CNC, Maker, Woodworking, X-Carve

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 the greatest games made for the original Nintendo Entertainment System. The hammer lets Mario break rocks in the map, and the P-Wing allows him to fly for an entire level (but only a single level).  It’s a very useful item, but it’s also very rare, so it must be saved for just the right occasion. Let me walk you through how I built this.

Like all good things, this project started with a board of quarter-sawn red oak.

I chopped and sliced the board until I had these six pieces.

I glued two of the longer pieces together to make the back of the box, and I mitered the ends of the rest of the boards for the box sides.  I cut a groove (not pictured) in each of the sides to accept the back of the box.

The photo above is a dry fit. Because the box holds the glass (“glass”) front captive, I couldn’t glue it up until the very last step.

I originally made a mushroom out of Perler beads to use as the power-up, but it didn’t seem worthy of emergency use. Nobody was ever psyched about getting a mushroom from a Toad House.

I decided to make a P-Wing out of wood instead.  I cut a pixel grid on some oak with my X-Carve and then cut out the P-Wing shape on the bandsaw.

A splash of paint and the P-Wing is done. The P-Wing looks superimposed on this photo because it’s sitting on the top of a bottle, not floating in the air.

I made the hammer head the same way, by carving a grid on the X-Carve and then cutting out the real shape on the bandsaw.

I don’t have any bits that could cut two inches deep, and cutting the edges on the bandsaw resulted in sharper corners.

In order to attach a handle, I cut a 15/16″ hole through the hammer head.  Reenactment pictured below.

I filed the top of the hole to flare it out so that the handle would fit better as I pounded the wedges into it. (I also took some liberties and cut a space between the hammer claws, even though it’s not clear from the game that the hammer has separate claws.)

I apparently forgot to take any pictures of the handle-making process, so you’ll have to take my word for it that I used part of a broken broomstick, rounded the ends, cut an X in one end, and then pounded walnut wedges into it to secure the handle in place.

(This video explains the process of using wedges to attach a hammer handle.)

This was my first time successfully making my own wedges for a hammer and my most successful X-shaped wedging.

The last step for the hammer was to coat it with clear enamel.  This really made the contrast between the walnut head and the birch (?) handle pop.

I decided to use this project to make a spline-cutting jig and cut splines for the first time. It went better than expected!

The splines are walnut so as to match the hammer.

I originally wanted a vinyl sticker for the “In case of emergency label,” but I don’t have the means to make one, and ordering a single custom sticker from a sign-maker would have been cost-prohibitive.  So instead, I cut a little placard on the X-Carve.

To mount the sign and P-Wing inside the box, I used epoxy to affix two more pieces of the aforementioned broomstick. I used epoxy instead of wood glue because this joint involves end-grain, which doesn’t always adhere well with just glue, and I don’t want these joints to fail since there is no way to fix them without breaking in to the box.

You can see in the above picture that at some point, I cut a groove around the top edge of the box to accept the glass front, which is really plexiglass because I was going to be sending this box through the mail and I didn’t trust it to arrive unbroken. So if there is an emergency that merits breaking the glass, you’ll have to hit it really hard.

I mounted the sign and P-Wing to the ends of the broomstick dowels with epoxy as well.

At this point, the bottom two corners of the box are glued together, and the plexiglass front can go in. But first, I needed to figure out how to attach the hammer to the box.

After poking around in my spare parts bin for a minute, I made a simple hook out of two pieces of a wire clothes hanger.

I drilled holes into the bottom of the box and epoxied the hooks in place. I also added a picture-hanging hook, although I’ve been exclusively using 3M Velcro strips to hang things for about three years.

You can see in the above picture that I glued the top on, effectively securing the contents of the box forever. That’s not true, I lied. Instead of using wood glue on the top corners, I used hide glue. Hide glue has the useful property that it can be loosened with heat, so if the box ever does need to be opened for repairs or some nefarious purpose, the owner could heat the top corners with a heat gun or hot water, and the top of the box should come loose.

Here’s a shot of the finished splines and hammer hook.

And a shot of the hammer in place.

And the final product.  I sent it to a friend who needed something to jazz up a newly renovated space, and I can only assume that upon hanging it up, he installed a spotlight to showcase it and a velvet rope to protect it.

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CNC, Maker, Woodworking

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 problem we can’t get rid of, we cover it with a wishing well. So I volunteered to build a wishing well… but not just any old wishing well. Keep reading to learn the secret of the well.

