Porter's Workshop

Arduino

Porter — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 15:48:35 +0000

OK, so I’m stretching the word “make” past the breaking point, I know.

But yesterday afternoon I received an arduino in the mail. In short order, following the instructions on the web, I had it hooked up to and flashing a LED to my command. So I did the obvious thing and wrote a program to make it send out morse code messages.

I haven’t really done much more than that, but I’m pretty excited about it and the possibilities, so I figured I’d share.

Won’t You Be Mine

Porter — Tue, 08 Feb 2011 22:11:07 +0000

In the Beginning

Porter — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 05:16:01 +0000

There were plans.

Even before I really got into woodworking a few years ago, I was fascinated by the kits and plans that were sold for people to make mechanical clocks. They even sell kits so that you can make clocks entirely out of paper!.

And when I got into scrollsawing and saw some of the beautiful wooden clocks designed for scrollsawers, I knew that someday I had to make one. I even went so far as to order the plans for one so that someday I could make it.

Someday.

Well, I’ve decided that today is that day! The latest edition of ScrollSaw Woodworking & Crafts has full plans for an extremely simple (relatively) mechanical clock. I went out today and made copies of it, because I have no doubt that I will mess things up the first time. In fact, I really should have gone ahead and made two copies of everything so that I can mess up twice. Oh well…

I don’t know how long this will take me. But I’m closer than I’ve ever been to really starting, and now I’m even closer.

Spinning Tops

Porter — Sun, 26 Dec 2010 06:50:57 +0000

This is a bunch of spinning tops I made this last week out of wood and corian.

I used some of the best and brightest corian colors I have for these tops. I let everybody pick their favorite color out of what we had, and then on Christmas morning they each got a top made out of that color in their stocking.

Steampunk Ray Gun

Porter — Sat, 25 Dec 2010 07:33:32 +0000

We heat our home with two woodburning stoves, and having a working bellows will make it much easier for us to get the fires started in the morning.

So I made this bellows out of a foot pump (probably for an air mattress or something like that) that I picked up at a garage sale and a length of copper tubing. The tubing is so long so that we can stick one end of the tubing right into the fire and blow air into it without even having to bend over.

Wood Dolls

Porter — Wed, 22 Dec 2010 22:50:26 +0000

When Mary Cate was painting her recent nativity set, my two daughters were absolutely fascinated and wanted to paint some themselves. But we didn’t have any extras, so that couldn’t happen.

So I’ve made some for them, of various sizes, that they can paint however they want.

Exotic Snakes

Porter — Mon, 20 Dec 2010 17:48:19 +0000

Here are a couple of snakes puzzles, very similar to the one I’ve already posted here. I used some nice exotic woods for these. The light striped one is zebrawood, and the dark one is wenge.

I really like the wenge. I’m going to use more of it in the future, I can tell.

Painted Nativity

Porter — Mon, 20 Dec 2010 07:53:57 +0000

Mary Cate made this nativity set from a bunch of the wooden figures you can buy at a hobby store. She did all the painting. All I did was cut out the manger.

More Nativity Boxes

Porter — Mon, 20 Dec 2010 04:45:36 +0000

Last spring, I made a set of nativity set boxes.

One thing about them that I wasn’t satisfied with was that the style of the center box didn’t really seem to match the style of the other two.

This time, I made two different sets, one with a more detailed style, and one simpler.

As always, Mary Cate drew all of these designs.

I also took the center box of the simple version and made a bunch of them to give away this year:

Mortar and Pestle

Porter — Fri, 19 Nov 2010 05:13:24 +0000

This is a mortar and pestle. It’s a little smaller than I had planned on, but for a first try, I’m pretty pleased.

The main material is Corian, and the wood is maple recycled from the foot pedal of an old organ.