10/31/2011

Chair Repair

We've been slowly putting together a dining set over at our house. A few months ago we found some chairs in need of some love on craigslist. A friend re-covered the worn out seats. In the meantime, we had scored a table from a store in Santa Cruz and our dining set was almost complete. Then, a day after our chairs came back re-covered, padded and looking great, one of the chairs snapped. I wasn't too surprised and I had already noticed that two of the chairs had already snapped in the same exact position. Luckily, I have the skills and tools to fix such a crack.


Here's the chair.



I used a knife and these paint brushes to get the glue into tight spots.



Here's the crack itself, held open with a screwdriver.



Here is a dry run of the clamping process. Whenever you're gluing something, always do a dry-clamp first. I taped that piece of wax paper resting on the seat in place around the leg, just in case I spilled some glue.


 
 





You can see that I used enough glue by the way it's gushing out of the crack. Also, those little wooden blocks are to protect the surface of the chairs from getting marked up from the clamps. I also wrapped the wooden blocks in packing tape so they wouldn't stick to the glue.



Good as new!



Barely noticeable, right?

10/25/2011

Be Mission Market

Mission Local is a great local blog that covers all the important shootings in my neighborhood! I kid, I kid. They cover a wide range of topics and I read their blog on a regular basis. So, I'm pretty excited to be a part of their new marketplace, the Be Mission Market, where they sell products from vendors based in San Francisco's Mission District. You can check it out here: http://missionlocal.org/bemission/


10/17/2011

Low Horse

I've talked a bit about how I switched my office job's old desk with a standing desk. I had hoped that this stool would allow me to rest my feet on the lower rung when I wasn't sitting on it but there wasn't enough room for my knees to fit underneath the seat. I remembered seeing a project via Make a while back for some low saw horses and I decided to just make one as a foot rail. This was my first attempt at doing joinery with hand tools only. I learned a lot and the project turned out just fine. Here's the tutorial from Make if you're interested: http://makeprojects.com/Project/Low-Horses/813/1

As with any project, careful measuring in the beginning will save you heartache in end. I had just sharpened my chisels so this was a great project to try them out on.

Here are the feet before I carved them. I just used some simple pine 2x4s I had lying around.

Here is the glue-up of the foot and the rail.

 
One of my joints fit perfectly. The other? Not so much but it still held together after the glue-up.
 
If this was something that I was going to use in my shop, I would have taken the time to really smooth those rounded edges but since this is something that I'm using in my cubicle to put my feet on, I took some liberties.

Here's my set-up. My keyboard and mouse are on a (very fancy) pull-out tray and now I can rest my feet on my standing rail all I want.

10/05/2011

Mail Center

My wife and I have had this little crate as our mail center for a long time lying flat on a table in our hallway. We recently sold the hallway table and I realized that the crate didn't have to lay flat anymore. I used some copper wire wrapped around small nails to make sure the mail doesn't fall out. I ended up adding two more rows of wire after the initial two pictured below. I also gave it a good once-over with some sandpaper because you know I like it smooth.We've hung it up and it's been working perfectly for weeks now.