I started off with some rough-cut 8/4 cedar.

I cut one of these 2x12s into three boards, each about 3.5″ tall and 1.75″ thick, to use for the base of the well.

From the boards, I cut eight matching pieces (each with a 22.5º miter on each end) using a miter sled I made for the occasion.

I used biscuits and glue and clamped the octagonal base together with a tie-down strap.

At the lumberyard, I also bought a handful of 6′ 1×6 fence boards. I cut each of these into six two-foot 1x3s. Some of the boards were drier than others.

I screwed the cut-down fence boards into the inside of the base, four on each side. I elevated them about half an inch so they wouldn’t have end grain in direct contact with the ground.

I repeated the process I followed for the base to make a collar around the top of the fence boards, and then I added two roof supports. Each support has two 45º miters at the top.

The lip of the well will be octagonal as well, but with the wide sides of the boards facing up. Two of the sides must be notched to fit around the roof supports, so I made a template out of cardboard.

Seven of the lip pieces are biscuited and glued together. The seven-piece part and the remaining piece are each screwed to the roof supports. More on why it’s assembled this way later.

I chose to alternate the wood colors around the lip, partly because I liked how it looked and other-partly because that was the most efficient way to use the boards.

The roof frame comprises two triangles, one attached to each vertical support.

I attached the triangles and added rafters made from leftover fence boards.

Every wishing well needs a place to hang a bucket, so I made handle and spindle out of a scrap of cedar and an old clothes-hanging rod from a closet we remodeled.

I shingled the roof with cedar shingles I picked up with the lumber, and the well is good to go!

Or is it?? (Oh, I also finished all of the weather-facing wood with some spar urethane before continuing.)

This well’s secret is that when you peek inside, you won’t see the aforementioned septic cleanout. You’ll gaze into an endless simulated abyss, your brain fooled by just a pair of mirrors and a string of lights. Ha ha! Stupid brain!

This illusion is known as an infinity mirror. There are many tutorials online for building these mirrors, but I do believe I am the first person to combine one with a wishing well.  I’ll wait while you rush to create a Wikipedia entry for me, now that I am most definitely notable.

I added supports for the mirror about three inches below the bottom of the lip.  The lip had to be removable so that I could insert the mirror, and, if necessary, remove it later.

The mirror base (and all of the rest of the parts) were cut on my X-Carve CNC router.

The second layer of the infinity mirror is a standard round mirror, twenty inches in diameter. I got this mirror (and the glass for a later step) custom-made by my local glass shop.

The interior of the infinity mirror is two layers of 3/4″ plywood with an octagonal opening (to mimic the inside shape of the well) plus a piece of quarter-inch plywood on each side with a circular opening that fits around the glass.  I glued all of these layers together and then painted all of the interior edges black.

I drilled a hole in one corner where the LED light strip will enter the mirror.

After fitting this section over the bottom mirror, I threaded the LEDs into the frame and used the adhesive backing to attach them around the edge.

Once the LEDs were in place, I added the top mirror, which is actually a two-way mirror. I bought a round piece of glass and applied silver privacy film to one side, creating a mirror that you can look through from one side. On top of this mirror, I added another 3/4″ plywood octagon, a sheet of plexiglass to protect the glass from errant footballs, and a final quarter-inch octagon to hold the plexiglass down.  With the lights on, this is what the mirror looks like at this point:

But what is controlling the LEDs, Chris? Surely this wishing well is not plugged into the wall! That would ruin the illusion!

You are correct. I did not plug the well in to the wall. The LEDs are powered by a battery pack that I inset into the bottom of the standalone lip side. Here’s a shot of it before I attached it to the well:

The battery pack is also a motion sensor, so the lights inside the well automatically turn on whenever someone walks up to it (and turn off 30 seconds later). See for yourself:

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Maker, Woodworking

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 cedar 2x12s.

First, I cut the two legs. They’re about thirteen inches long with both ends mitered at 80º.

I cut the sides of each finger joint into the ends of the legs with the table saw, removed most of the inner material with a coping saw, and then cleaned it up with the table saw again.

I cut out five four-foot strips from the 2×12 and then planed them down slowly until they fit perfectly into each finger joint.  Here’s a photo of the dry-fit. (I also tapered the bottom of the end of each slat at 80º.)

