We have all of our music stored on a NASLite server in the basement, so any computer in the house can play any MP3 we own. The only problem with this is that you need a computer to access it. We used to have a computer in the living/dining room when the basement was (more) unusable than it is now, and we’d play music on it through those little crummy speakers. Then Jenn got a laptop and all the PCs moved downstairs. Suddenly we didn’t have anything to play music with on the whole upper floor. We have an iPod touch and a couple of Creative MP3 players that we keep loaded with MP3s, and I have a small iPod dock, but it wasn’t loud enough to play music for more than one room.

We needed a solution for playing music for the main floor. Sure, I could have bought a more expensive and powerful iPod dock, but where’s the fun in that? Instead, I built this:

I got a set of Logitech X530 70-watt speakers dirt cheap. I specifically chose these speakers because the controls are all mounted on a separate wired remote rather than built into one of the speakers. This allowed me to crack open open the remote and rewire it. I removed the major controls from the circuit board and put them on longer wires, which let me mount the knobs and buttons in another location, arranged differently than they were on the small remote.

I loved the design of a Shaker-style lingerie chest that I saw a photo of on the internet (why the Shakers would build a lingerie chest, I have no idea). I decided to design my own based on this cabinet. Here’s a screenshot of the Google Sketchup model I built:

The white parts of the drawers were to be cut out and filled with speaker cloth. The top drawer was real, the others were just false fronts covering the speakers.

I built the cabinet and mounted the speakers in it, then added a power supply and tidied up the cabling.

The top drawer opens to reveal an audio plug to insert into the MP3 player output jack, and charging cables for both micro-USB (our Creative Zen MP3 players) and iPod devices (our iPod touch). There are knobs for master volume and bass and a switch for master power, which doesn’t affect device charging.

Voila: an MP3 cabinet that gives us music in the living room and kitchen. Sure, 70 watt computer speakers aren’t audiophile stuff, but it sounds great to me. The bass kicker is more than enough to vibrate the floor, and we get nice clean high end.

I wanted to put perforated individual drawers down the front as per the design, but I have too many other projects on the go right now and I really needed this out of the shop. It’s been hanging around for a year in various unfinished states and I just wanted it done. I might come back and do that later, the speaker cloth I put on is easily removed.

A few years ago I had a big beautiful old console radio cabinet that I wanted to do this to, but never did. I got rid of it, and I regret that a little now. Some day I’ll pick up another one and do this to it. In the meantime, we’ll be rocking away during dinner chores.

The bed of my table saw isn’t that large, so if I have to crosscut anything more than about 10 inches wide the miter gauge is pushed off the front of the table, making it very awkward to cut properly. I don’t expect that it’s very safe, either. I’m left-handed so I like to hold the work to left of the blade, and that’s the best direction for large stock to extend in my shop. (It goes out the door if it’s over about 5 feet long…)

A crosscut sled seemed to be the perfect solution.

I’ve been looking for a good crosscut sled to make myself, but everything that I found was quite large and cumbersome. As you’ve seen before, I have a reasonably small shop so moving and storing a large sled just wasn’t going to work for me.

I had never heard of a front-stopped crosscut sled until I saw this plan, and I knew that it was perfect for my needs.

I started out with a piece of 1/2″ MDF that I cut to 20″ x 20″. I figured I’d make it a bit larger than I needed and trim it later, but that size seems perfect as it is. I lined it up where I wanted the sled to sit on the table saw, with about 1/2 inch extending to the right of the blade. I then marked where the miter slot in the table was, and mounted a piece of UHMW (ultra-high molecular weight) plastic as a guide. UHMW plastic is that slightly greasy feeling dense plastic they make hockey rink boards out of. It’s very stable and easy to cut and drill with normal tools. Lee Valley sells lengths of it that are perfectly sized to the standard miter slot, so I don’t have to make my own runners out of hardwood.

I like the runner to stick out about a half inch or so from the front on the sled, so it’s easier to put it on the table properly because you can aim the runner into the miter slot.

Once the runner was mounted, I put the runner in the miter slot, raised the saw blade and trimmed that extra 1/2″ off. Now I have a sled that slides beautifully in the miter slot, and that has one edge that is exactly in line with the edge of the saw blade.

I inserted threaded T-Nuts into the bottom of the sled along the front edge to attach the fence, and found out that they don’t sit flush, so I used a forstner bit to make a small recess. I don’t want the metal t-nuts sliding on the surface of my saw.

