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WOOD101 - UPDATE: 2/3/2020 - Enc Makes a GM Screen

2»

Posts

  • dispatch.odispatch.o Registered User regular
    If you don't want to craft a bench from scratch, finding one at a thrift shop to repair or refinish might be a good starting place.

  • mtsmts Dr. Robot King Registered User regular
    edited January 2020
    come on, you really only need like 2 fingers and a thumb on each hand. the other 4 are practice fingers

    mts on
    camo_sig.png
  • see317see317 Registered User regular
    I know you've got the information to turn you off starting this up as a hobby on your own, but something I didn't see asked that you may want to consider:

    Minor Incident mentioned teaching wood working classes that do just the kind of project you're planning.
    Any chance you've got a community college or woodworking studio/makerspace near you that might offer something similar over a weekend or two?

    Might be a lot better for you to learn some tricks in a supervised environment lead by an experienced woodworker using tools that didn't come entirely out of your pocket rather than jumping into the deep end and furnishing a shop on your own. Especially if you discover that it's not something you enjoy and now have a pile of tools that you have no desire to use, but can't sell off because the hit on used tools can be nuts.

  • RadiationRadiation Registered User regular
    see317 wrote: »
    I know you've got the information to turn you off starting this up as a hobby on your own, but something I didn't see asked that you may want to consider:

    Minor Incident mentioned teaching wood working classes that do just the kind of project you're planning.
    Any chance you've got a community college or woodworking studio/makerspace near you that might offer something similar over a weekend or two?

    Might be a lot better for you to learn some tricks in a supervised environment lead by an experienced woodworker using tools that didn't come entirely out of your pocket rather than jumping into the deep end and furnishing a shop on your own. Especially if you discover that it's not something you enjoy and now have a pile of tools that you have no desire to use, but can't sell off because the hit on used tools can be nuts.

    Super agree on the makerspace.
    Or look into a woodworking guild near you?

    Also if you're in the DC-ish area, I've also got tools you can borrow.

    I will say with the plans you listed you could totally get away with just getting a handsaw/miter box, drill and sandpaper. If you are looking into the hobby though, a miter saw is a solid tool to have and it opens up a bunch of projects.

    PSN: jfrofl
  • minor incidentminor incident expert in a dying field njRegistered User regular
    Yeah, and I'd say if you decide to go the miter box route, go with the cheapo $10 plastic box to save money. If it's just for the one project, it'll work well enough and you'll save a good bit of cash. And definitely check into makerspaces or classes if you wanted to get more into it. Youtube's great for learning from, but you'll pick things up a ton faster by doing it with someone who knows their way around.

    Ah, it stinks, it sucks, it's anthropologically unjust
  • RadiationRadiation Registered User regular
    Oh hey, another tool that might be of use (I know the threads supposed to close) that if you were looking to purchase one tool to do a bunch of projects is a circular saw but also get a track for it.

    https://www.amazon.com/Kreg-KMA2700-Circular-Saw-Track/dp/B073PGP96S/ref=sxin_2_ac_d_rm?ac_md=2-2-a3JlZyBhY2N1LWN1dA==-ac_d_rm&cv_ct_cx=track+saw&keywords=track+saw&pd_rd_i=B073PGP96S&pd_rd_r=de6371bc-72fa-4b3e-829f-2b575e893ff3&pd_rd_w=yxB7I&pd_rd_wg=5DDOl&pf_rd_p=6d29ef56-fc35-411a-8a8e-7114f01518f7&pf_rd_r=KYRAWX5JX3Q3GFX76QY7&psc=1&qid=1579930622&sr=1-3-12d4272d-8adb-4121-8624-135149aa9081

    Miter saw can get you good angles, but the track saw replaces (sort of) a table saw (which is big and expensive) and you can do quite a bit of plywood projects with it.

    PSN: jfrofl
  • EncEnc A Fool with Compassion Pronouns: He, Him, HisRegistered User regular
    edited January 2020
    So I started a more managable project:

    qlp8bsibzwnv.png

    Making a GM screen. Bought a 1"x12"x4ft board, torched it with the propane torch, sanded it by hand with little sanding sponge bricks, and then varnished it with a lovely gunstock varnish.

    I got some hardware coming from amazon, a wood burning pen and some nice hinges for the boards themselves. I'll post an update when I can start attaching it together.

