Here's a completed Pine Post Office Box Bank

And here we have a finished bank made from the old growth pine. I used a shellac wash coat before staining, to seal in any problems in the wood from the old paint, or simply from the pitch in the wood, so it didn't get as dark as I wanted. Which is okay, really, as I like the way the grain shows off through the finish.


I don't usually, but I used a high gloss finish on these, so it made getting a good pic a little harder than usual- lots of glare.

Here's a look at the back- note that the back is stapled, bradded and glued to the body, and the bottom of the back extends into the base. Quick to assemble (the brads and staples speed things up because I don't have to use clamps), and quite strong- I can't bend the 1/4" ply back on one of these when it is fully assembled.

This was a great use for this fine old wood, and I'm glad to be the one to have salvaged it!

Finally using the old growth pine boards...

It's been some time since I've posted here, simply because I haven't had anything much to talk about. I've been sick most of the past month (including having the worst of it during my planned working vacation), and haven't been able to accomplish much.

This past week, though, I was finally feeling well enough to go out to the shop and get to work on a project that I have been planning for some time- making something out of those nice old growth pine boards I found earlier this year.
After putting old blades into my planer, I used it to take off most of the paint on several of the boards, then cut them up to make these-

What are they? They are going to be post office box banks. In the picture, they have just recieved a seal-coat of shellac, and do not have their bases (I haven't made them yet). Ten of them are rounded like the bank on the left below, and
the others are all "faceted" like the one on the right.


These are made from only three different boards, but the grain is still wildly different in almost all of them. Note that the grain continues around all three sides- I was careful to make each of them from one length of wood to get this effect.
The shellac has a slight orange tint to it, and made the grain pop out (visually) in such a striking way, that I'm tempted to not go any further with the finishing!

If you're wondering why they are not sitting flat on the boards, it's because each of them has a stub tenon on the back (below), that is formed from the 1/4" ply back- this not only makes a more secure glue joint with the base, but reinforces the back, allowing me to use thin material, which makes for much more room on the inside. These will hold about 40 cubic inches of coins. when they are done

And here is one of the prototypes, to show what they will look like when finished...

Remember a few posts back how I went to all the trouble of pulling the nails out of the back of an old countertop to make a workbench? Well, that's not the plan anymore (in fact, I've already cut that up for shelves). Why the change of heart? Because I finally scored what I've been looking for- a hospital door (inside). The pic is dark- the only safe place to lean this behemoth was against the tree. It's about 7' x 4', and just out of curiosity I put it on the scale- 190 lbs!
No wonder I almost gave myself a hernia moving the thing!
It was on the bottom of a rollway dumpster- I thought at first that the weight was from things stacked on it, but obviously, that wasn't the problem! I got it out of there (over the side!), and into my work truck, and from there into the back of my suburban, where it's been riding for a month or two now. I was finally able to get it out today, and boy is the wife going to be happy!
If this one is made like the others I've seen, the interior is a form of oriented strand board- only about an inch and a half thick! It's edged all around with solid wood, so I'll have to take off the hardware and cut into it to be sure. Either way, It's gonna make a nice massive workbench to which to mount the two bench vises I have waiting on it (procured at an auction for $25 for the pair!!!).


I'll try to get some pics when I'm building the bench, and will definitely post some of the finished product!.

The Purple Computer Table

For some time, we've been in need of a small table for our second computer. So, when I found this table frame a couple of months ago, I snapped it up (it was sitting beside the dumpster at a moving business). Also, the wife loves anything purple, so I just naturally had to bring it home.


Note the long, green grass in the background- this is almost unheard of for central Texas in June! It's been an unbeliveabley wet year so far- it rained *hard* three times in the last week! Probably not much for the pacific northwest, but it's a big deal here, lemme tellya! It finally dried out enough (barely) for me to start mowing here the last couple of days.

I'm pretty sure that this originally had a glass top, but I wasn't about to mess with that- not with all the materials that I have on hand! To secure the top to the base, I simply drilled two holes in each of the 45 degree crosspieces that used to support the glass top. Flat bottomed pocket hole screws through these will do the trick. Also repainted it with the can of purple spraypaint in the top pic (my only expense for the job).

This old piece of countertop has been keeping the rain out of my carport for years- and now I've finally found a new use for it. Note the odd shape- first order of business was to cut a straight line, then work off of that to cut a square table top.

