DIY

Monday, December 10. 2012

DIY car laptop stand #2

I wrote about a stand that I made in one hour here. It took a bit more to do this one in my friends workshop (needed some joiner's tools to drill holes in a proper angle). The frame is made of oak wood, I used 6mmx16cm long screws and a really good glue to put it together. The aluminium trim is screwed with 6mmx6cm long screws. The laptop just slides in so it doesn't move around. I used the white platform from the old stand (hence so many holes).

Continue reading "DIY car laptop stand #2"

Monday, October 8. 2012

Laptop hanging from the ceiling to watch movies - my solutions

This "stand" or "hang" was made in a few minutes. I put two strings around the handle of the roof window when I needed to look at several hours of video. This way in bed proved very comfortable and we started watching films like this as well. The strings might be in a way but it's not bothering us. It can be achieved with two hooks in the ceiling as well if no roof window is available.

Wednesday, August 22. 2012

Ukulele DIY hard case

There are three reasons why I wanted to do a home made hard case for my uke:

• I'm clumsy enough to be scared of breaking my uke in a gig bag
  
• Hard cases are expensive and I did not want to spend that money on it
• I like to build this kind of things
  

The material cost was 13€/£10/$16 (in July 2012). So very very cheap but I had some things already in the house/garage. I got the idea from the box my ukulele came in. Then I looked at similar projects online, but all were converted ukulele cardboard boxes (e.g. Ukulele box case - cheap easy way to recycle your uke box into a case). Unfortunately cardboard is not very sturdy, so I made a wooden one.

Material

• (waterproof) plywood 6mm (the thicker the heavier) - 9€
  
• wood glue
  
• wooden strip (to harden the joints) - had some left overs from window frames
  
• wood screws (the smallest I could find were 9.5mm x 3mm and I filed them afterwards) - 1.5€
  
• 2 hinges - 1€
  
• 2 metal latches to close the case - 1.5€
  
• cloth - in my case old pants
• insulation foam 1cm thick (for laminate floor) - the pieces that I had at home
• double sided tape to stick the cloth to the insulation foam and then to the case
• a handle and its hardware - I used a leather one from an old suitcase
  

Tools (other tools can be used as replacement for any of the below):

• belt sander (to sand the plywood and excess of side boards as they were a few mm longer for this purpose - sand belt 120)
  
• craft saw (to cut out the grooves for hinges and clips)
  
• screwdriver
• angle grinder (for filing the screws)
• varnish/paint/laquer and brush (or nothing if raw wood is preferred or if it will be covered in tweed or some similar material)
  
• clips (to hold pieces together when gluing)
  
• scissors (cutting the cloth, tape and insulation foam)
  

I cut the wood at the local workshop as I don't have the appropriate tools at home. The below measures suit my soprano ukulele (friction tuners). Bear in mind that the top and bottom need to be wide as or more than the width of uke + 2 x insulation + 2 x plywood width. Just trace the uke on a paper and add extra width to get the right dimensions. The sides were cut a bit longer for purpose and I needed to sand them to the right sizes and angles after the box was glued.

The case is just a bit under 2kg (4.4lbs) in weight.

The whole process can be seen from below photos.

EDIT: I just found a similar but more sophisticated DIY case. The brass hardware looks nicer (I couldn't find it in my local hw store). And this guy used rubber foam and velvet material. Very nice case indeed!

Wednesday, May 30. 2012

Make your own Jumping Jack - a good birthday party activity for kids

I had to keep busy 14 kids (a birthday party) recently and there's nothing better than to challenge them and give them something to work. I designed my own Jumping Jack (Možiček Kopitljaček in Sovene). 

There are three different ones that you can print on an A4 cardboard:

• one with a skirt
  
• one with long pants
  
• and one with shorts (like a footballer)

• I also made some different hair styles and accessories so children could put on and decorate them however they liked.

Some photos:

Tuesday, April 10. 2012

DIY simple cheap bedside garment rack fixed on the wall

I made this two simple garment rack to hang cloths in our room. They're located on both sides of the bed. The idea was not to have anything on cycles on the floor and in a way.

Material:

• round iron bars 6mm radius (used for fencing and found at the fencing workshop as leftover)
• 2 zinc plate brackets (found at ScrewFix) 
• Metalic silver paint in spray container
• Welding machine with all needed equipment (if you don't own one and don't know how to weld, the solution is to ask at the local workshop as this job took less than 5 minutes).