Most of you know that I generally fill my summer up with construction projects around the house and for hire. This summer has been no different. I apologize for being absent from the blogosphere for a while, but I’ve just been enjoying my summer too much to sit and type. So far the for hire projects have included some sheetrock repair, hanging a new exterior door, fixing some rotten entry ways, enlarging some closets, new bathroom faucets, new kitchen plumbing, and a full bathroom remodel that had the room down to the studs and included new tile, shower, and walls. Pretty much every Friday through Monday I’ve been somewhere fixing something. It’s been great as I love doing this type of work, and it’s a nice way to supplement the teacher salary. On the home front it’s been all about the backyard. I’ll write about the pergola project in the next few days, but by far the most fun project of the summer is the sprinkler park. Being a stay at home dad (Tuesday through Thursday), this summer has been a blast, but unlike the previous years I now have a baby to take care of as well as an almost 4-year old. Needless to say this puts a damper on how much time I can spend playing with Annelise. As soon as we start something, Julianna needs her diaper changed or a bottle. Adding to this is the fact that the normal outlets for stay-at-home-moms are not available to a stay at home dad. She can’t have any of her girl friends over and we can’t go to any play dates. To make her summer a little bit more fun (and because I like cool projects) I told her we would build a sprinkler park right in our own back yard. So if you like totally pointless projects, or you just like the smell of PVC glue here is how to get started…

I didn’t really start with much of a plan. I had some ideas, but I really work best by going to Lowes or Home Depot and just playing with the stuff they have and seeing what I can come up with. I was in Home Depot with an assortment of 2″ PVC fittings stuck together in a configuration that should never occur in nature trying to spark some ideas when a man in a “Jon’s Plumbing” shirt looked over and said, “I don’t know what it is but it’s the most complicated thing I’ve ever seen.” The point is that there are a lot of things that can be used for other than their intended purpose…just be creative. I settled for lots of PVC, some small and large foam noodles, a sheet of pink high density foam house wrap, and lots of spray paint (the kind that is made for plastic).

Below you can see the basic core of each sprinkler. The basic idea is that water flows in on the left and can go into the sprinkler or out the other side to the next sprinkler. The whole point is that the sprinklers are all chained together and can be used separately or all together. The only issue with the design when this picture was made is that a second sprinkler hooked up to the right hand output side won’t have water pressure unless this sprinkler is on. My final design placed a T-fitting before the valve and just capped off the output side. Now all the sprinklers have water pressure all the time regardless of which ones are actually on. The valve I choose is a brass ball valve meant for gas. It was the easiest to turn on and off for kids.

You want the water to flow up into the sprinkler not down into the support tube (and the ground) so before gluing the lower tube in place I put a 2″ knockout plug on the top of the pipe.

After gluing the lower pipe in place you can see that the knock out plug has blocked the lower leg of the assembly.

I also painted on a nice layer of silicone caulk to the top of the knock out plug.

The lower pre-assembly is the same for all the sprinklers. Below you can see a basic pre-assembly attached to the “Dueling Noodles” sprinkler body. The top small pipe is capped and does not carry water…It’s just there to support the duck (you’ll have to look at the pictures at the end)

If you are going to use a noodle to carry water it must be one of the large noodles. The smaller ones just split under pressure. To attach a noodle to the PVC core you need an 8″ length of ½” PVC. I taped off ¾” at the end to protect it and coated the other end with plumber’s goop (actual name) and just pushed it into the noodle and let it dry for a few days.

Once it’s dry you can pull off the tape and attach any fitting you need.

If water is not supposed to come out of the other side you can glue a PVC plug to the ½” pipe. I used this technique on the “Tunnel” (again…see the pictures at the end)

For the “Dueling Noodles” station, I wanted to use small diameter noodles so I had to thread a length of ½” flexible hose through the noodle to bear the pressure.

For the “Flower Shower”, I bought the cheapest shower head I could find and broke it apart to remove the shower disc.

I filed the disc down until it would fit in a 2″ PVC compression ring fitting.

Then I screwed the fitting together to make the shower head. The flared out piece in the picture below (the one with the bar code) is not actually glued on anything. The 2″ PVC pipe carrying the water is passing right through it. The piece is a 2″ to 3″ adapter with the 2″ side cut off and just slipped over the pipe before the compression fitting was glued in place.

The flower head is just a piece of pink foam house wrap cut into a flower shape.

Using the basic ideas and techniques described above, I built the following four sprinklers.