From the top:

I used a scrap piece of red oak for the fence. Once I trimmed it straight, I drilled 3 holes along the length to match the T-Nuts in the sled. The holes were slightly larger than the T-Nuts so there is about 1/16″ play in the fence when it’s not tightened down. I can loosen the bolts and easily adjust the fence to be square. I know my own skills well enough that if I tried to make the fence permanent, it would never be quite square and the whole sled would be useless. Planning for these type of adjustments has saved me a lot of grief.

A large fender washer and a 1/4-20 sized jig handle threaded into each T-Nut keep the fence nice and snug. I bought a large assorted box of jig handles and parts, including the T-Nuts, from Lee Valley. (Most of my birthday and Christmas presents are Lee Valley gift cards nowadays… ) I already have plans for most of the rest of that box.

The fence also has a pair of DeStaCo low-profile vertical clamps (guess where I bought them?) that keep whatever I’m cutting from creeping during the cut. I have them adjusted to keep 3/4 stock tight, as that’s 90% of what I cut.

The only thing that remained was to round the bottom corners, cut some holes through the near side to make it easier to hold, and to add some holes on the sides to hang it up out of the way. Voila.

Here are some pictures of it with wood clamped in, before and after cutting.

And it hangs perfectly on the wall when I’m not using it.

I was unsure about how the front-stopped sled would work, but I really love it. It’s different than the usual back-stopped miter gauge, but I already prefer it hands-down. Wider work is far easier to cut. The fact that the edge of the sled is exactly on the saw cutting line makes setup far more accurate and far simpler; Put the desired cut line at the edge of the sled and it’s perfectly lined up. The clamps make it a breeze. No more slightly angled cuts due to slipping.

Because there’s no support for the back of the work, I found I get some minor tearout if I don’t put something behind it. I have some long 1×1 pieces of scrap that I put on the sled behind the work hanging over the cut line, and when they get too short I toss them. Finally, a use for my scraps box.

I also need to make a 1/2 inch thick piece that sits on the right side of the blade to support the cut-off, because it hangs over nothing and can splinter if it’s long enough. I will just use the rest of the MDF that I cut the sled from, and put a ledge on the front like a bench-hook so it won’t slide with the wood.

The only downside that I’ve seen is that because the cutting takes place a half-inch above the table top, the under-table dust collection doesn’t work, and the sawdust all sprays back towards me. Not serious, just messy. Perhaps when I get the cut-off support made I’ll try to fit some dust collection in it, or perhaps if the cut-off support is tight to the blade on the right side the dust collection will work better. I’ll let you know.

I’ve had it for a week, and I’ve used it every single time I’ve been in the shop. This crosscut sled has made my life in the shop a million times easier, for one afternoon’s worth of work. If you’re still using a metal miter gauge, I can’t recommend strongly enough that you try this.

Ever see a magazine cover story with a title like Dealing with a Small Bathroom? Then you open the magazine and flip to the article and see that their idea of a “small bathroom” is a bathroom that only has room for one large easy chair beside the double sink and whirlpool tub, because the standalone sauna takes up too much room. How ever will they survive with only one large easy chair?

Looking for information on small workshops is the same. “Mine is only 1200 square feet, come see how I deal with the cramped conditions.” Pfft.

My shop is a 12 by 11 room with one large corner cut off, losing me about a quarter of the space. It looks like this:

Note: I didn’t tidy for this. I was taking pictures of another project and decided to take some of the shop for posterity and insurance. Then I decided to share them. Getting it “show ready” would take a few hours that I don’t have or want to spend, you see it way the shop is most of the time.

The diagonal wall has a wood storage rack and shelves full of plastic peanut butter jars that I use for screw and nail and parts storage, and pegboard. I love peanut butter jars and pegboard. The wood rack is for dimensional lumber, though it often has a few larger pieces of sheet goods leaning against it waiting to be used. Here, the upstairs bathroom floor is propped up waiting for the walls to be painted.

The wood rack is just 2x4s mounted to the wall with toggle bolts. The 2x4s have 1″ holes bored through them, and I inserted lengths of 1″ dowel that I rounded off on the router table. They aren’t glued in the holes so I can reorganize the shelving if I need it by moving the shelf supports. That would involve actually cleaning it off, though, so I don’t think I’ll ever bother.

