The "I just made..." thread.

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Red Squirrel

No Lifer
May 24, 2003
70,228
13,609
126
www.anyf.ca
I posted about this in the bought thread when I bought he materials for it but figured it's more fit for this thread.

Made a deck box. Roughly 7.5' x 2' wide and about 2' deep. The biggest available for sale were like $400+, so I spent $300ish in materials and probably over $400 in man hours to make this one. :p

Dropped it off at my off grid property and it was raining the entire time we were driving there and it didn't get wet inside so that was a good test. Definitely needed 2 people to move that though.

I set it up so I can put a lock on it, but honestly if someone wants to steal they're just going to cut a hole through it with a chainsaw or even break the lock so there's no sense in putting a lock. Going to avoid keeping stuff of value in there, it's mostly for camping chairs, kindling, paper, lighter, bug spray, sun block some hand tools and stuff of that nature. Just to save having to bring that stuff back and forth each time.



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Start of piecing it together

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Top done


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Painted




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In it's final resting place


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Was originally going to rely on just paint for weatherproofing but decided to put a plastic panel instead, also added drip edge at the higher point as water could potentially trickle down along the back wall. May paint the inside too at some point but was running out of paint and just wanted to get the outside done.

Once I build a shed I will use this for kindling and small pieces of firewood for making it easier to start fires.
 

purbeast0

No Lifer
Sep 13, 2001
53,554
6,381
126
Wrapped up converting one of my Rush 2049 cabinets with an LCD monitor in anticipation of turning it into a racing emulation cabinet in the next month or so. I think it came out very well and nearly looks stock IMO. Now I have to do it to my other one.

I got my hands on 2 16:10 25.5" ASUS monitors which are the best possible fit for both 4:3 and 16:9 games in this thing, and was tricky to find considering it's a 15 year old monitor and I saw less than 10 of them across the entire country.

 

Chaotic42

Lifer
Jun 15, 2001
34,597
1,757
126
Hmm, seems like JB Weld and super flat, clean aluminum aren't a great match. I scratched a bunch of lines into the two pieces that came apart, we'll see if that works better. I'm not really set up to weld aluminum and screws would be a headache.
 

IronWing

No Lifer
Jul 20, 2001
72,402
32,976
136
Hmm, seems like JB Weld and super flat, clean aluminum aren't a great match. I scratched a bunch of lines into the two pieces that came apart, we'll see if that works better. I'm not really set up to weld aluminum and screws would be a headache.
Doesn't that make thermite?
 

Chaotic42

Lifer
Jun 15, 2001
34,597
1,757
126
Doesn't that make thermite?
JB Weld is just epoxy and a little titanium dioxide as far as I know, so it might make a trivial amount of titanium thermite. I wonder if I could make some myself and use it to weld the pieces together? :p
 

Chaotic42

Lifer
Jun 15, 2001
34,597
1,757
126
Benzil aka 1,2-Diphenylethane-1,2-dione. Such fluff, much yellow. Is this what Nelly was talking about people selling here in St Louis? We may never know.

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Red Squirrel

No Lifer
May 24, 2003
70,228
13,609
126
www.anyf.ca
Is gallium conductive? Could probably do some really interesting stuff with that with electricity. Ideally in an enclosed space like inside a mason jar or something. Maybe some sort of DIY fluorescent bulb or something.
 

Chaotic42

Lifer
Jun 15, 2001
34,597
1,757
126
Is gallium conductive? Could probably do some really interesting stuff with that with electricity. Ideally in an enclosed space like inside a mason jar or something. Maybe some sort of DIY fluorescent bulb or something.
Yep. My understanding is that the liquid metal heatsink compound is just a variation on the standard galinstan (gallium, indium, tin) recipe.
 

snoopy7548

Diamond Member
Jan 1, 2005
8,241
5,318
146
I made a table top, which will become my dining table. Just need to trim and profile the edges (haven't decided on a profile yet, maybe just a chamfer), sand and stain, then make the legs. It's all reclaimed wood I've had for years and only finally got around to starting to a few months ago. The middle board is hickory, the breadboard ends are cherry, and the rest are maple.

This was my first time attempting breadboard ends, and I'm pretty sure I did them correctly; 1" tongue, ~2 3/4" tenons (2/3 width of the breadboard) with 1/8" oversize on width, glued only the middle tenon and dowel, and elongated the dowel holes except for the middle tenon. I also offset the dowel holes on the tenons ~1/32" from the holes on the breadboards, which pulls the breadboards nice and tight against the top.

I made the dowels using some maple cut-offs (same wood as the top), just using a steel plate that I drilled a bunch of holes into. The cherry I used is fairly bug-eaten and has knots, and the one piece with the large missing knot made a great feature to highlight the middle tenon.

I'm probably going to use Waterlox for finishing it, but unlike my desk, I'll most likely just use the original sealer/finish and not complete it with the satin finish, which gave me some streaking and yellowed the wood more than I had expected.

I wish I could do this kind of stuff full-time...

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snoopy7548

Diamond Member
Jan 1, 2005
8,241
5,318
146
Not going to do resin fill?

If you're talking about clear epoxy resin, maybe. I did it with my desk on the small knots/voids and nail holes and it came out well. But I'm sort of leaning towards leaving everything as-is just to keep the character/texture more prominent, if that makes sense.
 
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sdifox

No Lifer
Sep 30, 2005
99,477
17,594
126
If you're talking about clear epoxy resin, maybe. I did it with my desk on the small knots/voids and nail holes and it came out well. But I'm sort of leaning towards leaving everything as-is just to keep the character/texture more prominent, if that makes sense.
it's all fun and game til your micro sim drops into your table.
 
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lxskllr

No Lifer
Nov 30, 2004
59,538
10,049
126
If you're talking about clear epoxy resin, maybe. I did it with my desk on the small knots/voids and nail holes and it came out well. But I'm sort of leaning towards leaving everything as-is just to keep the character/texture more prominent, if that makes sense.
I agree with you. Natural wood's better.