FOG for Charities Contest

[Brice Burrell]

The Jr supermodel in the bottom picture is my lovely daughter Sophie.

No fair! You're gonna win just with that great photo of the little cutie.  [big grin]

Hey, all's fair in love and war....and contests with Festool products for the prizes! ;D

 

[Chris Hughes]

Okay, this is how I did what I did.

Using the MFT I cut tapers on my rough base panels.

Now that the panels are cut to height and width I use a radius jig that I have laying about the shop that I made for projects like this.  Using the jig first to draw the arch for the rough out with a jig saw. (another Festool purchase for the future)  I reapply the jig with clamps and use my OF2200 to clean up the cut.

After some edgebanding wishing for a MFK and fond memories of my super advanced End Users Class, I set up to do some dominoing.  At class we learned how to set up and cut dominoes in a field.  This was very helpful for this operation as I have no hard edges to justify the cuts to.  The key is in using the bottom of the machine and clamping on the right side to make the joint.

All setup and ready to glue after a little sanding with my RO125.

 

[Chris Hughes]

Not all good deeds go punished.  Contary to legend.  Appearantly the the benches were popular with all invovled.

First the administration wrote me a thank you note on letter head.  That was nice. 

Next the preschoolers made me a very large thatnk you card.  That was the best.

The next day, yesterday, I went in to drop of Sophie and the Kindergarden teachers were sitting on their new bench waiting to give me a very nice award.

Yep, it was a fun project that ended well and it feels good to have the opportunity to make some people happy.

 

[Brice Burrell]

Chris, sounds like the only thing you didn't get was a gold star! Again, I have to say good job and thanks for posting.

 

[tbellemare]

You're a lucky guy, Chris!

Great work...

Tom

 

[Chris Hughes]

Thanks guys!

 

[Brice Burrell]

I have a neighbor, the kind of guy that does things for people in the neighborhood like shovel snow, cuts grass and keeps on eye on the elderly. Great guy. Last week he came to my door with a beat up piece of MDF and asks if he could use one of my cordless drills. I say sure, no problem, whattaya workin' on? Turns out he recently gave his old computer to a kid whose family lives down the street. Problem was they didn't have a desk big enough for the computer, keyboard and mouse, speakers and so on. He wanted to attach that piece of MDF to a rickety old table to have a makeshift desk for the kid.

As I sent him off with the drill I got to a thinking.... Chris's word's stuck with me: "Sometimes I think we overlook the small things right in front of us, things that we can solve in an afternoon and move the ball forward in a small way." You see this family is going through some tough times. The father lost his job shortly before Christmas and they'll having a hard time making ends meet. So I thought I'd help in my own small way - I'd make the boy a new desk. After all, I've got leftover materials laying around anyway and a few hours over the weekend wouldn't put me out at all.  

At first I thought about going as simple as possible but where's the fun in that. Materials used: a few 1x6 #2 pine, some birch ply, edge banding, a few Domino tenons and pocket screws, finish: gloss polyurethane and tinted primer. Here it is, first the SketchUp model.

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Edge trimming.

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Finished.

[attachthumb=#]

I'd also like to point this isn't a contest entry, I just thought this might help keep things moving in this great contest. While this isn't anything fancy I had a lot of fun on this project and it was nice to able to help out a neighbor. I'll start a thread in the projects section to talk about the build. EDIT: here's a link to the build, Child's Computer Desk.

Okay, so who's next to post their project?        

 

[peter halle]

Brice,

[thumbs up] [thumbs up]

The littleist things to us may be the biggest thing to someone else.  Great job.

Peter

 

[Jonathanerrrm]

Hi Brice,

I just read your post and felt compelled to say what a really cool thing to do and it looks great too.

Best wishes,

Jonathan

 

[Frank Pellow]

I really like the style of the desk Brice.  [thumbs up]

 

[Chris Hughes]

Thanks Brice.  What a great way to "pay it forward" and awesome design as well. 

 

[Brice Burrell]

Thanks everyone. It was a super fun project, besides, I had a few new tools to play with try out.

Thanks Brice.  What a great way to "pay it forward" and awesome design as well.  

Chris, you got things going here and your words just jumped into my head at just the right time. So, thank you for the inspiration!

Brice,
My hat's off to you.  I look forward to reading about the build.

Joe

Joe, I hope to have something posted some time tomorrow. I'll post a link here.

EDIT: here's a link to the build, Child's Computer Desk.

 

[sw1211]

Great design and execution, you banked some good karma with this project.

 

[Dave Ronyak]

Very nicely done project, Brice.  No doubt that child and his family will get much use and joy out of your work and that of your neighbor. 

I encourage you to design more items!!

Dave R.

