The first time we attended an ROCC Launch event was March of 2009.  This was an interesting experience, as one larger size rocket malfunctioned.  Its parachute failed to open and it torpedoed into the ground.  I followed the crowd that embarked to find its landing spot.

Another time we attended an ROCC Launch event and took lots of picture was January of 2010.  This is a good time to mention that rocket launches are a great venue for budding (or professional) photographers.  You have lots of opportunities to get that perfect launch shot.

The command center.

One of the greatest part of launching your own rockets is that your launch is announced by the Launch Control Officer (LCO) over the loudspeakers.

Rockets line the launch pad.

The launch pad is filled to capacity before launching.  This means periods of dead time between launches.  It is much like a tailgate during these times and many people grill hot dogs and hang out.  When launching happens, all of the rockets are launched consecutively.

Discussing a launch.

Many high school and college groups come to events like this for trial runs of rockets they have created in preparation of competing in rocket competitions.

Launching a rocket.

Many of the launches are quite impressive.  The larger motor sizes lead to launches that look like mini Nasa launches.

A launch with black smoke.

It is an interesting surprise to see what type of reaction will be caused by the motors – red and white flames are common.  Occasionally a launch will have black smoke instead of the traditional whitish color.

Another great rocket launch!

Looks like a great day, doesn’t it?  I will admit that I wasn’t really into all this rocketry geekery – but I went at Adam’s request.  I wound up enjoying myself even more than he did!  (*Update* After reading this, Adam claims that he had more fun than I did.)

Find a local rocketry club near you through the National Association of Rocketry.

Oh yeah, for those of you curious to Adam’s home-made rocket endeavors, here you go!  I advise to not try this at home.  (Apparently we aren’t the only ones using a creative license when it comes to rocketry. On a related crazy note, watch a child get his tooth pulled out by a rocket here!)

From a teacher’s perspective, four makers in particular presented things I just “need” to have in my classroom.  This is my wish list:

• Classroom Visits for “Scrap” from the ScrapExchange
• Leatherbound Books
• ShopBot Tyro
• DIY Multi-Touch Screen

Find reasons and more information about each of my choices after the jump.

“Scrap” from the ScrapExchange

The pre-party for all the makers involved was held at The Scrap Exchange, and I admit I spent over three hours in this creative reuse center perusing all of their wonderful and random items.  Some items of interest for potential classroom application range from the obvious to the obscure:

• Lab Equipment (All teachers that teach science need to use tools scientists use!)
• Paper (Large Rolls for Art Projects or Collaborative Group Planning)
• Folders (I like to use folders with educational programs like MathPals)
• Notebooks (For taking notes, duh!)
• Stickers (I couldn’t resist buying some sparkly sticker paper myself!)
• Corks (One of the many materials you can find there to test bu0yancy or density)
• Old Posters, Newspapers, and Magazines (Comparing yesterday to today.)
• Mylar (Creating kites to study the physics of flight)
• Doodads & Whatnots (Whatever your mind can imagine!)

I think either a teacher field trip or student field trip to the scrap exchange could be an amazing creative journey.  They have giant blue bins that contain all sorts of random items you knew (and never knew) you wanted and needed.  All of their prices are very reasonable, and for a mere $3.50 you can fill a shopping bag size bag with all the bin items you could ever want.  The only stipulation is there is a item limit for each of the bins.

Leatherbound Books

Of course a name like Leatherbound Book Works is bound to get an educator excited.  The books here are bound by bookbinder and shop owner, Michael Greer.  The journals he creates are sure to inspire any child and would make great writer’s or reader’s notebooks.  Michael shared that the maps in the stories by famous author J.R.R. Tolkien influenced him to go into book making, and he now even creates his own maps to be included in the pages of the books he binds.  His passion for bookbinding makes me want to help my students create their own professional books from scratch, much like this instructables post I found.  Have you embarked on a similar venture?  I would like to here how your own bookbinding endeavor turned out.

