QuintinSmits.com

This weekend I picked up my Arduino Starters Kit at my parents. I had ordered it a few weeks ago via eBay. At the same time, I also ordered an Arduino Ethernet Shield, which was also waiting for me, at my parents.

First I did some of the little projects from the manual, but these were not really so interesting...

I wanted to use my Ethernet Shield!

First I tried a temperature-webserver:


But that was boring...

Then I got it! It would have to tweet the temperature when I pressed a button!



Click through to read more!

My girlfriend and I are slowly replacing all the furniture in our home with new furniture. (all built by me) Up till now, I just always thought of something, made a quick drawing to explain my ideas to her and then we went to buy wood.

This time, we're going to do it differently.

Our current coffee table is badly damaged and discoloured, so I thought we should get a new one. Because I couldn't find anything I really like (with a good price) we again decided I would probably end up building it myself.

Read more to see my designs!

My girlfriend and I have wanted a bookcase for a while now, but we never could find something we really liked. Because I've started woodworking a few months back, I decided to try and build my own:

This was quite a project, I've been working on it on and off for 2 weeks, mostly during weekends and on days off (there were a lot of those, the past two weeks...). I think the total amount of time I spend on this project is about 48 hours, give or take. Most of that time went into sanding the bevelled edges of the back-panels. If I'm ever going to work on a project like this again, I might go and buy a tool specifically for this purpose, that might take the time spent down to 30 hours, maybe even less. A picture of the finished product (no books yet, the laquer was still drying when this picture was taken):

We're talking about the top half, the bottom half was made earlier. Also, the coloring of the wood will be the same as the wood of the bottom cabinet, as soon as the laquer has had time to dry.

See the light patch in the bottom left of the next picture?

That is what the floor in our hallway usually looks like. The brown stuff is sawdust from my table saw. I used this for the bevel-edges on the back panels of the bookcase, as you can see in another picture.

A pic of how some of the shelves are lined up in the center of the case (not entirely correct...) and the bevel edges of the back panels:

Most of the shelves are lined up correctly, though. This actually seems to be the only mayor fuckup in this piece of furniture. I must be getting better at this!

And to finish off a pic of how the other side of the shelves are connected to the sides of the bookcase:

Perhaps I could have used nicer wood, but the wood for this whole cabined (including the bottom "half" with the sliding doors) already totaled about € 450,-. Add to that the glue and two cans of laquer (water based polyuretane called "Glitsa") and we get a custom, handmade bookcase for just over € 500,-.

I'm not counting hours, of course, this is a hobby project. I do, however, now understand why furniture can be so expensive. If I was going to take my hours and tools into account, the price of this case would be nearer to € 2000,-.  

The room feels completely transformed now that the bookcase is in its place. The ceiling appears to be much higher and the rooms just feels bigger. I wasn't aiming for this, but it certainly is a nice side-effect.

A few months ago I made a laptop stand, to hold my laptop in a more comfortable position while working. It looked ugly:

 

I decided I wanted something that looked nice, because I'm looking at it for at least 2 or 3 hours every day. When I spotted a small piece of wengé wood in our local DIY-store, I bought the wengé and a piece of purple heart. I think this one turned out much better:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The project took a few weeks to complete because of some complications. Wengé wood is HARD. By hard I mean really really hard, and very dense. (It supposedly sinks in water) Hard woods splinter a lot. I got a LOT of splinters in my hands, some in my face and even one in my eye.

Yes, I learned to even wear safety glasses when using hand tools. (I always did wear them when using my table saw or band sander...) I varnished it with varnish from a spray-can. I wanted it to look very shiny...

During this project I learned how to make sliding dovetails:

  

How to inlay wood into other wood:

Also, wengé stains my hands black. I've had black fingertips for days after working with this wood! Just another pic, from the side:

I've been working with wood for a few months now; I made a cabinet to store shoes, a drawer cabinet for clothes (mainly underwear), night tables for next to the bed and the "headboard" for the bed.

The second to last project was a cabinet for the TV and all the equipment that comes with it.

The last is the bottom half of a bookcase.There is a pic of the TV cabinet there as well. In the coming weeks I'll be working on the bookcase itself.

Because I've been using my laptop exclusively for the past months, I decided it was time to do something about the way I kept my laptop on my desk. This is the result of about half an hour with a saw, cordless drill and some wood I had laying around from another project:

Another pic after the jump. (of the laptop stand in use on my desk.)