This is my first project. It is half done but some other things came up so I wanted to post up the partially completed product. My wife and I have two great danes, we got the second one back in April. The older dog has always had an elevated food/water bowl cabinet that her mom’s friend made for her about 4 years ago, it was made out of MDF with a white laminate. To keep the story short it was crap. So now that we have two Danes we wanted something that could feed them both that looked nicer. This is just the bottom half. I am going to make a top for it that with reach roughly 6.5’ tall. It will look alot like a china cabinet. It is made completely out of pine. Center bowl holds about 1.5 gallons.
Tyson
BTW- I learned alot on this project, both things to do and not do.
I wanted to try my hand at marquetry and this is my first attempt. I am not pleased with the outcome, and would appreciate some constructive criticism to help me along.
1. The fans on the corners don’t seem to be the right size? Too big or too small? 2. The center cries out for something, maybe an oval fan or a shell? 3. The book matched veneer’s seams show, especially the end grain. I overlapped these and cut them together, but still the seams show. Should I have tried to cut them on an angle like in double bevel marquetry? 4. The inlay looks lost sitting next to the frame, I think next time I will put veneer outside of this. Any other suggestions?
I coped the mahogany frame on the table saw. This worked fairly well, although it sure takes a while. The veneer is mounted on 1/4” plywood. I used birch veneer on the bottom and birds eye maple on the top. I will not use birds eye maple again, as the eyes are a bear to cut through. Live and learn. I finished it with the salad bowl finish followed by mineral oil/bee’s wax.
Here is my temporary solution to improve it’s looks:
I bought this cedar to make my daughter a blanket chest, but never made the time to start the project. After the birth of her twin daughters, I made a toybox/blanket chest, killing two birds with one stone. The challenge was cutting and gluing panels to avoid knots where I had to cut dovetails. It turned out so good I am considering making a second chest so each of the girls has their own.
The concept for this cutting board is derived from the live-long quest for a simple separation of goodies and waste. By using two plastic containers you can simply shovel the waste into the right one and the goodies into the left one (or vice versa, your choice). The containers simply go into the dishwasher. The craftmanship here leaves room for improvement: You could use end grain boards, invent some more elaborate methods of removing the containers rather than my simple lifting the entire board (I use the inside rim of the top board as handle). The second picture shows just that while the third is an inverted view. The cutting board is gkued from three commercially glued panels, top is beech, the two bottom ones are some local softwood (fir/spruce). The trick was to find containers whose height matches the combined height of two panels.
I am thrilled to see whether my idea is taken up by the community.
Ever been bothered by wielding annyingly long pipe or bar clamps? Do you also always seem to have the wrong size of clamps? How cool would it be to have a web clamp that actually clamps like a pipe clamp?
The main problem is, that the arms of the pipe clamp do have to sustain some torque, i.e. the pipe should not bend. The straps of a web clamp bend with no effort at all.
The thought did not leave me and after some less succesful prototypes I came up with this version:
The trick is in the shape of the batten where the strap is running around – think of the triangular sections as if they were wheels where the strap in wound on. At university we learned, that the friction put onto a wheel by a rope depends on the tension of the rope and the angle of loop – twice around would be 720° – as an example. By making the strap taking a longer way at the bottom and putting the lock such that the moving strap is pointing upwards, pulling the web together creates the torque necessary to keep the arms on the object to be clamped.
If you need low to medium clamping pressure on very large or otherwise cumbersome objects, this may be your tool.
Glad to have proven my point I rewarded myself with a pair of Bessey parallel clamps.