Weekend Project - Mini Cornhole

Somehow I completely escaped cornhole while in college. I must have seen people playing it, but probably thought it looked a bit too silly to play myself. One of my friends in grad-school had a set, however, and I gave it a try.

Turns out I'm really good at throwing a beanbag into a hole - and had a good deal of fun doing it.

So this weekend I set out to make a set of my own! I had some plywood lying about, so that set the dimensions of the boards to 20"x13" (which is pretty close to the golden ratio). I used two 7" sections of my favorite 2"x2" furring strip for the legs.

The recipe is simple enough: Slice off the sections with the jigsaw, then drill a hole big enough to get the jigsaw blade into and spiral out until you can cut out the center hole.

I measured out the center of the hole, and then used an old lid (a paint can could work as well) to mark a circle. You can center the circle by making tic marks the radius away in the horizontal and vertical directions. Line up the edges of the circle with those marks, and it should be centered.

I drilled a hole large enough for the jigsaw blade and then spiraled out to cut the hole out. Be careful and take your time during this part, since it's largely freehand, it's also VERY dangerous!

Sand everything down so there are no edges to get splinters from. That would put a damper on your fun!

Onto painting! The photos are a bit out of order - I hadn't charged my drill - and I got a head start on painting before finish the cuts. There are some tricks that can make the painting go easier. I was going for a three-tone design, with two lines leading up to the hole. First I laid down a strip of painters tape for where I wanted the line to go, and painted around it.

Running a razor blade (or x-acto knife) along the edge of the tape helps it peel up without dragging the paint up with it.

I also used the x-acto knife and the lid I drew the circle with to cut a nice circle out of the ring of tape around the edge. This left a nice circle when I painted the highlight strips.

Finally, attach the legs with a couple of screws (this prevents them from rotating). Don't forget to counter-sink the screws, so you don't have the heads sticking up waiting to catch someone's finger.

You may have to do some touch-up work, but we're done with the boards. Now onto the bags.

I used some split-peas for filler, as they have a nice smooth feel to them (it must have looked pretty strange to see me feeling up all the beans in the store). I measured out ~5.3 oz as a good weight, which used 2 16oz bags of beans for the 6 bags. As you can see, I was very careful about measuring out the beans :p.

Finally, we used some old cloth we had lying around for the bags, which are sewn just like a pillow - inside out and the flipped, filled, and sealed.

All done! Grab a cold soda and enjoy your handi-work.

Tools:

• Jigsaw
• Hand drill
• Sandpaper
• Painter's tape (optional)
• Paintbrush
• Coutersink / drill bits / screwdriver bit

Supplies:

• Plywood (spare, probably ~$10)
• 2"x2" furring strip ($2)
• Screws (8x ~$5 for a large pack)
• Paint (I used some old latex paint we had lying about ~$5)
• Cloth (spare, ~$2)
• Beans ($4)

Total: ~$28

Weekend Project: Tablet Stand

I added a new tablet to the family, and thought that it was about time I came up with a stand so I could use them while typing. So with a bit of scrap wood and a few quick cuts I was able to whip one up in no time. It works great for both the Galaxy Note 10.1 and for the Nook Color. The stand is only about 4.5 in long and very lightweight. Here's the story;

Here's the basic design. A few slivers of plywood held

together with glue and dowels.

The side-view. You can see the design sketches below.

Making sure that it will fit the tablet.

A layer of spray-paint goes a long way

You can see it holds the Note 10.1 nicely.

It also works great for the nook!

Here's the side view, and you can see that it holds

the nook comfortably in landscape and in portrait mode.

The Galaxy Note 10.1 barely fits is portrait mode too.

Weekend project: Bluetooth Radio

Perhaps you may have seen these bluetooth powered speakers popping up around. Well, I had an old bluetooth headset that was sitting in my 'junk electronics' drawer, and I thought it would be fun to turn it into the receiving end of a bluetooth speaker system for the house. You may need an app such as btmono to play music to a mono (as opposed to stereo) headset.

