Hey guys! Welcome back to Maker Break, where we share our favorite maker videos of the week, and challenge ourselves to build a project of our own! This week Sarah got some time in the shop to make something of her own and decided to make something for her Mom. Here’s how it went.
This Week’s Project
A while ago I asked my Mom what she’d like for mother’s day, and she pointed me to this adorable hanging basket stand for her porch. Lucky for her, I’m the host of a maker show, so I could get this one done!
I started with this simple sketch, figured out my cut list, and fired up the saw. I used only a couple 2x4s, a 2×6, and a 2×10. I first measured out my cuts, and then used the miter saw to get this all squared away.
The 2×10 was a little wide for our miter saw, so I grabbed our 6 and a half in Circular saw and used a square to keep my cut on the line.
Once I had my stack of pieces ready, I started the assembly by laying it all out on the bench. I spent a few minutes cleaning up the boards with a quick sanding.
I decided to hold the frame together with pocket holes, and used my Kreg jig to get that done quickly. I held the four pieces together with a Bessy band clamp, and drove in the pocket screws.
For the 3 layered base, I predrilled some holes to make sure I didn’t split the wood, and then screwed them all together.
And with that, the assembly was done! It’s a tad bigger than I imagined, but it kinda has to be in order to hold the plants. Now 4 of the pocket holes are in a spot that’s easy to see, so I filled them with some pine plugs we had laying around.
After that, I decided to give it another good sanding before staining. I first tried to seal it with this ceder colored stuff that looked like angry mustard, whatever that is. And yeah. That looked terrible. So I bailed on that idea, and grabbed some dark walnut and it looked waaaay better.
Then I added 2 coats of clear sealer. The last step was to make a welcome sign in illustrator, and then cut it out with our cricut. Applying it was easy. I put it on the front, and then painted one more layer of sealer over that to keep it all in place.
And here it is! It holds baskets, and looks good too. It turned out to be a really easy project, and a lot of fun to build.
Meet A Maker: Scott Brown
This week we got to meet Scott Brown from Scott Brown Carpentry. Be sure to catch the interview in the episode above! He also wanted to shout out to The Off Cut on YouTube! So when you are done here, be sure to get check him out as well!
Our Favorite Maker Videos of the Week!
Our first stop is with Izzy Swan who’s made a unique tool box. Izzy first made this really cool garden tool box with an auto open feature, which got everyone on Instagram drooling. But not all of us need such a big box, so he took to Youtube to build a smaller more manageable version with the same auto open feature. Such a creative mechanism in such a pretty package. You can check it out at Izzy Swan on youtube.
Timber Frame construction makes for some really solid projects, but the build process is unique. This week Kyle from RR Building took his first shot with a pair of heavy duty saw horses. Kyle broke out the Super Sasquach saw and turned a bunch of 4×4 douglas firs into some of the most substantial saw horses I’ve ever seen. It a lot of fun watching Kyle try something new, learning at every turn. If you’ve been thinking about giving timber framing a try, this is a great place to start.
If you watch any maker videos at all, you’ll immediately run into the awesome live edge slabs that everyone seems to smother in epoxy. What they don’t tell you is, live edge slabs are really expensive. But fortunately for us, our buddy Zac has a clever solution. Zac took some rough walnut boards, glued them up, and then used a grinder to carve out some fake natural edges, that look absolutely amazing. What a cool wood carving project. If you want to take a stab at a slab of your own, be sure to start at Zac Builds on Youtube.
Alright gang that’s all we’ve got. If you saw a Maker Video that should have been mentioned, do us a favor and link it in the comments below. If you link it, we’ll watch it! Thanks to HART for sponsoring this episode and reminding us that we can build anything we can imagine, if we Do it with Hart. So be sure to like and subscribe so you don’t miss a thing! Alright break’s over, let’s make something!