I glued the slats into the legs and clamped them for an afternoon.

I cut a chamfer into the edges of the slats in the middle section so it’s easier on the butt (or feet, depending on how the bench/step is being used).

When the cedar-friendly varnish I ordered gets here, I’ll give it a couple of coats to preserve the wood’s color, but it’s otherwise finished and perfectly functional.

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Maker, Turning, Woodworking

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.

  1. I didn’t avoid knots in the wood I chose.
  2. I didn’t use enough glue during glue-up, so there was a gap between two of the pieces.
  3. The blade I used on my first cut was too wide, so I couldn’t get the radius I wanted for the cut.
  4. After changing blades, I didn’t tension the new blade properly, leading to cuts that weren’t straight up and down. Luckily, this didn’t affect the functionality of the drawer, since the back was narrower than the front.
  5. I used a blade with too few teeth per inch, leading to a rough finish that took a long time to sand.
  6. I made one side of the box concave despite not having a spindle sander that I could use to easily sand it.
  7. I didn’t sand the insides of the drawer faces as much as I should have, so they still feel roughsawn.
  8. When cutting the drawer, I didn’t plan my cut in a way that left only one entrance point.
  9. Due to mistake #8, I should have cut the bottom of the drawer blank off before cutting off the front, but I didn’t.
  10. When gluing the box back together, I should have glue the bottom on first (due to mistake #9). I glued the back on first, which meant that when gluing the bottom on, I couldn’t tighten the clamps enough on the back edge to avoid a gap…
  11. …but I tried to anyway and cracked the box.  I undid the clamps and the crack disappeared, and then later I couldn’t find it when I tried. Oh well!
  12. Also during glue-up, I didn’t put a sacrificial piece of wood between the clamps and the box, leading to shallow dents in the front and back.
  13. When turning the knob, I cut off a rectangular piece of stock instead of a square one that would have saved a little bit of wood.
  14. If I had turned the knob with it facing the other way, I could have made the face of it a little concave instead of flat. That would have been neat.
  15. When attaching the knob, I didn’t consider that I wouldn’t be able to screw it on from the inside (because the box is too shallow to fit a screwdriver), so I had to use a screw with a hex head that I could hold with a wrench while I rotated the knob onto the stationary screw.
  16. I didn’t think to fill or sand out a small knot in the upper right corner of the box, and after oiling it, the knot is mostly invisible, but the crack in the middle of it is more noticeable.
  17. I didn’t scrape and sand all of the glue out of the interior corners of the box before it dried, so the oil finish didn’t penetrate in those spots. Luckily the drawer hides all of these spots.
  18. When I started oiling the box, I wasn’t using a lint-free cloth, so it got little lint nubbins all over it.

Hopefully, the next time I make a bandsaw box, I only make seventeen or fewer mistakes.

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CNC, Maker, Woodworking, X-Carve

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 followed this tutorial from I Like to Make Stuff and this one from The Geek Pub.  The basic steps are to get a Raspberry Pi computer, load RetroPie onto it, buy some arcade buttons, and make it all fit into a box.

I already had a Raspberry Pi that I won at That Conference a couple of years ago, but I got my buttons from Amazon. The set came with enough buttons and joysticks for two players to each have eight buttons plus a coin and player button.

The LEDs inside are powered by the USB connection to the Raspberry Pi.

For all of the non-rectangular pieces, I cut them out using my X-Carve. This was especially helpful for all of the button holes, since they were not the same size as any of my drill bits.

After getting the holes cut in the control panel, I wired up the entire system and made sure that it worked. A couple quick rounds of Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out confirmed that everything was copacetic.

For the monitor frame, I cut a window the exact size of the screen, then an inlay that would cover the bezel, and a deeper inlay for the area where the screen’s buttons are so that they wouldn’t get pressed by the frame.

Doing the frame this way hides the fact that the screen is a monitor, something that lots of other builds don’t do. I don’t want to be taken out of the moment by a distracting monitor logo and LED light. Ugh! An LED, can you imagine??  I did drill tiny holes in front of each button so they can still be pushed using a paperclip, but the holes became almost invisible after I painted the frame.

The monitor is attached to the frame by a board screwed into its mounting holes. I didn’t do this exactly right, so check one of the linked tutorials for a better example.

I followed The Geek Pub’s example, and attached guide strips where all of the sides needed to be attached. Then I glued and nailed the sides to the guides.

