Coming soon.....

a brand new garage!!

I outgrew the old one.. so time for an upgrade.  and all the fun that comes with laying out a new shop.  Stay tuned...

TA - DA

May I present to you the culmination of 1.5 years of woodworking frustration, punctuated of course with many smaller projects

 

This is the John Smith Senior 20 busker organ plans available here.  almost every aspect of this is handmade following some very poorly written instuctions.  If it wasn't for this youtube video series, I might have given up.  Thank you Ronald Walters for bird dogging and documenting your own levels of frustration.

I opted to pass on the mechanical conductor but left room on the left and right for some static figures.  The final artistic paintwork will be by my wife as I do NOT have that talent.

What happened?

The original purpose of this blog was to follow along the resto-mod of a 1969 Bronco.  That task was finished and it now collects dust in the garage as I don't like driving such a nice vehicle.   I am now somewhat relenting and have plans of driving it more this coming summer.

I have determined that I derive more pleasure from the building of something than the use of it... oh well.

As the blog title implies.. this should have morphed beyond the Bronco to whatever else I am doing in my garage.  A ton of things have happened in the intervening years as i reverted back to my passion of woodworking.

My love of mechanical movement has resulted in several more clocks, kinetic sculptures and a hummingbird automata.

My current project is a 20 note busker organ that i refer to as "The Stupid British Thing" because the plans were purchased from a UK site and the instructions are incredibly lacking,  so much so that there is a 3rd party site selling plans to help interpret the original plans.. and I would not have finished this without massive assistance from some youtube videos and busker forums.  Well.. it is almost finished



I will share some photos below of projects that occurred from last posting to now.. I love the clock plans from Clayton Boyer.. and i have 2 more yet to build, but my real intent for this space is to document my next project.  Not yet sure what it will be.

(2013) Flying Pendulum from Clayton Boyer

(2014) Model T Clock from Clayton Boyer

(2015) Zinnia from Clayton Boyer - this about killed me
as i built 5 at the same time as gifts.  I do not have the patience
for production work

(2016) Epicyclic from Clayton Boyer - This one is
from his masochist selection, nailed it!

I built 2 of these dog fences to strategically place in the house
to restrict the location of our Dachshunds.  While excellent at accomplishing
this, they proved too difficult for the humans in the house.  Both had massive
repairs and rebuilds and ultimately 1 of them became un-saveable

Master Bath remodel - ok, i didn't do this.  The remodel stalled for several years
and i built a Bronco as a distraction.  I finally relented to the woman and contracted
to get this done to our collective vision.  I did paint the woodwork though.

(2017) Colibri by Derek Hugger - this was a whole lot simpler
than it looks,  i intend to motorize the action.  Derek was impressed
that i handmade this instead of CNC router

(2017) Merlot by Derek Hugger - I love the motion of this...  far easier than a clock
the gears are very chunky