and had a very specific look in mind. She's also an artist so storage of paints and brushes and paper was important. The unusual thing for me was that she wanted her desk to be painted. I've certainly done painted items before but usually older looking pieces that involve the use of milk paint and a hand rubbed finish. A professional looking heavy wearing finish was going to be a different challenge since I hate painting things with nooks and crannies with a brush and I don't have a sprayer.

My favourite wood for painting is poplar because it's cheap, works nicely and is fairly sturdy. It also comes in 5/4 and 9/4 stock which gives me the ability to build things a bit beefier. I didn't actually get a good picture of what she wanted. Instead I got a description that included;
1) Solid base and sides.
2) Fitted drawers on one side.
3) Tall enough for a particular brand of paint.
4) Four drawers on one side and a single drawer where you sit.
5) Painted.

She initially wanted it all white but we took a trip to the home centre and check out the spray paint aisle and found something she liked. I figured it was a relatively small project and spray paint would be a good option. I pre-finished all parts where I could with a white primer which made the spray paint go a lot farther. I think I only used four cans to get two good coats on everything. I used full extension slides for all the drawers and we found a nice black handle. Dimensions are 21 inches deep, 44 inches wide and 31 inches high. Sides are plywood and all joints are mortise and tenon.

A Cherry Bowl

I'm still not a wood turner. I can make things round, I can add a bit of a profile and I can use a Jacobs chuck to make holes in vases. The next step in my evolution is bowl making. I attempted to learn by Youtube but soon became convinced that this would be a good opportunity to take a class.  Lee Valley hosts a number of classes and one came up for turning a simple wooden bowl. The goal of the class is to make a bowl from scratch which meant we would be turning from dry wood. I've turned green wood before and it's obvious why turning green is ideal. The trouble with that is that you can only go so far before you have to wait for the wood to dry.

We started by a 6x6x3 chunk of cherry that had already been cut round. We then drilled a hole to attach the screw chuck and turned the outside of the bowl with a foot that could be turned around and attached with a four jaw chuck. We then turned the inside and created a jam chuck with a piece of poplar that we could use to turn off the foot and add a concave bottom. I managed to do all of the turning in the class and took the piece home for some hand sanding. It was a lot slower than sanding and finishing on the lathe but I wanted to make sure I got all my swirl marks out. I added a simple wipe on poly and was finish and now I have a place for my keys by the door.

Mission Style Desk

My son needed a desk and rather than designing one myself I decided to let him design one. I did of course influence him towards styles that I'm familiar with but the basic size and layout was all him. We settled on a Mission Style desk with two drawers and big blocky legs. The only part of this project that I was worried about was building the legs. Being mission style I had chosen quarter sawn white oak which meant I wanted to have similar grain on all sides of the legs. I considered a few different approaches. The first was a sandwich in one direction with a 1/8 applied piece on the long grain. I wasn't convinced this would be seamless. I also considered trying to find wood with the grain running at 45 degrees but that would have mean 12/4 stock which was not cheap.

I did also briefly consider some of the fancy router bits that allow you to bring four pieces of wood together in mostly flat grain. This seemed overly complex and I didn't want to spring for the router bit. I finally decided on a simple mitre with a piece of poplar in the middle. With modern glues, an accurate 45 degree angle and the poplar adding strength I figured it would do the trick. Everything seemed to come together nicely and I added some nice coasters to the bottom of the foot to ensure there would not be any undue stress when dragging the desk around.
Final result was a leg with edge grain running on all four sides and you can't see the seam at all.

The rails and styles were all done with mortise and tenon joints and the drawers were finger jointed. I have a Forrest 3/8 saw blade for my table saw and a box jig that allows me to create box joints very quickly and accurately. I used full extension drawer slides and applied an oak front. The overall dimensions are 40 inches wide, 20 inches deep and 30 inches tall. The rails are 5 inches high and the legs are 2 1/2 inches. The finish is a wipe on poly. The thing weighs a ton but should last a lifetime.