Lots of bartop arcade builders order custom vinyl graphics for their cabinets. I decided to go low-tech and painted a simple retro design on the cabinet and control panel in the same colors as the buttons.

Instead of going the usual route of a translucent graphic on plexiglass for the marquee, I carved a custom Nintendo logo bitmap into some quarter-inch plywood. I did this with a halftone-generator app I wrote for Easel, but it hasn’t been published for general use yet, so I can’t link to it here.

I covered the back of the marquee with red paper so that the logo will appear red when an LED light is mounted behind it.

I lined the marquee box with reflective tape to increase reflectivity. This was probably unnecessary.

The front panel holds the Coin and Player buttons for each player. Coin doubles as Select, and Player is the same as Start.

I also mounted a pair of USB ports on the front panel to allow for easy connection of a keyboard, thumb drive, or USB controllers.

All of the electronics plug into a power strip that feeds out the back of the cabinet.  I was originally going to use the speakers built into the monitor, but they didn’t have nearly enough power, so I stuck some external speakers in the cabinet too.

To allow for heat to vent out, I carved a number of holes into the back in no particular shape.

I also ran some t-molding around all of the exposed plywood edges. This really gave it an authentic arcade feel.

You can find instructions online for loading games onto the Pi, but it goes without saying that you should only use games that you already own a physical copy of.

The final step: invite the kids to play so you can inevitably step in and show them up. Done and done!

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Maker, Woodworking

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 join the box sides and 1/4″ plywood for the back.

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David Tewes

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 was a group of photos taken in Attu, Alaska during the War, and one of those photos, labeled “An Aleutian Latrine — Our XMas Card”, contained an unattributed poem and a shot of a soldier doing his “business” in the snow.

The poem is transcribed below.

An Aleutian Latrine

An Aleutian Latrine

Out on the wind swept tundra,
A place where howling winds will play
Stands a new three hole cabin
Overlooking a cold, cold bay.
It’s a very rugged country,
For here nature lovely calls.
You have a choice of constipation
Or a dose of frozen whatsis.
When the mercury says zero
And the weather’s very mean,
Then a man must be a hero,
When he visits our latrine.
For the seat is white with snowdrift
And the breeze blows thru the hole,
So your whosis gets frost bit
And your whatsis blue from cold.
It’s a struggle thru high snow drifts,
While the howling winds cut cappers
With a sigh, you sink on frozen boards
And reach out for the toilet paper.
Then gloom surrounds you, no paper is there
While you are in a bad position.
You can not act, nor seek relief,
Till channels clear that requisition.
I’ve seen brave men stoop to sugar bowls
Even paper bags and cans
And some even lost the fight
And did it in their pants.
It takes guts to serve your country,
As a sailor or marine…
But a man must be a hero
When he visits our latrine.
It takes guts to be a soldier,
And to heed your country’s call.
It matters not the whosis be cold
And although you loose your whatsis.
For when the work is over,
and the bloody war is won,
If you’ve used our ole three holer
Then — you are a man, my son.

* “whatsis” and “whosis” are placeholder words used to avoid giving offense. Use the rhyme scheme to decode their secret meaning!

I have not been able to find another copy of this poem; Google definitely doesn’t know about it.  I would love to track down the author if the author is known.

It’s possible that David wrote this poem, although he did not sign his name to it. Based on his photos and his hobbies shown in his other photographs, I wouldn’t be surprised if he did write it.

Chris Steller pointed out on Twitter that the author Dashiell Hammett was stationed in the Aleutian Islands at the same time that David was there. It would stand to reason, however, that if Hammett had written the poem, David would have wanted to note that, since Hammett was well-known for his book and movie The Maltese Falcon.

The rest of David’s photos from Attu are posted on the website I built to showcase his photography, in case you can find any clues therein.  Any and all tips, ideas, or wild speculations are welcome in the comments below!

 

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Automattic, Christmas, CNC, Maker, Woodworking, X-Carve

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 using my X-Carve to carve out a deep recess in some walnut to receive the inlay.  The plan at this point was to have the inlay visible on both the outside and inside bottoms of the bowl, so I carved it about an inch and a half deep to give me plenty of room for error. (<– Foreshadowing.)

I cut the inlaid pieces out of some maple, since it would have a natural contrast with the dark walnut.

