Under bed storage : Basic trundle

I suppose most houses in India have the same problem as I do : Too little storage space. A lot of our winter clothes (Vellore actually has no winter) lie in suitcases that are pushed under the bed. Gradually they go deeper and deeper under the bed, until the day I swim deep in the dust and fish the box out, only to find that it does not have the piece I am looking for.
I have the same problem in my make  do workshop where I would like to store items under the bed. (My present work area is our guest room, permission for which my wife has so graciously granted). So after looking at various trundle type storage units on the web, I decided to make a basic one.

There is nothing to it actually. It is an 10 mm MDF board with 6 small wheels screwed underneath. The advantage of this is that the items will not get scratched, and pulling it out is far easier.

The under side of the trundle with six wheels. My son is hiding behind it.

My little daughter trying to push my son off the trundle. It makes a good toy

Under bed storage with at trundle

The trundle with some boxes that will finally roll under the bed

 I plan to use a similar model for my gas cylinder and for my rice storage container some time in the future.

Wooden castle blocks

This is a set of wooden castle blocks made as a gift.

Wooden castle blocks

The inspiration was the set of wooden blocks from Down To Earth available here

Wood : Actually not sure. This was called "country wood" by the lumber people. An inexpensive wood. It was initially about 1.5 inches thick, that was smoothed in the lumber mill to about 1 inch thick.

Design : I made the gate, two towers and four wall pieces, drawn freehand. I made one entrance piece, two towers and four wall pieces. The towers and entrances required added supports to prevent them from toppling over easily.

Wooden castle blocks : The entrance with a door. Required Supports

Wooden castle blocks : The wall pieces 

Wooden castle blocks : Tower pieces : They required supports

Cutting : With a Skil Jigsaw.

Smoothing : Rounded over the edges with a rounding over bit on my router table.

Windows : Drilled a hole with a 9 mm bit and used a jigsaw to cut it out.

Supports. I rounded over a cuboid of the same wood and sliced off a small bit using the table saw. The two are supported with a screw inside, the head of the screw is covered with a plug of the same material.

Sanding : Very little needed on the surface. There were burn marks that hand to be sanded off for which I used a flexishaft with a sanding attachment.

Finish : Clear varnish wiped immediately after applying. There must be a better way to do this but I am learning this. If the finish comes off I will have to re apply this.

 Finished product: This can be rearranged to make a circle or a wall of castle.

Wooden castle blocks

Wooden Toy Sword

This is a toy sword made for kids in the age group 5 years or so.

Wooden sword from finger jointed rubber

Wood : finger jointed rubber, 18 mm thick. I had a long waste piece that determined the total length.

Cutting : Using a skil jigsaw. The corners were rounded over using a rounding over bit on my router table.

Finish: Well I do not know how long this will last but i used virgin olive oil and rubbed off the extra. I will post updates on how this fares. I wanted everything to be natural.

Final Product : I probably should have made a pair. This is a very basic sword with no detail, but I suspect that in a kids eyes, a long stick, this sword and the most elaborately detailed one are equal. Kids.. the great levelers...

My son Arpit with the wooden sword

Wooden Dominoes

Wooden dominoes

Well I decided to make wooden dominoes. It was to be a gift.
A lot of my inspiration was from Mathias Wandel's dominoes. He made it look so easy.

Failed attempts
I tried using 10 mm  thick beading. However the beading was slightly uneven and also was slightly warped. I gave up on it. I also tried cutting a whole block of neem, but my table saw blade was not high enough. I finally used a beam of wood that I cross cut.

Wood : Padauk wood (Padag) wood. The lady who owned the the local timber mill was very helpful. I asked her for the darkest wood she had, and she fished out this wood. It was nice and red. I got this planed at the lumber mill itself as a long beam about 2.5 inches by 1.5 inches or so. I planned to use this such that I could cut a cross section of the beam and get a single domino. I actually misjudged the size a bit, and had to trim down each domino later. But that was not so much of a problem.

Cutting the dominoes : I used my home made circular saw made into a table saw. I also had a simple cross cut jig to help me cut the dominoes. It worked pretty well.

My son Arpit enjoys vacuuming cleaning up sawdust. Seen here is my table saw

and the cross cut jig. The long belt of sandpaper that I used to sand paper the
dominoes is also seen.  

Trimming them. I used a stop block on my cross cut sledge to trim all dominoes to the final size.

Sanding : I got fine saw marks on the cross cut surface. These lines are not so important when one is making something large. But for dominoes they really stand out. So I had to sand both sides of the dominoes. I tried my orbital sander but this was not fast enough. I wished I had a belt sander. I finally went to the local store and bought one meter of sanding belt paper. I fixed this on my table with two clamps and then sanded the raw domino on this. This was useful as I was able to apply my body weight on the domino thereby hastening the process. I sanded along the grain and used finer sand paper to get a smooth finish.

Template: I used microsoft powerpoint to get an accurate size of the domino with the spots. I printed out a whole set of double sixes. I then cut them out (actually my wife and son did this) and stuck them on the blocks.

template for dominoes that I printed out from Power Point

Making the spots : I used a drill press and a 6 mm drill bit to drill the holes. They were not really accurate but were passable. I then sanded off the paper.

Drilling the domino holes with a drill press

Using a plug cutter, I cut out plugs of thin finger jointed wood.

Cutting domino plugs from finger jointed rubber with a plug cutter bit

Arpit enjoyed counting the small plugs. A total of 150 or so were needed.

I stuck the plug into each of the holes and then sanded them flush when dry.

Unfinished dominoes in  different stages

Center line : I made the center line with a file.

Finish : Clear varnish. But I did not want the glossy look so I wiped off the varnish immediately after applying it. It gives a dull finish.

Wooden domino box

Box : I made a box out of finger jointed wood. I tried some techniques for the joints. I was able to round over the edges using my router table.

Finished product : I liked the contrasting colors that I was able to get without any stains. I have to work on my box making skills. The dominoes topple well. However they are not perfectly square so you cannot stack three or four of them vertically one over another.

Wooden dominoes in box