Let's see your homemade crafts!

[CMACDONALD1]

Here is my gas pump amplifier.

[jhwkns]

Originally Posted by CMACDONALD1

Here is my gas pump amplifier.

Cool, here's one that I built to look like and old radio. The amplifier is a 50yo mono vacuum tube hi-fi that I converted to a guitar amp.

[CMACDONALD1]

Originally Posted by jhwkns

Cool, here's one that I built to look like and old radio. The amplifier is a 50yo mono vacuum tube hi-fi that I converted to a guitar amp.

looks fantastic!

[flashed]

Ya'll are quite talented .

[KShortell]

Wow! What a bunch of talented guys.

Here are a few projects I've done over the last few years, most within the last couple. Wood shop in high school and mining industry experience as an adult have really paid off for me.


New headboard for the bed w/ room for a radio, books, etc. (red oak and oak plywood, carved wave and fleur de lis finial for decoration. The fleur de lis matches the curtain rod for the window and, well, I just like fleur de lis!).



Gun cart for NRA and CMP high power rifle competition (oak and poplar). The ammo box is removable.







Long gun vise / gun cleaning station. This was made completely of leftover materials from other projects. Even the stain and finish were "surplus". Cost = free, the best kind!



Modified Steadi-Stock for my Pentax K-x SLR camera. It really helps in shooting airplanes in flight at longer distances. It has a remote trigger assembly which I had to fabricate since, like most modern cameras, mine uses an infrared remote. The cable attaches to an "artificial finger" to depress the shutter release. I took the inspiration for the forend from the IWI Tavor bullpup rifle. The aluminum is chemically blackened, not painted.





Fishing rod rack (select white pine).



My new mailbox, my first ground-up masonry project. It has a welded steel rebar core encased in concrete for stability. I like this hybrid look much, much better than the "ammo bunker" look of round-top brick mailboxes. As I'm in the USCG AUX, I added our CG racing stripe and house number to mimic the front end of a CG cutter. The stripes are painted on for durability. I salvaged all of the bricks from the back yard and the original steps that I had to remove for the new deck. I dug many of them up when I laid the electric line out to the new garage I built. They were the remains of an old koi pond that I ran into. Again, free bricks = good!



Sorry for so many photos, but seeing others' projects and sharing my own is too much FUN!

[slomotion]

Semper Paratus! Good looking projects! Very nice mason work!
I lived in Dunedin up Rt 17 from Churchland in '77, '78 while assigned to CGC Ingham which tied up at Craney Island.

[KShortell]

Originally Posted by slomotion

Semper Paratus! Good looking projects! Very nice mason work!
I lived in Dunedin up Rt 17 from Churchland in '77, '78 while assigned to CGC Ingham which tied up at Craney Island.

I toured the INGHAM last April. She is now a museum ship in Key West. The cool thing is that she wasn't stripped like so many others are. It looks like the crew just got up and left one day. Even the manuals are still on the shelves!

http://www.uscgcingham.org/

[LockDoc]

-
Neat stuff guys. Only problem is I'm gettin' more ideas than I have time left to execute. This is one thread my wife isn't allowed to see...

LockDoc

[68_Shortbox]

Here is my latest knife. The handle scales are maple and the steel is 1095 high carbon.

[SeniorVerde]

Cool stuff on here!

I dabbled in custom guitar construction as well:

[SeniorVerde]

I was too cheap to buy furniture (didn't fit the single-guy expenditure profile: Food, Cars, or Tools) so I made my own kitchen chairs out of square tube and a busted truck tool box.

[Fredo]

Don't have anything for the truck forums, yet, except for this new project, so I'll put my first post here in homemade...
I designed and built this 24"x24" vacuum former so I could get away from using fiberglass for my projects.. It's due for a rebuild soon as it was a learn as you go project...... Changing the coils to 220v for more heat... Was having a problem up loading the pics, I decided to link to the thread... http://www.tk560.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=1362..
Now I'll try to post my last vacuuming project.... The reason it's on a toy truck is because my 66 Chev truck doesn't have a slider back window, and it need a new trans first before it gets a back slider........ (back slider?,wait, that sounds like me )
The third pic is of the plaster mold after it was poured, the fourth is the mold on the vacuum table, and the last is the front half in plastic before it's cut out..
The finished unit is on the truck and running..... It works as well as any swamp cooler will... It all depends on the relative humidity.. Today it's about 6-8%.
Have applied for a provisional patent even with the long odds... It was cheap enough if you diy and the specs. are not made public until a non-provisional patent is applied for..

[LockDoc]

Originally Posted by Fredo

Don't have anything for the truck forums, yet, except for this new project, so I'll put my first post here in homemade...
I designed and built this 24"x24" vacuum former so I could get away from using fiberglass for my projects.. It's due for a rebuild soon as it was a learn as you go project...... Changing the coils to 220v for more heat... Was having a problem up loading the pics, I decided to link to the thread... http://www.tk560.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=1362..
Now I'll try to post my last vacuuming project.... The reason it's on a toy truck is because my 66 Chev truck doesn't have a slider back window, and it need a new trans first before it gets a back slider........ (back slider?,wait, that sounds like me )
The third pic is of the plaster mold after it was poured, the fourth is the mold on the vacuum table, and the last is the front half in plastic before it's cut out..
The finished unit is on the truck and running..... It works as well as any swamp cooler will... It all depends on the relative humidity.. Today it's about 6-8%.
Have applied for a provisional patent even with the long odds... It was cheap enough if you diy and the specs. are not made public until a non-provisional patent is applied for..

Welcome to the board!! That looks pretty neat. Being from the North I'm not that familiar with swamp coolers. Do you put Ice in it for the cool air?

