Tag Archives: projects

Productive Weekend

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It has been a very productive weekend, and as I sit here on Sunday night I’m beat.

First, we emptied David’s toy box and took it out to the garage so it could get it’s first couple coats of paint.  It looks great already, and Ana still has lots of details planned for it remaining.  Here it is, back in our family room and in use.

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I also spent a few hours here and there getting some more work done on the camera cabinet I’m building.  I’ve gotta admit, this is the best project I’ve done so far and I’m really excited to get it done, stained, and filled with my camera equipment.

Here’s the basic case, the top is going to be a long drawer (36 inches) and the bottom is going to be a pair of doors hiding an adjustable shelf.  The plan is to put my camera bags on the bottom, lenses on the adjustable shelf, and camera and accessories in the drawer.

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Here’s some detail of the routed and mitered trim base.

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And here’s the drawer (minus the face) bottom.

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So all that’s remaining is: route and attach trim for the top; mount the drawer and attach the drawer face; make and attach the front doors; attach the back; sand and stain a dark cherry color to match our piano.  So far so good!

Organizing My Camera Equipment

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In the nearly two years since I purchased my DSLR, I have accumulated quite a bit of stuff – lenses, flash, bag, cleaning supplies, etc.  My current organization “technique” has been to keep some of this stuff in my LowePro Slingshot 200, others in another bag, and the remainder on my desk or in a drawer.

Well, I’m tired of it. I want good, proper storage to keep my equipment safe and in one spot.

This weekend I started construction on what will soon by my camera cabinet.  Here’s the quick design, without the 2 doors and draw (at the top) since I’m not good enough with SketchUp get them drawn out. 

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The middle shelf is going to be adjustable in height and will be where my lenses are stored.  I’m going to try making EF/EF-S mount ”cupholders” for the lenses  on that shelf – we’ll see how that goes.

It’s going to be made out of Red Oak and once it’s done I’m hoping to stain it to match our piano.  So far I have the inner box built and the top shelf thing for the drawer made and installed.  So far it it’s been a fun project, and one I hope turns out how I imagine.

Ammo and… backups?

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OK, just a few more words about my data backups.

Last week I ordered a few Army Surplus, 30 Caliber Ammo Cans, they arrived today.  What the heck are these for, you ask?

Well I thought they could make a great way to transport and store the hard drives I’m going to be rotating off-site.  So tonight I got to work with a knife and some dense foam, to create what should be a pretty sturdy (and water-resistant!) hard drive case.

And here it is, with a spare drive not quite halfway pushed in.  The foam cutting was crude, and it may not be pretty, but I like it.

The cans are $4 apiece + shipping.

Hippo Comes to Life

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David has accumulated plenty of coats and jackets, the the point that it seems like they’re everywhere.  Last weekend I thought it would be fun to make something to hang them from.  Well, since David enjoys hippos….

I started off drawing the little guy in PhotoShop Elements with my tablet…

(wow, enough dust in there? sheesh)

Printed, cut it out, traced it onto a piece of wood…

A few minutes of jigsaw work and it’s ready for some paint!  Notice the wooden version lost a tail – it was just too thin for my skills and tools to be able to cut.  After the paint I’ll be putting it atop another piece of wood along with some coat hooks.

It was fun and took just over an hour from drawing to cut-out.

 

Google SketchUp

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My next non-computer project is to design and build a toybox for David.  I’ve put off actually thinking about the plans because I didn’t feel like finding graph paper and a pencil, and I hadn’t really looked for software to assist in the design.

But this afternoon was going a little slow and I ran across Google SketchUp again.  I say again, because I recall hearing about its initial release and trying it out.  I didn’t thing much of it at the time, and promptly forgot all about it.

Little did I know cool and easy to use it is.  I watched a few short tutorial videos and I was up and running.  If you’ve got a need to make to-scale models, you should check it out (it’s free).

Here are a couple initial views of the toybox I’m going to try building, stay tuned!