I glued the maple in, flattened the surface, and cut the walnut to a roughly circular blank on the bandsaw.

I mounted the blank on the lathe and carved the outside profile of the bowl. Because I made the blank by gluing two pieces of walnut together (top to bottom), I added three decorative grooves: one on the seam to hide it, and one on either side for good measure. The grain lined up well enough that it’s hard to tell that it’s not one solid piece.

The lathe chuck I was originally going to use would have tightened around the tenon.(In the photo above, the tenon is the protruding portion on the right side that contains the inlay.)  Unfortunately, it broke, and the chuck I ended up using (shown below) needed a recess to expand into, so I cut all of the tenon off (and then some). Because of this change, there wasn’t enough of the inlay left to have it visible on both the inside and outside of the bowl.

I hollowed out the inside of the bowl, being careful not to go too deep.

After finishing the bowl with Watco Danish oil, I let it cure, and then I mailed it off to my unsuspecting coworker along with some treats to fill it.  If he doesn’t like corporate wooden dishware, I hope he at least likes American candy.

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Epoxy, Life, Maker

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 that it’s easy to see but small enough that it doesn’t cause you crippling pain on its way out. I nailed the former but overshot it on the latter. Oops!

Step 2: Encase the stone in resin.

I used this “crystal clear” epoxy resin, although I learned after the fact that it only stays clear if you pour it in increments of less than a quarter inch. I did the entire thing in two one-inch pours, and the heat generated by the curing process discolored the resin, turning it yellow. Oops!

You should use a mold that is made for casting resin so that you can easily remove the block once it’s done curing:

This mold was supposedly ok to use with resin, which I guess it was. It just wasn’t reusable with resin. Oops!

Now that you have easily removed your crystal clear block of resin from the mold, cut it into a projection of a 2-dimensional kidney shape. I used my bandsaw for this step:

Then, trim off the edges at about a 45º angle, bringing it closer to a 3-D representation of a kidney.

Be careful to prevent the warm resin shavings from sticking to your bandsaw bearings and hardening in place, or your saw might not want to start the next time you use it. Oops!

Begin sanding the resin, first removing any saw marks, and then removing all of the scratches from the previous grit level. I sanded mine with 80, 120, 200, 600, 1000, and 2000 grit paper.

80 grit
200 grit
1000 grit
2000 grit

Once you’ve exhausted your sandpaper options, switch to rubbing compound. I used these polishing wheels by chucking them into my drill press.

After polishing the entire paperweight with rubbing compound, it should look something like this:

Now you can move on to polishing compound. This will give your kidney a glossy shine, and if you neglected to get all the bubbles out when you poured, your stone will appear to be floating in a sea of resiny stars.

And that’s it! Now every time you use your paperweight, you’ll remember all of the fun times you and your stone shared together.

That paper’s not going anywhere. Thanks, kidney stone!

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Christmas, Woodworking, X-Carve

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.

Carved but not painted
After painting the Vikings logo outline black and sanding the excess paint off.
After painting the Vikings logo outline black and sanding the excess paint off.
After final painting.

This one is for my parents to hang up pictures of the grandkids:

The rough-sawn 8/4 walnut from the lumberyard
I resawed it into three planks roughly 5/8″ wide.
I left the boards’ surfaces rough-sawn and offset the top and bottom for that old-timey look.
I carved this quote with a v-bit on the X-Carve.
I painted the carved letters and then did a quick sanding to remove any paint outside of the grooves.
I added some twine to hang the sign and a piece of twine with clothespins to hang pictures at the bottom.

If you’re wondering whether making a sign like this makes up for moving 2,000 miles away with the grandkids, the answer is “mostly.”

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Christmas, CNC, Woodworking, X-Carve

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 oil and spray enamel.

If you have an X-Carve and would like to make these, I’ve published projects at Inventables for the otter, elephant, and whale. (The image that the unicorn chair is based on is not freely licensed, so I am not publishing my project for that chair.)

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Christmas, CNC, Maker, Woodworking, X-Carve

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 a very small bit (1/32″), so when the letters are placed in the puzzle, they have a total of 1/16″ of play.  This is probably the maximum allowable play before the pieces start to feel loose.

These letters were from a proof-of-concept puzzle that I didn’t end up finishing, but you get the idea.

I carved the puzzle piece insets 1/8″ deep and rounded the corners of the base.

