Experiments with wood 8 & 9

I’ve been fascinated with the (collection of) material(s, named) wood for quite a while, but rarely worked with it during my education since paper, cardboard and foam were cheaper, better available to me and I knew I could easily work with them.
But ever since making the mobile speaker set, my interest for making things from wood has only grown, so I thought I’d share some recent and not-so-recent wooden creations.

birds (x2)!

Experiments with wood 8: Chicken coop.

I made a luxurious chicken coop from mostly leftover material, the only new piece is 1 multiplex panel that was cut up to form the sides. I tried making the chicken ‘residence’ as easy to maintain as possible, for example the stepladder and all the internal dividers can be taken away effortlessly, to make for easy cleaning or transport. The reason that the hen-house is so high up is to allow for easy access to the eggs: the roof swings open and the eggs can be taken out without having to bend over.

 

Experiments with wood 9: Bird feeder platform.

I was asked to make a bird feeder that would only serve little birds (sparrows, finches, robins …) and discourage larger ones like magpies and crows to hang around to bully the little ones and eat way too much food. I did this by using a lattice to ‘filter’ bird, allowing small birds to pass trough while keeping others out. I built two of these bird feeders, all from leftover material (from the chicken coop, for example).

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Experiments with wood 6 & 7

I’ve been fascinated with the (collection of) material(s, named) wood for quite a while, but rarely worked with it during my education since paper, cardboard and foam were cheaper, better available to me and I knew I could easily work with them.
But ever since making the mobile speaker set, my interest for making things from wood has only grown, so I thought I’d share some recent and not-so-recent wooden creations.

Christmas presents

I’ve probably mentioned this before, but I really like to give useful, home-made presents. Last Christmas I made 2 food related projects, both with beech wood.

Experiments with wood 6: Homemade bread slicer.

Cutting straight slices from home made bread is quite a challenge without any guiding tool, so I made one.

 

Experiments with wood 7: Speculoos molds.

Speculoos is a delicious type of cookie, usually eaten in the holiday period (december). Home made speculoos is even better, but to really let it reach its full potential, it should be shaped nicely as well. I mainly used a dremel to carve out a few holiday-themed shapes in both sides of 2 pieces of solid beech wood.

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Experiments with wood 5

I’ve been fascinated with the (collection of) material(s, named) wood for quite a while, but rarely worked with it during my education since paper, cardboard and foam were cheaper, better available to me and I knew I could easily work with them.
But ever since making the mobile speaker set, my interest for making things from wood has only grown, so I thought I’d share some recent and not-so-recent wooden creations.

Experiments with wood 5: Ring.

I had made a big wooden ring before (in the moodlight project: link) and after seeing a few examples on the interwebs, wanted to try and make a finger-sized wooden ring.
Mainly, this project made me realise that I really need to educate myself more on the different kinds of wood, and that not all things can be made from leftover pieces of pine-wood that I have laying around 🙂 I tried making rings from pine, but most of them broke in the making process and when I finally managed to finish one, it basically melted when it was worn while doing dishes.
So I picked up a piece of hardwood and got to work again.
I really like the final outcome, but since giving a ring without a box is kind of a no-go, I returned to the soft pinewood to make a fitting box.

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Experiments with wood 4

I’ve been fascinated with the (collection of) material(s, named) wood for quite a while, but rarely worked with it during my education since paper, cardboard and foam were cheaper, better available to me and I knew I could easily work with them.
But ever since making the mobile speaker set, my interest for making things from wood has only grown, so I thought I’d share some recent and not-so-recent wooden creations.

Experiments with wood 4: Spectacle frame.
I’ve seen a few wooden glasses (usually sunglasses) being posted on design blogs I follow and I quite liked the idea and the look of a wooden frame. So naturally, I wanted to see if I could make a spectacle frame myself.
Based on an old pair of glasses, I constructed a frame out of solid pine. I managed to make the glasses fit (both my head and the actual lenses), but the end result could be better.
I didn’t succeed in constructing hinges, the frame does not fit quite as snugly around the glasses as I would like and I realised that pine is not the best wood to use for things that are delicate yet need to be strong.
But, it does look OK and I learned some things (which was the main goal) so I might give this another go sometime.

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Experiments with wood 3

I’ve been fascinated with the (collection of) material(s, named) wood for quite a while, but rarely worked with it during my education since paper, cardboard and foam were cheaper, better available to me and I knew I could easily work with them.
But ever since making the mobile speaker set, my interest for making things from wood has only grown, so I thought I’d share some recent and not-so-recent wooden creations.

Experiments with wood 3: Necklace.
Making others happy by giving them something that I created myself is to me one of the most rewarding things I can think of. Added to that, I find that the gifts that I appreciated receiving the most are those that the giver spent a lot of time on finding, or even better: making.
That is why I wanted to take a shot at making a necklace. Working again with pine wood, since that’s what I had around and it’s soft and really easy to work with. This might prove to not have been the best choice, as the pine doesn’t seem to cope very well with being in touch with skin a lot. But hey, that’s why this is called ‘experiments’ with wood. Also, suggestions for wood choices/finishes are welcome!
I used a Dremel 3000 multitool for most of the work, a basic wood saw for the first cuts and sandpaper for a smooth finish.

