Maker's Portfolio

By way of shameless self promotion, I thought to add some pictures of some other things I've made in my hope that someday I can make stuff as a profession (other than as a tradesman that is... I make other people's stuff all the time) I've this terrible habit of keeping scrap and stealing machine time from my bosses (who don't appear to mind, and even offer suggestions along the way) but the thing is, I do this stuff without a budget - to the point where I wish I had a shoestring budget!

Please don't call me an artist! I want to make useful things that are beautiful - I'm not an artist!

NOTE: Some pictures are winter and very early spring...

Anyway, here's some of the things I've made:

This is the view of my pond from my sitting bench; this is where I contemplate reality... or geek out on the floaters in the pond :)

Here is a "Garden Box" with the "Flower Frame" Espalier lattice.

White oak, Ceramic Tiles, and Chicken wire on an old mirror frame.

 Holy Tomato!

 View of my greenhouse from the door

The Tributary House Ltd. Plotting Tool Kit. It contains a Tri-Square, Oblique Square, Flat Square, T-Bevel, and Graduated Triangle. 

Mahogany, Baltic Birch, Acrylic, Cherry, and Reclaimed White Cedar Fence. Under the "Pillow" is some Aspen Wool.

A place for a doggo. Dog run with a dog-house commissioned by a friend of Tributary House.

Deck rail sections, 20 ga roofing steel, galvanized fence posts and St. Augustine Grass-sod

 A Tool Chest. I made this with some salvaged cedar fence pickets, and I thought that it would be awesome to try that Japanese Burnt Wood Technique (sounds almost kung-fooey, but I don't know the word for it) on the plywood panels. The tools that I put in there are just some Harbor Freight and Ebay specials, but it makes it look neater, don't you think?

A very awesome series of "hold-fast" clamps that I made for my assembly table - the one above is a mix of Poplar, Mahogany, Baltic-Birch, and whatever a 3/8" dowel is made of (came in a jar with a bunch more!) The ones below also have Alder in them (except the one on the far left, that's the same as the one above).

*The bird on the wire is my friend the Ringneck Dove - I've known him for a few years, and he likes my pond. He's cool!

I salvaged the metal bars from an old bed-frame (I think it was a futon - the frame looked like jail-bars and I polished the black paint off of the lengths of tube) The ones with levers have a cam action, while the one without the lever is a simple smacker-with-a-hammer type. Each one has a little spot of leather on the business-end so as not to mar the work, and to increase holding goodness :)

Here are just some doohickies that I made, for the love of making doohickies! Steel, Copper, Brass, Aluminum, Paper, Cherry Wood, Mahogany Veneer, Leather, and Canvas.

Making the globe was fun, I had to adapt a formula for finding the radius of an arc, given the depth from a chord to the arc. Indexed it to the circumference of the finished globe, and the given number of gores in the sphere. I cut the gores from cereal box, then glued kraft paper to it - had to microwave it to dry it out so it would stay round :) Then I drew the world on it! Clear? 

MWAHAHAHA!!!

 A Compass-Top Box! Laser etched compass rose on Baltic Birch, White Cedar and Red-Oak splines. The Cedar is reclaimed fence and the Red-Oak is reclaimed pallet wood.

A freaking Kalimba with a piezo!

Reclaimed Cherry Floorboard for the body and back with Quartersawn Fir for the soundboard. The tines are from my leaf-rake and the bridge is hardened-steel pins on Mahogany. It's got to have a sound-hole, so I laser-cut the Tree!

A custom bookbinding job that I did for a friend!

This really is a pipe! (Ceci c'est vraiment une pipe!) It's a spoof on a 1929 Magritte painting - The Treachery of Images - where it says that it isn't a pipe (Ceci c'nest pas une pipe) because it's a picture.

Laser etched title, plastic pipe mounted in a reclaimed wood frame.
(At the moment, you can get one in our Etsy shop!)

 A Pipe Stand - what is interesting can be useful, and if it isn't useful, it isn't interesting!

Stainless Steel on Mahogany

A Ballot-Box requested by PPCCANS (Nurses and stuff at the local community college) Made of old cedar fence-post, fake-wood floor panels, and a chunk of pine I had sitting around.