ShopBot Tyro

I don’t know how anyone could NOT want a CNC Router.  With such a piece of machinery, you could create virtually anything.  The ShopBot Tyro is looking to release in the next few weeks for about $3995.  Every middle and high school shop class should have one of these in their classroom.

DIY Multi-Touch Screen

Already having a promethean board (which means I essentially have all the more expensive raw materials already available – like a projector and computer), I am VERY much wanting to create one of these to use in my classroom.  Can you imagine fifth graders working together with such a surface to share and create?  It would be impractical to use everyday, but this surface makes it ideal for groups to share computer resources.  The software is open-source (free!) and active support is available through the NUI Group Community.

Final Thoughts

Overall, I think the best impression that any teacher, or person, can take away from the Maker Faire is that if you can dream it, you can create it -  so go out there and make!

For my book, I decided to order a 8.5″x8.5″ square photobook.  My reason for this decision was two fold.  One, the digital scrapbook backgrounds I used were 12″ x 12″, so a square book would be the easiest to create from my photoshop files.  Two, this was the largest book size that had a casewrap (wraparound) cover.  I really wanted to have a full color custom cover, so I went with this size option.

To get my files ready for upload, I simply exported all of my photoshop pages to a 8.75.25″x8.75″ jpeg image.  The site claims to resize images for you, but I am paranoid.  I wanted to make sure that none of my images would be clipped or cut in a way I did not want.

The viovio site is fairly easy to navigate (most of the time).  I uploaded my files in the order I wanted them displayed, which worked well, because viovio automatically put them into this same order.  To get my book ready for printing, I just dragged and dropped each exported jpeg onto the page I wanted it to be on the photobook.

Placing My Order

Placing my order was quick and easy. For pricing, I had assumed that one page would consist of a front AND a back, but it turns out that every front and back are considered one page.  By this calculation, my book was 44 pages long.  With the full color cover, the upgrade to what viovio calls “pro binding”, and shipping/handling/taxes, my order came to 42.43.  I considered this a small price to pay for a personalized keepsake and also considering many competitor’s pricing.  Shutterfly’s pricing for an 8″x8″ book (which is smaller than what I ordered) would have been about the same price I what I paid, but that is not including their $8 shipping cost or tax.  I really had wanted to go with Inkubook, but their hardcover options are currently fairly limited.

Waiting for My Order

I placed my order on Tuesday, August 4th, 2009.  The next day I received an email stating that my order had “been sent to manufacturing. We expect it to ship by Wednesday, August 19, 2009″.  I was so excited, I could hardly stand it.

Still Waiting for My Order

Wednesday, August 19th, 2009, came and and went.  Once it hit Friday, August 28th, I realized that 9 days had passed since my book was supposedly shipped and I had paid for 2 day shipping.  I decided to email viovio to find out where my book was!  The very next day viovio replied.  That same day my book had also arrived!

Finally Receiving My Order

Once I received my photobook I was enamored by its size.  It is portable enough to carry anywhere to show off or fit nicely on a bookshelf or table.  It is big enough to show off details in pictures.  The full cover cover turned out beautiful.

The colors on the cover are impressive!

I was also in love with the binding.  The photobook looks just like a book you would buy at the book stores.  I am in awe of the transformation that the book making industry is undergoing!

This is the view of the binding when the book is closed.

Just like a new book, the pages are crisp when you first open your book.

And this is how the binding looks when the book is open.

The coloration matched very well in comparison with my original files.  The quality of the printing was also very clean.

This was one of my favorite layouts in the book.

Some of the better photographs used especially popped from the pages.

Images from a higher quality camera produce the best end results.

I thought that my pages would be full bleed, but the center of each page was marked by a white stripe.

The white line was in the center of every page, but it did not distract from the book.

There were a few pages that are of concern to me.  It seems as though the glue from the binding splurged up into some of my pages, creating an uneven seam.

This particular page did opened about 1 cm less than the other pages due to what appears to be glue from the binding splured up into the page.

I did not find this out until after I was almost done ordering, but viovio adds a logo to your back cover.  It is a lot less invasive that I expected it to be.

