My dad will love this. I’m almost ashamed I did this, but it works so well I have to show it off.

I present you, my shop’s Hillbilly Ceiling Fan:

Yes, that’s right! It’s a box fan hanging from the ceiling! By strings! It’s even switched to turn on when the lights go on!

It’s amazingly useful, as it blows down into our primary work / assembly area. For $16 you can’t beat it.

A lot of our work has been on the floor. Drilling, measuring, screwing, moving to another end, repeat. Dragging tools around is a pain in the ass, and Nelsons aren’t known for their patience, so I made this:

It’s a little hard to see, but I first made a square (out of 1×6 pressure treated–had on hand). That gave me a box. Then I screwed an old PC side panel to it. (Make do!) At the bottom I screwed in four heavy duty big (4″) casters.

I was first just dumping my tools into the box part, but then remembered I had this 5 gallon bucket and “bucket boss” (duh!). On top it goes! The “boss” holds my tools (drivers, pliers, hammer, etc). The bucket inside holds my drill. (The bucket didn’t fit too hot, so I have it sitting on some scrap 1×4 cedar.)

Since I use a lot of screws for the coops, I bolted three little yogurt cups to the bucket. They hold a supply of my 1″, 1 1/4″ and 1 5/8″ screws perfectly.

This makes a nice little 1 foot square cart that I can kick around the shop to wherever we need it. As a bonus, I can take the bucket off and sit on the wooden planks. Sometimes you need a little rolling stool in the shop (ask any mechanic) and this fits the bill.

Okay, I realize that in my last post I talked about jigs, but didn’t really show any real ones. Such is life. I will redeem myself in this post.

Here’s an example of one of them. Actually a set. It’s a set of four (perfect) right angle jigs. They are used to make the big rectangles for the coop, and to help making framing the doors easier. In the below photo you can see one of our mitered doors in the jig. It’s sitting there waiting for the glue to dry. The strap clamp (the blue thing) keeps everything tight.

How to frame up the miters you ask? Well, I mounted some mostly-straight 1x2s to our one bench, to making door framing easier. (With any luck, we need to make a lot of these, so this setup will save a lot of time.)

Again, that’s a pretty simple setup. Just some boards screwed to the bench, at a perfect right angle. It seems simple, but it saves a LOT of time when you are trying to frame up a door with 45 degree miter joints.

Here’s something we put togther today. It allows us to handle the parts of the door frames:

You slide the 1×4 into the jig (we have pins–actually 1/4″ bolts–to help lock in the depth). Then you have a stable “clamp” for the wood. No “hold fasts”. No clamps. Just slide the wood in and it’s held pretty darn tight. This jig is set up to handle the three different heights we are dealing with. (The photo shows a piece of scrap–our normal stuff has miters at both ends.)

You then hold the joiner to the 45 degree angle (the miter cut) and cut the biscuit. We have a Porter-Cable biscuit cutter and Evelyn is in love with it. It makes this assembly work SO much easier (we tried corrugated nails, and they were a pain in the ass…V nails are too expensive and not robust enough…we’d rather deal with the glue dry time).

The end result? Some nice looking coop doors. I think these look better than some houses!

That top right (short) door was our first using the biscuits. You can see that it has a much tighter joint than the corrugated nails (larger door below). Plus, as Evelyn pointed out, it just FEELS stronger. It feels like one piece. Behold the power of glue and biscuits.

If we’ve learned one thing with our chicken coop adventures, it’s that jigs are important–no, required. A jig, or a form, or whatever you want to call it, is something you create which makes creating other things easier (like a machine tool–a tool that creates other tools). We’ve created jigs that help us to create perfect right angles. Jigs for making cutting biscuits in miters easier. Devices that hold wood in place for cutting. And so on. These are tools we make ourselves which make making so much easier. Since we want to sell our coops, it’s critical that we be able to assemble them as quickly as possible. That requires jigs.

Here’s an example of something that’s not quite a jig, but that saves time in my shop. It’s a simple device.

I use it to hold longer pieces of lumber, when I’m cutting stuff with my miter saw. Here’s a wider view:

It allows me to handle an 8′ piece of lumber without having it sag off the ends of my saw. You can buy commercial stuff, but mine was cheap–and it clamps to my bench, so I can take it off when not cutting longs stuff. That metal rod was something from an old printer! I said it was cheap.

At the time I was cutting 2x4s for my saw horses, which I now use to hold my router table (perfectly!). Here are the legs during the assembly process:

Why buy saw horses when you can make them? Mine took me a few hours to make, and taught me more about how to use my tools. Plus, they are solid, so I can kick the crap out of them. More than I can say about most plastic stuff!

Here we are with the coop on Thursday the 23rd:

In the above you can see the basic chicken coop frame. Three rectangles, about 3′ x 6′, with posts. Since we’ll have a shed roof, one side is 4′ high, the other is 5′ high.