Bucket Dump

This sprinkler, while being the most popular with the kids, is the most complicated to build as you must design a pivot mechanism for the bucket. I welded mine out of ½” square tubing and rolled a length of1/4″ round bar into a ring that the bucket could sit in. If you don’t have a welding machine (get one)…or you could probably create something out of wood. It may be a bit bulkier but it could be made to work. You can attach your pivot mechanism to the body of the sprinkler with 2″ pipe hangers. These are heavy clamps that fit around the pipe and have bolt holes for attaching your bucket contraption. I did a ton of math (finally a use for my otherwise useless Physics degree) to find the point on the bucket where the bottom of the bucket is heavier empty but the top is heaver at the moment the water reached the top, so it will dump automatically. Turns out the kids just want to dump it themselves, so I attached a string…

Dueling Noodles

This sprinkler is the most dangerous to the dry adults in the vicinity as it is capable of spraying close to 60 feet. The top decoration is just a silly duck noodle that I found at Wal-Mart and cut shorter and stuck on the top of the sprinkler body. The two noodles on the side can be picked up and sprayed at each other or any other moving targets within the neighborhood.

Flower Shower

This is the simplest and (according to Monique) the cutest sprinkler in the collection. We’ve even let Annie bathe out here. This is the sprinkler that first gave us the idea for putting little one ring pools at the bottom to protect the yard from turning into a mud pit.

The Tunnel

I couldn’t really come up with a cool name for this one, but it’s one of my favorites. Its two large diameter noodles attached together (using a 12″ length of ½” PVC and the goop described above) and have holes poked along the length. I actually used some 1/8″ tubing in the holes to get the spray to aim better. The tubing is attached to the PVC base with a threaded connection, so you can take the noodle off for storage.

The only part I don’t have pictures of is the actual anchor into the ground. I just used a 4-foot piece of ½” galvanized iron pipe hammered 2 feet into the ground. Into the lower leg of the sprinklers, I screwed in a 1 ¾” PVC cap with a ½” hole bored into the center. This fitting slips nicely into the 2″ PVC, and a simple wood screw from the outside holds it in place. With one of these at the top and the bottom of the lower support leg, the sprinklers can be slipped over the galvanized pipe. This makes the sprinklers stable enough to be left out all summer but portable enough to be stored in the winter. Come by and let your kids play sometime…the park is always open!

Back in 2001 I was contracted to build a pair of custom waterfall speaker stands. This of course pre-dates the shop by about 2 years which means they were built on the back patio and living room of our first apartment here in Houston. If fact, if you look at the office picture in my apartment post you’ll see a piece of uncut copper under the table saw and the leaded glass sides right in front of it. This build was incredibly fun with loads of electrical work, plumbing, and design. In fact, I had pretty much a free hand to create whatever design I envisioned which is always fun for me. The final project took about 70 hours for both speaker stands with most of that spent designing and building the first one. Materials cost in 2001 was about $500 per stand but copper prices have more than tripled in that time so I’m not sure what they would cost to build today (I just hope the current owner doesn’t decide to recycle them). As this was back in the pre-blog days I didn’t take any pictures during construction. The current owner recently allowed me to take some pictures for the blog but bear in mind that the stands are now over 7 years old and unfortunately in need of a great deal of polishing but you’ll get the idea. I do have one original picture that I took back when the project was completed.

New and Shiny

Requirements:

• Must use copper as main design element
• Variable lighting
• Remote controlled
• Fit in a box 16”X16”x36”

Materials:

• Stainless steel angle, square tube, and sheet
• Roll of 1/16” copper 24” wide and 6’ long
• Leaded glass
• Ceramic tile
• Solder
• Copper tubing and fittings
• Pump
• Various electronics

Tools:

• Table Saw (could do it with a circular saw)
• Router (could do it with a circular saw)
• Angle Grinder
• MIG Welding Machine
• Drill
• Tin Snips
• Propane Torch

To begin, I welded a stainless steel frame out of 1/2” angle and square tubing. I attached marine grade plywood panels to the top and bottom sections of this steel frame.

Basic Frame Skeleton

To this basic frame I attached a stainless steel triangular rear panel with an access door, copper water reservoir, electronics package, and lighting.

Rear View

The electronics package consists of a primary junction box which routes power to the ground fault interrupt (GFI) to protect against water related short circuits, a remote controlled power switch (to allow the owner to turn both stands on and off remotely), a power switch for both the pump and fogging module, and a dimmer for the lighting system. This allows the waterfall to run in many different modes (water no fog, fog no water, both, no light, bright light, dim mode lighting, etc).

