Category: Maker
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I’ve Got Hives!
Beehives, that is! I’m going to be keeping bees this year, and I built and painted my own hives. One is an ode to Lincoln: One is a rainbow honeycomb pattern: And one was an attempt at a foggy mountain scene: I hope the bees like them. I think they are the bees’ knees!
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Secret Santa 2018: Japan in Maple and Walnut
For my workplace Secret Santa gift exchange this Christmas (you know, the one that very recently took place), my recipient was a Japanese citizen who likes to hike, so I made him a 3-D topographic map of Japan out of maple and walnut. The steps to build it were pretty simple, so I won’t caption…
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I Built a Bed That Is Also a Playhouse and a Slide and a Dresser and a Bookshelf
My five-year-old daughter saw my wife browsing Pinterest, and long story short, I ended up building this bed/playhouse/slide/dresser/bookcase for her room: I planned it out in SketchUp. It’s an original design inspired by a number of beds online, and the slide is based on The Wood Whisperer’s bunk bed slide. (My SketchUp file is available…
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Generating and Cutting Halftone Images on the X-Carve
Halftone is an app I’ve written for making halftone-style carves with Inventables’s Easel CNC design platform. A halftone image uses different sized dots to represent light and dark areas. Upload an image, and Halftone will convert it to a grid of holes with each hole sized to reflect the brightness of the image at that…
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I Made a Stand for a Daily Photo Calendar
We bought a photo-a-day calendar for 2019, but because it didn’t come with any sort of stand, it was in danger of getting broken apart prematurely. I made this stand for it that doubles as storage for the used pages so they can be used as a notepad. Underneath the calendar, there’s a slot where…
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I Made a Truly Simple Pencil Box
I made this sliding-top pencil box for our three-year-old goddaughter. It’s all Baltic birch; the sides are half-inch and the top is quarter-inch. I carved the design with my X-Carve, painted the carved area, and then finished the entire box with a spray enamel clearcoat.
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Shaker-Style Jewelry Cabinet
I built this Shaker-style jewelry cabinet for my wife. You’ll never guess what’s inside… If you’d like the plans for this cabinet, you can find them on Etsy. The cabinet box itself is only 1 3/4″ deep. These are the four sides; the top is shorter because it won’t be mitered, since the top of…
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I’ve Been Framed!
In a picture frame, that is! I made this 30″x20″ frame for my wife, who wanted one for our wedding picture in the same style as this smaller frame she found: The new frame is constructed of 3/4″ Baltic birch plywood. I started by making the sides (each 3″ wide) and cutting a rabbet into…
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I Built a Kitchen Cabinet to Replace Our Pantry
Come along with me on a journey; a journey of craftsmanship, cabinets, and canned goods. Observe as I detail the steps I took to build this new cabinet in our kitchen so that we could move all of our food out of the cramped pantry and into the light where it belongs (the light where…
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I’ve Been Busy in the Bathroom Again
Not content to live in a house with only one barn-style sliding door, I’ve built another over-toilet cabinet. I made a few changes since the last time I made one of these: I made the rail out of poplar instead of pine, as the pine rail on the old cabinet is beginning to splinter a…
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I made a patio with stones mined from my backyard
This is the story of how I turned this: into this: and how it only took me 411 days. It all started when I pried some flagstones out of the hill next to our house. They were sticking out of the grass, and I thought I’d use them for a path somewhere. As I pulled…
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I Turned a Broken Wheelbarrow Into a Chicken Tractor
Chickens, they say, are the most industrious of all birds. They are not content to while away the hours just pecking and clucking; they want to be put to work. For this reason, I built for our chickens a chicken tractor. Unlike its human counterpart, a chicken tractor does not have an engine or even…
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8-Bit Emergency Kit
Have you ever found yourself in a situation where you wished you could escape from your problems? Well if you had this 8-bit emergency kit, you could grab the hammer, smash your way to a P-Wing, and fly away. For the uninitiated, the hammer and P-Wing are items from Super Mario Bros. 3., one of…
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I Built an Infinity Wishing Well
A few weeks ago, my wife mentioned that she’d like me to find something to cover the septic tank cleanout in the front yard. I had strategically placed a bird bath next to it two years ago, but I guess people were still able to see the pipe. Where I’m from, when we have a…
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Nelson-Style Cedar Bench
I made what could be called a Nelson-style bench to use as a step next to our hot tub. It’s about four feet long, 13″ tall, and 11″ deep. The legs are angled out at 10º, and the top is composed of five one-inch wide slats. All of the wood came from one of these…
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I built a bandsaw box, and I only made at least eighteen mistakes
I made my first bandsaw box. While I’m very happy with the end result (and pleased that it looks like an ice cream sandwich), I thought that instead of crowing about how great it is, I’d list all of the mistakes I made so that I can avoid them the next time I make one.…
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Introducing the Fintendo: My Bartop Arcade Build
I have fulfilled the greatest dreams of my childhood and built an arcade machine that plays my favorite games from the Nintendo, Super Nintendo, and more. There are many very good tutorials on the Web on how to build your own bartop arcade, so I won’t be going into a ton of detail. I mainly…
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Today’s Project: Puzzle Storage
I just finished building a 16-puzzle storage box so that we can consolidate all of our board puzzles from three different smaller boxes to one large one. Not a lot to say about this one; it’s just a Baltic birch box with a bunch of little supports along each side. I used lock rabbets to…
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An Automattic Bowl
For part of the gift I sent through the Secret Santa exchange at work this year, I decided to make a bowl with the Automattic company logo inlaid in the bottom. I’ve never made a bowl or done an inlay before, so this was definitely a wise decision that would not backfire. I started by…
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How to Make Your Very Own Kidney Stone Paperweight
On today’s episode of Finkstructables, I’m going to be walking you through the steps to make your very own kidney stone paperweight. Step 1: Create a kidney stone. I made this stone with my right kidney, but you could use your left one if you like. Now, you want the stone to be large enough…