    Enc on
  • minor incidentminor incident expert in a dying field njRegistered User regular
    Nice! Definitely a good idea to start with a small project or two and build up your skills and confidence (and get your newbie mistakes out of the way). And if you end up liking it, you're better equipped to tackle the big projects next.

    Ah, it stinks, it sucks, it's anthropologically unjust
  • amateurhouramateurhour One day I'll be professionalhour The woods somewhere in TennesseeRegistered User regular
    So I saw this thread and wanted to chime in.

    First off, I know exactly how overwhelming woodworking with power tools can be. There's nothing wrong with that.

    Second, you've got a good start with a miter box and basic tools. The biggest thing about wood is the grain. It's like shaving or cutting steak, it's always about the grain. After that is the bend, and making sure if you have pieces with a bend to them they're bending the same way and not opposing forces.

    I've made everything from simple furniture to eating utensils to english longbows out of wood and done most of it without power tools, or at most with a drill press. If you're looking to get more into the idea of non power tools, look into treadle devices. There's a bunch of good youtube videos about the foot powered treadle lathe and it can be a blast to work with.

    Also +1 to checking around your area for local woodworking clubs or blacksmith clubs. There's a lot of good resource there and most of those people work with hand tools more often than not.

    Lastly, DRILL PILOT HOLES! There's nothing more frustrating than putting in a woodscrew and splitting a piece of wood because it didn't have a pilot hole.

    Good luck!

    are YOU on the beer list?
  • Donovan PuppyfuckerDonovan Puppyfucker A dagger in the dark is worth a thousand swords in the morningRegistered User regular
    Pocket screw holes ("Kreg jig") are shit. Dowel your joints instead.

    They're definitely not shit, my dude. Virtually every piece of decent furniture in a Crate and Barrel or a West Elm is built with pocket hole screw joinery. They're fantastic for the time and skill required, and generally stronger than dowel joinery. People shit on it because screws=not "real" woodworking, but that's just pointless snobbery. It's not "fine woodworking", but it doesn't mean it's not the ideal type of joinery for lots of applications.

    Obviously dowels or dominos or mortise and tenon's look better, but we're talking about the underside of a bench being built by a first time woodworker here. The trade-off is 110% sensible.

    C'mon now, you know that screws work loose over time (thanks to environmental fluctuations in heat and humidity) and that the way Kreg jigs work ensures that panels made up of planks Kreg-jigged together will slowly warp out of flat and true due to the very way they are built...

    Can't dowel it? Shit, biscuit joint it.

    Kreg jigs (and pocket hole screw joints) are cheap shitty slap-dash short-term construction and you know it. Fine for making a bookshelf out of a pallet for Instagram likes, but useless for anything you want to keep long term.

  • Donovan PuppyfuckerDonovan Puppyfucker A dagger in the dark is worth a thousand swords in the morningRegistered User regular
    Enc wrote: »
    At this point, y'all have successfully convinced me that I'm not in a place to seriously embrace this hobby. Thank you for the insights! Maybe in a few years when I have more money I'll take another look. For now, I think I'm just going to hit up ikea for something that will work well enough.

    Ceres, this can be closed.

    Aww hell no, if you can get a couple of hobby horses and some basic tools together, you can build a LOT of things! Have at it! Watch Paul Sellers on Youtube for instruction and inspiration!

  • EncEnc A Fool with Compassion Pronouns: He, Him, HisRegistered User regular
    I did start a project (scroll up). Please don't continue the "no true woodworker" argument in this thread though. : /

  • MegaMan001MegaMan001 CRNA Rochester, MNRegistered User regular
    That's a great starter project! Some experience cutting, sanding, basic hinges. Don't forget your pilot holes.

    When you want to fold it up make sure you have each hinge going the opposite way so they fold opposite of each other to be a flat two layers.

    Make sure you look around for some old brushed metal hinges too!

    I am in the business of saving lives.
  • EncEnc A Fool with Compassion Pronouns: He, Him, HisRegistered User regular
    MegaMan001 wrote: »
    That's a great starter project! Some experience cutting, sanding, basic hinges. Don't forget your pilot holes.

    When you want to fold it up make sure you have each hinge going the opposite way so they fold opposite of each other to be a flat two layers.

    Make sure you look around for some old brushed metal hinges too!