The water reservoir had to fit around the main support of the steel frame. To accomplish this, I built two sections into the water tank with a connecting tunnel between the front and rear sections. This allows for water return and provides an attachment point for the frame. The reservoir also contains a retaining circle for the fog generating system.

The rear section of the reservoir contains a 120 gallon per hour statuary pump. This pump is supported by the main copper discharge line running to the top of the stand. It is attached to this line with a rubber coupling and held 2 millimeters off the bottom of the reservoir thus insulating the vibrations of the pump from the rest of the structure.

The fog (or mist) system sits in the front of the reservoir and consists of a water proof hypersonic piezoelectric disc which causes the water to vibrate with enough energy for individual water molecules to overcome their electrostatic attraction and separate from the surface of the liquid creating a mist effect

Fog System Activated

The top of the stand supports the main spray arm which is simply a drilled piece of ½” copper pipe and the lighting system. The light is a 500 watt halogen bulb surrounded by a handmade copper heat sink. Both the spray arm and heat sink are grounded through the GFI.

The sloped support arms of the main frame contain notches to receive the locking pins from the stone tray.

The stone I selected is a bluish gray flag stone about 1” thick. I had the quarry cut the stone to the required tapered shape and smooth the back of the stone for attachment to the steel support tray. I used a waterproof construction stone adhesive to glue the stone to the steel and then glued copper strips the edge of the stone to keep the water from running off the surface of the rock. The tray can be easily removed from the frame for cleaning.

Lock Pin Detail

Stone Installed Full View

Stone sitting below Spray Arm

The glass for the project consists of 3 custom leaded glass 3/8” thick panels per stand. Two are long rectangular panels with one edge double beveled and polished. The third panel is a square piece of single beveled glass. I taped a diagonal line on the long panels that matched the angle of the stone and used a high gloss enamel spray paint on the inside of the panel. This results in a perfect finish on the outside of the panel that hides the electronics and plumbing.

The long panels fit into grooves cut at an angle into the top and bottom plywood panels.

Installing Large Glass Panels

Once the glass was installed I fabricated a copper splash guard/rock holder. This piece keeps the rocks at the base of the waterfall from falling into the main reservoir and keeps the mist effect from getting too crazy!

Installing the Guard

Rock Holder Function

Keeping the Mist Contained (somewhat)

Once all the functional parts were installed, I worked on trimming out the piece with the required copper. I attached brackets to the bottom side of each corner of the stand to support the lower trim piece. The trim is all hand fabricated soldered 1/16” copper.

Installing the Lower Trim

To complete the lower trim, I cut section of ceramic tile and supported them on 4 adjustable screws.

Completed Lower Section

With the bottom complete, I next fabricated another copper trim panel to fully enclose the top section and support the glass shelf.

Glass Shelf

With water added to the reservoir, simply press the button on the remote control and the water starts flowing!

Spray Arm On

Draining the unit is as simple as clipping the quick release drain hose in and turning on the pump.

Here’s a shot of the completed stand.

Of course, compared to the 7 year old picture at the top of the post, you can see that they really could use some polishing but other than that both stands have held up remarkably well. This is one of my favorite projects as it incorporated so many different materials into one piece of functional sculpture. I don’t often get to design a piece with no preconceived notion of what it needs to look like. Most people have a picture in their mind and want me to somehow build to match that. These stands were just the result of me being allowed play…and it was a blast!

A lot of people ask when I started collecting tools…truth is I’ve always been into tools but the real collecting started after Monique and I moved into our first apartment. I just found these pictures in our box of non-digital goodies and thought you might like them. I only wish I had a picture of the welding machine that lived on the coffee table…

I don’t think the landlord appreciated the table saw and band saw in the office

A typical evening sitting in the living room, watching some TV and building a stainless steel pressure vessel for one of Monique’s experiments…

Over the next few days I’ll do some entries on some of the things I built in our apartment living room…let’s just say they needed new carpet when we moved out.

