Meeting with the Publisher

 My family decided to go to Hershey Park in May because the kids had a day off school. We were going
to spend a couple of days in Pennsylvania. Just for fun, I looked up Fox Chapel Publishing. They are the
publishing company that has published several of my plans. They were located about ½ hour from
Hershey Park. We made it part of the trip to go visit them. (I did check with them first). They had candy
at the front desk, so the kids were happy. I also dropped off the tractor design so I did not have to ship
it.
We talked about future projects. It was nice to meet the group there. They were extremely friendly. I
let them know I am open to new design ideas. They already suggested another one that I hope to finish
around Christmas this year.

Animated toys

 I received a book on how to make animated toys a few years back. It was something that I have wanted
to try and different from the vehicles I have been making. I was hoping that this would help me into
new design ideas. I compliment the author and the work he has done to make these toys. The plans
were done well and easy to follow.
I really liked the concept of the toys, but I did not like how they went together. There were a lot of small
parts and purchased parts that needed to be cut down. I felt that the parts were really small for the
target kid age. This may be the toys that I decided to make. The dinosaurs had a lot of parts and were
on the more complicated side. Looking back the basic toys would probably be just as fun or better than
the more complicated ones. I will probably not make any more of the multiple linkage toys. From an
engineer standpoint, I can appreciate the design of these toys. I may make some of the simpler toys at
another time. These toys do take a lot of different thickness of wood which makes it a little more
challenging to plan.

Year in Review 2022

I had fun this year.  not as many projects and no new toy designs.  The Etsy shop is going well.  I have had a couple of commission jobs from it.  It is nice not to have to do a lot of painting and repairs on a house.  I was able to get the garage mostly setup.  There are some minor things here and there to work on.  Now it is more about getting things cleaned up than workable.  

This year I purchased a new cabinet saw.  It is the Laguna Fusion 2.  I am really happy with it.  It has the safety devices on it that I was missing on my last saw (riving knife and anti kickback).  It is so much quieter than my old saw.  It was a good purchase and enjoy using it.  I just finished up my first workbench for me.  It is more than just saw horses and a sheet of plywood.  It has drawers for storage for all the tools that I frequently use.  I also added t-track on the outside edge so that I can clamp pieces to it.  It isn't fancy, but it is solid.  Blog post on that will be latter.

Favorite project was the blanket chest.  It looks good and came together well.  I like how solid it is and the lid does not slam shut.  I probably should of had a lighter lid but I like how it looks.

I did some animated toys this year from a book I got a while back.  Again the blog post will be latter because I have to put them together.  I was thinking that this would be a next phase in my design.  I am not thinking that anymore.  In short, the designer does a great job and amazing work.  The small pieces and the inability to lock the small parts in place make them a choking hazard.  I just was not impressed with them.  I will have to think of some other things to design

Business is holding steady.  Etsy has been doing well.   I have not done anything to grow business out here.  There are a lot of craft fairs, but I am not sure if I want to go through and get a Virginia sellers license.  Time will tell on that.  I am enjoying what I am doing now. I was able to donate to the Laurel house this year and also to operation Santa.  I had some kids help make the donation toys this year.  It was a lot of fun and will continue to ask for help.

Next year is already booked out.  I have been asked to make a toy train from a graphic.  I have started the design part.  This should take about three months.  I am going to be making chest of drawers for our room this year.  That will take most of the summer.  I am also looking at a repeat customer that runs and week long church camp and part of the time is spent building four projects.  I have the toy donations that I will be working on as well as the many ornaments to do this year.

Blanket Chest

 This is the next piece in our bedroom furniture.  This gets the sheets and blankets out of my son's closet.  This project posed some design concerns.  The first one was how it was going to fit in with the rest of the bedroom furniture.  I am using a mission style.  I have kept open sides but the chest cannot have open sides or front.  There were a lot of different ideas that I had to accomplish this look.  The one that I settled on was grooving all the cherry parts and the walnut was in insert panel.  

