6-Pistol Rack
It has been three years in the making but I finally finished my handgun rack. It was substantially complete back in March 2015 but I never liked the solutions I was using for the gun slots.
I tried using CA glue to attach hook & loop (Velcro®) with the loop side exposed and the hook side glued to the wood. That didn’t work. It didn’t adhere well and it wasn’t very good padding. That’s when I shelved it to research new ideas.
Over the next couple of years I thought of different padding materials and different adhesives. I moved toward using felt early on but I was always concerned with the adhesive bleeding through the fabric and, therefore, nullifying the padding effect. The fabric would be like sandpaper once the glue set up.
Another issue was that I didn’t feel like I was capable of cutting fabric at a consistent width to match the width of the plywood edge to which it would be adhered. During this time my wife taught me how she uses an Olfa® rotary cutter and a straightedge to cut strips of fabric with consistent widths. That problem was solved.
Next, on Tested.com, I saw how Adam Savage glued fabric (and foam) with 3M Super 77 spray adhesive. The adhesive is sprayed on both pieces being bonded together and it has a low absorption rate on fabrics. It’s the perfect solution for what I was doing. Since it works great on foam, too, it will help me on another languishing project where I have to glue pieces of rubber foam together.
Finally, on McMaster–Carr (wonderful web site), I found wool felt in different thicknesses. I was able to get a 12″ x 72″ x 3/16″ thick piece of wool felt and, by my reasoning, it would be thick enough to prevent the adhesive from bleeding through. In actuality I found that the adhesive would work just as well on thinner felt but I’m happy with the results of the felt I used this time.
It took a long time but I didn’t give up on this project even while it was shelved and I was working on others. It’s very rewarding to finish this project and get the great results.
Hot Wire Foam Cutter (underside – v9 unfinished).
But there are a few reasons I’m shifting to Fusion 360:
- Fusion 360 is free for me to use; Autodesk has made the full-featured software free for hobbyists like me to use.
- I need to use software that goes from concept (3D CAD) to production (CAM) in order to use my CNC Router; Fusion 360 does that extremely well.
- The projects I’ve been designing require me to outsource many of the parts to fabricators; they all use Autodesk software and Fusion 360 allows me to be compatible with their workflows.
- To be honest, Fusion 360 does 2D drawings much better way than Sketchup with Layout. It cuts down on the time it takes me to go from design to building.
- It has more materials and renders more elegant images of my models. When I show them to people it’s much more impressive and requires less imagination on their part to understand the concepts I’m presenting.
Here is a model (with a comparison photo) I made in Fusion 360 of the main transformer for the Hot Wire Foam Cutter.
Photo of Main Transformer.
Model of Main Transformer.
I have a lot of books that I enjoy reading, re-reading, and referencing time and again. The problem is, I have a lot of books and no adequate place to organize them well. So, I end up with lots of piles of books and double rows of books on each shelf of my cheap, freestanding bookshelves.
The shelves you buy in the store have a couple of problems:
- They’re made with cheap, low-quality materials that can’t properly support the weight of the books, and
- Their size is limited for safety reasons; not too tall, not too wide, etc.
I’ve often wanted to install built-in-place custom wall shelving to hold all the books but there are considerable financial limitations to that solution. It would be quite expensive to remove, modify or replace the carpeting to accommodate built-in-place shelves. There would also be sheetrock and cove molding work to be performed.
I could probably perform the sheetrock and cove molding work, but I’d have to contract the carpet work. Also, the amount of material necessary to properly complete the work would be up to $2,000, maybe more. That’s not an amount of money I am willing to drop into this project. I haven’t been able to convince myself to do it.
One day I was chatting with my son and, knowing I’m a bibliophile in search of a good book shelf, he sent me a link to an article about Neil Gaiman’s home library. It blew me away and I looked at the pictures with my mouth hanging open. The books were floor to ceiling on the shelves! The shelves looked great but they weren’t typical, something was different about them.