We’ve been working hard these past few weeks on some projects to get the house ready for baby number two (I’ll do some project write-ups on them soon). As we were cleaning out a closet we came across some stuff that just made Monique laugh. It seems I’m infected with a disease that causes me considerable pain whenever I buy something that I could just make in the shop. The disease usually progresses like this:

1. Monique mentions something that we need around the house that Wal-Mart sells for $29.95
2. I tell Monique that I can build it in “about” 30 minutes for “around” $10.00
3. I go to Lowes and spend $19.00 on materials and $79.95 on a new tool I need for the project but I don’t count the tool because “I’ll use in on all kinds of stuff…”
4. I spend 5 hours in the shop working on the item
5. I head back to Lowes and spend $7.43 on stuff I didn’t realize I would need
6. 3 more hours in the shop working
7. 24 hours later the paint and/or glue is dry and I proudly show off the results of my 8 hour effort to save us $3.52
8. Monique heads to Wal-Mart to buy the real item because mine doesn’t quite work

Luckily, Monique was well aware of this aliment long before she agreed to marry me and many times my affliction does pay off. I love that our furniture came from my hands and I love spending time in the shop working on projects for my family. But there have been some real moments of “why didn’t I just buy this…” Below are a few examples.

A while back Monique wanted some crown molding style shelves.

My Version

Not too bad right? I think they look great too. Only problem is that it took about an hour and a half to build and another hour to sand and paint. Twenty-four hours for the paint to dry and about $16.00 in materials and paint supplies…After building 5 of them we found this at Wal-Mart:

Store Version

So we bought 2 of them for $12 each….oh well.

When it came time to mount my surround sound speakers I never thought to price speaker mounts at the store. I spent almost $20 on materials and the better part of a day cutting, grinding, welding, and painting to create this monstrosity:

My Version

A few months later I’m at Fry’s and I see these for $18.99 a pair…they are about a tenth of the size…you can’t even see them behind the speakers.

Store Version

When we first moved into this house I installed a laminate wood floor in the office. Part of the installation requires the use of spacers around the edge to create expansion room. I spent two hours cutting over a hundred 3/16″ thick spacers…

My Version

By the time I did the next room I discovered that of course they make a plastic spacer that cost like $5.00 for a hundred…

Store Version

But the real prize belongs to the time Monique asked for an aerobic step like this:

Store Version

But of course 2 hours later I deliver this 20 pound shin mangling embarrassment:

My Version

I’ve been wanting to write up a few older projects for a while now. The only draw back is a lack of pictures during the process…all I have are the completed shots. Hopefully its still useful or interesting. A few years ago I was commissioned to design and build a fully integrated aquarium system. The requirements were for a fresh water system that could easily be converted to salt water without changing any equipment. The tank needed to be at least 100 gallons. No aquarium equipment could be visible. The stand needed to fit the existing decor (brick floor, warm wood colors, nothing contemporary) and the system needed to arrive ready to run, just add water and fish! I’ve included costs for those of you who stumbled in here looking for ideas on setting up your new aquarium. My labor charges are not included.

The scale is difficult to gauge in this picture. The piece is 6′ 6″ long, 2′ 4″ deep and 6′ tall. Needless to say it will take up some room in a house!

Aquarium Materials/Equipment:

• 1-135 gallon aquarium from the great people at GlassCages (~$550 delivered)
• 2 -Rena Filstar XP3 canister filters (~$125 each)
• 2-ETH 300 watt inline heaters (~$55 each)
• 2 -Ice Cap 660 VHO ballasts (~$180 each)
• 3-10,000K 72″ 160 watt VHO Lamps (~$40 each)
• 1-Actinic Blue 72″ 160 watt VHO Lamp (~$40)
• 1- 72″x12″ Reflector (~$40)
• 8-End Caps for T12 high temp bulbs German 3 piece waterproof (~$5 each)

Materials:

• ~65 board feet of rough cut African mahogany ($4.75 per board foot)
• 1-4′x8′ sheet of 1/2″ mahogany plywood ($60)
• ~24′ of mahogany crown molding ($3.35 per foot)
• 1-4′x8′ sheet of 1/4″ mahogany plywood ($30)
• 1-4′x8′ sheet of 3/4″ pre-finished maple plywood ($65)
• 12-8′ select or #1 grade 2×4’s ($2.50)
• Assorted wiring/electrical components (~$75)
• Hinges/Hardware ($25)
• Finishing Supplies ($50)

Tools:

• High-end Table Saw
• Jointer (at least a 6″)
• Surface Planer (12″ or greater)
• Band Saw
• Router/Shaper Table
• Router
• Shaper Hold Down Jig
• Rail/Stile Bit Set
• Raised Panel Bit
• Edge Molding Bit (2″ High)
• 1/4″ Cove Bit
• Plate Jointer
• Spindle Sander
• Duel Bevel Compound Miter Saw
• Random Orbit Sander
• Finishing Nailer
• Air Compressor
• Pocket Screw Jig
• Loads of Clamps

Assembly:

The tricky part of this project was the integration of 5 distinct systems into one piece of furniture.

