Animal-Proofing Seed Cans

My wife worked at Wild Birds Unlimited for quite a few years before our kids were born.  During that time, she got into the habit of keeping a backyard feeder for the birds, a habit that she hasn't yet gotten out of.  We all actually enjoy it now, and it's fun to watch them outside the window.

Unfortunately, though, birds are not the only things that like the seed she brings home.  A raccoon has recently been prowling our area, and the metal trash cans that we'd been storing the seed in got broken into, tipped over, and the contents devoured.

They were pretty basic trash cans, nothing fancy and no real latching mechanism other than the simple pressure that the lid exerts.

Amazon.com came through with some basic toggle latches - a pack of four was priced a little over $7.00

Installing them was pretty easy.  I put the lid on the can, hooked the top of the latch to the lid, and marked out where the bottom of the attachment needed to go.

With the bottom marked, I could then pull up the top of the latch and mark the holes for my screws.

Some sheet metal screws, which I originally purchased for the ductwork in the basement, tapped through the can pretty easily. Please note: chicken bouillon container sold separately.

Once the latch is secured, the lid should attach firmly.

Doing it this way caused me some problems, though - I originally had planned to drill through and use a nut and bolt instead of the sheet metal screws, and using them left some rather sharp and dangerous-looking points on the inside of the bucket, just waiting for some unwary wrist.

I thought about cutting them off with my sawzall, but the kids were sleeping and I knew it would make a racket, so ... 

I know.  Kinda redneck, huh?  I'm a little bit ashamed of myself, but the molly bolts left over from fixing the train tracks actually worked nicely.  

And, the end result is a raccoon-proof seed can!  

Child's Pallet Step Stool

I've been trying to work on small projects lately, little things that won't take up too much time (or space) but will still give the chance for some shop time and provide something useful in return.  My son is getting old enough to start washing his hands by himself after he comes in from a busy hour in the back yard, or some other equally defiling activity, but unfortunately still lacks the height he needs to reach the sink himself.

A couple of simple stools was the perfect project for me to tackle in my spare time!

My usual habit of doing a Google Image search until I find something that looks similar to what I want led me to this blog post about a step stool put together with pocket hole joinery.  With a little adaptation to account for the materials I had on hand, the project came together quite well.

Notching the sides was easily done on the table saw.  I cut the notch a little bit wider than the thickness of my rails, and then cut an angle onto the edge.

I also cut a slight angle onto the rails - the miter gauge on my table saw was adjusted to a 45 degree angle.  I made one cut and then stacked the rails, mimicking the angle already cut so that everything would match.

With the angles cut into the sides (leaving enough wood under the shoulder of the notch to fully support the rail), drill pocket holes in preparation for attaching the rails.

Use screws in the pocket holes to connect the rails to the sides.  I made them a couple different sizes to fit comfortably in the two different bathrooms. 

Just for the fun of it, we decided to use milk paint!  I've been reading about it for a while now, and decided that this would be a great project to see how well it works.  From what I've read and seen, there can be some neat finishing techniques that you can use with this!  We bought a bag from the Old Fashioned Milk Paint Company, and I mixed up half a cup of powder with half a cup of water to try it out.  That was about twice as much as I actually needed to do two coats of paint on this - milk paint acts as its own primer.

I sliced free some nice sections of pallet wood that I had planed down to act as the tops, tested out a bunch of different stains, and then decided on the same Special Walnut from Minwax that I've used for just about everything else.  Go figure.

In the end, though, they came out quite nicely!

Fixing Wooden Train Tracks

My son has an obsession.  I know, I know, he's only two years old, but I'm serious - this is an obsession.  A few months ago, he received a pair of giant file boxes filled with wooden trains and tracks as a gift from a generous relative-of-a-relative whose own kids had outgrown Thomas and his friends.

My son, though, fell in love instantly.  He will spend hours playing with these things, and can list off the name of every engine he owns, which is pretty good all things considered.  As a firstborn, it's pretty much the only thing he will do completely on his own.

All this joy has one cost, though - used trains sometimes mean broken trains, and using trains sometimes means breaking trains.  We have a mixture of wooden and plastic trains, which can both have some issues: the male ends of the wooden trains can snap or split, and the female ends can chip out to the point that you can't connect them (and by 'you', I mean me and my two year old).  The plastic ones have the same kind of issues, though with them the little plastic piece at the end pops out.