A few things I made to try out my new lathe! Had to cut down some cedar at my house, so I made stuff!!

Bell, Cup, Mortar and Pestle

Cedar wood with beeswax.

I made this to hold my horn :) A friend said it ought to be on the site

Braided 14AWG copper

A2 Tool steel heads (annealed) with mahogany handles (material saved from the trash!) 

 From the left: Red oak maul (old pallet stringer); Lead mallet (tire weights cast in a Hot Mud mold); A brass tapper (no sparks, no marring!) An A2 (annealed) tool steel head; and a Delrin (nylon's big brother) dead-blow hammer. All the handles are aluminum, and I cryo-fit the heads, then added 2 3/16 steel cross-pins for overkill durability!

 As layout tools are instruments, I had to make some! The T bevels have leather inlays, and the scribe has a carbide point I made with a diamond wheel from a broken 1/8 end mill. The point of the scribe is threaded so I can make future inserts when I've the time and materials (pen, marker, pencil, grease crayon, etc...)

I once saw a drawing of a level thought to be used to make the pyramids, and I thought that was super cool, so I had to make one! Then I had to make a matching plumb - and because hammers are great and I couldn't throw it away, I made what a joiner would call a 'persuader' out of the off-fall from a chunk of red oak I cut for the block on the steam engine design proof I'm building. Scrap speaks to me... it's difficult being weird :)
Mix of brass, copper, Alder, and Walnut

 More 'delicate scientific instruments' for layout (from the bottom): A divider (that never worked well!) A straight edge, a trammel beam (it's hub is the weird thing in the middle); Top from the left: An edge square, a mortising gauge fence (with double scribe beam up, single scribe beam down) An oblique square, and a flat square. The mortising fence and the trammel hub work on a cam clamp thing - quite well I might mention - and I made the double scribe beam for the mortising gauge adjustable with a stainless screw and a nut... I think I'm a stainless screw, or maybe a nut... 

There's the straight edge again, and some squares (squares are neat, and every size needs three to make a set!) 

MORE SQUARES! These each have an edge square and an oblique square to go with them, but I figured I've shown enough squares! Oh, and all of them are made with trash! 

My little spiral planter... I had a bunch of little chunks of plank from building the fence in the background, so I thought they would make a cool border, and I once heard about spiral planters and thought it would be neat to make a three-dimensional planting. The tiles were saved from the trash (notice a pattern?) and the gizmo in the middle is my little armillary made from some welding rod. Blue glass is super cool, so I have that bottle there... :)  

The Dial on its stump

I call it the "Pinhole Light Gnomen" - Why be limited to the shadow?

The scale is not made, but it can show date/season as well as the hour!

Brass in a state of "Elegant Decay"

These show up elsewhere on the site, but this is a neat picture in my humble opinion. I made the sundial from a bike wheel, and I've already explained the whole 'use the garbage' thing... 

The pond!!

Another view of the "Garden Box" with the "Herb Rack" in the back.

Reclaimed Pallet Wood.

 

This is a little bridge - obviously! I made it with trash - of course - but it isn't done in this view! It looks much better now, fences and stuff, and I liberated some 'evil vine' (don't know what it's called, grows all over the place here, has a woody stem and a hand shaped leaf, like a grape but no grapes) and planted them all around the thing to climb the lattice (made from scrap re-steel grid) so in a year or two, it'll be a vine tunnel... I love befoliated lattices :)

Here it is in the winter!

     Why are all my outdoor pictures in the winter? Why don't the growing boxes have anything growing in them? Summer is super busy for me, and dirt is rather expensive :| I'm working on it!

     So yeah, I make stuff! This is the part where I ask you to imagine what I could do if I had my own shop, and could get the materials I need, rather than using someone else's tools, and making do with scraps. Of course, I like scraps, and it bothers me when people throw away good stuff... 'course my back yard has all kinds of 'stuff' that I don't have the heart to toss because 'I could make something with it!'

     If you're inclined, you could see how I see beauty in all kinds of things - and maybe bug a billionaire to fund a shop for me? 

     Anyways, I'll put more pictures up at some point. I am... compelled to make stuff :/