This was a job for the circular saw! Since I didn't want to damage the laminate, it's a two step process. 1st step is to make a scoring cut, with the blade barely protruding- just enough to cut through the laminate, and barely into the wood underneath. 2nd step was the through cut, with the blade lowered all the way. I used the same guide for both cuts. The pic on the right below shows the through cut being made- note the shallow cut ahead of the saw. This works pretty well.

Once cut sqare, I nipped the corners at 45 degrees- much easier and faster than trying to make rounded corners with the router. As it turned out, it looks pretty good that way, too. Once it was cut to shape, I used Durham's rock hard water putty to fill any cracks and voids in the sides (this is a powder that you mix with water- it's widely available, and really is rock hard when it cures). Then sanding, priming (kilz), and turned upside down to paint the edge of the plywood purple to match the base.

Turned it all upside down, screwed the base to the top, and the result is below.

Note that the purple edge really blends the top and base- I didn't anticipate this, but it was definitely a happy accident. The wife is happy, too, but that was no accident :) I had planned to install a keyboard drawer that I picked up somewhere, but it turned out to be *just* too wide to fit between the legs, and there was no way to shorten it, so we'll just have to make do with this :)

completed bathroom floor

So here we have the floor with the self-adhesive tile installed (made the wife do that part, and she did a good job :). I've since reinstalled the toilet and sink, and the new floor is a huge improvement- much stronger than the old particle board floor.

I've been needing to replace the floor in my daughter's bathroom for some time now, and I finally got around to it. We bought our mobile home as a repo, and agreed to do any needed repairs ourselves, in order to save several thousand dollars. Pretty much the only problem we had was that the bathroom floors had been soaked pretty bad, and, being made of particleboard, were naturally in bad shape.
The seal had gone out under the toilet, as the floor was sinking- you can see where I repaired that. The problem that followed was that the repair was thinner than the particle board, after it had absorbed water. The solution was to pull out all of the old particle board, and replace it with plywood.
Removing the old PB was a big job- it was glued, nailed, and stapled to the joists, and they used plenty of all three! Plus, the walls were built on top of the floor, so I had to cut the floor at the edges, then build up a frame for the new floor to rest on. It was sawzall and chisel work (I used a cheap harbor freight chisel- and I have to say that it held up quite well to being pounded on with a claw hammer).

Above, you can see where I've put in the cross braces- they are mostly cut from an old waterbed side, and screwed into the joists using pocket holes. I've also run some up under the wall, and screwed them into the next joist over ( no *that* was tough to do! laying on my face and doing it blind!). I've also put just under the wall, screwed into the frame I built, to support the edge of the bathroom floor, as well as the floor in the next room over. As you can see, there was a lot of frame building to be done here- the people who built the house didn't include any cross bracing, but simply relied on the particle board to hold everything together. Of course, they were working with full sheets- and I was working with random pieces that I pulled out of dumpsters :)



I have to admit that it was some work to get all of this fitted together- note that I also replaced my earlier repair. Total cost for the job? Maybe five bucks, including screws, and the tube of caulk I used to fill in the cracks. When the caulk dries, we'll cover the floor with some self-adhesive tiles that a friend gave my wife last week, and it should all look pretty decent, for now. When I've got time, I'll probably come back and pour a thin layer of thinset concrete to level everything out perfectly, then tile it with squares of Corian (that I'll be cutting from my scrap). In the meantime, though, my little girls's going to be happy to have her bathroom back, and that's the best part of the job.

The Shop Itself

I've noticed that I mention my shop a lot in this blog, so I thought I would put up a post about it. The shop itself is recycled- I picked up a badly damaged 12'x24' portable building cheap at an auction a couple of years ago, then had it moved in behind my house. It almost didnt' make it- one of the skids (what it sits on) broke in half under it when the movers picked it up. They ended up charging me a bit extra for all the trouble of gettinng it here and into a tight spot.


Here it is, in all it's glory, before I leveled it. As I found out later, the decorative surround on the roof concealed finger-sized holes in all four corners (left there by the builders!), which let in water, and I had a lot of water damage to repair.

An example of the water damage- lots of rot in the sills (the supports for the walls). The first owner had put a faucet inside it, and a drain- and simply had the drain running out under the building-which was tightly skirted! The floor was in bad shape- the first thing I did was tear out the old floor (with my wife's help).

I build new skids out of scrap material (nailed and glued shorter pieces into 24' long skids), then slid them under and secured them to the joists with screws, using pocket holes for a stronger joint. I tried to get around it, but eventually decided to replace the sill all around with new, pressure treated lumber. Here I've got the wall propped up for this purpose. This was pretty easy- I simply screwed a 2'x board to the wall, jacked the wall up with a couple of small floor jacks, then placed my propping boards (they are bearing on the new skid- if you look closely, you can see that I also put 2'x4' reinforcements above the skid and between the joists- again using pocket holes. This took some time, but is very, very strong).

