Word Alarm Clock

I've been working on trying to come up with a version of the word clock I build that is in a smaller form factor - something more of the nightstand-sized variety. This is version 1. It still doesn't have a wooden enclosure around it, but it's definitely much smaller. This one uses a pair of PCBs that I designed and populated myself - one for the LED layer, and one for the rest of the circuit. It's still a lot deeper than I would like though, so I've been starting to plan for a version 2.


Sitting Lizard

I recently made this little "sitting lizard" for the shelf above my monitors at home. He's made from an aluminum wire armature and Super Sculpey oven-bake clay. I think he's cute - it looks like he's just kicking back and soaking up the sunshine.

Growing Crystals

I read an article online about how to grow cool crystals at home using fertilizer, and Carter and I thought we'd give it a try. Our first attempt failed, but did something really interesting. The article mentioned this might happen if the water was allowed to evaporate too quickly. It grew this amazing structure that looks almost like white broccoli.


Word Clock #2

Technically, this is actually word clock #3 - as #2 is on my desk at work. But where I haven't taken any photos of #2 or posted it here, we'll call this one #2 for now. I made this for my sister's fiance Nate, after he saw the first one at my house and fell in love with it.


Avatar Night Light

Made this for Carter for Christmas on the laser cutter. Each panel is one of the elemental symbols from Avatar, and there is a remote-controlled LED puck inside of it.


Woorkshop Reorganization

Now that I've had a few years to settle in to this new workshop, I have a much better feel for how it could best be laid out. So I took everything out, painted the walls (to brighten things up), and moved everything to its new location. I also ran a bunch of additional outlets on three separate circuits, so that I will stop tripping breakers when more than one tool is powered on at a time. Last thing to do is to run the permanent dust collection pipes, but I haven't quite gotten to that part yet.


Assembly and Outfeed Table

I built this large outfeed table for my table saw, and it can also double as an assembly table. There is lots of room for storage (I use the drawers for power tools and the center cabinet for a shopvac), and the top is about 2.5 by 7 feet - so there is lots of room to work. The top has about five coats of water-based polyurethane, to keep it nice and slick.


Workbench Toolbox

I've always planned to build a toolbox to go under my main workbench, to hold my most frequently used hand tools. I finally build one, and I think it came out pretty good. The body of the box is just painted birch plywood, but the drawer fronts are cherry.


Plant Progress

A little over a year ago, I saved the seeds from some fruit we had eaten and tried planting them. We planted lemons, clementines, and an avocado. These plants are now about 15 months old, and I wanted to post an update on their status. One of the lemon trees and one of the clementines are in the left-hand photo, and the avocado is in the right-hand photo. As you can see, they are all doing pretty good. There are another half-dozen or so lemon trees that aren't in this photo, and all of them are doing about the same. They are *just* starting to develop actual bark on trunks, so that's pretty good! They say that it usually takes about three years to go from seed to the plant producing fruit, so it'll still be a while. But it's kind of fun to know that I started these trees from seeds.


Display Stands

Our science collection cabinet was getting a bit crowded and unorganized, so I came up with some display stands that I could cut with the laser. I even incorporated labels onto some of them, which makes it a lot nicer (when you know what you are looking at). I probably could still use to make some item-specific one-off stands, for some of the bigger items. But for now it looks much better.