Might as well keep the ball rolling here! My next ‘real’ project came out after I moved into my new apartment and saw all my cooking utensils just laying on my counter. Gal Gaforge to the rescue!
The design is just one base pattern, and then mirrored to give it a continuous flow from side to side. I originally designed the stripes to all be 1/8", which resulted in a pretty dense pattern. It looked awesome! But, in the end I had to scale it up because the resulting panel was just too flimsy. The stripes are now all roughly 1/4" and so far (as in, since last night) it’s held up very well! haha
A word of caution with finger joints- check, check, and check again to make sure everything fits!! I forgot how much of a pain getting the correct kerf adjustments for these things are. Even with the eventual help of an online box generator I still ran into a spot of trouble with one of the sides of my bottom panel not lining up correctly. The fit ended up being very snug, though since this will likely get knocked around a little I used super glue for some extra security. Not sure yet what sort of coating I might put on for water protection.
I’m hoping to continue with this geometry in the future…maybe some smaller versions for tea lights?
Thank you! On the opposite end of tea lights, I’m also thinking how this would look as a big pendant-style lampshade…or maybe something with more than four sides!
Thank you!! I spent a good portion of one day banging my head against my keyboard trying to create a ribbed, circular crock…I’m embarrassed to admit how long it took me to just go ‘wait…why not just make a square?’ In the end I like this pattern much better than my circular one!
looks great! seeing you have the cut out pieces all knolled out next to the cut side, it almost make me wonder if there was a way to use the cut out pieces, too.
Oh man, I stared at those pieces for a loooong time trying to figure out if I wanted to save them or not! For now they’re in a scrap bin, but unless I can get the laser smell to go away they may end up in a recycle bin instead Cons of having your workshop double as your bedroom lol
If you do decide to use the negative pieces for something, here’s a tip (maybe it is well known to laser experts but it was new to me): Press some spare masking material down on the negative pieces so you can pick them up in formation. Then enclose them in low-tack masking for storage. The masking material I have is so low-tack that I can easily pull it off when I want to.
Yeah, I would keep with that geometric design on other things too. I really like it.
I think you could put a few coats of spray lacquer and it would hold up quite well to some moisture. I wouldn’t put it in the sink, but an occasional splash would be fine. If you’re putting wet utensils in there, maybe use an acid brush and some long-open-time epoxy (like west systems) to paint a layer on. That would be pretty much water proof.
The fit ended up being very snug, though since this will likely get knocked around a little I used super glue for some extra security. Not sure yet what sort of coating I might put on for water protection.
Cons of having your workshop double as your bedroom lol