I wound up with a respectable pile of "to-be-fixed" train tracks in the basement. Now that the rooms down there are finally done, I've spent a little time getting my shop organized and picking away at some of the little projects that have needed doing, and this one went up to the top of my list.

A few of the parts, the ones with the little plastic end that popped out, were easy to fix - if you still have the plastic piece, simply dip the end of the plastic bolt into a tube of clear caulk, tap it back into the piece, and wipe off any squeezeout.  Let it dry, and it should be back in place!

For the ones with an actual break, or which had permanently lost the plastic piece, fixing (or recreating) the female end of a track didn't look too hard.  A drill (either a drill press or a hand drill) can take care of the hole, and a few passes with a hand saw or table saw can connect it to the end. But that wouldn't be practical to do for all of the dozen or so broken pieces I had - for one thing, that would then leave me with too many female-female adapters.  As importantly, shortening the piece wouldn't work at all for the curved ones like bridges and arches.

The first thing I found online was a set of train track router bits from Rockler.  These look awesome, and if you're making your own tracks it could be really cool ... but $150 would buy you a lot of brand new tracks from the store.  It just wasn't practical for me.

Then I ran across this guy's blog post about the exact same issue.  He had some tracks with a plastic connector that kept popping out. Apparently, he found a post suggesting that you use some eye screws and drywall anchors (also called molly bolts) to put in a new male adapter.  I was able to find both the drywall anchors and eye screws on Amazon, which either makes me a terrible person who will doom the old-fashioned brick and mortar store, or a smart shopper.  I'll leave it to you to judge.

The molly bolt and eye screw combination worked great for the pieces with the plastic part that had popped out.

Simply put in the molly ...

... cut off the part sticking out ...

... then twist in the eye screw.

The all-wood tracks were even simpler.

First, cut off anything that's broken so that you have a perfectly flat surface ...

... then drill a pilot hole straight into the end (make sure it's centered across the width of the piece) ...

... and thread in the screw eye (a nail helps to turn it tight).

Once you have it in, check it against an unbroken female end to make sure you have the depth right (it's okay for the screw to be a bit crooked if necessary).

That's it - a simple little fix, took me less than half an hour to do a dozen or so pieces.  This can fix broken wooden Thomas train tracks, or Melissa & Doug, or Brio, or any of a half-dozen others.  All told, it was a satisfying bit of time in the shop.  And the look on my son's face when he came downstairs the next morning and found a bunch of 'new' pieces sitting on the table waiting for him made it well worth the effort.

Pallet Nightstand

After last year's Christmas present to my sister, this year (which ended six months ago - that tells you how far behind I am on blogging!) needed another pallet project to complement the first. A piece to help round out the bedroom set was in order, and a nightstand was the best choice overall. 

Ana White has a nice, simple little plan for a bedside nightstand.  It was fairly easy to adapt to use pallets instead of the covering pieces she used. 

Kreg Jig produced pocket holes to fit everything together.  Not too hard - just do a Google search for it and you'll find plenty of examples and tutorials. The frame pieces were all 2x4 stock that was ripped down to 1.5" on each side.  

The frame went together pretty simple, piece by piece: I attached the front and back bottom supports first, linking the left and right halves together. 

With them in place, I then connected the fronts to the backs.  

Thin (1x2) pieces were used as trim on the sides. A second lower support was added to the back here.  Note the plywood: that was originally supposed to be the backer behind the drawer, but I took it off because you could see the edge from the side, and it looked terrible. 

With the frame complete, you can then nail in the tops.  Pallet wood was prepared beforehand, and I used a brad nailer to connect them up. 

Keep them square and even, and clamp each piece in place and triple-check before you nail it down. 

Making a drawer for the nightstand was pretty basic.  Use a Kreg Jig to attach some 1x pine boards together, and you're all set.  

The drawer is just a box with a bottom - no big deal.  Add a false front of pallet wood to it later on, and drill for a drawer pull. 

I didn't take shots of the sides going in, but they were pretty simple too.  Nail in some more 1x stock to the inside to support the drawer, using a torpedo level to ensure that the front-to-back and side-to-side balance is level.  Be finicky about this - it'll dictate how well the drawer slides.

Add the false front to the drawer, squaring, clamping, and then nailing it into place. 

That's it!  A simple little build - follow the Ana White instructions, adjusting for your sizes as needed, and use pallet wood to trim out the top, sides, back, drawer front, and bottom shelf. This piece was meant to be pretty rustic, so I used wood from different pallets and didn't sand out the original marks and scuffs on the top.  I'm pretty pleased with the way it all turned out!