    Yeah, I have some nice antiqued ones, some metal corner frames, and some screws to match all on their way. Should have time to assemble on Saturday.

  • amateurhouramateurhour One day I'll be professionalhour The woods somewhere in TennesseeRegistered User regular
    Also, and this may seem dumb, but there's a lot of hobby shops and stores on amazon that sell stuff similar to "build a birdhouse" kits cheap that are a good way to learn how wood joins and different ways to work with it.

    are YOU on the beer list?
  • EncEnc A Fool with Compassion Pronouns: He, Him, HisRegistered User regular
    My current plan is to make a work table after a few small projects. Specifically the gm screen, some breadboards and wall decor mrs enc wants, and a box to hold our d&d tv.

  • MegaMan001MegaMan001 CRNA Rochester, MNRegistered User regular
    Enc wrote: »
    My current plan is to make a work table after a few small projects. Specifically the gm screen, some breadboards and wall decor mrs enc wants, and a box to hold our d&d tv.

    DnD...tv?

    I am in the business of saving lives.
  • EncEnc A Fool with Compassion Pronouns: He, Him, HisRegistered User regular
    A lot of folks now lay led screens flat on a table to show virtual tabletops or looping animated battlemaps. Look up “d&d virtual map case” or “d&d tv table” for examples.

  • EncEnc A Fool with Compassion Pronouns: He, Him, HisRegistered User regular
    UPDATE: 2/3/2020 - Enc Makes a GM Screen

    So after a week of thinking, I decided I hated that first stain and wood. Once my hardware came in I went back to Home Depot and picked up some more wood to work with:

    r5tc3k8qkloj.jpg

    My saw right now is a Japanese-style pull saw for woodworking. To get my edges as straight as possible I used a metal square along the edge of the wood and hoped for the best. With one exception, it came out great! I has to pass over one edge another time to true it up, and after a few minutes of working and a lot of hand sanding, I had things pretty good for hand tools.

    bdagi51369bp.jpg
    1gsky80wzksk.jpg

    I measured out things with my hardware, but made a BIG MISTAKE. I'll come back to this later. The hardware here are a nice set of antiqued brass hinges and these similar brass corner protectors. It was a rainy day Saturday, and after the 2 hours of measuring and cutting and some light sanding I called it a day here.

    The next day, it was clear and bright. I set back to work.

    zv4lakj6jffr.jpg

    I took a plastic sleeve designed to hold papers in a 3 ring binder and cut off the 3-ring section, then ran it through my printer to get a stencil ink. The ink doesn't stick to the plastic, and flipping it put the ink onto the wood. The logo here is the symbol of one of the two big factions in my current D&D Campaign, and more often than not the bad guys. The good guy symbol is already on a bunch of my player's stuff, so I choose something that would look cool and set me apart from them.

    I then fired up my wood burning pen, really its just a soldering iron with some fancy tips, and set to work:

    ijl0uwb8mczt.jpg
    fi0on954mutk.jpg

    An hour later, I had it done! I was pretty happy.

    Then I remembered a problem. Not the BIG MISTAKE from earlier, a minor issue. I needed to be able to run cables between my laptop (on my side of the screen) to the flat TV we use for battlemaps (on their side of the screen). While I probably could run things through the gaps in the three boards, I worried about the cables pinching if something moved, and decided to cut out a slot of them. But I didn't have a jigsaw!

    So I cut a ton of tiny slivers along the area in question and then tried to pop them out with a screwdriver:

    ifoiy9ptp0v5.jpg

    Which... worked ok, but I had a bunch of irregular chips at the bottom that hand sanding would not be able to fix within a decade. So I went back to the store and picked up some chisels and a random orbital sander. Both of which were very helpful.

    rqtyexcu0txc.jpg

    Now I was ready to stain here, but it was such a lovely day that I decided to do more woodburning on the wings. The campaign i'm running takes place in a massive pine forest, a literal wild-west with fantasy themes, so I edited up some quick stencils in photoshop and put them down on the boards:

    euk4jyqargw8.jpg
    itgbfybk9oc7.jpg

    This took a long time. A LOOOONG time. I was wood burning for nearly three hours. One of the trees was over a bole in the wood and between the sap seeping forth as I burned and the core of the wood resisting burning it was an exercise in patience. But I got there eventually! It was also a beautiful day, so setting up in the driveway to work went pretty well.

