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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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Today’s Project: Wilkerson Workbench
This morning, I built a copy of the workbench from April Wilkerson’s latest video. I didn’t add drawers underneath (yet) or any storage on the ends (yet), because my primary use case for this bench is to use it to break down full sheets of plywood and as an outfeed table for my table saw. …
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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 Aleutian Latrine
Can you help me determine the author of a humorous World War II poem about toilets? While I was clearing out my late father-in-law’s attic, I came across three cases of Kodachrome slides taken by his late cousin David Tewes, who had been a soldier stationed in Alaska during World War II. Among the slides…
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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…
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Wooden’t You Like to See These Christmas Gifts I Made?
Here are a couple more Christmas gifts that came out of the workshop. The first one is a wall-hanging for my die-hard Vikings fan mother-in-law. I cut it on the X-Carve and hand-painted it. This one is for my parents to hang up pictures of the grandkids: If you’re wondering whether making a sign like…
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I Made Some Animal Stools
I made four little animal chairs for young family members this Christmas: The process for each chair was basically the same: cut out sides on the X-Carve, cut the seat and seatback on the table saw, and screw them together. I hand-painted the elephant and unicorn, and I finished the whale and otter with Danish…
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Making Name Puzzles with the X-Carve
For a couple of the younger kids on my Christmas gift list this year, I made name puzzles with my X-Carve. The puzzles are made out of Baltic birch plywood; the letters are 1/4″ thick and the base is 1/2″ thick. I cut out the letters of the name (and some additional puzzle pieces) with…
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Turn Your X-Carve into a Plug Cutter
One of my favorite aspects of Inventables’s X-Carve CNC router is Easel, their free online carving software. My favorite part of Easel is that it is programmable — you can write apps for it. Apps automate tasks like turning an image into a puzzle, carving gears, or making inlays. Inventables has written nine apps and…
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Today’s CNC Carving: A towel rack that says Towels
What do you hang your towels on? A plain old towel bar? Ha. A hook on the back of the door? Sad. You drape them over the shoulders of a mannequin like a cape? Ok that’s pretty cool. But what would be even cooler would be to hang your towels on a towel rack that…
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Activity Book: An Alexa skill for bored kids
Do you have an Amazon Alexa-enabled device? Do you have children? Are those children ever bored? If your answers were “yes,” “yes,” and “yes of course all the time,” then do I have an Alexa skill for you! It’s called Activity Book. Enable the skill in your Alexa app (or by saying, “Alexa, enable the…
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Garbage Can Cabinet Medallions
Ever since I built our garbage and recycling cabinet last year, visitors to my home have been mystified as to where to throw away their trash, so I made some identifying medallions for the front of the cabinet with my X-Carve. They’re carved out of red oak (the same wood used for the top of…
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