Shop update #68 (2-13-19)

It was another busy weekend. We finished my son’s toolbox, I tried out a new lumber yard and made 35 plaque blanks from the wood that I bought, a friend came over and we made a template for a headlamp for his 100 year old train, I designed some plaques for another Cub Scout Troop, and I’m working on a gift for Valentine’s day.

A couple of weeks ago I showed you the build up for the toolboxes for my son’s Cub Scout den. We gave the boys homework of applying some type of finish to their toolboxes. My son elected to paint his. On Saturday, he painted all the sides different colors and then painted in the letters that I had cnc’ed into one end.

We let the paint dry overnight and then Sunday afternoon he sanded off the excess paint from the letters and we gave the end and bottom a coat of spray polyurethane.

I am making 29 recognition plaques for my son’s Cub Scout troop. They wanted a smaller size than I normally make to keep the costs down but my CNC machine cannot cut the design that they want at an 8″ x 10″ size. One of the fathers in my older son’s Boy Scout troop has a Glowforge laser printer so I contacted him and between the 2 of us we are making the plaques.

I am a member of several maker groups on FaceBook and in one of them somebody asked for a good place to get plaque blanks. Somebody else mentioned chrokeewood.com so I checked the website out and found that they are located about 20 minutes from my house. I ordered 31 linear feet of 8″ wide x 3/4″ thick S4S poplar for about $93 on Wednesday and did free local pickup on Saturday morning.