Shop update #84 (6-5-19)

On Wednesday night my wife forwarded me a text message from a Cub Scout mom asking me if I could make a decorative planter box for a retirement party. After some back and forth I found out that it wasn’t for her but for her friend. I got the friend’s number and we hashed out the details with a delivery date of Tuesday night.

Later that night started a Stormtrooper plaque to donate to a raffle at a friend’s car show on Saturday. I got it carved out that night and gave it a quick coat of spray lacquer.

The next morning, I gave it a coat of black spray paint and left it outside to dry all day.

I gave it a good sanding and 3 more coats of spray lacquer that night after I got home from work.

Saturday morning I printed out 6 sheets of paper, trimmed, and taped them together to form a giant Stormtrooper Helmet. I then stapled that onto the back of the 2×4 Adirondack chair and cut out all of the black sections.

I spray painted the cutout parts with black spray paint and let it dry for about 20 minutes.

I disassembled the seat back and took my cordless palm router with a 1/4″ bit and manually carved out all the painted sections in each board. This took about 45 minutes total.

Once that was done I set the pieces all next to each other and gave the carved parts a good coat of black spray paint.

By this time my son’s Cub Scout leader came over and we made some team building skis for the Cub Scout Pack to use. I watched Steve Carmichael’s video for reference.

By the time we finished with the skis it was 4:00 pm. That gave me just enough time to sand the seat back and seat bottom pieces and then give them a good coat of Golden Oak stain. I left them under the patio cover to dry overnight.

Sunday morning I made a quick trip to Home Depot and picked up some red paint for the rest of the adirondack chair and some spar urethane. During the course of taking the paint out of the bag I got some on my finger and didn’t realize it until about 15 minutes later. When I saw it I totally though that I had cut myself and hadn’t noticed it.

I then broke out the table saw and cut enough cedar fence picket pieces to make 3 planter boxes. I only needed one but it only took a couple extra minutes to cut enough pieces for 3.

I used a v-bit in my X-Carve CNC machine for the first time so I made some test cuts into a piece of scrap first to figure out a good depth and spacing.

I then carved text into the front and rear pieces of the retirement gift planter box with the free Easel software on the Inventables website.

The next step was to assemble the 3 boxes with glue and brad nails. I spray painted the one with text, burned the second one, left the third one plain, and set them to the side to dry.

While they were drying I busted out the stained pieces from the 2×4 adirondack chair and gave them a good coat of water based on Spar Urethane.

Those pieces needed some time to dry so I took my son to our local park for an hour.

Once we got back, I moved the chair pieces back to the rear of the house under the patio cover and sanded off the black paint on the planter box with the carved lettering. I left enough paint on it give it a rustic feel. I also gave it 2 coats of Spar Urethane.