Sand Box

For years I have been continually frustrated by all my attempts at storing sand paper.  Of late I tried creating dividers in a milk crate, but invariable the paper would slump to the bottom and the whole box would be a mess with the 5" sanding discs for the electric sander.   I've had a design for a box in mind for quite some time, but just now had some time to slam it together.

Found these very small  brass card pulls at House of Antique Hardware

It's a hefty box with 7 1-inch drawers each holing the rectangular and round papers of each grade.  Usually 60, 80, 100, 120, 150, 220, 600.  A place for the sander, sanding block and a some odds and ends on top.  The handle folds down.  The drawer faces were cut from a single piece of salvaged Doug fir.  The drawers glide on their bottoms into dado cut channels on the side

It still needs some drawer knobs (maybe?), but it's already functional and a big improvement.

More Cutting Boards

I've been meaning to make more cutting boards. Having a few, thinly cut strips of wood left from doing the sand box I decided to glue them up to some walnut. But the resulting board was smaller than I wanted. The walnut stock I had was cut to about 2"x3" and I thought it might look good to suspend the laminated portion between end caps that would serve as massive feet. The result...

Back: Light wood for both was from a single 4x4 x 3' old growth, vertical grain Doug Fir.  Front is salvaged Doug Fir.

I was very pleased with the look and quickly made two more.  I have a fourth one that is even more ambitious in the final gluing stage now.

From Scratch

SCRATCH is a relatively new computer programming language from MIT.  Designed to teach kids the elements and structures of programming, it nonetheless offers a lot of sophisticated and powerful features.  Its keys to success are: a drag-and-drop interface, minimizes need to  the syntax exaclty right.

While trying to play a homemade civil war game with Campbell, and finding the decision making quarter landing far afield, I determined to make an electronic one using SCRATCH.  I knew of SCRATCH because it was used in his school and we had started coding a little video game together.  fact, below is version V, but versions 1 and 2 were developed with  Campbell.

Learn more about this project \