Better late...

Some of you may know that Rick Waters (who also runs the SplinteredBoard podcast) conducts six monthly build challenges through his other podcast, The Sawdust Chronicles.

The latest build challenge, in September and October, was for people to build something in wood for a charity or community group (or for local wildlife) as a way to get woodworkers out of their own comfort zone and doing things for their community.

Even though I had failed to complete my entry in the first build challenge (a desk organiser to your own design), I thought I would have a go. I intended to do my build for the preschool that both my son and my daughter attended . This is Anna’s last year there, so this is my chance to give them something that says thank you to them for their help in looking after, and helping to tame, our two monsters.

I wrote to them almost as soon as Rick announced the challenge explaining what I was wanting them to do - just tell me a project that you want me to make out of wood for the preschool and I will make it, just please tell me before the middle of September, so I have 6 weeks to build it.

I then followed up with a couple of discussions with the director of the preschool, but I heard nothing until the end of the second week of October when, indirectly through SWMBO, the director said that she was thinking of asking me to build a boat that could be sunk into the ground and used for playing in! That would take me a full 14 days - especially as the wood would have to be made water and rot resistant since it would be in contact with the ground all the time and it would need to be able to deal with sun and rain.

I said to SWMBO that I would give it a go, if they confirmed that they really wanted it and that they had the approval of the landlord to the installation of the boat - I knew that there had been another project for which money had been raised that hadn’t proceeded because the landlord objected to it.

Anyway, I heard nothing more and so gave up on the build challenge for (Southern Hemisphere) Spring 2009. Then a couple of weeks ago, I was dropping Anna at preschool because SWMBO was committed to something else that morning, when one of the teachers asked me if I could do something for her that she’d been asking about for a while. Until this year the hats that the kids wear when they go outside were hung on a portable rack to which hooks were screwed. The rack was two horizontal rails about 1600mm long held by two uprights on stands. The top rail was about 1000mm high and the bottom rail about 500mm high and the whole thing was made of some local eucalypt hardwood (I think it was Victorian Ash - which is just a generic name for the paler structural eucalypt timber from the highlands of Victoria and is not related in anyway to European or North American ash) which was about 19mm (3/4") x 65mm (2 ½").
The project was to take this rack and make it into two smaller free-standing boards to which pictures or other things could be attached and left with the kids at their work tables as a stimulus. The stands had to be light enough to lift and have a solid centre.

Here's a photo of the old rack:
TSDC BC#2 003.jpg


So I took the old rack home and started thinking. Here’s what I did -

1. Locate some similar eucalypt boards to make two extra vertical upright assemblies on the same pattern as the existing uprights.
2. Make two foot assemblies for the new vertical assemblies.
3. Bandsaw eight knees to reinforce the joints between the vertical assemblies and the foot assemblies to replace the existing diagonal bracing.
4. Find the centrepoint of the existing horizontal members and mark 3 mm each side, then clamp the new vertical members so that their outside edge touches those marks and their ends rest on a foot assembly and screw the four knees in place.
5. Screw the new vertical assemblies in place and then saw the horizontal members apart between the two new vertical assemblies, making two frames.
6. Insert 19 mm blockboard panels to fill the two frames.
7. Cover one side of the block board frame and the horizontal members with 6 mm cork.
8. Finish with water-based poly.

TSDC BC#2 001.jpgTSDC BC#2 002.jpg


Clearly, as the photos show, these are not works of art and certainly would not have won the build challenge (see here for the entries received), but at least I have done something worthwhile for the preschool and they are happy with the work and the donation.

Here they are in their new home - the female model is Anna (with her friend Matthew).

TSDC BC#2 009.jpgTSDC BC#2 006.jpgTSDC BC#2 007.jpg

So well received were these that I have been asked to turn a second similar rack into another two similar stands!!