1. A support system that could hold up a 220 lb aquarium, 1,100 lbs of water, a 75 lb canopy (with other decor items on top), and 450 lbs of rock for a total of almost 1,900 lbs.
2. An electrical system that could deliver power to the pumps, heaters, and lighting as well as control the lights via a timer or override switch.
3. A plumbing system that could deliver water to and from the filters and the heaters
4. A decorative wrapper system that would encase all the above systems and make it look like a piece of solid mahogany furniture.
5. Fully integrated canopy/lighting system

Support System
Step one was to do the load calculations and ensure that the whole thing would not come to a very loud and very wet end. I keep a white board in the shop for tasks like this.

Aquarium Load Calculations

I began by taking high quality white pine 2×4’s and running them through the jointer, planer, and table saw to create 1.25″ x 3″ stock. I then built a frame with this stock using pocket screw joinery.

Frame Design

The front uprights were doubled up in thickness to create the column look. Below you can see the frame assembly from inside one of the cabinets

Frame with Pocket Screws

To the top of the frame and to the inside right and left bottom frame I attached a shelf made of 3/4″ pre-finished maple plywood. This plywood comes from the factory with a heat applied poly coating that is virtually indestructible…perfect for conditions involving water. Minus the back of the cabinet which provides my lateral stability this structure makes up the support system that will bear the 1,900 lb load.

Maple Plywood

Decorative Wrapper System
Next, I needed to disguise the frame with a mahogany wrapper. First, I attached some 1/2″ mahogany plywood panels to the outside ends as well as the inside of the inner frame. The bottom inner frame panel was milled with two dado’s to receive the upright panels. The inner upright frame panels were milled with a dado to receive the center shelf later. Next, I wrapped the upper portions of the frame with a 4″ wide 3/4″ thick band of mahogany. This would later become the support for the crown molding to attach to. For the last bit of plywood work I slid a 1/2″ thick piece of mahogany plywood into the center shelf dado’s and finished it with a small milled piece of solid stock to treat the edge.

Center Shelf

The main visual element of the design is the four fluted columns (they are not load bearing). To build these I glued up a three sided column (front and two sides) with biscuit joinery. Using a jig to ensure accuracy I routed 3 flutes and a corner detail into each column and then fitted them over the existing frame.

Column Fitting over Shelf

I also created a fake rear column on each side using a single piece of stock.

False Column

Next, I attached the top shelf which hides the bottom edge of the aquarium. I treated the edge of this shelf with the same half flute detail that I used on the center shelf, lower cabinet frames, and lower edge of the top wrapper. This simple detail repeating throughout the piece gives unity to the design and ties in to the full flutes on the columns.

Top Shelf Edge Detail

Next, I milled out the base board from solid mahogany stock 2.5″ wide using the shaper. Then I wrapped the bottom edge and columns with the baseboard.

Baseboard Detail

The last piece of molding detail was to install the crown molding below the top shelf and around the tops of the columns.

Column View

The final steps for the design portion of the system was to mill out a pair of raised panel doors.

Rail and Stile

When I installed the doors I made sure to line up the face of the door on the mid-line of the last flute…this allowed the reflection of the half flute in the door face finish to create the illusion of a full flute.

Flute Reflection

Power System
Now that the base was complete it was time to wire the system. The unit features a single line to plug in. This line feeds a multiple sets of outlets in each cabinet.

Outlets

The white set of outlets on each side powers the filter and heater and any other accessories that require power at all times. The gray plug is controlled by a hidden switch and powers the lighting system. Rather then hard wire the lighting system I utilized this pass through plug design to allow for a timer to be installed on the lighting system at some point in the future.

Hidden Switch

Plumbing System
Now for the water handling system. The canister filters are installed on each side and the output and return lines are passed through the back panel and up to the canopy behind the aquarium background. The output line also runs through an inline heater on each side to avoid having heaters in the tank. You can also see the lighting ballast in this picture.

Inside Cabinet View

Canopy System
The canopy system needed to house the lights, route the plumbing, allow for access to clean the tank, provide an easy way to feed the fish, hide the top edge of the tank, and match the design of the rest of the tank. I built it using a 1/2″ thick plywood for the top rear section and solid 3/4″ stock for the rest. I kept the crown molding and half cove detail intact.

Canopy View

The front and forward 6″ of the top fold completely up to allow for periodic tank maintenance and also revel the 640 watt 24′ long VHO lighting system.

