Kentucky

I really caught the woodworking bug a few years ago. I even took some classes at the Kelly Mehler school of Woodworking. Dovetails by hand, and a Blanket Chest (which I never finished) I even went to WWIA in 2011. Unfortunately, stuff has just been on hold since. I remodeled the basement, so everything from there was in the garage. Then it was time to do upstairs, ripped out all the carpets and got hardwood flooring put in. So all the furniture from the bedrooms and dining room were in the garage. What better to do with no furniture in the rooms but to paint each room and then put on new baseboards. The wife and I were basically living in the basement for quite some time.

Now that all the remodeling is done (for now), I have been cleaning up the garage little by little and that has in turn gotten me back to woodworking. It is nice having space again. The Dodge was moved out to a self storage locker and that has really given me room to move.

Today, I used a sheet of 1/4" plywood and cut out the shape of my home state, Kentucky. It was a fun little project, and I have more plans for it, but it gave me something to do on a Sunday afternoon and made me feel like I actually accomplished something. Even if I never finished the project that I have planned, I could paint it UK Blue and then hang it on the wall in my basement.

As I get more and more of the garage cleaned up and organized, I hope to be able to complete more little projects that will eventually get me back on the path I wanted a few years ago. This one is on hold until I get some more lumber.

Postcard picture frame.

On a recent trip to Ikea, we picked up a pack of these postcards, not totally sure what I wanted to do with them at the time. The pack came with 5 cards so the wife and I picked the three we liked best.

I decided I wanted them to stand out from the back of the frame. I cut a piece of  1/4" plywood the size of the postcard and then tilted the blade to 45° and beveled the edges so it would make it look as if the postcards were standing out from the back. I used some 3M spray adhesive to stick them to the pieces of plywood.

You can see the frame pieces in the side of this photo. I made one groove for the glass and another for the plywood backing. I don't really plan on making this frame so that I can change out the cards. Maybe I will for future projects.

I tried my best but it just didn't come out at perfect 45° angles so I had to use a little wood filler on the corners to hide the gaps. Later I am going to paint the frame white.

Everything but the kitchen sink.

This is what you call really rough construction. The quick & dirty. I seriously took anything I had laying around to make this.

 I wanted to make a stand for the grinder and I had some cheap plywood laying around. Because the Dodge was in the garage and it wasn't running, I was really limited on space to work with. I used my circular saw to cut the main pieces of the box and glued and nailed it together. It isn't square and I couldn't seem to cut straight today, so there are some large gaps.

To weigh it down, I had a 50 lb bag of play sand laying around, I don't know why or where it came from but I put it in the base of the stand. It worked OK until I punctured the bag and sand started to spill out through the cracks.

I went back today and attached the piece on the front of the base to hold the sand in. I happened to have a tube of silicon caulk from when I put in a toilet, and rather than let it go bad, I used it to fill the gaps in the bottom where the sand was so it would stop leaking out the back.

I decided at that point to dump the sand out of the bag and level it off as best I could. laid another piece of plywood on top of the sand and nailed and caulked it in too. Now I have a shelf to store some stuff in.


Just so the safety nuts don't get on me, I don't plan on keeping that stuff on the shelf. I think I would qualify for the Darwin awards if I were to use the grinder with a can of mineral spirits right below it. The spirits were really just to clean up the silicone off my hands.