On one of the puzzles, I also included the logos of the Minnesota Wild and the Minnesota Twins. I gave the Wild logo some depth by carving out one of the areas that was a single color. This made it easier to paint too.

After painting the pieces, I gave them and the bases a couple of coats of clear enamel.

Which piece goes where???

I hope that the kids like these for now, and when they get older, they can glue the pieces in place and use these as wall or door hangings.

If you have an X-Carve and want to make these puzzles (or variations thereof, if you don’t know a Minnesotan child named Justin), the Easel projects are here (Justin) and here (Alyssa).

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CNC, JavaScript, Programming, X-Carve

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 published another 14 from independent developers, and today, they’ve published my first app, Plug Cutter.

Plug Cutter turns your X-Carve into (wait for it) a plug cutter. What’s a plug cutter? It’s a woodworking tool that creates short dowels that you can use to cover screw holes. Here’s one that Rockler sells for cutting 1/4″ plugs ($16.99):

The Plug Cutter app turns your X-Carve into a plug cutter that can cut plugs in any size. The only constraint is your imagination (and the size of your X-Carve) (and the known diameter of the universe)!

Choose your plug quantity, diameter, and depth, and the app will organize them on your workpiece to minimize waste.

This is what the plug layout shown above looks like after it has been carved:

And this is what the plugs look like once they’ve been put into use:

The app itself is written in about 170 lines of JavaScript. It supports working in inches and millimeters, and it shows the exact cut that the X-Carve will make, depending on your current bit diameter.

You can see the Plug Cutter app’s sourcecode on GitHub, and if you have an Inventables account, you can try the app in Easel by clicking the Apps button and scrolling down until you see Plug Cutter:

If you try it out, post a shot of your plugs in the comments!

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CNC, Home Improvement, Woodworking, X-Carve

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 says “Towels.”

There’s no mistaking what goes on these hooks. Thinking of hanging up a bathrobe? Get out of here, buster. This rack is for towels.

“But there are so many hooks and I only have two towels!” Not my problem. Buy more towels.

If you want to make this towel rack that says “Towels,” head on over to the towel rack project page at Inventables.

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Alexa, Amazon, Programming

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 Activity Book skill,”) and then tell your kids to say, “Alexa, open Activity Book” (or more accurately, “Alexa, tell Activity Book I’m boooooooooored.”). Alexa will then give them something to do. Examples include:

  • “Why don’t you count the wrinkles in your elbow?”
  • “Climb a tree, but be careful. You don’t want to break any limbs.”
  • “Make up a secret handshake. After you teach it to someone, celebrate with a secret milkshake.”

The list of suggestions is long, ever-increasing, and appropriate for all ages.

This was actually the first Alexa app I wrote, back before Amazon allowed skills targeted at kids. I’m glad that they decided to support kids skills solely so that they could approve Activity Book. You humble me, Amazon!

The Activity Book code is open-source and available on GitHub.

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CNC, Woodworking, X-Carve

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 the cabinet) that was planed down to about 3/8″ thick. I stained them with Varethane’s Kona stain (before carving) and finished them with some clear spray enamel (after carving).

The Inventables project is here for anyone interested in making something similar.

 

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3D Printing, Maker, Woodworking

I Built a Shoe Cabinet

Our front entryway usually looks something like this:

Those are bins to hold shoes; they’re uncharacteristically empty in this picture, but with as many as seven kids in the house at any given time, they’re usually overflowing (and not nice to look at).

We decided to get a shoe cabinet to keep the shoes (and their smells) hidden. Ikea’s HEMNES shoe cabinet was our top choice:

but it wouldn’t be quite big enough, and it wouldn’t make productive use out of all of the space by the door. I decided instead to build my own custom version of HEMNES.

Continue reading →

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API, Programming, WordPress

Share an iPhoto Library on the Web with WordPress

I recently needed to publish the contents of an iPhoto library online, so I wrote a script that converts the library to a WordPress site using WordPress’s REST API.  The script is available in my iPhoto-WordPress-Export repository on GitHub. Check it out, and then run it like this:

$ ./iphoto2wordpress.php --library=/path/to/photo/library --wordpress=https://www.example.com/

After prompting for a username and password, it will upload all of the library’s photos to the specified WordPress site. For each event in the library, it creates a post that includes a gallery containing all of the images from the event.  It will also convert any albums into categories, categorizing the photos themselves, not the posts. (For this to work, you will need to enable categories for attachments.)