Top Opened

The bulbs are mounted in German 3 piece water proof high temperature T12 sockets and backed by a polished aluminum reflector. The lights are 8″ above the tank to allow for some heat dissipation. You could mount them closer to increase the light level as well as shrink your canopy but you would need fans and this client wanted the system to be as quiet as possible.

Light Mounting

On the right hand side I also installed a fish feeder door to allow limited access to the canopy compartment without opening the face.

Fish Feeding Door

Here is the final product

Competed View

With All Access Doors Open

Summary
This project had a materials cost of about $2,400 and a labor cost of around 100 hours. This was a very enjoyable build with lots of unique challenges and design features. Hopefully I’ll get around to doing a few more of these past project write ups.

I often get asked for advice on setting up a home shop so I started writing a series of posts on selecting tools and arranging your work space when I realized I wanted to include one of those cool interactive 360º scrollable & zoomable panoramic pictures you often see on web sites advertising vacation spots. These images offer users a virtual tour of the environment and just look really cool. I begin the process of learning how to create these images with one goal in mind. It had to be free! I wasn’t going to buy some panoramic lens for my camera, I wasn’t going to pay some company to produce it, and I wasn’t going to shell out any money for software. After 2 weeks of research and failed experiments I finally put all the pieces together. Below you can see the results of the experiment and a step by step how-to guide if you would like to make your own virtual tour (for free).

Click here to take a virtual tour of my shop
(4 Mb file)

To begin, you simply need a camera and a tripod. Take a series of pictures (15-20) rotating the camera a few degrees each time. When finished, you should have a set of pictures covering the entire 360º view. Try to make sure your pictures have some overlap as this helps the software when it stitches together the final panorama. I also found it usefull to put the camera in manual mode. In auto mode the camera adjusts the picture based on lighting. As the lighting may change for different angles, your pictures may not all look the same. This will make your final panorama have obvious seams. Manual mode fixes that. Here are the images I took of the shop. As you can see, each picture shows a slightly different area of the shop (and you can see the jatoba table waiting to be completed on the floor…).

Now you need to download the software that will create the single panoramic image from your photos. The best free tool I found was AutoStitch. After downloading and launching AutoStitch you can play with a few settings (although I used most of the defaults). I did change the scale value (edit>options) to 50% to increase the detail of the final product.

Now click file>open and select all the images from earlier. As soon as you click OK, AutoStitch will begin to create your panoramic image and save it as pano.jpg in the same directory as the original files. Be sure to move or rename the file if you want to try again as AutoStitch will overwrite without warning. Mine looked like this when it was complete.

The next tool you need is some software to take your panoramic image and turn it into an interactive movie. I found that the free version of Pano2QVTR worked great. It can even add clickable hotspots to your movie but I choose not to use that feature. After installing and launching Pano2QVTR you’ll need to change one setting. The default setting for image type is equirectangular but you need to choose cylindrical.

Next you need to tell it where to find your panoramic image (pano.jpg) from AutoStitch. Click the … button next to the “Cylindrical image” field and locate your panoramic image file

Under the “QuickTime Output filename” you can choose the location for your completed movie. Under the settings tab you can also change the size and quality of the final movie. When you are ready click “Create” and Pano2QVTR will take care of the rest. It’s surprisingly fast (about 30 seconds) and upon completion it will show you a preview of your movie. After that you can email or post it to the web if you choose. If you are posting to a web site, here is the minimum code for embeding a quicktime movie.


There are other options you can choose to include such as an auto download of the QuickTime plugin. A excellent explanation for all the embedding options can be found here.

Have fun making your own panoramic movies!

PS the shop setup posts are coming soon…

I was so excited earlier this year when Monique and I got our first minivan. I mean, what kid didn’t grow up with a poster of the latest Ford Astrovan on their bedroom wall. Seriously, I really do love our van. I can haul a ton of stuff around and it all stays nice and dry. The only problem is that I typically keep the rear seats out and store them in my garage. These seats are heavy, awkward to move, and difficult to work around in the shop. After working around the seats during the first part of the jatoba table build I decided to do something about it. Here is my solution:

Materials:

• 2′x2′ – 3/4″ high grade plywood
• 4×4 – 48″ long
• 4 – 6″ L Brackets
• 4 swivel casters
• Assorted nuts and bolts
• Material for hooks (I used angle iron)

Tools:

• Drill
• Saw (or get the wood cut for you at the store)
• Assorted hand tools (wrenches, screwdrivers, hammer, etc)
• Welding rig (for my type of hooks…you may come up with another type)

Assembly:

This is a quick afternoon type project. Just center the 4×4 post on the plywood and temporarily hold it in place with a few 3″-4″ wood screws. Now anchor the post with the four L brackets. I used bolts that went all the way through the post and the plywood rather then just wood screws for strength. Next attach the four casters to the bottom with bolts. The most difficult part of the build is designing the hooks for the seats. If your seats are like mine they weigh about 60 lbs each so the hooks must be very strong. Another concern is to make sure that the hooks won’t damage the underside of the seats while holding them securely. I choose to weld my own hooks out of angle iron rather then try to find a pre-fab hook. The final product came out great for an hour’s worth of work and now I can easily move the seats around the shop to keep them out of my way!