    Next up, I sanded the wood with 120 and 200 with the random orbital sander, which clarified the woodburn designs and got rid of all the pencil marks. Before I did this I pre-"drilled" my hardware holes knowing that the sander would get rid of my pencil marks. Without a drill, I took a nail and did a few light taps to accomplish the same effect.

    Then I stained it with a lovely Golden Pecan finish:

    ulpkepzjgsqq.jpg

    While I waited, I was thirsty. And this wouldn't be one of my H&A posts without a shout out to a water company. My new mainstay is:
    onw33ksdlo2i.jpg

    Peach Bubbly: It sure is water with peach bubbles, alright.

    gbdxknvo3txi.jpg

    I then came back and attached all the hardware. The corner protectors went on with little tiny pin nails that I had to line up with tweezers before hammering in. Screwing in the hinges by hand took no time at all thanks to the nail holes. What you see above is me holding down stainless steel "whiteboards" that I can attach magnets to or use to write things down on. The left vertical one will track the day and time as the campaign moves on, the right one will be for initiative and monster health. The middle bar will hold my players AC, Passive Skills, and Max HP as a reference. The amazon reviews of the boards said the adhesive was garbage, so I used some wood glue instead.

    And I think it came out pretty well!

    p1eim3p5dxzq.jpg
    zuc2hwe8mor7.jpg
    dumn75e5yb3j.jpg

    But what about that BIG MISTAKE?

    hjtpg3oebazh.jpg

    While the wood measured perfectly to close, and so did the cornerpieces, I didn't have the pin nails when I did my early on measurements. So now they rest against eachother and don't perfectly close all the way!

    Not the biggest mistake, but the only non-correctable one.

    Even still, it looks great, is portable, and is heavy enough to write on and not fall over. I call it a solid B+ for a first woodworking experiment!

  • XaquinXaquin Right behind you!Registered User regular
    for a first woodworking project that looks incredible!

    for a fiftieth woodworking project that looks incredible!

    very nice!

  • EncEnc A Fool with Compassion Pronouns: He, Him, HisRegistered User regular
    Thanks! : )

    One thing I definitely learned from this project is that I need a better worktable, and that means a miter saw, clamps, and some kind of planer if I'm going to build it myself. Using a scrap bookshelf and a card table was really not ideal.

  • FeralFeral MEMETICHARIZARD interior crocodile alligator ⇔ ǝɹʇɐǝɥʇ ǝᴉʌoɯ ʇǝloɹʌǝɥɔ ɐ ǝʌᴉɹp ᴉRegistered User regular
    edited February 2020
    Hey, can I run a minor question by y'all?

    I mounted a flatscreen TV at a friend's house. The flatscreen mount was 18" wide but the studs were 24" apart. No problem, I know how to do this: I took a piece of plywood, sanded and painted it to match, attached it to the studs, and then attached the flatscreen mount to the plywood. (I do this all the time for my job, with small network equipment like switches and routers at branch offices.)

    At every step of the way, I used a bubble level to make sure every single piece was perfectly level. I made sure I used long enough screws and everything was firmly attached. And I drilled pilot holes in the wood while holding a level on my drill to make sure I went in straight.

    But once I mounted the TV, it was crooked. It's sagging at a small angle on one side, maybe 2 or 3 degrees, but just enough to be noticeable. When I took the TV off to investigate, the plywood panel is crooked.

    Other than just MOAR SCREWZ what is a good way to prevent this from happening again?

    (If it matters, it's a 35-pound 46-inch LED TV, which is a heavier device than I'm used to working with.)

    Feral on
    every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.

    the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
  • EncEnc A Fool with Compassion Pronouns: He, Him, HisRegistered User regular
    edited February 2020
    Feral wrote: »
    Hey, can I run a minor question by y'all?

    I mounted a flatscreen TV at a friend's house. The flatscreen mount was 18" wide but the studs were 24" apart. No problem, I know how to do this: I took a piece of plywood, sanded and painted it to match, attached it to the studs, and then attached the flatscreen mount to the plywood. (I do this all the time for my job, with small network equipment like switches and routers at branch offices.)

    At every step of the way, I used a bubble level to make sure every single piece was perfectly level. I made sure I used long enough screws and everything was firmly attached. And I drilled pilot holes in the wood while holding a level on my drill to make sure I went in straight.

