fred

I just like to make things.

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Corian & Walnut Coaster

I’ve been on a water kick lately. It’s definitely something I’d recommend, but I’m not qualified to offer health advice or anything so I’ll shut up and stick to what I do know. We recently got a water cooler at work and it serves up some pretty chill water, so I had to supplement my coaster arsenal here at my desk with something that would wick moisture. My pressed paper coaster for my coffee mug would be destined for mush by the end of the day, so I decided to make something in a few hours on Sunday. It’s not my most inspired design, but it was a fun little project that mostly used scrap materials I had lying around.

This was my uninspired design. I wasn’t aiming for anything fancy since this was just for my desk, but I think it turned out pretty well. The corian is leftover from previous projects, and the black walnut as well. Cutting the walnut inlay strips was the only “hard” part. It just took a little time to get them to be a good 1/8″ square then cut to length. You can see from my first picture that I carelessly chipped out some of the walnut while cutting and sanding, but it’s good enough for who it’s for I suppose.

After everything was cut, fit and glued together, I cut a 1/6″ bottom for the coaster to keep it from sliding around. Corian is pretty dope, but it can be a slick surface. The laser cutter made quick work of the cork and with a little CA glue and some 500 grit sandpaper I was good to go.

Here’s a link to my router project in Easel for cutting the corian: https://easel.inventables.com/projects/AVyXh9Fmcg5Nv4AFbJ9kVQ

I can share an .svg of my Illustrator drawing or something, should anyone ever find this page, read this post and actually want it.

For the black walnut I very carefully and very inappropriately used a tablesaw and miter saw. 

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Chinese Checkers

This is a pretty simple but fun project I made as a birthday gift for my coworker’s daughter. I’m sure it’s the most boring gift she got for her big day.

I was inspired by a design from Mo at Inventables, but I wanted to do something a little different. For mine, I made the overall shape a hexagon and created an angular pattern across the top like you see in some printed versions of the game, where black lines connect all of the peg holes. I think it just makes the game look more complete.

This piece is 3/8″ bamboo plywood and finished with a bit of beeswax and mineral oil.

The marbles I ordered on Amazon weren’t the greatest. They’re not like a colored glass, more like a painted glass. They don’t feel nice and heavy, but they do the job. I like that they all came in individually colored bags though with a big bag for all of the little bags. Also they had one extra marble for each color. Here’s a link to them: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07NQ7B9FQ/

Here’s a link to my easel project. If anyone out there wants this, I can share my design files or make a .pdf that can be printed for a template.

https://www.inventables.com/projects/chinese-checkers

If you decide to make one of these, I’d love to see how your’s turned out, so drop me a line!

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Birch Bunny

I know... Easter is real far away right now. This is a project I’ve been meaning to post for a while. I designed this little bunny model in Illustrator to be cut out on a cnc router or laser cutter. For mine, I used the router to avoid the soot... You can use any .125″ (3.2mm) material, though I went with birch plywood from Woodpeckers. Once all the pieces were cut out, I sanded them with some high-grit paper, placed the pieces in ziplock bags and gave to my family’s kids at Easter. They seemed to enjoy coloring the pieces, then putting them together. I’d recommend doing a test piece, like the hip and a leg or something, to make sure your material slots fit together nicely for a good joint before cutting out an entire sheet of parts. You could always scale this up or down a bit to make them a little tighter or looser if there’s a problem. Remember not to sand too much, especially around faces that are part of a joint. You can affect the tightness of the joints just by sanding a little too hard.

Here’s a link to my router project for Easel: https://www.inventables.com/projects/birch-bunny--2

Here’s a link to the .svg that can be used for laser/cnc: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1GQPS_8rKZAhP6w8JYas_TdheoefET2x5/view?usp=sharing

If you take on this project, I’d love to see what you make. If you need help or have questions with this, just let me know.

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Stuff to come.

The plan is to share some things I’ve worked on. from silly and lazy Photoshop projects to laser, cnc, vinyl and woodworking projects.

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Enjoy ya summa.

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Man. Myth. Legend. Straw.