The logo is about the size of two pennies.

My Experience (Thus Far…) with Customer Support

Since I was already in touch with customer support, I mentioned the glue splurges.  The representative asked that I send photos of what I was talking about.  That was today.  I will update on the outcome of my contact with customer support.  Overall, I love my book and customer support has responded quickly (so far).  It it were not for the glue splurges and very slow shipping, I would give viovio 5 stars.

**Update** Overall Viovio Experience

After 3 short and speedy emails with viovio,  I did not recieve any word about whether or not the glue splurges were “normal”.  What I did recieve about 3 weeks later was a whole entire new book!  It was a surprise when I recieved it in the mail because they did not tell me they were sending me a new book.  Although their communication was a bit lacking, I am definitely impressed with Viovio’s products and quality.   5 stars to Viovio!  I anticipate in using their services in the future and will share future experiences :0).

This is the first part in a two part series about how to design, build, and finish a simple woodworking project.  This part focuses on the design and build of the project.

Jessica and I tend to collect a lot of books.   I mean a LOT of books.  When one of those cheap 7ft tall particle board bookcases we had finally bit the dust, and fell on me, I decided we would only get solid wood bookcases from now on.  I also decided that it was probably best that the bookcase we get to replace the broken one be rather short, something that would fit just under the window in our living room. With the cost of solid wood bookcases being pretty high and nothing available suiting our needs exactly, I decided we should design and build one ourselves. Rather than trying to fit a new bookcase into our living room, why not design one that already fits?

This project was a practice in two arts.  Firstly, it was an excuse to teach myself how to use Google Sketchup, and secondly I wanted to get more experience with woodworking.  Most of the earlier projects I did with wood were literally laughed at (and many with good reason), so I had plenty of room to grow.

The first step in this whole process was to design something to build. I researched a lot on the internet for the perfect bookcase style. I didn’t find anything that I could easily build with the tools I had laying around.  Being in a small apartment without a garage, it is hard to store table saws and the like.  The tools I have are power hand tools, a circular saw, a power sander, an electric drill, and other simple things like that.

I finally decided on what I would build.  I took elements from many book cases I saw online and started drawing up my idea in Sketchup.  The easiest way to do this, I’ve found, is to simply create a particular piece of wood, then make that piece a “component.”  Then you can treat the whole thing as a single object.  I will go into more depth about Google Sketchup and even the Sketchup physics engine in other posts, feel free to check them out.

After lots of playing around, and learning the basics of Sketchup, I ended up with this:

Bookshelf Front in Sketchup

Everything in the design could easily be bought from any lumber yard or hardware store. It consisted of 1”x2”s, 2”x12”s, and 1”x4”s.  Sadly, these measurements are the wet weight measurements, before the wood is fully dried.  When dried, the wood actually shrinks a good bit.  Here’s a chart that may help you find the actual sizes of dimensional lumber.  I already knew this fact; however for some reason I completely ignored it when designing.  So back to the drawing board I went.

I planned on making this out of Red Oak (which is a hardwood).  The dimensions of hardwood lumber are a little different, but since I’m cutting by hand, the difference of 1/16^th of an inch between the dimensions won’t matter.   I redrew the design to account for the different wood sizes.  This wasn’t very hard as I had made all the wood pieces components, and copied and pasted things that were the same size.  In Sketchup, editing one of a group of the same components changes all other components automatically.  For instance if I changed the height of one side, the other side will change automatically.  This speeds up corrections somewhat. There is also an option to make a particular component unique, so changes made to it only apply to that particular part.

Once I had the design, I had to figure out a way of connecting the parts.  Of course I would use screws and glue, but how would I connect everything together without showing the screw holes?  I stumbled on a neat joinery method called “pocket screws”.  Pocket screws use a jig to drill a hole diagonally through the end of one piece of wood, and into another.  This can completely hide the screw while still making a very strong connection.

