Wood Shop Magic

 It has been a busy winter!  I believe I mentioned my new source for industrial pallets in my last post called "Pallet Wood Fun."  This time the objective was night stands!

Last summer we bought a pretty nice dresser for our bedroom from the ReStore by Habitat for Humanity.  If you've never been to one, it's like a huge playground.  They have leftover materials from builds, used furniture from donations, tools (my favorite), and many other things.  This dresser that we bought is painted white and has legs and drawer faces that are proud of the front of the cabinet.  It's a pretty nice design and functions fairly well.  There are six drawers and Stephanie and I share it.  The problem is that Stephanie filled one whole drawer with socks... she has sooo many socks!  They are all sorts of fun colors and designs, and they seem to make her happy.  So, with one drawer full of socks, it only leaves two drawers for the rest of her clothes.  She mostly makes do, but we thought that having a little more space would be helpful.  We thought nightstands would do the trick... except that apparently nightstands don't come in pairs? Ridiculous, I know, but we looked for a couple of months both new and used and either couldn't find a matching pair (used), or ones that fit our space (new).  Night stands are apparently 30" to 36" wide these days for bedrooms that are larger than our living room.  I know this because I've designed several of them (bedrooms, not night stands). 

Anyway, I had just taken another load of industrial pallet wood home, so I thought I would endeavor to build a couple of nightstands that matched each other and our dresser.  It was an interesting journey, let me tell you.

I started with 2x6 lumber which, for those of you who aren't initiated into the world of lumber, means that the dimensions of the wood are 1 1/2"x 5 1/2".  I figured out that if I cut a length of it and then re-sawed it on my table saw, I could get (2) 5/8"x5" boards out of each piece.  That meant that I could make the sides, back, and drawers out of the same material rather than buying plywood panels.  I had a few challenges in that I don't have a planer or a jointer, so in the end, the panels I glued up are not perfect.  I did have a large sanding block so, by hand, I was able to flatten each panel.  I now have muscles in places that I didn't know I could have them...

The legs were easy to make, and the whole thing went together with pocket screws drilled into the inside of the panels.  I inherited a small nail gun from a friend and was able to use that to put the drawers together.  

The entire outside of the cabinet was painted white to match the dresser, and then it was done!  Well, I still had to make another matching one for me, but one done and one to go!  The second one was easier, or at least more streamlined.  This time I cut everything I needed all at the same time and bought the right sized clamps to make the process a little easier.

Anyway, I think they came out pretty nice and we now have a matching bedroom set!  In the end, I learned quite a bit, used wood that was destined for the landfill, and supported the local hardware store where we bought drawer pulls... and a lot of screws.

Pallet Wood Fun

 Well, its been a while since I've written anything here, but buying (and fixing) a house is a lot of work.  We've been pretty busy with many different projects.  Honestly, Stephanie and I both enjoy doing household projects, large and small.  We recently put in a new cork floor, milled stained and installed our own "shoe base." If you aren't sure what a shoe base is, I can't help you.  Its what my dad calls it, and I haven't heard a better term.  Its an addition to the wood wall base which in our case, takes the form of a quarter round piece of molding installed to take up the gap between the baseboard and the new floor.

Anyway, this post is about pallet wood!  Doing all of the projects has made me realize that I would like to have a little wood shop.  A dedicated space to put tools and do small projects.  I've slowly been gathering tools either passed down from relatives (my 1957 delta contractor table saw) or buying them on (you guessed it) Craigslist!  These projects however, need a place to be assembled, so the most important project I've done recently is an assembly table / work bench.  

Made of an old solid core wood door (SCWD for my architecture friends who have the pleasure of reviewing door schedules...), and an extremely robust pallet.  Most pallets are pretty flimsy, or at least made of undesirable rough cut, small pieces of wood.  These are great for small projects like the boxes I made for our wedding.  When it comes to larger projects however, larger pallets can be great.  I'm doing some work at a large food processing plant, and most of the machines come on gigantic pallets made of dimensional lumber including 4x4s and 2x8s, and that is pretty useful for some larger projects like assembly tables.

This table is pretty simple, using the 4x4s for the legs and 2x8s for the apron.  It's pretty solid, and should work out well as we continue to find ways to improve our surroundings!

The Boxes: Chapter 3

The Fourth Use.  Well, once I get an idea I really push it to the max.  I designed The Boxes to easily come apart knowing they would have more uses.  Check out this post about The Boxes:  Chapter 2.  Our friend requested some spice racks.  She keeps her herbs and spices in mason jars, and she has a lot of them.  I was once again excited for a project.

The stock list came together pretty easily.  The new design called for 18"x24"x4" open box with handles on the side for easy picking up.  Wood, screws and handles all came from the previous projects.

I cut the pieces to length first and then sanded them well.  Perfect corners don't matter with this kind of thing, so I rounded everything.  I'm also not planning on putting a finish on the box, so smooth edges and faces are pretty important.