The parts we'll need. Headset, audio jack, and splitter.

After trying to remove the case for an hour,

it was simpler to dremel off the speaker section

and get at the wires that way.

Testing it out with the audio jack.

Finally, I've hot-glued everything in. I would recommend

hot-gluing over the exposed leads so you don't get

speaker pop when plugging in the speakers.

Weekend Project - Photopopper

One of the current geek things to do is see what you can fit in an altoids tin. One of my friends had a similar tin that I was playing with awhile ago. He saw me playing around with it and challenged me to come up with something.

Well I've failed. It doesn't fit in the tin.

But it was still great fun to work on! And it's the perfect weekend project.

So what am I talking about? It's Solarbotics BEAM photopopper photovore. That's a mouthful, so let's break it down; it's a robot that follows the light. I got the design from the Solarbotics page, where you can buy a kit from them, although I just purchased the components on my own, as I wanted to fit them in the tin. 

Here's the picto-breakdown - scroll all the way to the bottom for a video!

It's best to build the circuit on a prototyping board to
make sure everything works. If not, it's easy to fix here.

Once it's working, you can solider it together.

Finally, we use some double-sided tape to attach the shell.

The tabasco robot! It's hard shell protects
it from many natural predators.

Mobile

Everyone picks up seashells from the seashore, right? Well we did to thinking we would make a mobile out of them. Fast forward two years and we finally got around to making it ;)

The easiest way of finding the balanced midpoint is to put each of your index fingers at opposite edges of the stick, then move them inward. Volia! They arrive together at the center of mass.

Just a nicely balanced collection of seashells.

And the close-up.

'Origami' Bookshelf

If you haven't seen Frank Lloyd Wright's Origami chair, you should. Legend says each chair comes from a single sheet of 8x10' plywood cut and remade into a chair. Needless to say I wanted one as soon as I saw one. Unfortunately they're not for sale :(

So I did what I could. Inspired from the chair I decided to start a bit smaller with my own 'origami bookshelf' from some leftover wood.

We'll start by slicing the old piece of leftover wood in half. One half goes to the shelves and the other to the legs. Then we'll cut slots halfway through so they can slot into each other. There are some small adjustments I had to make as I went on, but I'll let the pictures speak for me.

The leftover wood piece.

Marking up the slots.

After the cuts.

Checking that everything fits.

The pieces individually.

Assembled lying down.

Assembled standing up. There is a bit of a tilt to the setup, 

resulting in a leg being trimmed towards the end.

Also I thought that the second shelf angled with respect to

the first and to the ground.

Prepping for the stain.

Turns out stain can polymerize if
left exposed to air and alone.

Done with staining, you may have noticed an extra piece.

The extra piece helps maintain the shelf separation.

Weekend Project - Wine Bottle Torches

We had seen these blue wine bottles turned tiki-torches in various corners of the internet, and decided that they would look great on our back porch (and might even keep the bugs away too). So a quick trip to the hardware store netted the required components for a hair under $25 (nearly half was in the $10 torch fuel). The hardest part of the construction was in removing the wine bottle labels - but repeated soaking in warm, soapy water and scrubbing with rubbing alcohol removed them to our satisfaction. Here are the photos of them in use (we have one hanging up and one on the table);

Tools:

• Screwdriver
• Teflon tape
• Lighter

Cost:

•  $25 (fuel, hardware, teflon tape - no wine bottles)

Wine Bottle Cutting Jig

    We've been storing up empty wine bottles for awhile. The plan was to recycle them into some artwork - vases, candleholders, etc. Earlier this year, we tried to cut the top off by scoring them with a glass cutter and heat-shocking the glass. The plan didn't work out so well, mainly because the scoring was very uneven, both in pressure and in making an even line around the vase. So while we were able to heat-shock the glass into breaking off, the end result was more effort than it was worth, and not very pretty.
    So over the last few months, I've ideas of how to improve the results simmering on my mind. The result is a nifty cutting jig I threw together this weekend:

The idea is simple: a couple of boards to hold the bottle while we rotate it, and a backstop to keep the bottle from sliding back and forth. The glass-scoring tool is seated in a wood block so it's easier to apply pressure.