    But once I mounted the TV, it was crooked. It's sagging at a small angle on one side, maybe 2 or 3 degrees, but just enough to be noticeable. When I took the TV off to investigate, the plywood panel is crooked.

    Other than just MOAR SCREWZ what is a good way to prevent this from happening again?

    (If it matters, it's a 35-pound 46-inch LED TV, which is a heavier device than I'm used to working with.)

    I've run into this before! $20.00 will get you something called a Flatscreen Wall Mount extender- it's a metal bracket that attaches to the studs and has a track to attach the wall mount to. Much stronger and less likely to warp from the weight.

    This one might work for you, but there are wider ones too:
    https://www.amazon.com/Mounting-Dream-Screen-Plasma-Profile/dp/B07N867KSP/ref=sr_1_21?keywords=adjustable+tv+wall+mount&qid=1580756828&s=electronics&sr=1-21

    Enc on
  • Donovan PuppyfuckerDonovan Puppyfucker A dagger in the dark is worth a thousand swords in the morningRegistered User regular
    Enc wrote: »
    UPDATE: 2/3/2020 - Enc Makes a GM Screen

    So after a week of thinking, I decided I hated that first stain and wood. Once my hardware came in I went back to Home Depot and picked up some more wood to work with:

    r5tc3k8qkloj.jpg

    My saw right now is a Japanese-style pull saw for woodworking. To get my edges as straight as possible I used a metal square along the edge of the wood and hoped for the best. With one exception, it came out great! I has to pass over one edge another time to true it up, and after a few minutes of working and a lot of hand sanding, I had things pretty good for hand tools.

    bdagi51369bp.jpg
    1gsky80wzksk.jpg

    I measured out things with my hardware, but made a BIG MISTAKE. I'll come back to this later. The hardware here are a nice set of antiqued brass hinges and these similar brass corner protectors. It was a rainy day Saturday, and after the 2 hours of measuring and cutting and some light sanding I called it a day here.

    The next day, it was clear and bright. I set back to work.

    zv4lakj6jffr.jpg

    I took a plastic sleeve designed to hold papers in a 3 ring binder and cut off the 3-ring section, then ran it through my printer to get a stencil ink. The ink doesn't stick to the plastic, and flipping it put the ink onto the wood. The logo here is the symbol of one of the two big factions in my current D&D Campaign, and more often than not the bad guys. The good guy symbol is already on a bunch of my player's stuff, so I choose something that would look cool and set me apart from them.

    I then fired up my wood burning pen, really its just a soldering iron with some fancy tips, and set to work:

    ijl0uwb8mczt.jpg
    fi0on954mutk.jpg

    An hour later, I had it done! I was pretty happy.

    Then I remembered a problem. Not the BIG MISTAKE from earlier, a minor issue. I needed to be able to run cables between my laptop (on my side of the screen) to the flat TV we use for battlemaps (on their side of the screen). While I probably could run things through the gaps in the three boards, I worried about the cables pinching if something moved, and decided to cut out a slot of them. But I didn't have a jigsaw!

    So I cut a ton of tiny slivers along the area in question and then tried to pop them out with a screwdriver:

    ifoiy9ptp0v5.jpg

    Which... worked ok, but I had a bunch of irregular chips at the bottom that hand sanding would not be able to fix within a decade. So I went back to the store and picked up some chisels and a random orbital sander. Both of which were very helpful.

    rqtyexcu0txc.jpg

    Now I was ready to stain here, but it was such a lovely day that I decided to do more woodburning on the wings. The campaign i'm running takes place in a massive pine forest, a literal wild-west with fantasy themes, so I edited up some quick stencils in photoshop and put them down on the boards:

    euk4jyqargw8.jpg
    itgbfybk9oc7.jpg

    This took a long time. A LOOOONG time. I was wood burning for nearly three hours. One of the trees was over a bole in the wood and between the sap seeping forth as I burned and the core of the wood resisting burning it was an exercise in patience. But I got there eventually! It was also a beautiful day, so setting up in the driveway to work went pretty well.

    Next up, I sanded the wood with 120 and 200 with the random orbital sander, which clarified the woodburn designs and got rid of all the pencil marks. Before I did this I pre-"drilled" my hardware holes knowing that the sander would get rid of my pencil marks. Without a drill, I took a nail and did a few light taps to accomplish the same effect.

