It’s Made of Wood

Last September a friend of mine asked if anyone wanted to join him for a wood working class. My father has always made cool things with wood but I’ve never had much luck. That’s partly from laziness and not trying. Partly from lack of access to tools so no chance to improve. So I decided to give it a try and took the class.

It sounds boring but the thing the class taught us to make was a cutting board. Turns out, you can learn a lot from something so simple. We went through and used miter saw, planar, joiner, router, table saw, and sanders. Most of those tools I had no idea existed. In the end, it looked pretty good, especially for a first attempt. Unfortunately, I don’t have a picture to show off as I gave it to my Dad for Christmas.

With this small success I had the itch. The class was taught at a maker space near downtown Houston called TXRX Labs. It was a very cool place and I looked into joining. Unfortunately, the fee for anytime access was quite a lot, especially for something I wanted to try out and given the drive distance. So I looked closer and found CreatorSpace much closer to home and much cheaper membership. It came with a lot fewer tools but for a stepping stone into the hobby it worked great.

Since joining last October I’ve made a number of things, each improving. Christmas was a giant pile of wooden presents. Old school Santa Claus.

The first thing up was a dice tray. I wanted something I could use for a multitude of games that had ample dice rolling room and a place to keep the dice. I settled on an octagon with three slots on each corner after counting just how many dice I regularly use for Star Wars RPG’s. It’s quite a lot.  Pictured you see it used for Armada which still uses most of them.

This first attempt ran into quite a number of problems. The pieces of the octagon didn’t line up well. The sides were rough. I drilled the holes to close to the edge a few places. But it was a great learning experience.

I next tried a smaller version to take with me for X-wing tournaments. I never will need more than twelve dice for X-Wing so a hexagon with two dice slots on each hedge felt good. I also wanted to try out the laser cutter.

There isn’t a lot of space to roll dice but it’s very compact. Which is handy on cramped tournament tables. Six green and six red dice fit perfectly.

After that, I made several as presents for the rest of my RPG group as Christmas presents

These went more smoothly than the first one. There are still plenty of flaws of course. But the process had less hiccups and the pieces actually fit together much nicer. Overall I was pleased enough with them to warrant them worthy as presents.

Next, I tried something completely different for my wife for her birthday. She had been saying we needed a stoll or chair or something by the laundry room where all the shoes are kept. So I thought I’d try my hand at it.

This turned out both better than I expected and worse. It went together and sat flat which I did not think I’d pull off on my first attempt. But it also didn’t hold up as well as I’d hoped. I couldn’t figure out a way to get the legs securely into the seat and ended up just glueing them. It works okay but I don’t think it will last very long.

In the build up to Christmas I went a little mad. Part of the justification I made to myself on paying for the creatorspace and devoting the work time to projects was a commitment to make a bunch of Christmas presents. The time required to get everything made was far above what I had anticipated.

BUT I made my mother cry on Christmas, and as we all know, that’s the true goal of Christmas presents. Right?  Right?

For her I made up a perpetual calendar with special dials for birthdays. Her side of the family is huge so I ran out time and had to cut it off at the cousin (her niece/nephew) level. I’d still be laser cutting out names if I did their spouses and kids.

This was another learning experience. Cutting out the names was time consuming but simple enough thanks to computers. But learning how to cut grooves for the rows and getting everything to slide in were challenging. Despite lots of sanding and measuring the tiles still don’t slide smoothly on every row. But they will all go at least.

For my sisters and wife I worked with my niece on some boxes. Learning to make a simple rectangle box proved surprisingly challenging. But I got to learn rabbet cuts which should prove quite useful going forward. My niece, whose a phenomenal artist, especially for an 11 yr old, made some drawings that I laser cut into the boxes and then painted. She made three different ones but I forgot to take pictures of those so this is the one my wife got.

Finally, for my son I wanted to something too. I debated some kind of castle or something for his toys. But I couldn’t decide on anything. Until we went to Ren Faire and he really wanted one of the wooden toys for sale. I looked at those and said “I can do that”.

Morgan Freeman voice, “He couldn’t.”

These proved the most frustrating. I followed a video on how to make them and still made quite a few mistakes. I just couldn’t get the crossguard and tang to work right. I did get these made, and he loves them, but then, every stick in the yard is a sword when you’re seven. They look decent in the picture but the crossguard’s don’t fit right on all but one of them. But they still slain monsters so it’s all good.

So what’s next? Something to hang the swords and other adventure gear.  Maybe some more dice trays for people. Maybe a complete tournament set for X-wing to replace the hodgepodge of stuff I have. Eventually, a true gaming table. But that’s years, and years, and years out.