It was clear that Neil’s shelves were more about the books and less about the shelves. Often, built-in-place shelves are built to be showy and are rigid and inflexible in their size to accommodate different book sizes/types. For days I kept going back to the article to enviously scan through all the pictures. As I repeatedly viewed those pictures, I realized the shelves were constructed using shelf standards and brackets.
This fact had not been immediately evident when I first saw the photos. The shelves had been skillfully constructed to hide the shelf brackets. This was the solution I had been looking for! I didn’t want cheesy, cheap shelves on my wall and I didn’t want to spend thousands of dollars to avoid that problem.
I researched shelving standards & brackets and decided on Knape and Vogt brand 180 series in silver with 10-inch deep brackets. Their are a lot of options with their shelving and their web site was very useful in helping me design my shelves to replicate Neil’s shelves. The best place I found to supply the shelving was Woodworker Express. They had all the parts including the special screws to mount the standards to the wall.
Since I’m an electrician by trade, I decided to 1-up Neil by putting LED lighting on my shelves. I went with the excellent Diode LED Fluid View 24VDC Tape Light in 2700K and used their innovative 100W in-wall switch/driver combo to power them. To distribute the power to each shelf I built a custom wiring harness with Diode LED’s 16 AWG 2-conductor cable and used barrel connectors with pigtails at each shelf to allow me to disconnect the shelves from the power harness in order to remove or relocate the shelf whenever I needed to do so.
To build the shelves I went with red oak veneer plywood and solid red oak (all from Home Depot) to trim the edge making the lip which hides the shelf brackets and gives me a place to mount the LED tape lighting. To stain the wood I chose General Finishes (Nutmeg) Gel Stain and for the topcoat I chose General Finishes Arm-R-Seal Urethane Topcoat (Satin). I applied one coat of stain and then put on three coats of the topcoat. The results were better than anything I’ve done previously and I’m very happy with it.
The project cost just over $700 to build including the lighting which is considerably less than my projected budget for the built-in-place shelves. Check out the build photos below for to see step-by-step construction of the shelves:
Goat Ranch 2-Door (short) Wall Cabinet
Finished the 2-door wall cabinet and the 2-door wall cabinet (short) before I went on vacation. This short cabinet is for above the stove. Since all the wall cabinets are complete I started making sample finish pieces for Wendy to choose a finish she likes.
She has decided on the clear finish that shows the wood. The wood has a blonde color after three coats of top-coat. I’m happy with it, too. I’ll go ahead and start putting coats of sealer and top-coats on the cabinets while I start the lower cabinets. I have to complete my build drawings first…shouldn’t take long.
Goat Ranch 2-Door Wall Cabinet
Now that I’m getting closer to completing the construction of the 1-door wall cabinet I need to start my 2-door wall cabinet. The bugs should be worked out of my building methods and it should only be a question of doubling the smaller build.
When I made mistakes on the smaller cabinet I was able to develop techniques to avoid them thereafter. Some minor changes to the doors needed to be performed in Sketchup and I’m processing those 3D models into build drawings now. If the rain holds off this week I’ll be able to get the additional materials I need before the weekend to start this part of the build.
After this one, I’ll move on to the cabinet bases. They are big and a little cumbersome. At some point I’ll also have to plan on painting all these cabinets. That will be the first time I use my HVLP sprayer…guess I need to read up on that, too.
Goat Ranch 1-Door Wall Cabinet
I clumsily started building the wall cabinets for the Goat Ranch Cabin. The cabinet I chose to begin with is the smallest of all the cabinets I’m building. There are two reasons I chose this one: 1) I can relatively quickly build it and find any design issues, and 2) I can practice the setup and cuts on a small scale before I get to the larger stuff.
By “clumsily started” I mean I’ve found a problem with one of the methods I was using to suspend the shelves. I’ve used the technique before but, for some unknown reason, it’s not working for me on this project. The result was that I damaged one of the cabinet sides to the point that it will have to be re-cut. There were several mistakes in that side piece which made me decide to re-cut it. It was just too much of a mess.