    Then I stained it with a lovely Golden Pecan finish:

    ulpkepzjgsqq.jpg

    While I waited, I was thirsty. And this wouldn't be one of my H&A posts without a shout out to a water company. My new mainstay is:
    onw33ksdlo2i.jpg

    Peach Bubbly: It sure is water with peach bubbles, alright.

    gbdxknvo3txi.jpg

    I then came back and attached all the hardware. The corner protectors went on with little tiny pin nails that I had to line up with tweezers before hammering in. Screwing in the hinges by hand took no time at all thanks to the nail holes. What you see above is me holding down stainless steel "whiteboards" that I can attach magnets to or use to write things down on. The left vertical one will track the day and time as the campaign moves on, the right one will be for initiative and monster health. The middle bar will hold my players AC, Passive Skills, and Max HP as a reference. The amazon reviews of the boards said the adhesive was garbage, so I used some wood glue instead.

    And I think it came out pretty well!

    p1eim3p5dxzq.jpg
    zuc2hwe8mor7.jpg
    dumn75e5yb3j.jpg

    But what about that BIG MISTAKE?

    hjtpg3oebazh.jpg

    While the wood measured perfectly to close, and so did the cornerpieces, I didn't have the pin nails when I did my early on measurements. So now they rest against eachother and don't perfectly close all the way!

    Not the biggest mistake, but the only non-correctable one.

    Even still, it looks great, is portable, and is heavy enough to write on and not fall over. I call it a solid B+ for a first woodworking experiment!

    Could you use a pin punch to hammer the heads of the tacks down flush with the surface of the corner protectors?

  • FeralFeral MEMETICHARIZARD interior crocodile alligator ⇔ ǝɹʇɐǝɥʇ ǝᴉʌoɯ ʇǝloɹʌǝɥɔ ɐ ǝʌᴉɹp ᴉRegistered User regular
    Enc wrote: »
    Feral wrote: »
    Hey, can I run a minor question by y'all?

    I mounted a flatscreen TV at a friend's house. The flatscreen mount was 18" wide but the studs were 24" apart. No problem, I know how to do this: I took a piece of plywood, sanded and painted it to match, attached it to the studs, and then attached the flatscreen mount to the plywood. (I do this all the time for my job, with small network equipment like switches and routers at branch offices.)

    At every step of the way, I used a bubble level to make sure every single piece was perfectly level. I made sure I used long enough screws and everything was firmly attached. And I drilled pilot holes in the wood while holding a level on my drill to make sure I went in straight.

    But once I mounted the TV, it was crooked. It's sagging at a small angle on one side, maybe 2 or 3 degrees, but just enough to be noticeable. When I took the TV off to investigate, the plywood panel is crooked.

    Other than just MOAR SCREWZ what is a good way to prevent this from happening again?

    (If it matters, it's a 35-pound 46-inch LED TV, which is a heavier device than I'm used to working with.)

    I've run into this before! $20.00 will get you something called a Flatscreen Wall Mount extender- it's a metal bracket that attaches to the studs and has a track to attach the wall mount to. Much stronger and less likely to warp from the weight.

    This one might work for you, but there are wider ones too:
    https://www.amazon.com/Mounting-Dream-Screen-Plasma-Profile/dp/B07N867KSP/ref=sr_1_21?keywords=adjustable+tv+wall+mount&qid=1580756828&s=electronics&sr=1-21

    Thanks!

    every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.

    the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
  • EncEnc A Fool with Compassion Pronouns: He, Him, HisRegistered User regular
    Enc wrote: »
    UPDATE: 2/3/2020 - Enc Makes a GM Screen

    So after a week of thinking, I decided I hated that first stain and wood. Once my hardware came in I went back to Home Depot and picked up some more wood to work with:

    r5tc3k8qkloj.jpg

    My saw right now is a Japanese-style pull saw for woodworking. To get my edges as straight as possible I used a metal square along the edge of the wood and hoped for the best. With one exception, it came out great! I has to pass over one edge another time to true it up, and after a few minutes of working and a lot of hand sanding, I had things pretty good for hand tools.

    bdagi51369bp.jpg
    1gsky80wzksk.jpg

    I measured out things with my hardware, but made a BIG MISTAKE. I'll come back to this later. The hardware here are a nice set of antiqued brass hinges and these similar brass corner protectors. It was a rainy day Saturday, and after the 2 hours of measuring and cutting and some light sanding I called it a day here.