How Pocket Holes Work

With all the wood dimensions I needed, I was off to the local super-hardware center.  At many super-hardware centers, they offer boards by the foot.  They’ll even cut it to length for you.  So I looked for the straightest, cleanest Red Oak boards I could find (there weren’t many).  Finally deciding on certain boards, I asked for help from one of the store associates who ran the saw. Now, anyone with common sense knows that when you use a saw blade to cut a piece of wood, you are actually removing a strip of wood the thickness of the saw blade.  Apparently, this is not in the training video for this particular super-hardware store as the associate proceeded to cut my parts “through the center of the measurement mark.”  Worse than that, he was inconsistent with it.  Sometimes he would cut the center of the measurement mark, and sometimes he would cut it a bit short, and sometimes a bit long.  All of this threw my measurements off again.

I grabbed a pocket hole jig kit and wood glue on my way out of the store after gathering all my poorly cut lumber.  The approximate price breakdown is:

• Lumber = $160
• Tools and Glue  = $30

It was a fairly expensive project, but completely worth it.  Overall, this project still cost less than buying a brand new solid wood under-window bookcase, especially if it were custom built.  Not to mention all the fun that was had and all the stuff we learned while building it.

Finally having all the parts, I knew I’d have to cut most of the boards smaller again to resize them all.  I redrew the design yet again in Sketchup to make sure it would all work out.  After this, Jessica and I got to work.  We cut and rough-sanded all of the parts.  Sanding took forever as Red Oak is a very hard wood.  It was December of 2008, and we were working outside on the back deck, so instead of taking time to take loads of detailed pictures of the process and freezing to death, we hurriedly put it together exactly as the Sketchup file shows.

The Final Sketchup file can be downloaded from the Google 3d Warehouse. Feel free to edit it and repost it (as long as you give us inspiration credit . )

Since it was winter, we couldn’t stain the bookshelf as it was way too cold outside for the stain to set.  The stain cannot be applied below 65°.  Part 2 of this article goes through the process (with more pictures) and the results of staining.

Adam and I had been in search for a drawer system for use in our office, and then there it was, the Ikea Alex.  Everything was right.  It was the perfect height.  It had plenty of long thin drawers, perfect for tool organization.  It even had wheels.  We excitedly perused our color options;  white, white, or white.  Hmm….

Our office is mostly wood tones and black, so white was just not working for our color palette.  At first we tried to find another option, but we just kept coming back to the Alex.  It had the barebones of exactly what we needed.  That’s when we decided to buy the Alex and give it a facelift.  Our plan was to paint it black and customize the drawer fronts.  This is how we did it.

Materials

• Ikea Alex (≈$130*)
• 2 Containers of Plaid Mod Podge Hard Coat 8 oz (≈$6 each, $12 total)
• Paintbrushes
• 3 Cans of Krylon Fusion for Plastic in Black Satin (≈$5 each, $15 total)
• Dropcloth (≈$1)
• Scrapbooking Paper of Your Choosing (≈$3)
• Scissors
• Razorblade Cutter
• Cutting Mat (Can be as simple as a piece of cardboard!)Drawer Liner (≈$10)

*Prices are shown only for items we purchased and include tax.  We already owned the other items.

The cost for our Alex facelift = $41 + Alex itself = $171.

Color Change
The first step for this project was the color change.  Although the Ikea Alex is mostly particleboard, it is coated with melamine, foil, and acrylic.  This made it confusing for choosing the right type of paint.  We wanted something that would be easy to apply, had even coverage, and would be durable enough to handle the wear and tear of being in our office.  This isn’t your normal office.  Mad science happens here.

After researching the many options, we decided to go with a spray paint made for plastic.  The container also specified it could be used on Wood, Metal, Wicker, Wrought Iron, Plastic, Hard Vinyl, Glass, Plaster, Ceramic, Paper, and Paper Mache.  We figured it would have the adhesive property to cover anything.

We opted to spray paint in our “back yard”.  Yup, it’s just a porch.  We laid down some plastic drop cloth that we picked up at a local dollar store (much cheaper drop cloth than at your local hardware store!).

Painting on our Back Porch

It took about 3 cans of spray paint to cover all the necessary pieces.  For time and material saving, we decided not to paint the inside parts.