The design is solid, though; no changes will be needed there. Aesthetically speaking, I think that I’ll add some edge banding on the “face edges” of the cabinet to hide the plywood ends. At first, since this is for the cabin, I wasn’t worried about that. But, it’s just one of those things that, I think, will bug me for years to come if I don’t do it. It’ll look more professional with the edge banding.
P.S. — I just call it the Goat Ranch because the previous owner had planned to raise goats there. We don’t have any goats.
Goat Ranch Cabin with Kitchenette Cabinets and Appliances
I’ve neglected building out the interior of the cabin for many years. It’s rustic…very rough. It has air conditioning and, obviously, electricity but no plumbing or any special accommodations. I’ve done maintenance on it and worked on it a little bit but my focus has been on large projects here at home.
The large projects at home are pretty much wrapped up so, for Christmas last year, Wendy asked to have the cabin buildout completed. Slowly I’m creaking into motion on that project. I’m getting some traction on it mainly in planning and design.
Yesterday I took an opportunity to go to the cabin and I modeled the whole thing in Sketchup. All the framing and decking and structure of the cabin is now a 3D model I can work on in Sketchup. I can make all the measurements I need for design and fit them with appliances in the 3D space.
There is a bedroom (a have the walls framed already), a loft (where kids sleep), and soon a bathroom (shower only…outhouse is down the trail), and a kitchenette (shown in the image above). It will be designed on Tiny House design principles and it’s our goal to keep it simple and low-maintenance. It’s our place to get away, let the kids roam and play in the woods and not worry about constant housekeeping.
With the cabinets designed (the brown objects in the image above) it looks like I need to get moving on the other things holding up their installation…like the wood flooring. It’ll be really nice to have a place to go and stay for extended periods; almost camping, but not quite.
#10 (1-gallon) Can F.I.F.O. Storage Unit
Recently I began purchasing freeze-dried disaster/emergency preparedness food. After experiencing the disruption caused by large storms—hurricanes and tornadoes—in the Texas Gulf Coast area, we decided it’s best to be as self-sufficient as possible in the aftermath of these events. It didn’t take long to realize we needed a way to store the #10 (1-gallon) cans so we could rotate the stock and easily transport the food when necessary, i.e., when it’s necessary to evacuate / relocate.
We’re a large family and—depending on the time of year—there can be as many as six of us to feed; one, 1-gallon can will feed the whole group for each meal. But all storage solutions I found on the Internet were geared toward small food cans. There were some commercial First-In-First-Out (F.I.F.O) units I liked but they were expensive, not modular or easily portable. So, I took the ideas I liked and headed to my trusty Sketchup 3D app and started designing my own based on the dimensions of the #10 cans.
My approach to building these units will be a little different: I’m going to make a full-sized, 1:1 scale template and work off of it to cut & rout the sides. I don’t intend to produce build drawings other than the 1:1 scale template. This is my budget solution for a CNC since I haven’t assembled my CNC…yet. The unit is 18″ tall x 22″ deep and holds six cans.
Plate 18 – Book Stand (revision 1)
Books are piling up everywhere in our house, particularly on our center table in the living room. There have been some subtle hints that it’s getting pretty difficult to dust that particular table. Taking the hint, I decided we need more book shelves in the house and I located a design that was close to what I need.
I had already modeled the project as it’s shown in the book Advanced Projects in Woodwork ©1920 so all the work was in modifying that original model. This wasn’t all that difficult thanks to Sketchup.
In order to allow for my 12-inch tall books to fit onto the shelves of the book stand, I had to move the lower shelf down and the upper shelf up to get adequate space. Once the modifications were completed I created scenes (views) in Sketchup, and exported that to Layout (included with Sketchup) to make my build drawings.
On the righthand side of this post you can see an image to the completed design in isometric view. If you’re interested in build drawings, they can be downloaded here: plate 18 – book stand (revision 1).
The little kids have been asking for wooden swords so I started experimenting with ways to build one. I intend to practice building these prototypes until I’m confident enough to build them in hickory and walnut—this prototype is in clear pine. After I complete this sword in hickory I’m hoping to make some other styles; this one is ~38.5″ long.
Here’s a link to download a dimensioned drawing to build your own: Broad Sword Plans
