Jul 062016
 
Racks Stacked and Waiting for Paint.

While driving home a week ago I saw that my buddies work was throwing out a bunch of wood scraps. Mostly bits of plywood that are too small for them to use, but still big enough for a project so I loaded up the old Tahoe with what I could.

I always have woodworking projects waiting for me at home, so I figured it would be used up quickly. Turns out I was right.

We always have a lot of plants on the porch, hostas, peppers, etc. The problem is the pots ruin the deck and stain the wood. Plus its best to have the pots raised for better air flow and drainage so I have often built racks to keep the plants off the deck.

We have some racks I made a few years ago but they are looking ratty and are in need of replacement. Also, in the hosta prison the ground is not completely level and the pots occasionally fall with the help of squirrels looking for places to hide food.

PlantShelf

Seems like a good project for all this free wood. I drew out a plan to make the best use of the wood I had on hand and got to cutting. In the unlikely event that anyone wants to make a few the plans (drawings) are included below.

Jess helped me staple them all together and it took two weekends to get them painted (2 days of drying between coats).

I was going for a “moss” colored paint, but I’m pretty new to tinting paint so it came out a bit lighter then I had hoped.

We ended up making seven racks, and perhaps if I see more scrap wood I’ll make another seven.

I think they came out pretty good, don’t you?

-Brian

Jul 042016
 
Bottle Rocket Racks

Another 4th of July has come and passed. This one brought with it a lot of fun little projects and new accomplishments.

This was also the first year that I have ever been able to legally buy flying fireworks in a state that I live in. Woohoo! About time.

I may be the worlds only bottle rocket enthusiast!

…A connoisseur of fine Chinese gunpowder.

So now that bottle rockets are finally legal I ordered up a few cases and we went a little crazy. For the last few weeks, we have been flying bottle rockets whenever time permits (even when time doesn’t permit, lol). This weekend we made up some nice little racks to fuse up a few hundred at a time and let them rip. I even dug out the old Crackerjacks tested bottle rocket racks (angry hornets nests. …because the rockets… oh never mind).

Jess and her firecrackers

Jess and Fwub with a big Firecracker

As you probably already know Jess is a fan of firecrackers so I ordered up a case of 28,000 crackers, and at the fireworks stand they had this really cool pack of 8,000 firecrackers so we had to pick that up also. Jess made a few impressive celebration strings that had the neighbors hooting and hollering for more.

Holly crap did we make a big mess.

The bigĀ finale this year was one of Jess’s cracker piles with 20 or so fountains fast fuses all around the fire pit. Somehow none of the fountains lit (Doh!) but the crackers went off with a bang (sorry.. how about they were a blast? .. wait where’s everyone going..)

All in all, I’d say it was a pretty good fourth!

Hope yours was a huge success also!

-Brian