just a quick sketch of my wineglass cutting board design.

Again a good cutting board will be something that can be around for ever so it’s a good investment in time and effort to make it right once. Your kids and grand kids will appreciate it for a long time.

My plan for the wine and cheese chopping block calls for Hard Maple, Black Walnut, and Purple Heart woods for contrast and visual interest. Again it will be an end-grain cutting board because it’s better for your knives if you use it a lot.. and I use the things I make as much as possible.

Black Walnut wood

Hard Maple Wood

PurpleHeart Wood

Size for the chopping block will be 12″ x 16″ x 1.5″. Yea, it’s going to be amazing as always..

See the Valentine’s day gift cutting board design.
And the simple Pig shaped cutting board.

puzzle patterns for your scroll saw

Several new 3d style puzzle patterns for your scroll saw. Enjoy the free downloads.

Train Puzle pattern

Download Train Puzzle Pattern.

Camel scroll saw puzzle pattern

Download Camel scroll-saw puzzle pattern.

dinosaur 3d puzzle pattern

Download dinosaur 3d puzzle pattern.

Little Duck and Big Duck puzzle.

Download Big duck little duck 3d puzzle pattern.

Cute Elephant scroll-saw puzzle pattern

Download Cute Elephant 1.

Download Cute Elephant 2.

Piggy Cutting Board

Download Project Plans

Check out the pics of the old cutting board my father made many many years ago.. it’s gotten a good amount of use over the years.

See also:
Hearts Cutting Board
Wine Glass Cutting Board

Anyhow, it’s a whole kit to clean and re-surface your garage floor. Step one is a bag of cleaning product that you’re supposed to mix with a large bucket of water and then scrub your garage floor with. I have a feeling it’s mostly an industrial strength degreasing agent that will make the floor more porous and help the epoxy coating properly bond to the concrete. Really step one is getting all the crap out of your garage and cleaning all the cobwebs out of the corners and sweeping out the saw dust, lol. Next, We mix the quart of epoxy hardener into the gallon bucket of the paint looking stuff and roll it onto the floor. Don’t skimp on the quality of roller you get, you really don’t want little fuzzy stuff on your garage floor forever.

Rust-Oleum Epoxy Shield

While the coating is wet you have the option of sprinkling on the little flakes that come with the kit. The flakes are in various shades of blue and gray and will help hide the dirt you track into your garage. I got the gray colored kit, but the tan color kit also has flakes in shades that will compliment that look as well.

Epoxy garage floor coating

I also have a 5 gallon bucket of Behr one part epoxy garage floor coating in a much lighter shade of gray that I’m going to use for accents. For example I’m going to put an 8 inch wide stripe around where each car should park and the same around my workbench area. It’s basically like having a painted on area rug in the garage. It doesn’t have a real function other than making it look cooler and visually separating the different areas of the garage… and maybe helping her park properly if another girl ever lives with me, hahah. So that shouldn’t be real difficult either, just wait for the first coat to dry, then tape off where I want the stripes and roll over that section again. The only thing that worries me is that the two epoxies might not like each other and I’ll just make a mess with the top coat pealing off in various places and looking ugly. I guess I’ll find out the way I find out everything else,.. the hard way.

I’m hoping that writing this will help to motivate me to actually clean and fix up my garage… so far it’s not working. hmmm.

Cute Ducky Step Stool!

Click here to download the cute duck step stool plans

Also check out the custom step stool 2by6 made for a friend.

Handmade paper..  it should really be called ‘Recycled Paper Making‘, but handmade sounds better when your giving someone a gift. Then you can throw in that it’s made of reclaimed household materials and is totally Green and good for the environment!

Tools & Materials:

• Scrap paper or other fibrous products.
• Blender.
• Water.
• Medium size rectangular tub (minimum 4-5 inches deep).
• Framed screen that will fit into the tub.
• Food coloring or dye
  
• Various other optional materials.

Making Red Paper for a Valentine

Step 1. Making paper slush. Imagine spring skiing in New England and you’ll understand the consistency of slush. To begin, grab whatever paper products you have around that you want to recycle into your new paper; like newspapers, junk mail, magazines, cardboard boxes, etc.

Notes on items you use to make new paper:

• Red papers(and other bright colors) will bleed and turn everything pink.
• Materials with heavy printing on them (like cardboard pasta packaging) will make brown paper with little tiny specks of whatever color printing was on it.
• The amount of print on the paper you use will determine the grayness of the paper you create.
• In general, the variations of color in magazine pages and other materials will all even out to gray.
• You can use lint from your dryer, old clothing, and other scrap materials that have small fibers, but be careful when blending. Don’t use too much material other than paper or you will loose cohesion in your final product.
• One your first try using only basic paper products is generally best, you can experiment all you want after you get the basics.

Cut, rip, or shred everything into small bits and throw it all into a bucket with warm to hot water. The thicker the materials you are using the longer you should let them soak. For example; cardboard you would want to soak for about 24 hours before going on, but regular printer paper or newsprint don’t even need pre-soaking. Now pour some of the water and paper materials into your blender, making sure you have enough water that your blender motor doesn’t burn out, and mix until it’s a slush consistency throughout. There shouldn’t be anything noticeable as paper anymore at this point. I use the pulse button a lot to get it started blending, seems to go more smoothly this way.

Repeat this step as many times as you like pouring your paper slush into a high sided casserole dish or larger tub. The size of the tub will ultimately determine the maximum size of your paper. Leave some empty space at the top of the container so you don’t spill too much.

At this point you can add various things:

• Food coloring – It will color your paper, duh.
• Thread, glitter, leaves, grasses, etc. ..really anything you could want to incorporate into your paper. The flatter the object the better.. you are making paper. A long piece of contrasting color thread can look really cool weaving through a page of a handmade journal.

Screen for making paper.

Step 2. Screening your slush. Obviously, you need a screen. I simply used an old window screen and stapled it to a canvas stretcher frame, but any sturdy frame will do.

Simply dip the screen into your bin of slush and gradually bring it back up to the surface, gently rocking it back and forth making a thin even layer of paper slush. This took me several tries, but remember, you can always just dump it back in the bin and start again. Practice makes perfect, or at least makes it look ok. 

Once your new sheet of paper has drained of much of it’s water (blotting with a sponge will help to expedite this process) turn the screen over on a towel and shake gently just inches above the towel. The paper should begin to fall away on to the towel. This will also take some practice to get it right.

Once your paper is ready to begin drying you have a few options:

• Dry naturally
• Press
• Roll
• Hair dryer

It seems that a slow natural drying process between two towels and a large book pressing down was the method that produced the nicest, smoothest looking paper.

Drying took about 2 days with this method at about 65 degrees F.

Less than perfect first tries at making paper.

Now all you need to do is personalize the paper/card and send it off!     Hope they like it!

Handmade Valentine