LockDoc

[DT1]

After almost choking on my water bill last summer (+ $400.00 Month), I decided to do something about it. My front yard has two rather large lawns so I decided to eliminate one of them in favor of some sort of arid type landscaping. I figured I'd save at least 30% on the water bill by replacing the lawn with something that needs little or no water.

This is a shot of the lawn about two weeks after I started to kill it and cut down two trees. The existing curbing had a radius in the corner, so I needed to straighten it out for fencing.




Then I had to remove the lawn by rototilling it out. When that was done I built a bridge over the curb for the Bobcat to get in.




Got the Bobcat and started to remove many yards of dirt.


And started to put back many yards of new dirt, in hopes of making a crude looking sort of mound.


I then just sort of raked and shaped...


After that I built a raised block planter against the wall so I can eventually plant Oleanders to hide it.


And laid in some curbing to separate the rock, hedge and mound area.


The next step was to erect a nice Idaho ceder split rail fence around the perimeter.




That's all I have for now but I hope I'll have it all completed in about another month.

[DT1]

Originally Posted by DT1

After almost choking on my water bill last summer (+ $400.00 Month), I decided to do something about it. My front yard has two rather large lawns so I decided to eliminate one of them in favor of some sort of arid type landscaping. I figured I'd save at least 30% on the water bill by replacing the lawn with something that needs little or no water.

This is a shot of the lawn about two weeks after I started to kill it and cut down two trees. The existing curbing had a radius in the corner, so I needed to straighten it out for fencing.




Then I had to remove the lawn by rototilling it out. When that was done I built a bridge over the curb for the Bobcat to get in.




Got the Bobcat and started to remove many yards of dirt.


And started to put back many yards of new dirt, in hopes of making a crude looking sort of mound.


I then just sort of raked and shaped...


After that I built a raised block planter against the wall so I can eventually plant Oleanders to hide it.


And laid in some curbing to separate the rock, hedge and mound area.


The next step was to erect a nice Idaho ceder split rail fence around the perimeter.




That's all I have for now but I hope I'll have it all completed in about another month.

I finished the hard part this weekend. Laid down the weed block and spread a dump truck load of rock. My wife came out and gave her approval too. Next week I'll start planting.

Weed block


Rock

[DT1]

Ok, I got it pretty well finished this weekend. It was harder than expected and more expensive, but what isn't these days. The unplanted pots on the mounds are my wife's and I guess she'll get around to putting them in some day.

[DT1]

Originally Posted by DT1

Ok, I got it pretty well finished this weekend. It was harder than expected and more expensive, but what isn't these days. The unplanted pots on the mounds are my wife's and I guess she'll get around to putting them in some day.

Well, It's been about a year since I finished and my local water company now has a $1.00 per Sq. Ft incentive to remove grass. They will only pay for a Max of 1000 Sq Ft (I have another 1,700 Sq Ft to remove) but I figure it's more than I got for this side and better than nothing. Here are some Pictures of the project...

































It turns out in the fine print, the water company doesn't pay for the footage of grass removed after all. They only pay for the footage of plants replaced, so I'll probably only get around $100.00

[slomotion]

Excellent! I'll be following this closely. Are you free-lancing or do you have a plan or picture you're following? Pea gravel, and pavers, or just low ground cover?
Keep us posted!

[DT1]

Originally Posted by slomotion

Excellent! I'll be following this closely. Are you free-lancing or do you have a plan or picture you're following? Pea gravel, and pavers, or just low ground cover?
Keep us posted!

I just have a picture in my head as to what I want it to look like. The area between the curbing will get an assortment of 1-3 inch Arizona River Rock. The area just behind the fencing will get Juniper hedging all around. The mounded area in the center will get a Myrtle tree on each mound and bordered with various Cacti and ground cover. The raised planter will get oleanders to hide the block wall.

[flashed]

Very impressive ,I like that .

[flashed]

That looks great ,how did you do the curbing ,by hand or a machine of some sort ?

[DT1]

Thanks, the curbing was the only part that I had to contract out. They come in with a machine specially designed to lay it. It's a small electric thing on wheels with a hopper that comes with different shaped dies depending on what shape you desire. That part only took about an hour to do.

[Fredo]

Been on vacation, thought I'd do this follow up on my first post with some data I've collected after running the cooler the past few weeks...
Also I cast this in aluminum to replace the original shift knob that came with the truck.. The casting is still on the sprue.. Needs to be cut off, drilled and tapped yet..
With the swamp cooler, I used a 5 gal bucket as a reservoir and a 12v bilge pump to recirculate the water over the pad... This proto-type was used for testing different type pads for air flow volume and temp data... Using PWM speed controllers, air flow and and water feed are controllable from 0-100% ... On a dry day it'll deliver air at 24-28*f below ambient air.. When I say dry I mean 2-8% humidity, with an average of 6% at days end..
Max air flow on this model was 8-10 cubic ft a second.... Measured with a cheap anemometer at +/- 3.5%.. and depending on what pad was being tested... Even with the error factor, the temp. shift between conditioned air and ambient air should be close to accurate.. This morning 10:30 ambient air 92*f humidity 13%, fan on low, air off the cooler 66*f...
My 24/7 shadow couldn't go with me in the summer because of the heat, and the fact that sometimes she needs to stay in the truck for a short time... With this she sits in a cool breeze and keeps an eye on me and we both feel better...

[motornut]

Bought this 20' 1976 terry taurus trailer "cheap" it had a leak somewhere.....we found it!
and rebuilt it.

[motornut]

My son wanted more storage,we built a box for under his bed.
and the finish was looking thinned...
just the mattress ontop of 3/4 plywood
stained/cleared to match his set