Stuff I Made

Friday, 27 April 2012
I’ve been meaning to do this for a while, and, since I’ve been writing about stuff I (and Owen) have made lately, I think now is a good time.

What follows are photos of things that I’ve made, or helped make. I am only including things that are made out of wood and that are still in existence. The reason for that second caveat is that if it doesn’t exist anymore, then I didn’t have a way to take a picture of it.

In collecting these photos, I noticed something: the items I’ve made out of wood were made at only two points in my life: While in compulsory school and while a father. Basically, it seems, I only make stuff out of wood if a teacher or a small child compels me to do so.

Anyway, here are the things I made while in school, in chronological order…

 Here’s my oldest wood-working (that I know of). I made this in third grade at Savage Elementary School (yes, that really was the school’s name). There really wasn’t too much “crafting” here – the teacher had a large bin of wooden blocks, we selected the one we liked, sanded it, wrote a message, glued photographs (or magazine pictures) and shellacked the hell out of it. You might look at this creation and think, “Hey, it looks like this was a gift to your parents. Why do you still have it?” The answer is: Because my mom gave it back to me a few years ago. Guess she didn’t like it anymore.

Here’s the backside (brace yourself):

Oh my god (pun intended)! What a dork I was am. And check out that superfont “S.D.” What’s with that? Guess I couldn’t be bothered to sand that off, so I just made a half-assed attempt at crossing it out.

Fast-forward to Junior High School. I took shop classes in 7th, 8th, and 9th grade, but this sanding block -both the first and simplest thing I made in Jr. High – is the only one still in existance. I made a cool wood robot that dispensed gumballs, a big clock that looked like a wrist-watch, and a tool box, but they’re all gone now. But here’s the trusty ol’ sanding block I made at age 12. I still use it, too.

 
To me, this clock represents a big jump forward in craftsmanship. Perhaps that’s because it had been three years since I made that sanding block. Or maybe it was because I actually cared. In fact, besides my film classes, wood shop was the only class where I really cared about what I was doing. I really wanted to do a good job on the assignments. According to a small tag on the inside of this clock, I completed it on April 12, 1991. As of today, 21 years later, it is sitting on a mantle as intended.

Here’s a kid-sized chair I made in the same class. This project was assigned concurrently with the clock (above), but I didn’t complete it until later in the year. According to the tag underneath the seat, I completed this chair on June 4, 1991.
Look closely and you can see, in between the right side of the blue seat and the wood frame, a small strip of tan paint. “What’s that doing there?” you ask. Well, for many years after I moved out of my parents’ house, my mom kept this chair. One day, she decided to paint the seat with tan wall paint. It was rough and scratchy and, coming from a woman who absolutely adores the color blue, was completely unexpected. Anyway, a few years ago my mom gave the chair to me (since I lived with someone who’s butt fit on the seat), and Jennifer succeeded in removed 99% of the paint.

Moving on to 11th grade, here was a quick “find you bearings” project that the teacher assigned to the class right away. I believe I finished it that first month (September 1991). This is one of the few items on the list that I do not own: my mom owns this basket and she took this picture for me.

Wall clock! I’m not sure why the teacher assigned another clock…but that’s high school for ya’. In front of the pendulum you may see an odd looking decal. That was an optional decoration that I purchased from the school. My dad applied it upside-down, and it’s flaking off, so I’ve been lobbying to have the decal removed for, oh, about 20 years now. No luck. Like the basket, this clock was made in the early months of 11th grade and currently resides at my mom’s house. She was kind enough to take this picture, though it does make me wonder: Why isn’t it hanging on one of her walls? My guess is that the man she lives with (a guy she calls “husband”) doesn’t want it hung up because it reminds him of me. This is the same reason why I don’t have an 8×10 portrait of him hanging in my house.

This wood chest took the bulk of my time in 11th grade wood class. According to the tag inside (which smells deliciously of cedar), I completed this project on May 20th, 1992. It currently resides in our living room. We use it to store blankets for those cold winter evenings. We also keep some spare coasters in it. So if you’re ever at our house and you say, “Hey, don’t you Neanderthals have any coasters?” The answer is, yes, smart-aleck, we do.

Finally, here’s a knife rack I made in my final few weeks of high school woods class (I didn’t take a wood shop class in 12th grade). I believe this fell under the heading of “Extra Credit.” At some point in the spring of ’92, when it became apparent that some students would complete their cedar chest several weeks before the semester’s end, the teacher offered this project as an optional assignment (he also began playing episodes of Home Improvement). I was not, by any means, the first student done with his or her cedar chest (and there was one “her” in our class), but in the few weeks of school between that May/June, I made this knife rack. According to the tag on the bottom, I completed it on June 10th, 1992.

Saturday, 28 April 2012
And here’s the stuff I made since emerging from the intellectual wasteland known as Rosemount High School:

Okay, so here’s the one anamoly in this list: I didn’t make this in school, and it has nothing to do with my kids. I just wanted a nice place to display my Star Trek action figures and ships, and my Dad offered to help me build something (he had the tools). So, in the summer of 1997, we built this. As shown in the picture, it sits on my desk at work where it offers itself as a conversation piece to the otherwise painful interactions between me and my co-workers.