    The next day, it was clear and bright. I set back to work.

    zv4lakj6jffr.jpg

    I took a plastic sleeve designed to hold papers in a 3 ring binder and cut off the 3-ring section, then ran it through my printer to get a stencil ink. The ink doesn't stick to the plastic, and flipping it put the ink onto the wood. The logo here is the symbol of one of the two big factions in my current D&D Campaign, and more often than not the bad guys. The good guy symbol is already on a bunch of my player's stuff, so I choose something that would look cool and set me apart from them.

    I then fired up my wood burning pen, really its just a soldering iron with some fancy tips, and set to work:

    ijl0uwb8mczt.jpg
    fi0on954mutk.jpg

    An hour later, I had it done! I was pretty happy.

    Then I remembered a problem. Not the BIG MISTAKE from earlier, a minor issue. I needed to be able to run cables between my laptop (on my side of the screen) to the flat TV we use for battlemaps (on their side of the screen). While I probably could run things through the gaps in the three boards, I worried about the cables pinching if something moved, and decided to cut out a slot of them. But I didn't have a jigsaw!

    So I cut a ton of tiny slivers along the area in question and then tried to pop them out with a screwdriver:

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    Which... worked ok, but I had a bunch of irregular chips at the bottom that hand sanding would not be able to fix within a decade. So I went back to the store and picked up some chisels and a random orbital sander. Both of which were very helpful.

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    Now I was ready to stain here, but it was such a lovely day that I decided to do more woodburning on the wings. The campaign i'm running takes place in a massive pine forest, a literal wild-west with fantasy themes, so I edited up some quick stencils in photoshop and put them down on the boards:

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    This took a long time. A LOOOONG time. I was wood burning for nearly three hours. One of the trees was over a bole in the wood and between the sap seeping forth as I burned and the core of the wood resisting burning it was an exercise in patience. But I got there eventually! It was also a beautiful day, so setting up in the driveway to work went pretty well.

    Next up, I sanded the wood with 120 and 200 with the random orbital sander, which clarified the woodburn designs and got rid of all the pencil marks. Before I did this I pre-"drilled" my hardware holes knowing that the sander would get rid of my pencil marks. Without a drill, I took a nail and did a few light taps to accomplish the same effect.

    Then I stained it with a lovely Golden Pecan finish:

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    While I waited, I was thirsty. And this wouldn't be one of my H&A posts without a shout out to a water company. My new mainstay is:
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    Peach Bubbly: It sure is water with peach bubbles, alright.

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    I then came back and attached all the hardware. The corner protectors went on with little tiny pin nails that I had to line up with tweezers before hammering in. Screwing in the hinges by hand took no time at all thanks to the nail holes. What you see above is me holding down stainless steel "whiteboards" that I can attach magnets to or use to write things down on. The left vertical one will track the day and time as the campaign moves on, the right one will be for initiative and monster health. The middle bar will hold my players AC, Passive Skills, and Max HP as a reference. The amazon reviews of the boards said the adhesive was garbage, so I used some wood glue instead.

    And I think it came out pretty well!

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    But what about that BIG MISTAKE?

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    While the wood measured perfectly to close, and so did the cornerpieces, I didn't have the pin nails when I did my early on measurements. So now they rest against eachother and don't perfectly close all the way!

    Not the biggest mistake, but the only non-correctable one.

    Even still, it looks great, is portable, and is heavy enough to write on and not fall over. I call it a solid B+ for a first woodworking experiment!

    Could you use a pin punch to hammer the heads of the tacks down flush with the surface of the corner protectors?

    The nail heads were inexplicably spheres, probably for some designers look, but im certain they are now as flat as they are gonna get. Also, like 1/2cm pin nails no way to get them out now without prying off the hardware itself.

    I can live with it, but next screen ill allow more space.

  • thebovrilmonkeythebovrilmonkey Registered User regular
    Have a watch of Rex Krueger's Woodwork for Humans videos on youtube - they go through using some basic tools to make some more basic tools and a workbench, then using those to make better tools and learning enough to build other cool stuff.

    Liquid Cow
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