Re: What do you make and where do you put it?

I am finishing up a design, along with a furniture-industry designer for a flatscreen entertainment centre which in some ways is quite advanced. The first couple of prototypes are already on the bench and I'm keeping a bit of a log. The two big features are hidden wires and modular construction which allows choices of finishes right off the shelf. Then they go to people's houses.

Too_Many_Tools wrote in news:a779914a-d1a3-4b75- snipped-for-privacy@j6g2000vbd.googlegroups.com:

I make things I need: A table, book case, shelves for the garage, model railroad benchwork, etc. They go where they're needed. The next major project looks to be a board game cupboard, followed by a wheeled tool chest for under my model railroad.

While the theoretical limit does exist, it could easily take a lifetime for a casual woodworker (like most of us are) to fill a house with their projects. Plus, as styles and tastes change, some of the woodworking projects are likely to become useless and others will be needed.

Puckdropper

Projects to do for me:

Projects to do for others (all gratis) Bookcase for grandson of good friend Cutting boards for gifts

I've done more for other's houses than my own. I've done some things where the recipient will pay for the wood, but labor is a hobby, not a job, so it is free.

Not a problem the past year or so. We are doing much of the finish on our retirement home including hardwood floors, staircase, some cabinets, tub surrounds, trim etc.

Otherwise, we have:

- Done similar trim/finish work for both of our kids during home construction

- Built some furniture items for ourselves and our son

- Built five rather involved hardwood rocking horses. Two for grand- kids. One for a friends daughter. Two for church raffle prizes.

- Fancy picture frames for us and others

- Quilt racks for us and others

- Shop storage and bench projects

- Etc.

Obviously a lot of the above went somewhere else or is attached to a home.

Now that I am retired and finishing up with our home project, I might have to start working on inventory management.

Oh-Oh!

RonB

On Thu, 28 Jan 2010 23:01:25 -0600, the infamous Morris Dovey scrawled the following:

SPF furnace?

P.S: Why are you guys feeding the TooManyTwinkies Troll?

-- It is in his pleasure that a man really lives; it is from his leisure that he constructs the true fabric of self. -- Agnes Repplier

They all don't go in my house, I sell 95% of what I build although I am currently involved with replacing/building all new master bed room furniture for our home.

As per request:

Exactly. Where they're suitable, firnaces are much more economical than furnaces.

There's much to be said for that - and there can be considerable satisfaction in making things for other than just oneself.

Bookshelves

Under the nether parts of books.

Also, I've built a significant number of boxes/bins for media. Furniture is actually fairly well handled by industry goods, but CD bins and bookshelves from most suppliers are ... dreadful on several levels. I can get good chairs, good tables, good bedsteads and dressers, but it takes saws and elbow grease to get a good shelf for my printed treasures.

Actually, I started my "woodworking" hobby when we bought an older house with a simply huge, unfinished attic (10 feet floor to peak). Turned it into a 2nd floor bedroom, playroom, added a dormer bathroom. Learned a lot. Made many mistakes. Wondered why I didn't start with something simple like a sandbox. My realworld job is totally unlike this...

Then I had all those tools and newly acquired hobby skills so....I started reading "Woodsmith" wayyyy back around Issue #5...loved it and got the reprints back to the first issue with the crude butcher block drawings... I don't build anything unless I grok the process entirely, and by then

--like a dog-- I've peed all over the design enough to call it "mine."

New House: partition off part of the basement, learn how to install a window in the fresh cut-out in the concrete foundation (I hired *that* out!) and did the insulation, walls, ceilings, closets...etc.

Two 2x8' hobby benches in another corner of the basement for the kids' plastic models, rockets, and fool-around stuff....(pre-computer. Now'days we all LAN-party and shoot aliens anymore)

Custom "typing stand", back when my now-31-yr-old #1 needed one. (he just sold it last year at a garage sale! Does that make me pro?)

Custom two matched night stands with book storage

Custom little wall-mounted magazine rack in the, uh-- "sit room" where I read the magazines....

Custom "entertainment center" about 7 years ago or so...for 25" TV, storage for 80 VHS tapes, nook for the antenna rotator... Gonna have to build an entirely new thing just as soon as that old RCA burns out and we have to upgrade/modernize to 16:9 and Internet feed, with custom storage for the CPU, etc. {Nothing much to watch on cable/broadcast anyway....}

Custom smoked-glass fronted audio cabinet to match the TV thing for my 1980s audio amp and subsequent *tape* and CD players. Guess that'll go, too, in the upgrade.

Custom gun cabinet, 6 long-guns and repositionable shelves (hunting gear storage) with 12 vdc LED lighting ..in process now.

Collapsible table/seating for my sons' (previous) Boy Scout Troop ..also wooden storage boxes for Dutch ovens...and a 12v car battery that was supposed to power the lights inside the Troop's equipment trailer, re-juiced by sunlight. Grew out of the organization soon after, but I saw the trailer last month with the solar panel on the outside, so I ass-u-me it still works.

Utility stuff around my little man-cave shop, garage, back yard, whatever. y'know...puttering. Oh, I just put a new (and upgraded design) top on the really crude router table I got out of "Woodsmith" back when the whole router-thing was new and people were still feeling their way around 'em. (remember the 2-dimensional bits ...before somebody discovered anti-kickback design?)

The typing stand was, maybe, circa 1990. Audio cabinet last year. Not too bad, I guess for my little almost-room-to-turn-around-in shop under the stairs. I still want a real table saw someday....

When the gun cabinet's done, soon, next up will be two sturdy outdoor wooden bench seats that I saw in "Woodsmith" last ?fall? for the back patio.

Oh and there're those coasters my wife's been asking for since...oh....1989..... ;-}}

On Fri, 29 Jan 2010 16:43:02 -0600, the infamous Morris Dovey scrawled the following:

Bbbbut, don't they burn up in the first heating session?

-- It is in his pleasure that a man really lives; it is from his leisure that he constructs the true fabric of self. -- Agnes Repplier

On Fri, 29 Jan 2010 09:58:47 -0600, the infamous "Leon" scrawled the following:

Twelve thousand board feet and counting, wot?

-- It is in his pleasure that a man really lives; it is from his leisure that he constructs the true fabric of self. -- Agnes Repplier

Silly wabbit, firnaces aren't for burning!

They get heat from the sun, and they do that so well it takes /all/ night for the sun to recharge for the next day...

On Sat, 30 Jan 2010 00:05:44 -0600, the infamous Morris Dovey scrawled the following:

Those aren't firnaces, they're passive solar panels, aka "plastialumplyaces".

-- Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine and at last you create what you will. -- George Bernard Shaw

I make a mess and put it in the garbage.

LOL, Some times it feels like that. Especially the time Swingman helped me load 27 sheets of oak veneer 3/4" plywood into my truck for a double kitchen job we worked on together. Cut it all up in one long afternoon.

That's a lot better than making a mess and tracking it into the house. If I'm not careful, I leave a trail of sawdust where ever I go. SWMBO doesn't complain so much now that there is a full bathroom (completely installed by me) adjacent to the woodshop.

LOL...funny enough, I do the same and unfortunately, don't have a separate room to clean off. I have to remember to blow myself off before entering the house.