The cord set comes with an open eye hook, but it didn’t work in our situation because there was no stud in the ceiling where we wanted to hang the light. We ended up buying a hanging plant hook kit. We had to modify the hook slightly because the plastic wire hanger that came with the Hemma was too small to fit over the end of the planter hook.

To fix this, I simply cut the end off of the hook with a small hacksaw. The metal was very soft and this took only seconds.  If you don’t have a hacksaw, you could possibly use heavy duty wire cutters to cut the end off.

These hanging kits are designed to hold hanging planters which are pretty heavy and come with the parts to install on either a stud or directly into drywall.  The drywall anchor is a spring toggle bolt, which is capable of hanging a lot of weight. This is a bit overkill for this project, but it doesn’t hurt. For other projects, you may want to check out which kind of drywall anchor would be right for you. To install this toggle bolt, I used a half-inch spade drill bit to drill a hole in the ceiling large enough to accept the toggle bolt when it is folded.

Once the hole has been drilled, simply insert the toggle bolt and screw the hook until it is tight against the ceiling.

We planned to power the light using a power socket under the kitchen cabinets by the sink but we didn’t want the plug just hanging down from the ceiling for two reasons; 1) Because it is unsightly and 2) because the Hemma wire was several feet too long. What we decided to do was to run the wire inside our cabinets and leave the extra wire on top of the cabinet. To do this, we used a larger drill bit to drill a hole bottom shelf and the top of the cabinets as close to the back corner as possible.

A 1-inch spade drill bit which was just wide enough to handle the plug.

We threaded the wire through the holes and tied a knot just before the bottom hole leaving enough on the other side to reach the plug under the cabinets. This knot should prevent any extra wire from coming through the hole.

To keep the wire out of the way and tidy inside the cabinet, we used small nails to tack it to the back side of the cabinet facing. This also help rout the wire neatly around the inner shelves.

We got a shade from a local Habitat for Humanity ReStore for $2.00. These stores are great because they have a wide variety of random construction pieces and furniture for great prices and the money goes to help Habitat for Humanity. The particular share we got was a bit too big to fit on the screw part of the hemma, so I filed down some of the plastic on the hemma’s light socket to make some room. I was only able to thread a couple of threads on the socket with the screw piece, but that was plenty to hold the shade.

All in all, the IKEA Hemma proved to be a great solution for us. There are tons of really great examples out there using it as well. It allows you to be creative and still coming up with a professional look.  If you have used the Hemma for a DIY lighting project, we’d love to see what you did! Leave us a comment with info and a link.

For the design, I was inspired by two owls.  First I liked this guy from iStockphoto.  You can definitely see the similarities.  Second I was inspired by this owl on Disney’s Family Fun:

Of course, I liked the spin on the word always as “owl-ways”.  I think the pencil idea is great too, but I had already bought some sour crybaby gumballs.  I am planning to put the gumballs I already purchased over the eyeballs of the owl.  Here is the owl I created:

I have it two to a page to make for easier copying and distribution.  I will put my email on the back of each owl valentine so students can contact me in the future if they need to for any reason.  I also intentionally kept it as a line drawing so students can color it in if they wish.  Enjoy the freebie!  Happy Valentine’s Day!

I needed to put my anthropomorphic house theory to the test. (Yes, I had to look up how to spell anthropomorphic.)  For Halloween, I decided to use my house face palette to create a scary face.  Adam and I had different visions for our beauty, so we sketched out our ideas using paint to end our squabble.  Yes we are that anal retentive.  Our ideas were:

Idea 1: White Pointy Teeth with Black Background

Idea 2: White Square Teeth with Black Background

Idea 3: Black Square Teeth

Idea 4: Black Pointy Teeth

Although we thought Idea 1 would likely look the best, we decided to go with Idea 4.  We figured cutting out black teeth would be easier than trying to create a black background.  This is how we did it.

Materials:

• Big Black Garbage Bags
• Permanent Double Sided Tape

Tools:

• Good Quality Scissors

We cut the edges off each garbage bag to create black squares of material.  From there, we cut out isosceles triangle shapes to use as the teeth.  We didn’t measure any sizes, but we did use the square pattern in our garage door to measure sizes.

