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Don’t talk to me about foam

GeneralScience Fiction

Yet another diversion from the desk (where I’ve done almost all of the basic shaping and am ready to start cutting the sliding dovetail part which is the complicated bit).

This is a floor mat:

They’re cheap, they’re foam, they go together like a jigsaw, and they’re being sold everywhere (including the local car parts and doo-dads shop halfords near us) for very little money. And they’re EVA (Ethylene Vinyl Acetate) foam and are the base material used by cosplayers for a lot of costumes and props (that’s the grown-up’s word for “toy”):

Yes, that’s a 9 foot tall hulkbuster Iron Man costume made entirely out of foam. And yes, halloween is approaching and yes, junior wants a costume, so I thought it might be fun to at least make a part of it.… Read the rest

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Modelling

Desk ShelfShelvesWoodworking

So I was really just at a low energy setting this weekend, and it was one of the first rains of the coming winter and even just looking at the shed was making me tired, but I have been wondering about something with the design of Calum’s shelves/desk thingy, which is whether or not to put a backing board behind/between the top two shelves. It’d stop stuff falling off the back of those shelves, give a larger contact area with the wall, and stiffen up the whole carcass; but it’d change the look of the unit quite a bit and the joinery might get complex unless I cheated and used a router to carve out a rabbit for the panel.

So, what do you do when you’re too tired to go to the shed and still want to see what it looks like?… Read the rest

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Square-off

New Toys!ToolsWoodworking

So I recently had a birthday and bought myself a present that I’d been thinking about for a few years but had been putting off because spending a chunk of money on a small thing is usually painful and if you’re not going to be doing something long-term, a bit of a waste, but I finally convinced myself that this making stuff thing wasn’t a fad, so after some advice from the pros I went off to one of my usual sources for new tools and bought…

A red box! And inside the red box…

What can only be described by Herself as “a ruler that cost 150 euros?”. 😀

Yes, yes, I know, but you can’t feel it. This thing’s just solid in a way you have to see to appreciate.… Read the rest

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