My favorite part is the peg and hole system I used to allow the tool to cut the bottles at varying heights. The holder / guide for the cutting tool has two pegs at the bottom which pair up with numerous holes along the length of the guide-rail.

This allows the jig to accommodate bottles of multiple sizes. It doesn't allow for arbitrary distance movements, but the steps are 3/4" apart, so it's close enough for practical purposes.

As you can see, it makes nice even scoring - perfect for later heat-shocking for cutting the glass.

Tools needed:

• Jigsaw
• Mitre Saw
• Sander
• Power screwdriver / drill

Total cost:

• $7 (Another furring strip and some longer screws.)

EDIT: Here's a schematic of the jig with sizes. The base and backing is 1/4 inch plywood, and the square wood pieces are furring strips. Be sure to take all safety precautions when working with wood, glass, and fire. Click for a larger size.

New Painting and Poster

    We've made a couple of additions to our gallery in the effort to slowly add life to the dull white walls around here.

    The first is a Monet print. The print itself was mostly square, but it didn't fit into any of the frame sizes at the local craft store. We had to ordered a 24" x 24" frame from online, and then spray-painted the silver over the white. We had some difficulty picking a mat color to compliment the deep purples and greens in the picture, and wound up going for this teal.

    Next up was a project I'd been putting off for awhile. The "Keep Calm and Carry On" poster was a birthday present, and I thought it would be great to have a matching "Live Long and Prosper" poster. So with a little creative image searching, and some help from the GIMP, I had a matching hand from Mr. Spock for the decoration. The image is 11" x 17", which was the largest the local print shop could do in color, so we got lucky. The "Sans" font matched very well, and I scaled the text to be the same 2" height.

Weekend Project - Hat Rack

  Here's another quick weekend project we undertook. After having our hats laying around on chairs and coffee tables, I finally decided that it was time to give them a dedicated place. So we brainstormed some ideas, and thought it would be a neat idea to have a "his and hers" hat rack, or even better, a "Mr. and Mrs." hat rack.
  We picked up a pine sign plaque from a hobby store, and then some hooks from the local hardware store. After some quick staining, sealing, and screwing in the hardware (I opted for slightly smaller than the stock screws so they wouldn't go through the other side), the sign was ready for some customization.

Cutting out the stencil

  In an attempt to make nice clean text, I set down a layer of tape and then a print out of a nice font with above it. Tracing over the font with moderate pressure using an exact o-knife cut through the paper and the tape. As a tip, i would recommend not layering the tape on itself, this gave me some trouble later.

Trace the stencil with the knife again for easy removal

 After tracing with the knife and removing the stencil and tape, it was ready for a layer of paint. This is just a craft-acrylic paint laid down over the tape stencil.

Careful scraping can remove the stray paint.

  When removing the tape, I found it very useful to trace around the stencil with the exact o-knife again. This separated the paint on the wood from the paint on the tape. Hence, the tape was much less likely to peel up any paint with it (the 's' above suffered while I figured this out - but I'll just say it's an antique look).

The finished product!

It's practical too!

Here's the final product with all the tape removed and looking snazzy up on the wall. A couple of 1/4 inch drill holes in the back provide a recess for the nails. Just be careful not to go all the way through the board.




This was a pretty quick, cheap, and unique project that really adds some nice personality to the entrance by the door. Now for the usual breakdown:

Tools:

• Sandpaper, stain, sealant, acrylic paint.
• Screwdriver / drill

Price:

• Tools: Used our existing stock.
• Supplies: $8 (sign) $10 (hardware)
• Total: $18