Friday, July 31, 2015

Porch Swing (kind of)

Yes I built a beautiful porch swing... well I built this bird sized porch swing for my mother-in-law. I don't think I've made her anything yet so I wanted to find something. I looked at bird feeders because she always seems to have a bunch at her house and likes feeding them. I remembered Steve Ramsey's porch swing bird feeder that he built and decided on that project. I believe he got the idea from Matt McDowell. I finally got to use some of the oak pallet boards I've been saving which made it pretty sturdy with mostly just glue to hold it together. I didn't do any sanding and tried to keep the burn marks from the table saw on the back of the feeder. I also kept as many weathered edges as I could. I finished it with spray lacquer which is safe for the birds. My mother-in-law is going to attach the chains as I didn't have any and I didn't really know where or how high she'd want to hang it. There's a screen sandwiched on the bottom to keep the seeds as dry as possible which is probably a non issue here in California.



Saturday, July 25, 2015

Minecraft Torch

Cousin Camp 2015 is quickly approaching and it's gonna be Minecraft themed. All the kids and myself are really into Minecraft right now and I knew I had to make some kind of torch since it's in the game and basically a flashlight. I just cut some pieces of 1.5" square wood at 7.5". I painted them to look like torches from the game (which was no easy task since I'm making six). I cut a hole down in the top to fit a small flashlight in then trimmed a quarter inch off the top and replaced it with a quarter inch piece of plywood that has a hole just a little smaller than the flashlight. I screwed the plywood on top to hold the flashlight in and you just push on the flashlight to turn it off and on.