Instead of nailing into end grain from the outside, which is a weak joint, I drilled four pocket holes in each end of every joist (that's what's going on in the above pic), and attached them to the new sill with four 2 1/2" pocket hole screws. This is orders of magnitude stronger than nailing, plus it leaves no outside holes for water to get in.

To illustrate the holding strength of these screws- one of the end sills was badly bowed along it's length- about three inches out. My wife was helping me- I had attached one end with four screws, and she was holding the bowed board up for me. When I ran the first screw in on the loose end, it pulled the entire 12 foot board straight so fast, that it pulled it right out of her hands!

Here's the new sills- a big improvement! Later, I inserted aluminum flashing (that I got cheap at an auction :) I've still got a lot of the stuff, and it's pretty useful for a variety of things.

So, next I needed to replace the floor with new plywood. This would require 12 sheets of plywood, which could get expensive at retail. As it happened, there was another auction about this time for the items left behind when a church moved into a bigger building. Among these items was a large stage, built of 2x4's and 3/4" plywood. I got it for fifteen dollars, and it took me two trips to get it all home, as I was unable to dissasemble it at the church. Above is my trailer, full of this material.

All of the plywood was covered in carpet, which had been thouroughly glued down. This was a huge pain to get off! The most effective method I found was to stand it on end, attached an old weight bar to the carpet with clamps, then hang the heaviest stuff I could find off it. It took most of a week, but I finally managed to get it all apart. This still left the glue residue, which was easy to deal with- I simply turned the sheets over and used the virgin bottom surface.

The 2x4 material also came in handy- I used quite a bit of it in building the new skids, and more of it in repairing and replacing rotted wall material.

More to come on the shop later!

Preparing an old counter top for making into a workbench

So, today I log onto blogger, and what do they announce? Auto-save! After I already lost this post once to a storm, of course! Anyhow, I'm glad to see it.


So, here we have an old plywood counter top sitting upside down on the sawhorses (with a bunch of the wood I salvaged from that old shop stacked in the background). I'm planning to use the top layer of this, with the laminate still on it for a workbench. My normal procedure here is simply to clip off the nails on the bottom, and file them flat. On this one, however, there's a good possibility that I'll want to be drilling some special-purpose holes in it, and, since I don't want to ruin any good wood drill bits, the nails have to come out.

In the pic above, we see the tools for this job- a good, sturdy hammer, a pair of vise-grips, and a bucket for nails. Note the piece of plywood poking out under the left end- this is another piece of old countertop (with pink laminate, of all things!) that I've already made into a workbench. When I'm done, I'll have three built-in benches in my shop, and one portable, all made from recycled materials, and all sporting vintage vises.

Here's the procedure- grab the pointy end in the vise-grips, and use the hammer to pull it out.

I'm lucky her, in that when it was build, they used finishing nails, so they come out easy. An added advantage of using the vice-grips is that when a nail goes flying into the grass, it's easy to find with the pliers attached to it :).

Older countertops often have a strip of wood glued to the side, and laminate applied over it and the top at once- to remove that strip, it's necessary to cut the laminate where the two meet, to avoid tearing it up. I usually do this with the circular saw set for a 1/16 or so cut, then just knock the side strip off with a hammer. This was a cheaper, and/or less professional installation, and they simply put a strip of laminate on the edges of the stacked plywood. This came off pretty easily with a stiff scraper blade (and a tiny bit of persuasion with the hammer). I tossed the laminate scraps- then dug a couple of them out a couple of days later to use for spreading paint remover on another project (instead of using a brush and discarding it).

The bottom layer is almost never applied very well, since it's just a filler. Usually just some nails and a bit of construction adhesive. Just slam the claws under the edge and start prying- they usually come off pretty easily.

Here are the filler strips turned upside down. Note the globs of adhesive. When I remake the top layer into a workbench, it will get glued to another full layer of plywood, with wood glue, clamps, and screws all around, and will be very stout (and heavy! Oh, my back!).

Also, I removed the nails from the filler strips, and made them into shelves in my shop, so pretty much this whole item is going to get used.