Looking in the door to the back wall, you can see that my bench is actually just kitchen countertop scraps on old kitchen cabinet bases.

On the left of the drawers are two stacks of large Rubbermaid bins labelled “Electrical”, “Plumbing”, “Drywall”, “Painting” and “Infrequently Used Tools”. There are some half-sized Rubbermaid bins labelled “Cabinet Hardware”, “Caulking” and “Electronics”. Also on that side under the bench is my Router Table, which gets pulled out and placed on the table saw to use.

Drawers (behind the table saw in the above pic) are labelled, from top to bottom, “Measuring and Marking”, “Sandpaper”, “Drilling and Grinding” and “Small Power Tools”.

The right hand side under the bench is miscellaneous stuff. Drop cloths, garbage bags, unfinished projects, etc. I haven’t really organized this side yet.

The right end of the bench is work space. Above the bench is pegboard with hand tools. The left end is bench tools: the bandsaw, drill press, band/disk sander, bench grinder and scroll saw. Above and behind the bench tools is the paint collection, all the colours that we have used in various places for various things around the house.

Being a basement shop, dust control was very important. I didn’t want that fine dust to make its way through the whole house. I have a ceiling mounted air cleaner and a large capacity dust collector from General International to help with that.

Looking left from the workbench past the bench tools, you see them along the wall, more pegboard, clamp storage and sheet goods storage (under the drywall T-square). I can’t keep a half sheet of plywood. If I need that much I have to cut it to smaller size as soon as I buy it.

Looking up, you can see the switch I wired in for the dust collection. I’m 5’11″, so this switch is the perfect height and place for me when I am standing at the table saw. You can also see the house central vac unit, which I don’t use in the shop. It’s just most convenient place to hang it.

You can also see some of the unfinished ceiling. I wouldn’t want it finished. I store a load of stuff up in the floor joists.

The floor is linoleum over concrete (easier to sweep and keeps the dust down) and the walls are drywalled and insulated for noise.

The back of the door is covered in small spring clamps to hold work gloves for the 7 of us and aprons and such. Beside the door is a rack similar to the wood rack, but with the dowels angled. Nice and strong for holding extension cords.

The shop is too small to run a dust collection tubing system, so I just have one 8 foot length of 4″ tubing for the table saw, and one 10 foot length of 2 1/2″ tubing for bench tool dust collection (I need another couple of feet, this one is a bit short). I use the Veritas Dust Chute on the 2 1/2″ hose, because the magnet on the end is handy. I can hang it up out of the way just by sticking it to the house ducting in the ceiling. I switch between hoses using a homemade manifold/separator. It catches the big pieces before they go to the dust collector, and lets me easily pick which collection hose to use:

I finally feel like the shop is getting to an organized point where I can use it and find things and not spend half my time shuffling things around. Thanks for looking.

For Christmas, we made each other gifts, and my eldest son had the idea to build my youngest son a set of building blocks to make a castle for Playmobil-scale people. The boys love playing with their Playmobil knights and Roman warriors. The also have vikings, pirates and various other warriors that they mix in for some excitement. Imagine what a battle between the Playmobil French Knights and the Playmobil Romans would have been like, with Playmobil Egyptian chariot support and Playmobil pirate artillery… the mind boggles.

I sat down with Google Sketchup (which is an amazing, free 3d design program that is very easy to learn) and designed some blocks that could be made easily by gluing cubes and rectangles together. Using some figures as a reference, I made the blocks the correct scale to be used by Playmobil people. I used the tablesaw to cut up some old scrap oak (leftover church pew ends…) and then left Josh to sand and glue them together. Here are the results:

The gun ports are the right height for a Playmobil character to aim a gun or crossbow out of.

And the towers and crenellations are sized for standing armed Playmobil soldiers too. The little ledges for the soldiers to stand on were Josh’s brainchild. He really wanted to be able to have forces on the walls shooting overtop.

Including the doorway, there are only 7 kinds of blocks. The actual gates aren’t complete yet, but I’m not sure they’re needed. They boys have fun playing with it as is. You can see in this picture how the blocks are all made up of cubes and rectangles glued together.

Here’s the entire set of blocks:

Here’s the plan in Google Sketchup:

And here’s the Google Sketchup File for my Playmobil scale wooden castle blocks.