Another design concern was the weight of the lid.  The lid is made of three pieces of 1 3/4" thick cherry.  The total weight of the lid is 35 lbs.  I did not want the lid slamming shut and hurting someone.  There is not a lid stay on the the market, that I could find, to handle a 51" x 21" top with that weight.  I did find torsion hinges from Rockler that I liked.  The calculator does work but it said my top was too big.  If I took the lid and divided it into two lids, it said to use 2  - 60 inch-pounds torsion hinges.  So it takes 240 inch pounds to open the chest.  The lid does not slam shut.  I am happy the way the lid turned out.

The lesson learned from the lid is that the case needs to be heavier than the lid.  It does once it was filled.  When it wasn't, it was a tipping hazard.  

Other designs features that are part of the chest:

• The bottom of the chest is made from tongue and grooved aromatic cedar,  It is said to repel bugs so I put it in our of tradition
• The top has two battens that are installed with sliding dovetails.  This is the first time using this type of joint,  I did not execute it as well as I had hoped but it still works to keep the top flat.  This was the part that I was most nervous about because if I screwed it up it is a lot of wood that becomes firewood,
• All joints are mortise and tenons.  I made these using a router instead of hand chopping them out.  This seemed to be easier then drilling and cleaning them out.  They were a more consistent making the tenons easier to make.
• Inserts are walnut.  I was going to make them out of maple for the contrast.  I am glad I didn't.  The cherry will darken over time.  The two wood tones will compliment over time.
• The front was originally going to look like two drawers.  It was not going to look as good.  I was also going to add an internal tray.  That also was removed.

I really like how the features come together.  This was a challenge in getting all the lines to line up and offsets look the same.  There are a couple of things that did not go as plan.  The parts for the sides should have been the same for the front and back.  I was off by 1/4".  It all worked out.  

The other design feature is the inserts are not glued into the center curved pieces.  This is to allow the wood to expand and contract.  It may never cause a problem but I did not want the joints to break over time.

I like how the project turned out and it fits with the other bedroom furniture.  The next piece is going to be the chest of drawers.  That is next year

Buildable Toys for a Church

 I was contacted by a church in the south about making kits for youth to build at their youth camp. Of course I said yes and under costed the project. It is a little more difficult to mass produce build your own projects. I didn’t have a belt sander to make everything flat and smooth. 

They requested 4 projects and 15 of each. I could not do all the toys the person wanted, because I did not have the time to redesign so they can be put together by kids. They turned out all right. I don’t know how easy they were to assemble, but I got good feedback from them.

Simple Shop Projects

 I had a couple of small projects that I wanted to do for the garage since we moved in. Both were out of need. I have been working on using the Triton router table more. It is better than my bench top and has more functionality to it. The problem is that it is not easy to move for two reasons. The first is that all the attachments (saw and router) are underneath it and it is not mobile. The second is that it is a flat surface that is a catch all for projects and battery chargers.

I had a couple of thick pieces of “scrap” I purchased from another woodworker. The piece I used was 2” thick 8” wide and 24” long of red oak. I made a floating shelf out of the piece to hold my lawn mower batteries and the cordless system batteries. I cheated and just put a groove in the shelf instead of pocketing out the space for the wall mounting bracket.

The other project was a clamp rack for my larger clamps. I had them hanging from shelf supports. It was working but I wanted to hang them on the wall. I looked at purchasing some but I had several 2x4’s that would do the job just as well. It was a quick project but it made a huge difference in the accessibility of the clamps.

Next shop improvement project is my workbench.

Saburrtooth Burrs

 I am going to try some intarsia projects this year. A lot of them will require shaping and detailing. Some of which I can do with sand paper but others I need to take a lot off. I have used the sanding drums on the Dremel and some of the carving tools that come with the Dremel. I have been watching some videos on the process and someone recommended the saburrtooth brand burs. They were a little more then I hoped, but not unreasonable after using them. The set was about $100.

I have used them on creating deeper profiles on some animated toys that I am making. These things will take material off. These look like little medieval weapons. The will not do a finish ready surface and I will say you will start at a rougher grit sand paper to get it ready. It beats the tool wear that happens on the Dremel carving tools. I would burn them up as well as the sanding drums before finishing the part.