The finished coat rack

So, here it is, in all it's glory. Besides a couple of coats of varnish, the only addition is the coathooks (which I had picked up on sale quite some time ago).
Wife and child are both happy- now I just have to get them into the habit of using the thing!
I'll add some hooks on the side for umbrellas and such later- and if it turns out to be "tippy", even with the extended feet, I'll simply screw it to a stud with a 3" screw. Not high art, but a satisfying little project- useful and cheap, just how I like it :)


I was on vacation last week, and spent as much time as possible working on my shop. When I get some time later, I'll do a post on how I prepared an old laminated countertop and made it into a built in workbench.

Finished Packing Crates

Here's a finished packing crate, with the components packed into it. It works well- these are not tubes, but machined from solid stainless steel, and quite heavy. The crate holds them perfectly.


The bottom pic is of the other four crates,with the tops screwed on. Note the different colored woods- these are one-use items, so they didn't have to be pretty- just strong. I didn't purchase any of the wood for this project, and the customer (my brother :) was quite happy.

A Cutting Guide for A Skilsaw

A year or two ago I found an entire sheet of 1/2" plywood that had been in use as a sign. I've used that wood for tons of things, including shelves in the house and other stuff. I had one little piece of it left in the shop, and this is what I decided to do with it-

Here, I've attached it to a piece of 1/8" masonite, leaving a large overhang, and clamped it to the end of my bench, being careful that I won't cut the bench.

Here, I'm simply cutting the masonite with my circular saw, using the plywood as a guide. Yep- it's an old saw. It was old when I got it about twelve years ago. One of my better $20 purchases! :)

The complted guide- in use, I will simply line up the edge of the masonite where I want my cut, or alternately, use it to line up a longer guide relative to the edge of a piece. I'm planning to use this to make some templates for things that I'll be making a lot of, like shelves.

Finally got some time (and a non-rainy day) to start getting into some of the wood stacked in my trailer. It's been under a tarp for over a week now- it's been raining almost every day- a real rarity around here!

These are a couple of the nice old pine board that made up that collapsed shelf unit- they are heavy and dense, and mostly pretty straight! I'm almost six feet tall, and look how long these things are! I'm gonna be able to make lots of nice things out of them- nine altogether, just like these two. The thing in the middle is my favorite ongoing project, our daughter Kehaulani. My face looks wierder than usual here, because she kept saying "cheeeeeese" and making me laugh :)

This was taken in the alley behind our house- I'm sure the neighbors were wondering what all the hammering was about (was pounding nails out- *lots* of nails!).

Our New Coat Rack!

Here's the coatrack I mentioned in my last post- I got tired of having those big ol' boards taking up space in my shop, so I made a point of getting it assembled this week.


It stands 5'8", and is about 3 1/2' wide. After it's got it's finish coat of polyeurathane, I'll add the hooks. The top crosspiece in back will hold jackets for my wife and me, and the middle one will also get hooks for our daughter's jackets. The top is intended as a shelf for library books- I am forever forgetting where I left the things, and ending up with late fines. Hopefully, this will help with that :)


The sides and feet were made from old waterbed sides that I salvaged, and the crosspieces were ripped from an old pine tabletop that I found somewhere years ago. That table top has had several lives- first it was a table for someone, then I cut it down a bit to make a top for the kitchen island in our old house, and now I've made it into a coatrack. If that isn't recycling, I don't know what is!

Everything is held together with 2 1/2" self drilling pocket hole screws, which are a *very* effective method of mechanical joining. They also allow me to dissasemble if necessary. I bought the top of the line Kreg jig pocket hole kit several years ago, and it was a very worthwhile investment- I use that thing constantly!

Once the wife finishes with putting on the varnish, and I get the hooks on, I'll post a pic of this item in use. Oh, and by the way, I was planning to paint it- but Tina insists that she likes it just the way it is, so it's poly instead of paint for this one!

building the packing crates

Here's the item I'm building the packing crates for- doesn't look like much, does it? In fact, these are components of a very important piece of oilfield equipment, and are all precisely machined and heat-treated stainless steel. It's all very heavy- and this isn't even the part that does the work! I'll explain what it is at the end of this post.

These pieces are sitting on my small cabinet maker's workbench, which I built from old military bunks picked up at auction, and a solid oak entry door, picked up from beside a dumpster ( it was *heavy*- I don't blame them for not actually putting it in the dumpster!)

Here, I've machined the blocks to hold the items- I used scrap wood to build a locating jig so that they would all be the same, and a forstner bit to get a clean, precise hole.

