The Laser Party was fantastic. The ladies of Design Glut and the fine folks at Length Width Height (a fabrication lab in the “incubation” center at NY Designs) hosted a great event. Met some great people and saw some very interesting designs.

They have a 51″ x 51″ laser cutter, the biggest I’ve ever seen. The thing opens up like a DeLorean and when the roof deck door is open, you can see the Empire State Building (my streak of using tools with some killer views continues). She’s a real beauty.

After a little trouble with my CAD file (I was the only one to give them a bum file, awesome), we cut a Monster Mirror. It turned out great. I still need to glue it up, sand it, and finish it, but this beats cutting them out by hand.

The other designs were incredible, check them out here. If you are in the NYC area and in need of a 51″ laser cutter, I know a guy.

And FYI, laser cut food does not taste good.

I tweaked the wooden mallet design a bit. Still using naturally fallen oak from the Poconos (P-oak-conos if you will, wakka wakka, sigh) finished with walnut oil, but now I’m using some scrap poplar to pin the handle to the mallet head. And because I’m an incredible egomaniac, I branded my logo on the handles.

The one on the left reminds me of the hammer from Donkey Kong, I’ve named it “The Mario”.

I recently got to use a lathe that quite possibly has the best view ever. The MAD Museum has working studio space up on the 6th floor, overlooking Columbus Circle. It is incredible, the image above does not do it justice. It was very easy to be distracted by the Columbus statue, Central Park, the fountains, the traffic, the people. Amazing.

I can’t wait to use it again.

You can never have enough hammers. I’ve got a hammer thing going on these days.

I’ve been making wooden mallets lately. Mostly out of oak, mostly for food preparation (meat tenderizing, etc). I just like making them. Maybe designer mallets will be the new designer axes (I have no idea why, but I just want one of those axes real bad).

My sisters got me a branding iron for Christmas. They had to order it special, and it took some time to get here. But it just came in the mail the other day.

This thing is so choice, if you have the means, I highly recommend picking one up.

Look what I bought with my Cash Cab winnings.

This thing is a beast. One and a half horse power, 16 inch turning diameter, 400 lbs. of lathe awesome-ness. Getting it to the shop was basically a sitcom. But it’s here now and I can’t wait to make beautiful stuff.

I posted two new instructables recently, take a look.

Steps on how to wire a turned lamp.

And a quick instructable on how to build a simple tool to thread turned wooden lamps. This tool makes wiring wooden lamps very easy.