We probably should have read all of the direction before starting.  After painting all the pieces we learned that the brand of spray paint we used takes approximately 7 days to “cure”.  We couldn’t keep the pieces outside for that long, so we knew would have to find some place in our house.  Our half bath room was out of service for the following week.  I wish we had a garage!  Also, we also

Pieces Curing in our Bathroom

When choosing a paint option, here are some things to consider about spray paint.

Pros

• coverage was very even
• dried to touch in only 15 minutes
• painted entire surface quickly
• practical color choices (we chose satin black)

Cons

• takes 7-14 days to fully harden
• may chip
• fairly toxic as shown in the msds
• paint excess sticks if you reuse dropcloth (This was my fault.  After painting twice already on the drop cloth, I laid more pieces over the excess paint.  That excess paint ended up sticking to the drawer fronts I laid on top of it.  It was an easy fix though.  I just sanded and repainted.)

Customizing Drawer Fronts
While we were at Ikea, we had also picked up some damask designed wrapping paper.  Our original idea was to use it to cover the drawer fronts.  How sweet would it be to do an Ikea hack almost thoroughly with items from Ikea!  Initially, we did go forward with this idea.

Upon using the wrapping paper for the drawer fronts, we realized two things:
One, it scratched easily.
Two, air bubbles in the glue were impossible to remove! Both of these were a result of the thinness of the paper.

Because of these reasons, we decided to use scrapbooking paper instead.  It was a cheap option as we only needed seven 12” by 12” pieces that cost 30 cents each (on sale!).

The paper was easily applied to the drawer fronts using hard coat mod podge.  We choose the hard coat variety because of the durability factor.

Steps to apply the paper to the drawer fronts:

1. Cut paper roughly to size.  It is easier to have extras hanging off almost all of the edges to cut off later.  I say almost all of the edges because I started the paper on the left edge perfectly to help keep alignment of the design.
2. Apply a very thin coat to the back of the paper using a brush.  I had some paint brushes laying around for acrylic painting that I used.  Just definitely remember to wash them completely after use.  I did end up with one solidified brush victim.
3. Using a plastic store discount card, push all the air bubbles out from under the paper.  I imagine this is much like what car painters have to do when applying decals.  One thing I learned the hard way: even if it doesn’t look like there are bubbles, there are!  It is important to do this process immediately, or the paint will start to dry and the bubbles will be impossible to remove.
4. Repeat steps 1-3 for all the drawer fronts.
5. Cut off the extra paper from all the drawer fronts using a razor blade knife or something similar.
   

   Cutting Excess Paper with a Razor Blade

6. Apply mod podge to the surface of all the drawer fronts.  The container recommends using 5-10 coats.  We applied about 8 coats.
   

   Using Mod Podge Glue as a Top Coat

Reinforcing Color
To be on the safe side, we also applied about 5 coats of mod podge over the spray paint.  We hadn’t planned on doing this in the beginning, but even after 7 days of “curing”, the paint chipped on one of the corners.  After investing so much time and effort in the project, we didn’t want to take any chances.

When applying mod podge, it is important to coat the entire surface each time.  This provides an even coverage. The mod podge will apply white but it dries clear. If you apply the mod podge haphazardly it will look splotchy.

Assembling the Alex
We only let the mod podge dry overnight since we were excited to see our completed project. Assembling the Ikea Alex was fairly easy.  Some of the screws were tough to get started, but overall, we have no major complaints.

Adding the Final Touches
After assembling the Alex we put liners in each drawer in order to minimize slippage.

Using Drawer Liners Maximizes Organization

Then we organized our tools in their new home.

Tools Organized in Drawer

Now a finished project, we have an Ikea Alex customized to our tastes!

Our Final Ikea Alex Modifications

UPDATE: December 1,2 2009:

We found a similar project to ours via Scraponomy Blog (German to English translation here.) .  This new project was done on June 26th, 2008.  We were unaware of this project until now. Check it out over at the Painted Fish Studio website.