Wooden Pig Craft Project
We ran across a picture of a little pig online and my little girl fell in love with it, so we grabbed a sheet of paper and tried to make it. Here’s how it turned out. Below the photo is…
Tag crafts
$2 Hot Wire Foam Cutter
Here’s a hot wire foam cutter that I made from scraps, following a general design I saw in Make magazine a couple years ago. I picked up 20 feet of 30-gauge nichrome (nickel chromium) wire on ebay for $2.09, shipping…
How to Make a Pen from Start to Finish
Here’s a 20-minute video of the entire pen-making process — everything from selecting the wood to preparing the blanks, through to turning the pen on the lathe, finishing it to a shine, and assembling it. Virtually none of the process…
Rubber Band Gun
Okay, let’s get some parenting concerns out of the way first: I believe that a rubber band gun is probably one of the safest ways to teach a kid a bit about gun safety, partly because it actually shoots something…
A Few Turned Pens
Here are a few pens that I made for Christmas gifts this year. (I can post them now because everyone’s received them!) Click the image for a larger view. From left to right, there are two pens turned from holly,…
3D Printed Detail Test, Stainless Steel
Here are the results and a key for the detail test that I had printed by Shapeways in stainless steel. The detail is quite remarkable. If this interests you, check out the . First the scale, compared to a penny:…
Maple Cabinet Door Spice Rack
Here’s a spice rack I made to fit on the back of a cabinet door. It really cleans up the spice cabinet, and makes the individual jars a lot easier to find. I had to notch the shelves out a…
Making the $6 Branding Iron, Step-by-Step
In the post, I showed off a branding iron I had “printed” in stainless steel by Shapeways.com for US$6, after using the free vector image editor Inkscape, and parametric modeling software Alibre Design, which also has a free version called…
A $6 Custom Branding Iron
Some woodworkers like to leave their mark on their work using a branding iron, but at roughly $190 per iron, it can really be quite an investment. I took a less expensive route, using some free software, and a genius…
Bubinga and Maple Ice Cream Scoop
I picked up several of these scoop kits at Rockler a couple weeks ago to use as Christmas gifts. I used bubinga and sugar maple, and finished it with tung oil. This handle feels the best so far — both…