Here are three semi completed crates- they still need sides, ends, and a top. The long piece in front is marked with layout lines, so that I can just lay the pieces on top of it to get them all right, and don't have to fuss with doing layout on each piece. In the left top of the picture is an uncomplted post office box bank- still needs a base. It's made from the same white oak door I used in building my bench. Just beautiful wood- I'm proud to have saved it. I built that bench probably two years ago, and I've just now figured out what to do with the remaining wood- it was worth the wait!

Here's a piece of the plywood I picked up last week, waiting to be cut to size for making more crates. Even the short pieces will get used for something- no idea what, yet, but plywood always comes in handy sooner or later. It's keeping company with an old waterbed side that will probably get used in some of these crates, as well. Old waterbeds are a great source of reasonably good lumber, since they've gone out of style. In fact, I've just planed a couple of them down, and I'm planning to make a coat rack out of them for our new house.

The items pictured above are the body for an item called a "downhole clock", used in drilling holes that might be turned into oil wells. In use, all of the sections screw together, a special clock is inserted into a waterproof section of the body, and the whole assembly is lowered into the drill pipe, until it hits bottom- then tension is put on the line, and the crew waits for the clock to hit it's preset timer (this is kept track of by the driller (crew chief), with a stopwatch). When it is pulled up and dissassembled, the clock will have punched a hole in a special piece of paper, showing the angle at which the body was hanging- and thus if the hole is going crooked.
If this sounds like a lot of trouble, you're right- it is! But it has to be done- these are necessary equipment on every drilling rig. My brother repairs and sells these clocks for people in several states. Apparently he's one of the only competent person doing this, as he keeps quite busy.

The joys of keeping your eyes open!

Last Sunday, as I was running around town looking for plywood, I noticed that an infamous local junk shop that hadn't been open for several years had a roll-away dumpster parked in front of it. Later on in the week, I noticed a big hand lettered sign that said "free antiques", so I stopped in for a look. I wish I had had my camera along- the pile of stuff was unbelievable! None of it was really worth picking up, unless you just needed some old dishes- but the shelves were all made out of some pretty decent wood! I made up my mind right then to bring my trailer to town the next day.
Friday, I finished up at work as quickly as possible, and ran straight over to this place. The cleanup crew had been working at an unbelievable rate over the last 24 hours- there was nothing left but dust and some of the shelves! This was okay with me- saved me lots of work! The shelves were free for the taking- all I had to do was break them down, and load my trailer.
I took a number of tools, including a cordless drill and handsaw, but all I really needed was a couple of hammers- everything was simply nailed together!
I got two shelves like this one, which is a full eight feet long- the shelves were 3/4" ply, the backing 1/4" ply, and the kicker board was a nice piece of old growth pine!


Two shelves like this, again a full eight feet long. I just tossed the "shaped" supports. Got that big box on the right, too, and the nice pine boards laying on top.

This doesn't look like much, but it was formerly a shelf unit as tall as me, and eight feet wide- made entirely of old pine! This item was the main thing I had wanted- they had just collapsed it when I got there, getting read to throw it in a dumpster- what a waste that would have been! I'll end up making all kinds of nice items out of this!

Here's my trailer with the full load- it was heavy, so much so, that I had to be careful driving it home. I could really feel the weight affecting how my truck manuevered. I've got lots of nails to pull ( couldn't take the time yesterday), but that's okay. This will take care of a lot of needed shelves, plus the new workbench I am wanting to build in my shop, plus some stuff to sell! All in all, a very satisfying day of real recycling!

I had to go into work today (my Sunday on the rotation), so I took my trailer with me to see if I could find any materials. Normally, I'm just looking for whatever turns up, but today I was specifically looking for junk wood. The reason for this is that my brother has asked me to make some packing cases for
some items he needs to ship to a customer. Since these items are heavy and made of steel, he decided to get me to do it instead of messing with it himself (I'm the family woodworker- we have a specialty, and that's mine). It's not important what the crates are made of, just that they are strong and secure, so
off I went in search of stuff!

I didn't have to look far for this pile of 3/4" ply- just went by the local countertop contractor- they've provided me with lots of good ply in the past, included that that I used to build my work bench (with a nice, smooth laminate top, thank you!).


Look at this good pile of wood! The border on the big one is red oak- I might use that for something, and I might not. I've got lots of red oak on hand.

I was sad to see this in another location- all that nice wood, buried with bricks. I could probably have gotten it out, but it just wasn't worth the trouble- there's always more somewhere else.

So, I got home with a nice trailer load of used 3/4" ply, perfect for making heavy packing cases. Stay tuned, and I'll show you how I put it to use- as well as the item I'm making them for. Points to anyone who can identify it :)