If the script stops for any reason, you can restart it, and it will pick up where it left off. Depending on what it was doing when it stopped, you may have an orphaned attachment in your Media.

Posts are created as drafts and left for you to publish at your leisure.

I used this script to create DavidTewes.com.  (For back-story on what that site is and how it came to be, see this post.) Because the site is image-centric, I chose a photography based theme called Silvia, and I made a few adjustments to it:

I could have had the script automatically assign a featured image to each post, but I chose to make that decision manually. Here’s the end-result:

Let me know if you have any questions, and if you use the script, leave a link to the site you used it on in the comments below!

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Camera, David Tewes, Photography, Programming, Technology

Putting 1940s Kodachrome Slides on the Web

When my wife Christina and I were cleaning out her late father’s garage, we came across two cases of Kodachrome slides that included nighttime shots of downtown Minneapolis in the 1940s and 1950s, pictures of daily life in nearby Hutchinson, Minnesota, and some World War II photographs, like this one of a group of soldiers celebrating on Attu Island in Alaska on V-J Day.

We determined that the photographs were taken by David Tewes of Hutchinson, Minnesota, Christina’s first cousin twice removed. He died in 1991, and her dad had likely come into possession of the slides then. They sat untouched in his garage attic for twenty-five years.

I wanted to scan the slides so they could be preserved and shared, but we had to get them back home first. Fun fact: if you pack cases of slides in your carry-on luggage, your bag will get special attention from a TSA agent since the X-ray machine can’t see through the slide case.

Internet research showed me that there are generally two ways to digitize old slides: either use a slide scanner, or get a macro lens and take a photo of each slide at 1:1 magnification. I couldn’t find a slide scanner in my price range, so I paid $40 to rent a macro lens from LensRentals.com and set up a rig for “scanning” all of the slides.

The slide holder is three pieces of hardboard sandwiched together with a cut-out in the middle for the slide to fit into.

I back-lit each slide with a very bright lamp, and I added a paper shade around the slide to prevent my eyes from getting burn-in from the lamp bulb.

Here’s an example of what one of the slide photos looks like, overexposed so you can see the labeling that David added on each slide.

I took four photos of each slide at decreasing shutter speeds (in raw format) and then chose the best one. I cropped and captioned all of the photos in iPhoto and organized them into events matching how David had organized them in his slide cases.

In order to get the slides from iPhoto to the Web, I wrote a script that uploads an entire iPhoto library to a WordPress website. It creates a post for each event and then adds all of the event’s photos to a gallery in the post. I will publish a standalone post soon with details about that script.

The result of all this work is DavidTewes.com. It contains 650 photos organized into 51 posts, with dates ranging between 1944 and 1955. All of the photos are licensed under the Creative Commons – Attribution license, meaning that they may be used for any purpose (commercial or non-commercial) and derivative works may be produced, as long as David is credited as the photographer. If I understand U.S. copyright law, the photos will enter public domain on January 1, 2062.

Some of my favorite albums are Attu, Alaska, This is Minneapolis, and Santa Monica. In each of those albums (and in most of the others), David created a title card, sort of like a scrapbook page that he photographed to introduce the photos.  For example, here’s the title card for the photos from his trip to China Town.

There were 81 title slides; you can view them all here.

Although some of the slides were labeled with a date, many were not. For those, I’ve estimated a date but marked them as such. If you’d like to help narrow down the dates for any of those photos, you can see them all here.  Leave a comment on the photo or on the photo gallery post with any information you have, like this comment on a photo of cars from the Minneapolis Municipal Gardens.

My favorite photo out of all of them is this shot of feats of strength at Muscle Beach when it was still in Santa Monica. What’s yours?

 

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3D Printing, CNC, Maker

Functional Print and CNC Carving Mashup: Mini Air-Hockey Pucks

In today’s Don Rickles news, I 3D-printed and CNC carved some mini air-hockey pucks.

We were given a mini air-hockey table this week, but it didn’t have any pucks, and after buying some at Walmart, we learned that the table didn’t use full-size pucks. After five minutes in OpenSCAD and half an hour of machining, I had two replacement pucks ready to go.

The question I know you’re dying to ask: which one is better? According to the kids, the plastic puck has a more satisfying sound, but the wooden puck glides better.

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