Desktop camera light base

Clamp light base hand carved from reclaimed whitewood, stained in TransTint brown mahogany, and finished with hand rubbed shellac for that old world glow.

That's a piece of 2x2 from Lowe's that's been serving flawlessly to purpose on my desk for a couple years. The rough rasped form tended to catch on a rag when dusting, but no longer. It is now sanded, finished, and silky smooth.

A pleasant surprise, buttonlac mixed in 2013 and resting in the bottle ever since still works fine.

The light is an LED corn light that sits behind the monitor, totally out of the way and quite effective for lighting zoom calls.

Wood store

My wife had the great idea to set up a fire ring and stock up on wood as a way to get outside as covid-19 lingers and weather turns colder. We started with these "free plans" and tweaked them to fit a roof made of cedar siding. Construction was a fun, challenging, all-day project for the whole family. We love the result and are using it multiple times a week. We've almost used half a rick of wood already.

Basement shop lighting

To date our basement has been lit with these incumbent clunkers, two in the shop and two in the hallway:

They averaged about two working bulbs per fixture and were generally in the way (hanging down 5" from the low ceiling floor joists), noisy, and ugly. And, man, are they heavy, it turns out. In the shop, they were in the middle of the space and cast little light to the sides and corners where I work.

In search of adequate task light in the low ceiling environment, I first tried a recessed can light with LED bulb, but it seemed like it was shining right in my eyes and cast a narrow cone such that many fixtures would be needed to achieve less total light than the old tubes.

The next iteration was to use strip lights recessed into the floor joists, hung on nailed up sticks. I wasn't sure how wide a beam would be cast and whether the bare LED bulbs would also shine right in my eyes, but it turned out great on all factors.

Here's the new shop setup with four 4' 2-lamp T12 fixtures, ballasts removed, and 18W 5000K dual-end powered T8 LED tubes with frosted covers installed. The walls and workstations are lit up like never before. The bright white light is just right. The bulbs light up in about half a second and run silently and flicker-free.

Here's a close-up of my stick mount hack job. That was time-consuming, but they came out level and at the right height. Half the bulb diameter protrudes below the joists.

The existing motion sensor switch was kept for the outer hallway/storage area and the shop lights split off to a new switch that stays on when the curtain is closed for dust control. If you look closely you can see a scar on the motion sensor switch where I nicked it with the Dremel while whacking off the corners to fit in the raised box cover. Oops. I'll have to live with that one.

The hallway/storage area got new low profile integrated LEDs. They cost a bit more than the other combos and do not have replaceable bulbs, but I didn't have room to recess fixtures in that area due to ductwork.

The project is a resounding success. The lighting is exactly what I hoped for, the new switch is a big win, we get more light with half the power consumption to boot. I heartily recommend this setup for low ceiling basement task environments.

Wood A-frame swing set

Kids love to swing. Will it be worth it with all the mosquitos, will they use it enough once we set it up, etc. This year ambition mounted and we went for it.

Of course DIY is the only way when one is dissatisfied with the configuration or robustness of commercial kits. Inspired by plans at The Design Confidential, among others, I drew plans in SketchUp, fretting over the height, angle, hardware, bracing, etc., until I was happy with it and ready to dive in. A weekend was enough to build it, then another weekend for the corner braces and a lunch break for anchors saw the job through.

I'd say it's a hit. They want to swing every day.

Specs:

• 4x4x10 treated posts, 18 degree angle front and back
• 4x6x10 treated beam
• Final height (ground to bottom of beam): 8' - 8'4"
• 5/4 x 6 decking A-frame braces
• 2x6 (treated) corner braces: 45 degree miter one end; 45 miter, about 33 bevel other end. Good luck with that. Glued with Gorilla Glue. I still need to trim the foam-out and probably should have skipped the glue altogether.
• 1/2" galvanized carriage bolts, 8" and 10" through the beam, 4-1/2" through braces (McMaster has that length, and they end up perfectly flush)
• 3/8" x 6" galvanized lag bolts and #10 x 2-1/2" galvanized deck screws through corner braces
• heavy duty swing hangers and swing seats (of the big box stores, only Home Depot carries these)
• 1/2" x 4' rebar anchors

Epilogue

Eight years later, the swing still gets used a lot! Now it's swappable with hanging egg chairs.

Safe-t-planer dust hood

This project has been done for a while, but only recently was I able to test it enough to determine that it does in fact work well enough to justify the setup: a dust hood for the Wagner Safe-t-planer.

Inspired by Jason Rodgers at MIMF, I went down to the Chinese restaurant and got a large order of egg drop soup. After the soup was safely and warmly in my stomach, the container was washed and cut, sewed to a strip of old computer mouse pad, and mounted to the quill of the drill press.

Here it is in place. Jason's setup is much simpler because he had a nice hunk of iron to attach to. I had to make a custom collar for the end of the quill, slide the hood around that, and then secure the hood with two smaller collar sections screwed to the inner collar. It's a bit of a pain dealing with the collar, but with practice I'm getting faster setting it up.

Here's a stack of eight boards, approximately 2x6x27, just off the planer.

Witness:

One small pile on the floor from taking about 1/8" off each face of each board in the pictured stack. Some three gallons in the 6.5A 1-1/4" Bucket Max (half the bucket load came from the previous round planing similar boards). Without the hood, each pass of the planer would spray dust in every direction, coat my left arm and every nook and cranny within three feet, and leave chips on the table that like to sneak under the work and lift it. This is a very satisfying improvement. Maybe if I used the 12 gallon shop vac, the basement would even clean itself while I work.

Bonus: Adding this 1.5 ton scissor jack under the drill press table greatly increased the stability of my whole planing operation. I highly recommend it.

A small restoration project

This is my second woodworking project, some kind of shelf thing from 8th grade industrial arts. It's industrial, I'll give it that. Lots of heavy oak and wood putty.

Today's project was knocking the front trim off so I could use the lower shelf without scraping my hands on the overhang every time. Now it's perfect for storing my stack of sandpaper, which frees up a workbench drawer.

Belt sander tool rest

I made this tool rest for the 4" belt sander. First a prototype with plywood and plastic, then the official release from 1/4" mild steel. Both versions have a 90 degree arm bent from 1/4" aluminum. The second shot shows both arms together for comparison.

The intended application is grinding plane blades. Using a bevel gauge, set the tool rest to an exact angle to the belt and clamp the adjustable handle. Next pinch a plane blade on the tool rest with your opposable thumbs and apply light pressure up into the revolving belt. Try to keep it straight into the belt. The beauty of this method is there is no need to measure or mark any guide lines. In seconds you will have a rounded, cambered bevel roughly at the angle you set, ready for honing.