PEP Badge: Oddball

Opalyn Rose that looks amazing!  So beautiful and what a great display of integrating different skills to make a finished item.  

It looks like this has quite a few elements that are already textile badges.

making rope
Making a basket

We may need to adjust the description on the basket BB to accommodate this technique, but I think that's easy enough to do.

I'm not sure where making the tools would fit in.  That might be a good one for oddball points.

Also, the plastic bag - while brilliant upcycling! - doesn't fit with the natural fibre requirement of the Textile badges.  I'll have to ask someone more familiar with the Oddball system to see if it's okay.  

Good job Opalyn, you gave us something to really think about here.  I think that since Textiles is for natural fibers, this isn't a fit there so it does belong here in Oddball.  As does making the tools.  So I think it's in the right place, we just need to figure out the score.  Please bear with us

Here are some pictures of some advanced carpentry I got to do this past winter.  The staircase into my basement was sized for vertically challenged people.  I was putting tongue and groove boards up on the ceiling of the basement and needed to transition up into the staircase anyway so this was a chance to create a couple more inches of headroom.  It was challenging to make the three surfaces meet up (ceiling, slope of staircase and front apron of floor).  Especially since the opening in the floor wasn't perfectly square to the joists (not my fault).

First I had to cut out some of the floor joist on an angle.  I drilled holes at each end of the cut to give a lower stress concentration at the corners of the cut.  Luckily there's no load on this particular joist so I didn't mind cutting it a bit.  I also sistered on a piece of 2x6 just to be overly safe.

I had to make creative use of the tongue and groove on the pine I was using.  I modified a chunk to wrap around the apron of the floor.  Then I fiddled and farted with sample pieces until I got the angles and widths of the lowest board correct.  The boards I was using had knots in them (knotty pine, who'd've figured?) so they weren't flat.  To get them to engage and fit the shape of the opening in the floor, I cut kerfs on the back side.  That lets them bend more easily and it worked great.

I screwed them on with finish screws.  The whole basement ceiling is held on with them so it's kind of the look.  Plus then I can take down the whole ceiling if I ever need to run a wire or work on plumbing.  

Enjoy the pics!

I'm putting this in Oddball because "plastic".

Background: My friend has had huge losses in the last two years, the most recent loosing her living place when her landlord died. Her "pet Banties" had to come to my farm and she comes out twice a week to spend time with them and help with their care. Her infrastructure isn't going to work as the weather gets wetter and windier, but she hasn't the time, money or energy to fix much of it.

Immediate problem: I need a protected shelter for the bird's day-time feeder in the portable exercise pen they go to. I need to be able to refill it quickly, and lift the whole thing into a garbage can at night to keep the rats away. It needs to be cheap and fairly quick to build.

Solution: Take two plastic buckets recycled from a local company and 3 stainless #8 machine screws,  1 washer, 6 fender washers and 3 nylock nuts and spend an 1 1/2 hours cutting and assembling it. My climate is wet/muddy all winter and chickens will find a way to get shit on anything, so it needed to not rot and be easy to clean. The square bucket will easily protect it from rain from 3 sides, and half the second bucket will act as a "visor" to protect the opening on the 4th side at least moderately well.

This is a quick note to mention that the criteria for Oddball has been adjusted to include the PEX Factor.  Other tweaks have also been incorporated.  Please check the top post for the new poetry!

Here is my submission for Oddball BB Points for building a freestanding 4'x7' bookshelf with dimensional lumbar.  I put it here as the Dimensional Lumber Badges have activities - not points.

I built my first dimensional lumber bookcase in 2012 and documented it here.

the visual cut list


Cut List:
two 8' 2x12s - cut to book case height (if shorter than 8")
one 8' 2x12 - cut to 47 inches (two pieces)
three 8' 2x10s - cut to 47 inches (six pieces)
one 8' 2x8 - cut to shelf heights
    (three pieces at 12 inches and six pieces at 9 inches)
one 8' 2x4 - cut to 47 inches (two pieces)
one sheet of 1/2" plywood - trimmed to bookcase height minus one inch



the notch - cut on the table saw - for the plywood to sit flush with the back of the bookcase instead of behind the 2x12s



The frame assembled and all shelves routed.



installing shelves



assembly finished - ready to move inside

To document the completion of the BB, I have included the following photos:
- The materials/cut list laid out on the trailer
- several photos of the construction in progress
- the finished bookshelf

Hi Opalyn,
Your first image isn't showing up. Could you try uploading that image to permies so we can see it?

Ash Jackson wrote:Hi Opalyn,
Your first image isn't showing up. Could you try uploading that image to permies so we can see it?

Sure,
The first link is to the blog post at Windward and the first image is the Visual Cut List.  Is this the photo you wanted to see?  

There is a photo before this in the blog post but it was made by someone else so I didn't include it in my post - it is the full bookshelf photo below