I was recently contacted to build a rather large table top for a friend of a friend. After a visit to my favorite exotic wood supplier (Houston Hardwoods…I’ll do a write up later) he settled on Jatoba. Jatoba is commonly called Brazilian Cherry but is not actually part of the cherry family. Jatoba is often used for flooring, tool handles, athletic equipment, furniture, and is twice as hard as oak and extremely dense and heavy. It is hard on tools so I will need to have all my knives and blades sharpened after I finish the project but it should make an incredibly durable table top. John (the future owner of the table) recently returned from Saudi Arabia where he purchased a dual pedestal table base designed for a massive 9′ by 4′ table top. I’ll be doing this write up in multiple parts as I work on the project over the next week.

Materials:
~75 board feet of rough cut jatoba.

Tools:
Required

• Table Saw
• Planer
• Jointer
• Biscuit (plate) Joiner
• Lots of Clamps
• Router with 1/2″ beading bit (for edge detail only)
• Pocket screw jig (could use a counter sink bit)

Mill Work:

The jatoba comes rough cut. This means that there is still bark on the wood and none of the faces are true (flat) or perpendicular/parallel.

The first step is to mill one face of the wood using a planer. After milling one flat surface turn the plank over and run it through the planer again. This ensures that these two faces are parallel to each other.

Now that two faces are flat and parallel I moved over to the jointer to true up one of the narrow edges. By holding one of the flat surfaces against the fence and running the edge over the cutter head I’ve ensured that the edge is true and perpendicular to the faces of the board.

Now holding that newly milled edge against my rip fence I cut the opposite face on the table saw. Now all the edges and faces are flat and parallel/perpendicular.

I still need to run the cut edge through the jointer to remove the saw chatter (marks left by the vibration of the saw blade)

Even though the saw chatter is very minor it still affects the seam between the planks during the assembly of the top.

Before Jointing

After Jointing

Now to layout for the biscuits that will be used to strengthen the seams during assembly. The first step is to lay all the pieces out as they will be during final assembly.

I’ve also made sure that the wood is laid out in such a way as to match the grain along the seams as much as possible. Once I decided on the finial layout I marked the position of all the biscuits. By marking across the seam while they are laid out I know that the pieces will assemble easy during glue up.

Next, I cut all the biscuit slots.

Finally time to glue the parts together. I chose TightBond III for this project for it’s long work time and superior strength. After coating all the surfaces with glue and inserting the biscuits it was time for lots of clamps!

This is the first two of what will ultimately be a five plank wide table top. The glue is still drying as I type this so that’s all for now. I’ll post more as I complete this project.

Well, as part of the continuing process of getting ready to squeeze another little girl into the room with Annelise, Monique asked for a book shelf that could fit between the two closets and match the armoire and bed that I built when Annelise was born. (I’ll do a write up on those one day…) We looked at a lot of different store bought options but they were all too expensive (the only ones we liked were over $250) and none of them really matched the existing furniture. I don’t exactly need much motivation to start a new project in the shop but this one looked especially fun as it could be completed in a day or two and not cost much money (we spent about $25 plus paint). Monique helped with the design (it was her suggestion to offset the height of the shelves) and the rest of the design was based on the existing armoire and bed. If the details details interest you, read on…if not, just enjoy the pictures (click on any picture for a larger view).

Materials:
I built the project out of MDF (medium density fiberboard) as it is cheap, easy to work with, smooth, and takes paint very well. The only draw backs to using MDF are weight – MDF is very heavy (makes for a stable bookcase) and poor edges. The cut edge of MDF is very soft and rough. To address this I covered the front with a solid wood (white pine) face frame. This not only fixes the aesthetics but protects the shelf front from toddlers with hot-wheels. I primed the entire unit prior to painting with Kilz brand spray primer. This stops the MDF from absorbing so much paint and provides a uniform color to the top coat. The top coat is an oil based interior paint. This is a little harder to work with then water based paints but I have yet to find a latex paint that is anywhere near as durable as oil based finishes.