Okay, now on to stuff for my kids…

With oodles of assistance from my brother-in-law and his brother, I made this cradle for baby-to-be in January of 2005. Jennifer supplied the instructions, which she found in a book she bought about making things for kids. Here it is from another angle:
Jennifer and her mother made the mattress and sheets to go inside. Underneath the mattress, Jennifer has used an engraver to write our kids’ names and birthdates. Both of our kids used this cradle as a naptime bed when they were infants.
Read more about the cradle, which I finished in January 2005, AT THIS LINK.

At some point in Owen’s very early life, my mother-in-law purchased a set of finger puppets for him. For whatever reason, I decided they would last longer and look better if I designed a holder for them. So I made this. The base, incidentally, is a leftover piece of 2×4 from the basement we were remodeling at the time.

Here’s the holder with some of the puppets removed, so you can better see the design:

I left two of the puppets on there because, well, elephants are heavy. And moving the other one would’ve been a bear.

Here’s the bottom of the puppet holder:

I engraved this little tag with Owen’s name and the date of completion (August 2006) and nailed it to the bottom. I also applied thick felt pads to the corners, mostly to prevent the tag from scratching the shelf it sits on.

In our first house, Owen had a great wood floor in his bedroom for zooming his toy cars around, but he didn’t have any ramps. So, one day, on my way home from work, I came up with the idea of building this ramp out of wood. I knew Jennifer and Owen wouldn’t be home, so I had the place to myself. Using scrap wood and spare paint, I made this in a single evening. It’s pretty ugly, really. And the tunnel was a last minute idea, which I had to add. Why? Because, after gluing and nailing the guard rails, I came up with the idea of included a barricade to hold the car at the top of the ramp until Owen pulls it. Problem was, I couldn’t fit the barricade in, so I had to torque on the guard rails to wedge it in there, and then I couldn’t true them up again. So then I put the tunnel on to keep the rails straight. Yeah, it’s a boring story.

I made this in December 2007 for Owen’s first full-fledged Xmas. The little wooden pieces glued all over were purchased at a store, but otherwise this was custom designed. Jennifer made the three bean bags, too, which are visible sitting on the holes. Oh – and I also helped to make the kid sitting in the foreground. Jennifer did most of the work, though. Anyway, the kid isn’t made out of wood, so she doesn’t belong on this list, anyway.

Card holder! I made this in the summer of 2008 (in our apartment’s dining room, to Jennifer’s chagrin) because Owen – who was old enough to understand and play card games with us – lacked the motor skills to not knock over the stack of cards every goddam time he drew or played a card. We first tried to remedy the problem by spending $20 on a piece of crap plastic card holder from Games by James. I used it once, pronounced it shitty, and declared: “I can make a card holder way better than this!” And so I did. We still pull this thing out every time we play a card game that doesn’t have a card holder (I’m looking at you, Sorry!).

I worked on this car on and off for about two years, constantly setting it aside until I had the right pieces. I even gave it to my brother-in-law and asked him to craft the wheels. He gave it back about 4 months later having purchased cabinet knobs to serve as tires. I finally finished painting this thing in time for Owen’s 4th birthday, in May 2009.

While going out on walks, and participating in nature hikes with Happy Trails, Owen liked to find big sticks and walk with them. “Hey,” I thought, “I could make him a really nice walking stick.” And so I did. This was really created from the ground up: I found a fallen branch at a State Park, stripped away the bark, and sanded it like mad. After applying copious coats of polyurethane, I bought a rubber stopper (intended for a chair) for the bottom of the stick and purchased a length of leather rope from a vendor at the state fair. I completed this project in the fall of 2009. One odd thing about the walking stick, though, is that being forced to hold it for more than thirty seconds instantly brings on severe depression…

Yeah, I’m not sure what made him so miserable, but man, this photo makes me laugh everytime.

Oh – there’s also this picture…

…from early 2010, which I’m including here for no other reason than because it shows how much Owen’s grown (compare his height to the stick), and it’s so stinkin’ cute.

And here is, once again, something I no longer own. I came up with the idea of making Isla a teether for Xmas (back when she was an infant), and my wife said I should make one for our nephew, too (he’s just a wee bit younger than Isla). So, I made this A, since his name starts with A (“Damn,” you say, “Your family must really like names that start with vowels.” “Yes,” I reply, “And the letter L, too”).
I finished my nephew’s teether first, as kind of a practice. Not sure if he still has it, but I’m glad I took a picture of it before giving it away (taking a picture of this, incidentally, is what first gave me the idea of photographing all of these projects).

Finally…

…here’s Isla’s I, shown in it’s current location atop the kids’ chalkboard in the playroom. I should mention that these two teethers were stained using tea, so no harsh chemicals were used on stuff intended for infants’ mouths. So get off my case.

More recently, I helped Owen make this: CLICK HERE.

I also had a small hand in helping my wife make this: CLICK HERE.