Next, I drilled holes and screwed it together.  Not too epic, but it was a pretty easy project altogether.  It was fun, and nice to work on something for a friend.

The Boxes: Chapter 2

The Third Use.  Remember the boxes I made for our wedding?  Me either... Here is a link:  The Boxes.  Those boxes were made with recycled pallets, giving that wood a second life.  That wood however, was always intended to have a third life.  After our wedding, we had many mementos including beautiful wedding cards that people had given us, a few handmade gifts, and the ropes we had used to "tie the knot."  We didn't want to loose track of those items, but had no place to put them, so I devised a project!  I thought I could reuse that wood from the boxes and make a Wedding Box.  Some of those pallets were made out of oak after all, and it would look quite nice.  

My design involved a 12"x12"x6" wood box, with a picture frame hinged top.  The picture frame would hold some dried flowers from our arrangements. 

The materials were fairly easy to find and included recycled pallet wood, reused screws, some glass from an old frame we found on the side of the road (it was in front of our apartment...one of our neighbors was throwing it out), and some new hinges.  We tried to find small used hinges, but craigslist just couldn't come through this time.

The execution was pretty simple.  I started by sanding the old pallet wood with some 80 grit sand paper on a belt sander.  I more or less squared up the pieces using a joiner and a table saw, and then cut them to size.  Next, I assembled them with a small finish nail gun, and joined two square boxes vertically with some pine blocks and screws.

The top was slightly more complicated.  I cut a piece of pine pallet wood so it measured 3/4"x1" and cut a 1/4" x 1/4" pocket for the glass to sit in.  I then cut the pieces I needed to size at a 45 degree angle so that they would join in a square like a picture frame.  The pieces were glued and nailed.  

The glass was very tricky.  I disassembled the large picture frame that it came in and carefully removed the two foot square piece of glass.  It obviously would have to be cut down to fit in my smaller frame.  The goal was to cut two 12"x12" pieces to create a sandwich for the flowers.  Cutting the glass involved drawing a line with a black marker and placing a ruler along that line.  I scored it with a rolling glass cutter, then put a skinny piece of wood under the score and pushed down on either side to snap it.  It worked!

Stephanie and I arranged the flowers between the glass, and then I placed it in the frame.  The glass is held in with window points, typically used for old single pane windows.

The result is pure magic... Well, maybe that's overstating it, but it does look nice.  We recently got some hinges and the box is now complete!  The flowers look great and at a glance you can see some of the items inside.  Maybe we will open it up on some future anniversary and remember the little things.

The Boxes

Creativity.  I have found in my life that creativity is one of the most valuable commodities when attempting any venture.  Thinking outside the box can mean the difference between accepting things the way they are and designing a way around it.  We got married this past October and, due to the pandemic, many things about our celebration had to change.  We had far fewer people (eight, including us), didn't require a bartender (because we had so few people, and that's just awkward), and we certainly didn't need a venue with a hundred-person capacity.

We adapted.  We rented a house instead of a hall, went to a local flower shop to buy our flowers.   All of our favors were purchased within 5 minutes of the rental house and were locally made.  The most enjoyable part however, was the making of the boxes.  We decided that, during our ceremony, we would like to be surrounded by mums.  That's right... the flower, not the mothers, though we were also grateful to be surrounded by both of ours.

Anyway, I got this idea to create some wooden boxes to put some of the flowers on in order to elevate them.  The boxes were just for show and would therefore be temporary, so we didn't want to buy something and be stuck with it later.  I decided to use pallet wood for the project.  A friend of ours also wanted some spice boxes made of pallet wood, so I decided that the boxes could have a third life after our ceremony.

Finding pallets is pretty simple.  Our friend works for a company that ships and receives items that come on pallets, and there was a pile in the back yard of their lot.  However, Craigslist is also full of them.  You might also notice them sitting outside a building; if you call, they'd likely allow you to take them.  They are free and, with some (serious) effort, will come apart.  They are typically made with pine wood, but I also found some made of maple and oak.  Pallets must be strong and durable because they are often used multiple times and over long stretches of time.  The nails are commonly stainless steel for this reason.

Taking the pallets apart was very difficult.  I used a hammer and flat bar to pry the slats off of the runners, and those stainless steel nails really hold on tight.  Ear muffs are essential because hitting a flat bar with a hammer will make your ears ring for days.  All in all, I used eight pallets for my project.  The runners were used for the tops and bottoms as they were made out of 1" - 1 1/2" thick pieces of pine or maple, and the slats were used for the verticals around the box.

Nothing is square, so I elected to spread the slats out.  It gave the final product a nice look, almost like an apple crate.  Everything was screwed together to facilitate easy disassembly later.

In the end, the boxes came out great.  They took an awful lot of effort but used very little in the way of new material.  Even the screws were left over from a previous project and will be used again after disassembly.