It all started when we were having family read-aloud time.  Mom was reading us a book about some boys who decided to act like knights, and founded an order of knights, the O.W.K.  Mare and Suzi were played with their plastic horses, pretending that they were talking horses.  The horses were getting ready for battle by making armor and 'robot humans' out of clay to help them fight.  Then I decided that I wanted to make a knight on a horse, too.  A few days later, Tim and I remade the first knight and gave him better armor. Mare, Suzi, Tim, and I made some more knights and armor.  And I decided that the knights needed to have something to fight, so I made a lizard.  And we made some bad guys, too.  That was a lot of fun!

I'm planning to build a 6 ft oak veneered toboggan. This is how far I've gotten so far.

This is my latest woodworking project. It was, needless to say, lots of fun to make! :-) Here’s how I made the box:

I built a prototype with piece scrap and then decided I would try to make a more finished project. I cut my different types of wood to the right thickness and then glued them together, after that I planed one side flat. I cut off the other side to exact size on the table saw. I setup a stop block on the miter saw so that every piece is the same size and then cut eight pieces. I glued up the box by taping the all of the outside edges first and then gluing the whole thing together. I built the bottom using the same basic idea.

Note-
Set your saw to a 22.5°angle for octagons. On your saw usually 0° = 90° and thus 22.5° will actually be 67.5°. If you wanted to make a different sided box all you would have to do is divide 180 by the number of sides. For Example – 180°/6(six sides) = 30° or 180°/18(eighteen sides) = 10°

I was thinking of something that could be used as a parallel between the Christian life and my green house plants. A few times I had forgotten to water the plants and they started wilting. I praise God that He never forgets us, and always remembers His promises to us.

Matthew 11:28 "Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.

Genesis 8:21-22  And the LORD smelled a soothing aroma. Then the LORD said in His heart, "I will never again curse the ground for man's sake, although the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth; nor will I again destroy every living thing as I have done.  (22)  "While the earth remains, Seedtime and harvest, Cold and heat, Winter and summer, And day and night Shall not cease."

Luke 21:13-15  "But it will turn out for you as an occasion for testimony.  (14)  "Therefore settle it in your hearts not to meditate beforehand on what you will answer;  (15)  "for I will give you a mouth and wisdom which all your adversaries will not be able to contradict or resist.

Hebrews 13:5b   For He Himself has said, "I will never leave you nor forsake you."

Matthew 28:19-20  "Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,  (20)  "teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age." Amen.

I'm doing a little experiment - trying to grow lettuce to maturity in a small greenhouse. Here is how big the plants are right now.

I'll keep you posted on the progress.

I've been wanting to blog more, but I just haven't got around to doing it. This is my latest woodworking project - A 10 drawer oak raised panel cabinet. I have been working on it for about a week now, and the cabinet is nearing completion. We bought a router table system from Sommerfeld Tools which included plans for making this cabinet as a base for the router table top. We also got a few jigs from them which really sped up the process of putting together the cabinet. This is my first cabinet, so I still have lot's to learn, but I'm very pleased with how it's turning out. Everything except for the drawers is glued , sanded, and varnished. 

I look at cabinets differently now that I know how everything fits together.   I'm thinking of some other projects that I could use raised panels on, because they are quite easy to make, and look really good too. I'm actually considering being a professional woodworker sometime - maybe. In today's "throw away society" nearly everything is made out of pressed wood, and furniture lasts only a few years. I'm encouraged to try my hand at making quality furniture. 

When you look at wood what does it make you think of? Wood should remind you of your Creator.  How could such beauty evolve from nothing? Rom 1:20 "For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse."

Simple board games are a great way to keep your hands busy during read-aloud, or just to spend some time with someone you care about. Recently I discovered a couple of new games I hadn't heard about before. One of them is called Go, or Weiqi. (wikipedia it here). Apparently it is a fairly popular game in China and other eastern countries like Japan. It's very simple and easy teach to someone, but hard to master the game. The Chinese consider this game one of the most important skills someone can learn. 

You play by placing stones on a lined board, and try to surround the other player's stones.  Once you do, they are captured and removed from the board. Whoever ends up with the most territory at the end of the game wins. You can play this game very easily with just some buttons or coins, and a lined piece of paper (materials: pen, straightedge, paper). I decided to build a wooden board for this game last week out of some ash wood from our backyard, and the pieces by spray painting stones.  I didn't make the wooden bowls (not quite that advanced yet) - they came from the thrift store - a couple $'s value).  Here's what it looks like:

I hadn't attempted a project quite like this before, and a few lessons learned are:

1.  Don't use a ball-point pen to draw straight lines, unless you want an inky mess.  The ink will form in a blob on the opposite side of the ball, and you have to remember to keep cleaning this off or it will get all over your hands, clothes, and the piece you are working on ;)

2.  Some varnishes dissolve ink, and some don't.  I tested both the ink (trying Sharpie and ballpoint pen) and the varnish on top, on a piece of scrap wood to begin with.  The first varnish I tried caused the ink to run and seep into the wood - and generally look very ugly. It was just by happenstance that I tested the varnish beforehand, because I didn't anticipate any problems, but it saved me some grief...

3.  When I tried a second coat on the stones, I used the same cardboard backdrop - a big mistake. Why? The fresh paint melted the old paint on the cardboard, causing the stones to stick. Then when they dried and I pulled them up - the paint peeled back off. Obviously, preparing the back-drop is just as important as preparing the piece itself.

Hopefully these tips will help you avoid some re-work if you ever try a similar project.

Here is a game in-progress (I'm playing with Suzy). She picked the game right up - and it's already a challenge to keep up with her

We've had a large bandsaw for a while now, but it hasn't gotten much use. We tried to re-saw lumber with it, but discovered that a bandsaw doesn't cut parallel to the table - it cuts at an angle. Since we couldn't figure out how to cut big boards along the fence, I thought I would try to cut some small and intricate work with the saw.

I switched blades to an 1/8inch blade, and started to cut some curves. I found that I could cut some fairly tight curves. I then decided to try to cut out a name out of wood. I printed out a the name in a fancy font and modified it so all the letters would be connected together and so that none of them would be too thin either. I taped the paper which I had already printed onto a piece of oak as a pattern. Cutting those tight curves didn't prove as easy as I thought but I finally finished. All I then needed to do was the sanding, and varnishing and I was done.

Here are two of the finished pieces.

Do you know of something that you can create with Legos that will become nearly infinitely complex but is built with the base pieces of 4 Lego bricks?  This is an amazing creation which is only limited by the number of Legos you have. I'll show you how to build it.

1.  First you put 4 Lego pieces(which have 8 dots on top) together which looks like this. 

  

  

  

 

 

 

2. You put 5 of those pieces together like this.

  

 

 3.  You put 5 of those pieces together like this. 

  

 This could go on practically infinitely(building a bigger and bigger ship) - like I said, only limited by the number of pieces you have.

I'm not sure who concieved of this idea, but it definitly is an amazing design. I only had enough pieces to get to level 3.

The number of pieces used goes like this:

• 4@ level 1
• 20@ level 2
• 100@ level 3
• 500@ level 4
• 2500@ level 5 and so on...