In the two top windows, we added a pupil to add to the eye effect.  Using the double sided tape, we put up each tooth one at a time.

Because we didn’t officially measure the teeth sizes, the last two teeth had to be cut smaller to make them fit.  We did this to the last two teeth so there wouldn’t be one tooth that was noticeably smaller than the rest. This way the overall visual sizes of the teeth look balanced.

More double sided tape was used on the bottom teeth than the top because we were concerned water or wind might more easily remove these teeth.  The bags had a bit of static cling which also helped them stick to the garage door nicely.

We lost daylight pretty quickly, but I couldn’t help but snap a nighttime shot.  Of course that adds to the drama of our scary faced house!

Here is a daytime shot from the next day.

Overall this was an easy and fun project.  It only took Adam and I less than an hour to complete the entire project, including creating idea sketches in paint.  Can you turn your house into a face?  Send us your results!

Materials:

• 1 Old Dome Chair Frame
• 2 Pieces of PVC Pipe (to serve as a base for making a seat)
• Less than 1 roll of Nashua 357 Duct Tape
• Scissors

This is the dome chair I used for this project.

The first thing I did was make the seat.  I wrapped the duct tape around the PVC pipe three times to add strength.

Next I positioned the seat into the dome chair and attached it to the front of the chair.  Adam helped and having two sets of hands really helped hold each part in place.

Then I attached the seat to the back of the chair.  To ensure comfort, I made sure the seat hung down in the back.

The chair didn’t feel sturdy enough, so more braces of tape were added.

The seat of the chair wasn’t very comfortable at this point, so more tape was added to help distribute weight.

I went through and folded tape over all of the edges.  This eliminated all the sticky tape goo feeling.

The chair is complete!  It holds my weight easily (see my proof below).  It does need a pillow if you want to lay your head down – but overall the chair works just fine.  I did attempt to reuse packing material (bubble wrap, in fact) to make a permanent pillow, but Adam said it looked too junky so I decided to stick with an “old fashioned” pillow :0).

If you have been wanting to create a duct tape project I say go for it!  This project was quick, easy, cheap, and FUN!

A couple of years ago when I wrote for Hackaday I did an article about the Hacker’s Soldering Station. Since then, that station became too bulky and impractical for my office.  I needed something that was easier to move, or possibly break down to take up less space.  I looked around at what I had on hand and slapped together this quick fix that is the perfect solution for my needs.

For parts, I gathers a bunch of scrap 3/4″ PVC pipe and pipe connectors, a 24″ long fluorescent lamp (actually recycled for the hacker’s soldering station project), two screws and some zip ties.

The first thing I did was to gather and arrange my parts.  Once you are sure how you want the thing to work, then cut all the pieces to length.  The pic below shows that I had to splice together a few smaller pieces to math the length of the lamp.  be sure to leave enough room for the power cable for the lamp (the extra length of pipe on the right-hand side in this pic).  Mark where the screw holes need to be with a permanent marker.

Using one of mankind’s greatest inventions, the step drill, drill out a hole large  enough for one end of the power cable of the fluorescent lamp to fit through into one of the 90 degree L bends.

Again, using the step drill,drill a small starter hole in each of the PVC pipes you marked for the screw holes.

Make the two side supporting bars by making two T shapes.  The longest pieces of PVC should be the center support of the T.

Now put it all together and feed the power cable through the pipe. put the screws in the screw holes and place and hang the lamp on them. I added some zip ties to make sure it didn’t fall off while I’m working under it.  Here you can see the extra piece I added on the bottom, back left.  I added this for extra support since that side is closest to the edge of the table.

Since there is no glue involved in this project, it can easily break down, but an added bonus to this design is that you can spin the pole the light is attached to.  This allows you to direct it where ever you need it, and add some indirect lighting if you need it.

That’s it for a handy tip on one way to reuse lemon juice containers.  Have fun and send in pictures or links to videos of your results.

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.