They can, of course, be assembled in any way that they want, and they have been used to make houses and two smaller opposing forts as well as the big castle.

A friend of ours gave us a snowflake Christmas ornament many years ago, and I’ve always wanted to make one myself. I decided to try this year, using some leftover oak I had in the shop. I had a very hard time finding good information on the about these, so I also decided to write up a bit of a tutorial.

Here’s the final result:

To make the snowflakes, we’ll use 3/4 inch thick wood, because it’s easy to come by. You can use any thickness you want, you’ll just have to scale your work up or down to match.

Start by setting your table saw blade to 30 degrees and making some diamond shaped rods. It’s important that the face of the diamond is side-grain, NOT end-grain. For example, cut the rods across the grain of a 1×4 rather than ripping long strips off the edges. The diamond face should have grain lines going across it (shown below). If the length of the rods have grain going down them, the face is end-grain and it tears and splinters when you do any of the next steps. Even on a very hard wood like maple I couldn’t get end-grain to work.

If you use 3/4 inch thick material, then each faces of the rod is roughly 7/8 of an inch. Mine were very slightly smaller than that because my stock was slightly thinner. The critical part here is that all four faces are exactly the same length.

The 30 degree setting is touchy. Try cutting 6 sample rods from some cheap wood like a pine 1×4. Assemble them in a snowflake shape (look at pictures further on in the instructions) and see if they fit with no gaps. If there’s a gap, increase or decrease the angle of the saw a tiny bit and try again. I usually had to adjust and re-try this step three or four times to get the angle exactly right. Once you get the angle correct, tighten the blade in place and make lots of rods, because the blade setup is the most time consuming finicky part of the whole operation.

Once you have your rods, it’s time to make them interesting. This plan is for a simple-looking snowflake using only the table saw. If you use a router you could use different bits and make many more interesting shapes.

I created a jig to help this process by cutting the edge off a 1×4 using the 30 degree angle blade, and then attaching a scrap piece of hardboard to one side. Lower the saw blade below the table, clamp the jig to the fence, and raise the blade up through the hardboard about 1/8 of an inch. This makes a nice custom zero-clearance table surface. For the first cut, the distance from the blade to the jig should be about half the width of the rod.

Slide the rods along the jig to cut a notch along each side.

Then move the jig so the same cut is made, quite close to the edge of the rod. Turn the rod over and do this last cut again, so the two cuts end up taking the point off the one edge of the rod.

Then start gluing and clamping pairs of rods together, with the missing corners together. These missing corners will make the hole in the center of the snowflake.

When the pairs are dry, unclamp and then test fit the pairs in groups of three.

Gluing and clamping is difficult, so we’ll do it in two more steps. First glue and clamp two pairs together. I needed two clamps to do this properly.

When they are dry, add the third pair. If there are gaps when they go together, you can adjust the fit by lightly sanding the loose piece. If the gaps are too large, you need to toss these out, adjust the 30 degree saw blade and try again. There’s no good way to repair a bad fit at this stage. Clamping was difficult so I used “plastic twine”, which is like stretchy plastic wrap.

Once they are all dry, I added some more decoration by putting a hole down through the center of each rod. It’s far easier to do this now than when the rods were not glued together.

The next step involves slicing snowflakes off of this bundle of rods, like cutting cookies off a roll of dough. I made a sliding jig for my bandsaw, if you have a nice bandsaw square that would do fine. I don’t.

Cut the slices to whatever thickness you like, mine are about 1/4 inch thick. Expect to lose the first slice, because the ends of the rods won’t be perfectly even, and expect to lose a few slices worth of wood at the end because it’s quite difficult to slice 1/4 inch slices off of a tiny piece of wood. I usually toss out the first 1/4 inch and the last inch of any bundle of rods I make.

Sand the faces of the snowflakes on a disk sander, or lay them on a table and use a palm sander.

And voila, ready for finish and string! (Yeah, this one has a tiny gap.. sigh)

I finished my oak snowflakes in a nice stain to emphasize the grain. You can clearcoat them with varathane, or finish them however else you want.

Here’s a prototype for my next design. I used a router to make the notches along the rods rather than the table saw. It makes aligning the rods a bit more difficult (this one is a bit sloppy) but I like the overall effect. It looks more like a snowflake and less like a star.

Have questions or suggestions? Let me know.

Make some? Post pictures!