On Monday the 27th we have this:

Things are hot in Austin, which explains the sleeveless shirt and the bandana. In this photo you can see that we have the roof rafters in place (complete with birds mouth cuts), and the frames for the doors in place.

As of today, we have the doors complete (more to come-there is some Super Secret Stuff involved), and the inside mounting stuff is coming along. Over the weekend we’ll be working on the hen boxes (where they lay the eggs), getting the mesh installed, and finishing up the panels on the doors.

Another day, another person who has had their pay cut. Let’s see. I think that’s 4 or 5 people I know who have had their wages cut 10% or more (either direct cuts, or unpaid days off). Meanwhile, I read this in the news:

Executives and other highly compensated employees now receive more than one-third of all pay in the U.S., according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of Social Security Administration data — without counting billions of dollars more in pay that remains off federal radar screens that measure wages and salaries. Highly paid employees received nearly $2.1 trillion of the $6.4 trillion in total U.S. pay in 2007, the latest figures available. The compensation numbers don’t include incentive stock options, unexercised stock options, unvested restricted stock units and certain benefits.

Executives (the C-levels of the world) are taking in a full 1/3rd of wages. Amazing.

And how about those living expenses? Those went down too, right–right? HA HA HA. My gas is going up. My electricity is going up. My garbage is going up. My food is going up. My rent is going up (due to huge 12% increases in real estate taxes in Austin this year). I have no heath insurance because it’s too expensive, and pay more in MEDICINE than I do in food.

A couple of thoughts:

• If you aren’t thinking of yourself as a “gun for hire” you should be. The days of reliable long term employment are over (they never really existed anyway). We are all independent contractors.
• Employers are not your friends. It’s business. They will try to get the most work out of you for the least amount of money.
• In this economic environment, you will get taken advantage of. Again, more hours and less pay. Don’t like it? They don’t care, with real unemployment at +15%.
• Work is work. Unless you are running your own business, you are sweating to fill someone else’s wallet. That’s fine, and the world we live in, but don’t forget it.

In other words: Nothing ever changes. You could apply those four thoughts to a Great Depression era worker, to a 19th century child textile worker, or to a cube farm.

Steps for improvement:

• Direct cuts in pay, without reductions in hours, is not effective. It just strains people more, without giving them anything in return.
• If you are going to cut payrolls, go the unpaid days off route. It’s still a pay cut, but the employee is getting time in return. This I see as a potential opportunity — perhaps you have time to start your own side business, or simply focus on something other than work.
• Enough with the tax increases. You can’t keep raising taxes just to maintain the status quo. I wouldn’t mind paying higher taxes, if I got something good out of it.
• Instead of cutting services, think in new ways. How about getting people to volunteer their time so that the library can stay open?
• Realize that every other first world country has universal healthcare, and that the U.S. should also. This is simply one of those “greater good” concepts. It’s as Socialist as a fireman–you think firemen are a good idea, right? Socialist! I’ve seen too many people NOT go independent because of healthcare worries. How many small businesses never got started because people were afraid of losing benefits? A lot, I’d wager.
• Small businesses are where jobs get created. Do everything possible to support their incubation, birth, and growth.

For those of your directly affected by this “economic downturn” (just say it: depression) — which means all of us — a couple more bullet points:

• Being out of work is becoming normalized. So many people are out of work that being “between jobs” no longer carries the stigma it once did.
• Quit whining and move on. I’m living this right now. Times are lean, but I’d rather be living off my savings than being miserable at a company I don’t respect.
• Beware of hyperopia. If you worry too much about what is going to happen in a year, you’ll miss the life happening around you right now. Working long hours seems like a good decision now, but look back in a couple of years and see if you regret it. (There is a good short article in the Wired 17.80 on this concept — it helped me to understand my own hyperopia.)

On last thought I’ve been pondering lately. There is an old phase that goes: “Sell to the classes, live with the masses. Sell to the masses, live with the classes.” Meaning that if you want to get rich, sell a million $1 widgets instead of one $1,000,000 yacht. I’ve seen successful businesses go both ways. Some people make money selling a lot of a iPhone app. Some people make money selling to only Fortune 100 companies. What has been your experience? Is the middle ground best? Sell the Echo and the Lexus? Something to ponder, as a small business owner.

I’ve been moderately busy the last week or so. Doing some work for the water conservation district, more chicken coop planning, and working on the buildout of the shop.

For the past couple of weeks I’ve been looking into router tables. The setup allows for faster and often more accurate cuts, much like a table saw is more accurate than a hand-held saw. The problem is that most router tables are very expensive (hundreds of dollars + cost of router). After some searching I realized that (a) there are a lot of plans out there for router tables and (b) a lot of people recommend making your own to save money (and get what you want).

