2-hour project (with too many pics...)

[Alej]

Re: 2-hour project (with too many pics...)

Hey Alex,
I have three kids too (although one's no longer a kid, technically). Those boomerangs are nice, and only two-hours! Did you get the plans from that Popular Woodworking article that came out a a year or two ago?

Yes, everything started with that article in PWW but then I decided to go a little further and I bought a book. I use a jigsaw, a rasp/file and sand paper, two hours is more than enough for a plywood boomerang but the ones in the lower picture are made of solid wood (wallnut and pine), these take longer to finish, solid wood boomerang are unusual, I was experimenting. It does not matter much the shape but the tuning is very important. If you are interested I recommend you Ted Bailey website, I got from him the "Ultimate Boomerang Book" it is a booklet that comes with full size plans, you can also download two books for free (go down the page).
Here is the link
Alejandro

[Frank D.]

Re: 2-hour project (with too many pics...)

Hey Alex,
I have three kids too (although one's no longer a kid, technically). Those boomerangs are nice, and only two-hours! Did you get the plans from that Popular Woodworking article that came out a a year or two ago?

[Alej]

Re: 2-hour project (with too many pics...)

what a bright idea, I have three children and a quite big backyard and I have never built anything there for them, now it might be a little late, the youngest is 5 years old.
but I have made just a few toys, I like to make boomerangs, they are like magnets for children, you can make one out of plywood in less than two hours, they flight very nice.
Alejnadro.

[matt]

Re: 2-hour project (with too many pics...)

Ha, ha. Can't say that I have.
Hey Matt - The arrow is the old fashion version of a laser beam. Helps you line up the chisel.

LOL! Well I guess every cordless tool eventually gets outfitted with a laser right.

[ERic In Nova Scotia]

Re: 2-hour project (with too many pics...)

Have you read Vonnegut? He says were all machines. Does that mean were all power tools? Hehe...

Ha, ha. Can't say that I have.

Louis L'amour said, "What we call human is what we believe to be right and sane, for in our world we have been brought up to believe certain things. We are apt to believe those things are human nature... Whatever that is."

I'm more of a western novel kind of guy.

Hey Matt - The arrow is the old fashion version of a laser beam. Helps you line up the chisel.

[matt]

Re: 2-hour project (with too many pics...)

Nice job Frank. One question though... Do you really need the arrow on your chisel to remind you which is the pointy end? ;-)

Seriously though, that looks like one happy little fella. Nice job!

[Wally in Calgary]

Re: 2-hour project (with too many pics...)

Hey Frank -- Nice work on the swing support and I'm sure that you're son agrees!!! Have one on me--

[Frank D.]

Re: 2-hour project (with too many pics...)

Thanks guys.

nice work Frank. thanks for the tip and pics. you make it LOOK easy.

Did you make the chair as well?

No, that chair was used to swing my wife and her brother in the 70s. My mother in law gave it to us, so I wanted to make something nice to go with it.

Eric,
Have you read Vonnegut? He says were all machines. Does that mean were all power tools? Hehe...

[ERic In Nova Scotia]

Re: 2-hour project (with too many pics...)

Nice job.

I can just see in many years to come when we are all gone. Some new home owner will shout out to his wife, "Hey Martha! What kind a machine do you think made this?"

We just called the machine "Frank".

[emorin]

Re: 2-hour project (with too many pics...)

nice work Frank. thanks for the tip and pics. you make it LOOK easy.

Did you make the chair as well?

[Frank D.]

Re: 2-hour project (with too many pics...)

Next I needed a piece to bracethe joint. I wanted to use traditional post-and-beam joinery, with no metal fasteners nor glue. I laid out the brace piece without measuring anything...I always measure as little as possible (my sliding sqaure is only for marking and transposing):



Then trace out for the mortises:



Same cuts to prep removal, go go go with the chisel...



With all the pieces cut, from an offcut I cut out some dowel stock and shaped them with my chisel:



I drilled the hoels with my brace, and then rammed the dowels in with my mallet. No need for a fine fit, as long as the dowels are bigger than the holes:



The finished piece. Took me a littel less than two hours. My neighbors were getting a little uneasy. Some of them use power tools on a regular basis...



The next day...

[Frank D.]

Hi everyone,
I've been doing reno jobs intensively for the past couple of years, and I finally had a couple of hours to do what I wanted with my time, so I decided to do a handtool project. Embarassingly simple, but a good chance to get a little practice in. All I had when I started were this hole in the ground (dug by hand, of course):



and these two pieces of wood:



I had to join the two pieces cross-wise, so I traced out a lap joint:



A littel saw pointer, at least this is how I do it: if you want to saw square to a surface, look at the reflection of the wood in the saw. If the line in the reflection is continuous and straight with the line of the actual piece, your saw is square. Here's an example of an out-of-square saw:



Now I can start a sqaure cut:



At the end of a cut, I can even see if it's square without using a square:



A few more practice cuts for waste removal:



Some adjustments to the joint. This is why you want flat chisel backs:



The finished joint (15 minutes...a little slow but I'm a little out of practice):