Kickstand Puck

I promised my Dad in May that I was try and make him a kickstand puck for his motorcycle, but had been stuck on how I would attempt it for a while. Last weekend I finally decided to go for it, using a pewter casting method I had read about online. I used the CNC machine to cut out a mold for the pewter, dusted it with baby powder (as a mold release) and then poured in molten pewter. What you see here is the result. At first I wasn't too keen on the pitted surface finish, but it has definitely grown on me - it brings home the idea that it was hand cast rather than made in a factory.

Screenprinting

Since the last time we posted about screenprinting some t-shirts, we've made a bunch more screens and a heap of new shirts. Here's a sampling of screens we've made in the last couple of months. From left to right they are: an Undertale-themed shirt we made for my nephew's birthday party favors, a Cthulu emblem I though was cool, the Team Valor logo for Pokemon Go, a Fallout 4 Vault 111 logo, Makey the Makerbot (the Make Magazine logo), and another Fallout 4 themed logo.

PiGrrl Zero

Sean and I just finished building a Raspberry Pi-based handheld emulator system, than can play any classic video games up through the SNES/Genesis era. It came out pretty good, but it took three times to get case printed correctly. The stock case STL files from Adafruit were just not big enough - I had to scale things up in height to get all the components to fit. Eventually I'm hoping to mill (on the CNC machine) a replacement case from some exotic wood, and made some wooden buttons as well. That would look pretty sweet.

Pin Wall

Every time the kids or I get a pin we stick them here. The kids sometimes get them with Pokemon cards, and I always get one in the Loot Crates we're subscribed to. We're slowly amassing quite a collection. It's fun to look back through them and remember where they all come from.

Carter’s Soap

Carter got a kit in the mail to make her own soap. It came out pretty cool. It's real glycerin soap - not like store-bought soap where they skim off the glycerin during the process to use in making liquid soaps and lotions. I've been using it every day, and it lathers up pretty nice.

Other Leather Projects

Here are a couple of other leather projects I've completed recently. One is a case for my phone. That one was wet-formed from vegetable-tanned leather over a wooden stand-in I created of my phone. The inside is lined with black felt to keep my screen from getting scratched. The bottom pictures are of a minimalist wallet I made from some thin chrome-tanned leather. Even really thin store-bought wallets are too bulky for me - I like to carry as little as possible. This one is basically just two card sleeves that fold in the middle. The whole thing is less than a quarter the thickness of my old one. It remains to be seen how well it holds up to daily use. I've been using it for about a month now, and so far so good.


Carter’s Longboard

Carter has been talking all summer long about making a longboard for herself - ever since we found a book on our road trip that had instructions for the process. We finally got around to doing it, and this is the result. It came out pretty good! Carter decorated the underside with a bunch of sugar skulls. We drew and colored them with fine point Sharpies, and we put a coat of spray-on polyurethane on top to protect it. She's been learning to ride it in the driveway. We'll have to take it somewhere soon where there is more open space for her to practice!

Leather Deck Box

The kids and I have been learning to play the Pokemon card game lately, and we made a bunch of these letter deck boxes to hold our Pokemon decks, dice, damage counters, etc. They're actually really easy to make - they're all one piece of leather, wet-formed and riveted together. I made two or three, and Carter made a couple too. We had a hard time getting the leather to stain evenly - but upon further research I think it comes out a lot better if the leather is slightly damp when you apply the stain. We'll have to try that next time.