Woodbox 23

A new style of Bamboo pen. I took some of the hardwood floor laminate that I have, and cut it at a 60 degree angle. The angle determined by holding a standard pen blank up to the board, and turning it until I could get a standard sized pen blank on the bias. The board is like 4-5″ wide, so the angle sort of decided itself. I did get one big tear out in the first stages, but it was able to turn that away. The angled cut makes a nice looking pen, and gives it a very interesting look.

– badger

Stopped by Woodcraft today to pick up a two pen case for a wedding gift I’m giving to a co-worker. They had a table full of mostly crap out on sale, with decent discounts. I grabbed two captive ring tools, ones I’ve been eyeing for a little while. They were 35% off regular price. They came out to be about $25 each, which is a pretty nice price for the quality of the tools.

I’m thinking of turning a few kids toys with it, just for fun. Eventually my goal is to make a wedding goblet with two rings on them as a wedding gifts for a couple I know. I wanted to do it a long time ago, but haven’t gotten around to it. Maybe this will be the impetus to get that done. I don’t feel too bad, they only get in contact every so often, and they totally should get in contact more often.

–Badger

p.s. That picture turned out really well I just noticed. The photo was taken in my home-made photo light tent.

iPod Dock

I needed a dock for my ipod at work. I used some scrap off of the floor of my workshop to make one.

The block of wood is a piece of 2×4 I had recycled from a broken bed frame. I used a 3/4″ Fornster bit to drill the holes for the iPod to rest in.

To get the angled opening, so that the iPod rests at an angle for better desk viewing, I used a wedge of wood under one side, and put it into my drill press vise that way, so it created the angle. I used a 1/4″ wood chisel to square up the hole a bit.

I then used a 1/2″ Fornster bit to open up the bottom so I could charge the iPod with my extra cable at work. I was worried about crimping the cable end, so I added the little legs to give it someroom. Super simple, and it only took me abotu a half hour max to create.
Edited: I snapped a quick camera phone pic of my new dock in the office.

Looks right at home!
– badger

Now that the spam problem is solved.

Check out the display stand design I came up with for my pens.

I went through like 3 designs before I settled on this one. I was trying to be too complicated on my other designs, this one is simple, easy to make and assemble, and looks good. The material is (naturally) bamboo! I scored some Timbergrass Bamboo flooring pieces at a local recycling store. I got a small bundle of the stuff, it’s like 3/4″ thick, with tounge and groove edges, and about four feet long. As you can see in the pick, it’s contructed of laminated strips of bamboo. Although easy stuff to work with, it does tend to break of long splinters at the edges, but I’ve found that sanding the edges round with my belt sander does the trick.

The notches I did by taking 2 square sticks of the stuff, butt them up against each other into my drill press vise, and use a fornster bit to drill a hole down the middle, where the two meet. Voila! Instant half circle cut outs! I did go a little too fast with the drill press, and burnt the bamboo a bit as you can see. It does burn fairly quicklyu. Just taking it slower and clearing chips often does wonders.

–Badger

I did some digging, and found a program (from the Wordpress site, so I didn’t dig that far) called Akismet that takes care of spam to your sites.  It’s a “learning” program, so it picks up patterns of the comments you’ve marked as spam, and takes care of it.

I installed it last night, and marked about 6 as spam that had come in those 10 minutes.  Woke up this morning, and it had already filtered 38 comments out.  Nice!

Now I can use this blog again, the spam had put a real taint on my blogging experience, but Akismet has handled that for me.  Whoo!

– Badger

Spam, spam, spam.

That’s all I’m getting in comments lately, like HUNDREDS of them.  Stupid spammers.  I hate them, the ruin things.  Like blogging, email, guestbooks, etc.

Annoyed.