 

Update March 2014:

After working with beechwood, I decided to revisit the wooden heart jewelry (because the pine does not seem to hold up well) and add a pair of earrings, because why not.

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Experiments with wood 2

I’ve been fascinated with the (collection of) material(s, named) wood for quite a while, but rarely worked with it during my education since paper, cardboard and foam were cheaper, better available to me and I knew I could easily work with them.
But ever since making the mobile speaker set, my interest for making things from wood has only grown, so I thought I’d share some recent and not-so-recent wooden creations.

Experiments with wood 2: Mood light.
I have been (and still am) collecting LEDs from old/broken devices for years, to ‘upcycle’ them into new functional objects. A moodlight seemed like the perfect project to put some of the LEDs that didn’t produce a lot of light to good use. I wanted the moodlight to give a warm and cozy glow to a room, ideal for falling asleep/waking up with or to use as background illumintation when watching a movie or listening to (calming) music. So I chose to combine yellow and red to produce a warm, soft orange light.
Since I wanted to see that glow on the lamp itself, not only on the walls of a room, I added a lampshade: a simple piece of paper shaped into a tube. I thought it would be nice to be able to use different kinds and sizes of paper, and that’s how I got the idea to make a removable ring to keep any piece of paper in place and in the desired tube shape.

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Experiments with wood 1

I’ve been fascinated with the (collection of) material(s, named) wood for quite a while, but rarely worked with it during my education since paper, cardboard and foam were cheaper, better available to me and I knew I could easily work with them.
But ever since making the mobile speaker set (http://www.jeroenrobberechts.be/mobile-speaker-set/), my interest for making stuff from wood has only grown, so I thought I’d share some recent and not-so-recent wooden creations.

Experiments with wood 1: small speaker for mobile devices.
I took out the electrical components of a cheap, plastic speaker setup I had laying around. (I didn’t use it because I found it to be ridiculously ugly and have a cheap look and feel). I had quite a bit of fun making a nice housing for it using pine wood.

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Retap Sleeves – final prototype

After 1,5 years, I wanted to finally push the Retap sleeve beyond the prototype phase and have it look the way I intended it. So I learned how to operate the sewing machine I knew we have at home (which belongs to my dad, surprisingly) and got to work. It’s quite a lot of work to make these, so Retap, if you ever want to put these into production, it will probably require some simplification 🙂

The sleeves are made of a sandwich of 3 fabrics: the inside is lined with thin blue cotton cloth, the middle layer is a thicker woolen piece for insulation and protection (recycled from an old sweater) and the outer layer is a decorative and durable cotton fabric.

The droplet cutout was originally designed to emphasize the Retap logo on the old bottles (and to make closing the sleeve with just one clasp possible), but it goes quite well with the new ones too.

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Mobile speaker set

A few years ago, I started looking for a flexible and mobile solution to play music from my mp3 player, laptop, phone, radio etc. After browsing stores for existing speaker setups for a while, I decided to build my own. Partly because I could not find exactly what I had in mind and partly because I simply enjoy designing and making speakers myself.

I picked up a cheap (and ugly) second hand computer speaker system and took out the components. I restored these components and added two extra speakers that I had laying around. This video shows the testing of the reconfigured speaker system:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PeJBpJZBcKg

I designed the speaker system in a modular way, so that I can configure a fitting setup for different occasions and locations. For example: a small unamplified setup to use in a quiet room before going to bed (setup 1 on the scheme in the picture gallery), a bigger amplified setup with few wires to take outside (setup 3) or a bigger setup with added small speakers,  connected to a laptop, to watch a movie.

I wanted the final result to stay reasonably compact and thus I chose to use a cube as the basic shape for all the elements. Only quite recently, I got around making and finishing this modular speaker system idea into a reality. The results are shown here in photo and video:

 

The small amplified setup (2):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1XVcpcKIoQ

The big amplified setup (4):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-KN6IpdAew

I also want to add a solar panel, so that I don’t need a socket or batteries when I take this outside, but I still need to figure out which solar panel would be suited.

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Workout time

I made these fitness schemes for myself a while back, but I thought they might be useful to others as well.

How to use these schemes: for one workout, I usually do every exercise block the same number of times. When you get fitter, you gradually up the number you work with. For example, you start by doing every exercise block 3 times and you add 1 every one or two weeks and after a few months you end up being able to easily do about 100 push-ups in one workout session.

Short workout (about 5 to 10min):

Long workout (about 30 to 60 min):

Note: Since I run and bike a lot (and thus don’t need to train my legs much more) these 2 workouts are mainly focused on the upper body.

You can also create your own workout sequence with this link to a .zip file including all exercise block icons seperately: fitness

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