Update on the Triton Tools Competition

So the contest ended on the May 31st. I submitted the cradle plans and my son submitted the car launcher.  I was told the judging would be completed by June 30th. On June 25th I received an email from them.

Dear Brad,

            Many thanks for your submission for the Triton Masters of Wood plans competition. I am delighted to be able to inform you that your entry “Toy Car Launcher” has won in the Kids category. This is a great achievement, we had a huge number of entries and the standard was very high. The judges really liked your project idea and the plans that were submitted, pretty much everyone wants to make it.

We will be contacting you again shortly to confirm the delivery arrangements for your prize of a Triton Workcentre with contractor saw, router table and a TRA001 router.

Once again congratulations and thanks for supporting Triton with this competition. We will be making the public announcement of the winners at the end of this week.

Yours Sincerely

Steve Hewson

Global Brand Manager

Triton

My son had won a t-shirt.  He is paying me the table saw and router for the write up. I charged a lot for writing up his project.  It was exciting to see him read the email and realize that he won.  He was excited too.
Here is the link to the project winners.  Please note that these plans are a little more detailed than what I normally provide.  I don't usually put pictures with the assembly of the project.  This is impart due to file size and mostly forget to take pictures of the project.
I am glad I entered.  My son is happy to know that he is better than me at wood working.  That may not be quite true, he does have a much bigger imagination than I do.  Grateful that he was able to express it in a positive way.

The Pizza Peel

My family loves to make and eat pizza.  It has been a while coming and I was having plans of grandeur of what my pizza peel was going to look like and how it was going to be made.  I wanted to have an inlay of the letter "A" in it.  made of hickory and walnut.  This is what came out:

I wanted to do those things, but I also just wanted to get out in the shop and make something.  I had some glued up hickory and that is what I used.  The design was my largest pizza stone as a template.  and then I added a handle on the bottom of it.  The hardest part was putting the profiles on the handle.  It was a matter of putting scrap underneath to support it while I ran it through the router.  Sometimes it is good to just get back out in the garage.

The Right Tools for the Job

I have a project I have been working on for the past few months where the entire purpose was to make mortise and tenons.  It is a high chair.  I don't plan on selling these plans, I will make an easier version to sell.  Being true to my self, I was making two, one to donate, one to sell.  Each chair takes 18 mortises.  So here is what I have learned so far.
First, I have a set of cheap bench chisels.  I have a good sharpening system so I sharpened them up. They worked well for what I can compare it too.  I did notice a couple of things with them.  I have heard that the nice bench chisels are sharp on the sides.  This is to cut the wood cleanly in the corners.  Mine have about an eighth inch of flat on the sides that crushed the fibers.  Not a big deal because no one would see them.
Second lesson was about a marking knife.  I never saw the point of one.  A pencil always seemed to worked for me and a knife line was always hard to see.  I heard that I needed to use a marking knife on mortises so I used an X-acto knife for a marking knife.  The reason is because to edge of the chisel will sit in the knife mark not on a pencil mark.  This helped keep my mortises consistent in size.
The third lesson came from the dry fit.  Mortises need to be cut straight.  I believe it was the first couple that cut were not straight and caused the entire project to be bent out of shape.  I might have been able to fix it, but I cut a mortise on the wrong side of one of the legs which was repairable.  So now I am down to one high chair to donate.
I am having fun learning this, however it does take a lot longer than exposed dowels.  The dry fit showed that it was a much stronger chair.  Hopefully it will be completed in a month.

Car Launcher

Triton tools is putting on a design competition (ends May 31).   I put in my redesigned cradle.  We will see what happens there.  I looked over the rules and there was no age limit.  It surprised me because the awards are a table saw and router.  The interesting thing about the competition was the groupings.  Top prize was the master level, then the same prizes for beginner, intermediate and advanced.  The group that surprised me was the kid’s project.  My cradle was entered in the intermediate group.  I talked to my oldest about it and we decided that we would make a car launcher.  Over the last few weeks we designed and built the car launcher.  He did most of the work and I did the write up. 

Once he approved the plans we started cutting.  It took a lot longer than I thought it would.  I will say that I was a successful parent on the project.  He had to mark all the holes and lengths.  He also had to cut through half the board before I helped.  I set up the drill press but he drilled the holes.  He assembled it.  We had to make a few adjustments to the plan along the way, and it works.

The project was basic at the core, I still learned from it while enjoying time with my son.  All wood could be purchased from a big box store.  The axles need to be purchased at an arts and craft store.  I did nothing to prep the wood either.  I have been holding off on using hand tools because I do not know how to set them up.  I fear if I set them up wrong or they are not sharp, the bad experience will deter me from using them again.  I will say, the box store saw and miter box is not very good.  I learned that even simple designs need to be adjusted.  I thought a bottom was needed and it was not.  I tried put a switch so that when pushed it would fire the launcher.  That did not work.  My oldest like the project and enjoyed building it.

I hope that this is the start of some “build it yourself” projects that I hope to develop.  That is next year.

Taping Glue Up Panels

I read a tip once about adding tape when gluing up panels to help cleaning up squeeze out.  When gluing up panels first put them in the clamps and clamp them tight.  Put masking tape on over the joint.  Remove the panel from the clamp and do it again for the other side.  Cut the tape on the seam of the joint.  Add glue and clamp the panel back up.  After the glue dries peel the tape off and squeeze out come off with it.

I am working on some more cradles and the bottom panel is solid wood.  I have a lot of ¼” material that I would like to use up.  However there is not a lot of material that I can still plane off.  I did not want to deal with removing a lot of squeeze out and planing the board much thinner.  This is why taping the glue up tip came up.

Not a bad tip.  As normal it was not an immediate success.  First was I expected the tape to come right off.  It tore around the squeeze out.  An old sharp chisel was used to take the rest of the tape off.  It came off clean.  I did not have any tear out and I only need to touch up the glue joint.  A word of caution, make sure the tape does not get inside the joint.  That will never come out.  I use blue painter’s tape so that will stick out all down the joint.

I will probably use this tip again.