I know almost no one in the city with a working fireplace (but quite a few with non-working fireplaces, weird), but I see firewood for sale at bodegas and super markets all over.
Instead of lugging wood back from the burbs, I figured I’d shell out the $8.99 and see if the deli wood is an good. I think it’s ash. Figure I can make something interesting out of the fire wood.
I’m finishing up a built-in cabinet at my place. Been been planning to do for years. The build went very smooth for the most part (thank you pocket screws). And usually I’m kind of against painted wood, but I figured a white cabinet would blend in nicely with my white walls.
I had a lot of paint left over from a previous home project, so I figured waste not, want yadda yadda. What I didn’t know is that paint can go bad. It gets skunked. Literally, it stinks after it dries. Seriously. We’re talking B.O. here.
Now this is very disheartning. I’m very pleased with the way the cabinet came out, but the smell. So after doing a little research, I discovered a trick. They say a halfed onion in a bowl of water kills the smell. I was skeptical, but tried it. And after a few hours of this I can safely say, my place smells like onions and B.O.
Update: 3 or 4 coats of polyurethane stops the smell.
Glued Up
Sanded
The laser burns the wood when it cuts it, and I was worried that it would be difficult to sand away the blackened edges. But I was pleasantly surprised how easily it came off.
I only worked on the inside cuts, easier to sand now before I glue the three piece sandwich together.
Next step: glue up and sand outer edges
So I tried cutting a wine bottle for the first time. Not a lot of success.
I believe it had nothing to do with the technique I saw on Make, but with my scoring. I need some practice, but I stand by the idea of this making a decent lamp shade.
I turned some green oak blanks this weekend, my shop smelled like a bourbon barrel. These will eventually be lamps, mallets, and maybe a wooden robot or two.
I’m working on a jig to cut the ends off of wine bottles. I plan on using the tube of the bottle as a glass lamp shade.
The bottle spins on two rolling pins (still usable) while a glass cutter etches the bottle. I was inspired by this wine bottle cutting video (the technique is shown around the 6 min. mark) I saw on Make.
I’ve been prototyping a pretty simple lamp using a piece of paper as the shade. A little fine tuning is still needed to get the dimensions right, but I’m liking where it’s going. I’ll probably group three or four of these lamps together with shades made from letter size (8.5″ x 11″) and legal size (8.5″ x 14″) paper.
Maybe go the kit route, I make the lamp base, you build the shade. More to come.
Proof of concept to see if traditional stained glass window techniques can be applied to marbles. The plan is to use marbles of various size to create a shade or globe for a lamp. yes, another attempt at a lampshade.
Through the years I have purchased/found/been given hardware that I instantly fall in love with. I want to build pieces of furniture around them, yet I never do.
Some day.
