I’m buying a house, as seen in the previous post (it’s not actually mine yet, the deed is somewhere unknown, but that’s a whole ‘nother story). Anyway, in this house is a room that will be my art studio. And I want to make a mobile for this room. And I don’t quite know what I want it to be yet, so I decided to make a miniature version to work out some of what I was thinking.
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Today I sanded the heck out of the jewelry rack, sealed, stained (2 coats), and re-sealed it. The first sealing makes it stain more evenly, in theory, though it’s still pretty uneven. I’m not sure if that’s because of it being pine and therefore very soft wood, or if I’m not doing everything correctly. Despite the uneven color, it actually looks pretty great, so no real complaints there. I installed it on my wall as well, and it’s serving perfectly beautifully, and I feel very accomplished.
Since the Dremeling was all I got to last time, today was pegs, holes for pegs, and overall assembly. I broke about ten standard cutting wheels in the process of cutting the dowel to make little pegs, and then discovered to my great joy that I have a heavy-duty cutting wheel, which made the rest of the dowel-cutting much less frustrating. And then I rounded off the ends of all the pegs, and came home to do all the drilling and assembly, since I needed my drill.
Jewelry rack, stage 2:
Mental note: Dremeling solid pine takes way the heck longer than Dremeling bass wood. So today was entirely spent on carving the compartments into the shelf. Other note – having the right tool makes a lot of difference, and between Lowe’s and Home Depot, Lowe’s has the better array of Dremel tips. So that was a random half-hour that probably saved me at least two hours of carving with the tiny tiny tip that came with my Dremel.
Jewelry Rack 2.0:
Today’s project was the beginning of a jewelry rack. This is a project with some history – I’ve been looking for a jewelry rack that fits my requirements for a really long time, and have come to the conclusion that it just doesn’t exist commercially. What I want in a jewelry rack: a bar to hang my dangly earrings on. Numerous little pegs to hang necklaces on – numerous so each necklace can have its own peg, rather than getting all tangled with each other by sharing pegs. A shelf on which to place non-dangly earrings, and pendants, preferably with some separators so pairs stay together. Mounted to the wall, so it doesn’t take up space on the dresser. Made of wood, not plastic.
So last year I bought some super-cheap bass wood at Michael’s (seriously, you can cut this stuff with an Xacto), and built myself a freakin’ jewelry rack. It’s incredibly soft wood, so it feels kind of like styrofoam, and it holds stain in an incredibly ugly way, so it’s not exactly right, but the shape and functionality, now those were what I had control over, and those, well, let’s just say I have been made happy by that jewelry rack on many mornings when deciding what to wear. So I finally decided I need to make the jewelry rack out of, y’know, actual good wood. And fix the very few usability quibbles I’ve had with version 1.0. Hence today’s project. Went to Home Depot and bought a 1×4 of nice pine, as well as a dowel. Am amused to see that the FSC certification we pay attention to when sourcing papers at work also applies to chunks of wood – should’ve expected it would, they’re both from trees, but it surprised me for some reason.
Then went to my dad’s workshop, ripped the wood down to 1/2″, sanded the crap out of it (mental note, must learn to sand more evenly, the pieces are… not so square, now), and figured out how the two main joints will go together. Tomorrow is for Dremeling the shelf separations, drilling peg holes, and hopefully gluing and clamping the whole shebang. Reports shall follow.
I have sawdust in my hair. And eyelashes, despite having worn eye protection because I am not an idiot. Blech.
My job has a really awesome perk in how it’s scheduled – it’s a 4 day workweek, so I always have Fridays off. This has resulted in a number of days where I have slept ’til noon, not changed out of my pjs, and done a whole lot of nothing with my free time. Lovely though that can be, I’m giving myself a challenge: to actually make things on Fridays. No limits, no requirement that they be good things, or useful things, or even pretty things, but simply that I spend some of my time using my hands to make things. And then record the results here. So here goes.