Meaningful Materials
It’s lumber season at our place on Whidbey Island — winter tides and storms carry tons of driftwood to the back yard. Mostly firs that have fallen off the high banks or escaped from log booms, but lots of Alder, Maple, Cedar and old construction timbers mix it up. I’ve got stacks of this stuff…
Inside-Out Christmas Ornament
Since getting my lathe three years ago I’ve started a tradition of turning an ornament using the trunk of our family Christmas tree. Year one was a pretty but simple blobby thing. Year two was a bell, complete with a second little brass bell hanging inside. This year I wanted to try “inside-out” turning, a…
Every Mistake
I’ve been working on myself for fifty-four years; software for about forty; kids for almost thirty; and (as Jim says) sawdust for six or so. Whatever the domain, sometimes projects go great and sometimes they, well, don’t. But it’s hard for me to think of anything I’ve tried — even the worst of them —…
Milling (boards) and drilling (pockets)
Have I mentioned how much I love our place on Whidbey Island? The ocean and animals are always present, and the house is built perfectly to take advantage of all that natural beauty. But the kitchen? Eh. I mean, it works fine, it’s just, well, ugly. The folks we bought from never found a clearance…
Three Logs, a Chainsaw, and the Scary Wheel of Death
A few weeks ago upon hauling another awesome log up off of the beach, I realized that there was in fact nowhere to put it. Every mostly-out-of-the-rain nook and cranny on our property was full up with logs and branches and stumps waiting to be made into, well, something cool. Time to use up some…
Rummikub on the Glowforge, a Journey
This summer our neighbors introduced Lara and me to Rummikub, which despite the weird name turns out to be a super-fun game played with a set of 106 tiles numbered 1-13 in four colors/suits plus two jokers. Tile games like this should be as nice to look at as they are to play — but…
A Chain from a Branch
By far the best part of our place in Bellevue is the trees. Along with the ubiquitous firs and alders, we’ve got beautiful cottonwoods, (self-seeding) cedars and absolutely enormous maples. This time of year, the wind and rain bury the yard in huge drifts of leaves, and inevitably a few big branches come down. I…
Weather, Wood, and Wifi
Who doesn’t love the weather? It’s universally relevant, physically amazing, frequently dramatic, and overflows with data that almost — but never quite — lets us predict its behavior. Weather inspires a never-ending array of super-awesome gadgets and gizmos — beautiful antique barometers, science projects that turn DC motors into anemometers, classic home weather stations from…
I Got a Rock
The title here isn’t particularly relevant, I just never miss an opportunity to quote It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown. A few months ago, a friend sent me some pictures of cool stone-lidded ring boxes and asked if I thought I could make one for her daughter’s wedding. I was 100% not convinced I could,…
Lincoln Logs FTW
A few weeks back I shared some pictures of the driftwood gate at the corner of our Whidbey place. Since then, I managed to actually finish the fence that runs from that corner along the bulkhead (only took three years). The last step of that was setting the pro-manila rope; turns out there are few…
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