So I took a look at what’s out there and decided on a table-top / cart mounted unit. I’m short on space, so I can’t dedicate an area to a full-sized setup. However, I also didn’t want to limit myself with a too small top. After reading and searching I realized that I needed something that was pretty modular. I didn’t want to lock myself into one router, etc.

Long story short, I ended up choosing a big top (24″ x 36″) with removable table plate. This plate means that I can swap out routers, lift mechanisms, etc, and still keep my top and stand. Here’s what I mean:

In the above photo you can see the top (of 3/4″ birch plywood) with a rectangular cutout. One of the designs I was following was using circles, but right angles are usually easier to cut, so I went that route. I then rabbeted a 1/2″ ledge 3/8″ deep. That is the shelf that the table plate sits on. It’s important that it fits pretty well, and that it’s level with the wood.

Now I could have gone out and gotten at metal plate ($60+), but I couldn’t justify that for a homemade project. Instead I went with a piece of cutting board. Evelyn found the board at a local second-hand for $5 and I cut it to fit. In my table I went with an 8×10 table plate. It’s not a standard size, but I intend on using my custom made plates, and not anything store bought.

Next up, I mounted the router to the insert. This required some careful countersunk holes to match with the router’s base plate.

For now, I’ve drilled a 1 1/2″ hole in the middle of the plate. That’s big enough for most of my bits. Why 1 1/2″? Because that’s the biggest bit I had on hand. I need to get a circle cutter. (In an ideal setup, I’d cut a 2″ hole, rabbet it, and then use inserts. For now this fixed hole will work and be safe enough.)

All of this seems simple and easy, but I’ve been thinking and working through the setup for the better part of a week. Like any problem, you go through a bunch of different what-ifs and hopefully end up with the simple and flexible solution. For example, I wanted to be able to use different routers, or maybe design a lift mechanism (which would magically lift the router up for changing bits and cutting height). In order to be able to add the lift later, I had to design a basic table that could support it. The square table plate, which could be replaced using cheap materials, ended up being the way to go.

Here’s an action shot that Evelyn took. I need to take a shower and shave, but at least I’m showing off the classic Nelson Sticking Tongue Out While Working behavior:

In between chicken coop design, I worked a bit on the control panel for the kiosk. Installed a joystick and four buttons:

The “Player 1/2″ buttons are in a weird place because I’m working on an idea for the kiosk. I’ll probably move them to one side.

I ended up using thin (1/4″) plywood for the control panel top, because I don’t have a lot of space below for the joystick. It’s strong enough, and good for the prototype.

What you can’t see in the photo is a little LED above the joystick. Under it is an RFID reader, which is part of the magic behind the Super Secret Project.

Next up: Wiring up the control panel, and getting it to talk to the PC.

P.S. I checked out counter top laminates at Lowe’s yesterday. Youch! They were $45 for a 4×8′ sheet. I think paint will do for now.

Evelyn and I have been working on a chicken coop project. Not because we want to raise chickens (we had enough of that in Puerto Rico), but because there is a huge increase in urban farming, including keeping hens for eggs. (Austin allows you to keep chickens, as long as the coop is 50′ from neighbors.) We have the tools, we have the time, so why not try getting into the coop business?

Projects require planning, which usually means going through books. Why not the good old Internet? Because most of the plans out there are either (a) not free or (b) suck. There is some good stuff out in the ether, but you have to wade through about a million sites willing to sell you their designs. I understand, but no thanks.

Here is our dining room table, covered with a bunch of woodworking books:

What’s that thing in the middle? It’s a prototype. Let me explain:

I’ve seen a growing trend toward CAD/CAM work and CNC machines. This is where you design your model on a computer and then have another computer do the cuts (or whatever) for you. I see a lot of builders working with CNC routers and laser cutters, spending hours working on their programs, so they can be “printed” on the equipment.

The concept interests me, except for the fact that people are spending more time in front of a computer than actually building things.

I’m a firm believer that if you can’t use a router by hand, then you shouldn’t use a CNC router. It’s simply because you don’t understand materials, and how they fit together, until you actually hold them in your hands. You don’t really know that something is going to work until you put it together. Computer models are nice, and can save time, but can often lead to disaster. (Ask any Airbus or Boeing engineer about the limits of CAD/CAM.)

And, quite frankly, I can knock together a scale sized working prototype in 1/8th of the time that I could develop the computer model. Maybe it’s because my workworking skills surpass my computer skills. Probably. Though it’s a heck of a lot faster for me to make changes and play around and really see the piece when I’m in the shop–not at my computer.

Here is another photo of the scale model. In this model we’re working on a roof mechanism:

We are able to see, in “real time”, how the unit is going to work. It helps us to see the final product in our minds, in a far more concrete way than any computer model could represent.

So, the next time your are going to build something, I’d recommend actually building it, instead of sitting in front of a computer. The result is far more satisfying, and you find out about problems far soooner.