 

[Kevcoleman]

I  finished a project to build a computer workstation for the USO in the San Francisco Airport.  It was a great project that I was ?drafted? for.  My Dad is a regular volunteer at the USO and he mentioned he was working on a computer workstation for the USO and was going to build it out of melamine.  He doesn?t have a lot of tools and from how is was explaining his plan to me, I got the sense that he didn?t have much of a plan.  I have to admire him as the mail tools he has are a circular saw, very small table saw, a router and a drill.  I mentioned that I was working on a large cabinet and set of drawers for the garage and have a number of tools that would make the process a lot easier including my TS55 saw  to help cut the melamine and minimize chip out.  He took me up on the offer to help and showed up with several pieces of melamine and a rough template of the wall angles that the unit would fit up against at 7 am the next morning. 

His original plan was to join three pieces of smaller prebanded melamine to make up the workstation top.  I didn?t think that was such a good idea as making those joints flush and chip free was going to be difficult and also we were working with lots of complex miters and thought the risk of error was too great.  I happened to have a large piece of 10 foot melamine that would work so we decided to cut the top out of one pience, mount it to another pience of ? inch plywood and then apply a maple bull nose on the front.  We cut the melamine with the TS55 which worked great with almost no chipout.  We used the Domino to attach the bull nose.  The top weighed a ton but made a very sturdy work station. We also decided to trim the rest of the desk out with maple to give it a more finished look.  I was concerned that the edge of the table would take a lot of abuse and probably look pretty ratty after a few months use.  The maple bull nose will last a long time and provides a smooth edge for the servicemen and women using the workstation.

For the base stations, we used the TS55 and MFT to cut all the pieces to size and dominos to build the cabinets.

The next weekend I loaded up the car and met my dad at the USO to install the cabinet.  We put the base cabinets down on the floor and slid the top into place.  Amazingly it almost fit like a glove.  We needed a very little sanding with a belt sander to make it fit perfectly.  We then attached the monitor stand to the top of the workstation and again that fit against the wall like a glove.  I was glad we made the top so heavy as we were not allowed to attach it to the wall and the weight makes it completely stable.

Everyone at the USO was really happy with the project and it gets a lot of use.  I was glad I could help out the USO as well as spend some quality time with my Dad working on the project.  I know that every time he goes to the USO and looks at the project he will have great memories of the project.

Unfortunately I forgot to take picture of the construction but do have this photo of the completed project
Thanks for looking
Kevin

 

[Brice Burrell]

Great job! It's so easy for us to forget the sacrifice the men and women of the armed services make for us everyday so I'm glad you were able to do something for them. (For those of you outside of the US you can read about the USO here.) A project that helps others and time spent with your dad is a win, win and it looks very nice too.

[thumbs up] 

 

[Warrior]

In February I was approached by my son's teacher to build a puppet theater to be submitted for the class in the school's fund raising auction. The money raised from the auction goes to pay for things like the art and music programs and field trips.  She wanted to kids to make the puppets and put stars on the curtains.

She said it didnt need to be fancy like out of "cherry wood or anything". I said, "OK let me see what I can do. I have some scap wood in the shop but its all exotic hardwoods. I dont have any cheap materials but I will gladly use what I have.

I sent her this sketch and started the build.

I didnt know about the contest until I was nearly done so Im lacking pictures of the build. I used the domino, C12, OF1010, ETS150

pictured is the domino curtain rod holders.

I seem to have been doing alot of Sapele projects lately and had quite a bit of scrap. I was able to pick out a couple of boards with some arching grain for the arches and stage. Notice that the actual arches are alot shallower than what was drawn. I had to follow the grain.

There is plenty of storage for the kids puppets on the shelves under the stage. The panel is 1/4" mdf with chalk board paint so the kids can draw on it and put the now showing sign in the top.

I delivered the theater to the fundraising chairpersons today. They were very happy and told me that all the other donations were going to be on a silent auction while this will reserved for the live auction with the paddles and such. Very exciting. They expect to get quite a bit for it and that translates into lots of good stuff for the kids.

Thanks for looking.

 

[score0matic]

Eiji
This is so out of line.

You should know not to go to this level of quality with the Sole purpose of impressing us [wink].  It is a Terrible display of unsportsmanlike conduct to make this.  all it does is serve to make me not even try. hehe

Craig.  Practicing being as backhanded in my complements as possible

 

[jonny round boy]

Eiji, that's beautiful.

Nuff said.

 

[Frank Pellow]

I  finished a project to build a computer workstation for the USO in the San Francisco Airport.  
...
Thanks for looking
Kevin

Kevin, that's a good design.  It's functional, it's attractive, and I expect that it will stand up well to the type of abuse that it is likely to receive.  [thumbs up]