More project time?

Well that was a rough weekend. Found out Saturday, via a call from my Dean, who knows I'm not checking work email over the weekend, that the college is announcing a massive reorganization this week, with 50% of the administrative staff getting let go. Yours truly included. Oh boy.

I'm freaking out a little about this, but for now all I can do is keep doing what I'm doing, just add in some cover letter writing time somewhere in there. And in the meantime, I'm starting to look for positives about getting some forced downtime coming my way. Even if it comes at the cost of my workshop budget. Oh boy.

I've been through this enough that I know the steps by now, and I'm going through the first of them already. That doesn't mean I'm thrilled to suddenly be job searching again, especially with kids and a mortgage and waiting to hear about an EED acceptance, but there's not much I can do about it. I tried being pissed off, but there wasn't really anywhere to point it. The state hasn't had a budget for two years, the college is in the red, and this sounds like the only way to keep it open for students in the fall. How it's going to look like a college with half the staff gone I don't know, but it's not really my concern either. I have some cover letters to write.

After a slight delay, helmet stands done

We went out of town over the weekend, which meant any projects got put on hold for an extra couple of days. I had been having trouble finding time to get a finish on these stands anyway, so being out forced me to get away for enough time that I came back ready to finish these and move on.

Even with the delay, I really like how these came together. Builds like this are a good illustration of how much fun you can have with a new hobby once you get acclimated to it. These were spur of the moment projects, won't serve much use, but I really enjoyed figuring out how to put them together and what finish I wanted to put on them. And really, it would have been easier, and not much more expensive, to just buy two stands. But that would have lead to time waiting for shipping to get delivered instead of time in the shop figuring stuff out, and shop time is way more pleasant than waiting for a delivery.

The Kylo Ren stand needed a bit of black, so while I stained the actual wood of the post, the plywood got a matte black spray paint. I think the contrast looks good. I also think I paid more for the plywood than I did for the helmet (90% off the day after halloween, thank you very much) so this project turned out great even if I don't think this helmet's getting worn in the next movie. Next up I think I have to build a display case for all these Star Wars figures I have waiting for the boy.

I went with a flat blue for the football helmet, using some of the blue furniture paint over the last of my white spray primer. Re-using stuff from other projects might mean I'm inching ever closer to being cost-effective but man do I hate painting with this stuff. It's can be challenging to get even coverage, but ultimately it's going to be under a helmet so I'm not too worried about it in the end. Same reason seeing the plywood bands doesn't bother me too much either. At least you can't really tell how crooked the bottom cuts are with it on the shelf.

Even with the mistakes these turned out pretty good. Having the helmets on stands feels like they should be somewhere more noticeable than our closet, but that's the challenge in sharing your space with the rest of the family. Not all my "guys' stuff" can be out all the time. For now it was a fun project to throw together. 

charging stand

With so much plywood left over, I thought it might be fun to cut together a quick charger stand for my phone and watch. A project that uses scrap and helps keep my space organized is my kind of project.

There are plenty of these out there, so I didn't go off any particular plan again. Two squares that interlock with cut out joints creating a shelf, plus a half-circle cut out to put my watch on. Simple.

2nd test-fit. Good to go.

My first cuts had the shelf higher than I wanted, so I traced the shape and cut out another square, this time with the cut-out lower. It gave me another shot at cutting the circle out with the jig saw, which helped. A sanding drum on the dremel helped get it a little more symmetrical too.

Looks alright for plywood, if you don't look too long at the sides.

Our bedroom furniture is walnut, so I used my walnut stain in the hopes of getting a good match. It's not terrible but this stain is getting pretty old and is about done. Doesn't look too bad though.

At this point I was considering adding an extra shelf at the top to put my glasses on overnight, but decided against it. I liked how it looked just as a plain board, and I think that was the right way to go.

Final product

A few coats of poly to keep it smooth, and after some glue to keep it together and some felt pads we're ready to go upstairs.

Just don't look at the back side.

Once it was up there I velcro'd my watch charger in place, which is temporary but sturdy enough to last for now. Since I'm not using a samsung phone anymore my neo isn't quite as functional as it once was but still does what I need it to do. The stand helps keep things tidy on my nightstand, so mission accomplished.

DIY firewood stand

There is SO MUCH to do on my Fridays off. And there's only 12 of them, so I better get cracking. Last week, I spent the day draining our landscaping pond to be able to get rid of it, and did a lot of pruning and upkeep on the bushes around the firepit. That left me with a lot of yard waste to clean, and as it turns out, I could throw together a project to help deal with that.

Another thing I wanted to do on one of these days was re-do the patio bench from last summer. It's been in the shop for the past few days and I pried off the two worst-looking boards, and they should make for some nice scrap to put together a place to store all this potential firewood.

This bench needs a lot of love.

But it does leave me with some good scrap to use

This needs to be dry at the bottom though, so before I put a frame down I'm going to re-use the stones that were surrounding the pond. Some of them are becoming a footpath through the landscaping to our spigot, and some are becoming my dry spot for the firewood rack I'm about to throw together. Always better to reuse vs throw out.

With two 6-foot boards to use, I thought a simple U-shape would work, with two U's attached with a bunch of shorter pieces cut off. I thought six would do it, so I started by chopping three small pieces off the end of each board.

Improvised a quick stopper jig with a small clamp

Cuts: two bottoms, four sides, six spacers

Then the remaining boards got cut into three sections, two 19" pieces which left one a little longer for a bottom. I made the first U with kreg screws, set that on its side to attach the spacers, then flipped that to attach the other U. This came together super fast.

Good kreg project

All together

The boards were pressure treated to begin with, and already had some stain and poly on them, so at that point it was ready to go out and hold the firewood. Turns out I had made way more fire fuel than I thought, so I filled it up pretty quickly without even chopping up a few of the remaining big branches.

Good day to work outside too, get out of the shop.

There is still a lot to do back here, but trust me when I say it's so much cleaner looking just with all the branches and wood organized. Going with scrap kind of limited me as far as how big I could make a stand like this, but I didn't want a huge one dominating the space anyway. This is just about perfect for what I needed. Now I just have to fill the hole the pond left, and have some bonfires to use up some of this firewood.

Side project: helmet display

While I was finishing the cooler, for whatever reason I got a bug to put together a display stand for a couple of helmets I've got sitting around. They weren't out or anything, it was one of those ideas that wormed its way into my brain and wouldn't let go until I put some work into it.

Two very different helmets but they could both use a stand.

I have plenty of scrap around to put something together, but nothing wide enough for a base to balance a stand on. Thankfully, my first summer Friday was full of errands, and one of them put me close to a Menards where I could pick up a project plywood. After the errands but before I put the poly on the cooler, I could see if the stand I had in my head would work.

Whew that is not clean!

I cut a first square out of the plywood with the circular saw at a 45 degree angle, then traced that to cut a second square with straight edges to put the first one one. It's a pretty terrible cut job, to be honest, but they matched up okay and seemed like a solid base.

I traced the mallet head to get an appropriately-sized circle.

That's too tall for the football helmet but good for Kylo.

I cut a circle out of scrap with the jig saw, then glued that to a scrap 1x2 that got glued to the base. I screwed through the mitered plywood to give the base some stability, then glued the plywood pieces together. Very quickly, I had a stand.

Proof of concept, the bike helmet has been fine there all week.

It seems to be holding up okay, so next steps: repeat the build again, and figure out how to finish them. This is a lot of work for something that probably won't get much use, unless the boy wants to put either helmet in his room or I redo some shelves in our office. Even if that doesn't happen though, it was worth getting this idea out of my head and into the shop.