Tools:
Required

• Table saw or Circular saw with straight edge guide
• Table saw with dado cutter or Router with straight cutting bit
• Band Saw or Jig Saw (only needed for decorative base trim)
• Router with Chamfer bit or tilted Table saw (for detail on top)
• Router with ogee bit for base trim only
• Clamps
• Brad Nailer (recommended)

Mill Work:
After cutting the pieces to size using my table saw (and band saw for the decorative bottom trim) I changed the blade to a stacked dado head cutter. This is basically a stack of blades called chippers that can be configured to cut groves or dadoes of varying thicknesses (1/16″ – 7/8″ in 1/64″ increments).

I set up to cut a 3/4″ thick dado 1/4″ deep. The blade height above the table controls the depth of the cut. Once the cutter was configured I milled out all the dadoes in the sides and middle of the bookcase.

Most of the dadoes in this project are full dadoes that run from one end of the board through the other side. The top however fits on the uprights using a blind dado (sounds like a blues singer). This is a dado that stops before the end of the board. Because the blade is round you end up with what is called “run-out”. This is the shallower unusable portion of the blind dado.

There are a number of ways to address this issue. I could use a sharp hand chisel to “square up” the run out, I could simply round off the end of the board that fits in this dado, or (as I’ve chosen to do in this design) the run-out can be hidden. Dealing with the run-out is easy. Figuring out how to cut this dado is the tricky part. Because the dado stops before the end of the board I had to figure out when to stop cutting without being able to see the blade (while cutting the blade is hidden under the board). To address this I put a piece of tape on my table saw’s rip fence and marked the highest point of the blade on this tape. Then on the back of the board I was cutting I marked where the end of the full depth dado cut needed to be. When I cut the dado I knew to stop when the marks lined up.

With the stacked dado cutter installed I next milled a rabbit in the uprights (blind dadoes and rabbits…getting weird). A rabbit is a ledge (or half a dado) cut into the edge of a board. In my case this was to receive a thin 1/4″ thick rear panel to act as the back of the bookcase. I didn’t want to just attach this piece to the back of the shelf…I wanted it recessed into the bookcase.

To cut a rabbit on my table saw (man that just sounds wrong) I needed to slide my fence on top of the blade so that only one side of the blade would be exposed. To do that I used a sacrificial fence. This is just a piece of wood attached to the metal rip fence. I slid it in place with the blade down. With the table saw running I carefully raised the blade into the wood and was ready to cut the rabbit.

The finial bit of milling to do was to put a chamfer (bevel) on the front and side edges of the top. I used my shaper (just a big router) with a chamfering bit and ball bearing guide.

Assembly:
After cutting and milling all the pieces I was ready for the fun part…putting it all together! Step one was to dry fit (no glue) all the pieces together and make sure everything fit. Next I assembled the bottom shelf between the uprights using glue (I like Tight Bond II) and 3/4″ brads toe nailed (these name get sillier and sillier but this means nailed from the inside at an angle…hides the nail and holds the shelf at the set angle while the glue dries). Of course I used a speed square to make sure every thing was perpendicular.

Next I installed the center upright and both shelves using the same technique and wiped up all the excess glue so I wouldn’t have to deal with it later.

You can see from this rear picture that the shelves stop at the edge of the rabbit. This will allow the back to slip in and attach to the back edge of the shelves later with staples.

You can also see from this front view that the bottom shelf has a lip to receive the solid wood face frame.

The last bit of assembly before allowing the glue to dry was to attach the top using glue and 1 1/2″ brads. After some dry time, I attached the face frame to all the upright edges and across the top of the piece using glue a few 1″ brads (the face frame is 1/2″ thick) and lots of clamps (the center and shelf trim is not shown here).

Here you can see that blind dado run-out from earlier just visible behind the top face frame. This remaining gap will be hidden by crown molding.

The finial step of assembly was to attach the crown molding (maybe I’ll do a post on cutting crown molding later) and bottom decorative trim using glue and brads. The corners are mitered (cut at a 45). After attaching everything I used some sandable wood filler to cover all the nail holes.

After a good sanding I took the unit outside to spray on a single coat of Kilz spray primer.

Another light sanding and I was ready to paint. I used an oil based paint applied with a nice natural bristle brush. Two coats later…

I also painted the back panel at the same time. It was much easier to paint without the back installed. After the paint dried I installed the back using 1″ narrow crown staples. Now it was Monique’s turn to load up some books and decorate the top. Here is the finial version of our $25 bookcase.