Marble Run Wall at reDiscover Center

Now that summer Tinkering Camp has wound down, I can share some of what we’ve been up to! I will post about the camp experience in itself soon, but first I’d like to show you one of the newest additions to reDiscover Center. Take a gander at the marble run wall!

 

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I worked with Molly Allis to build an 8-foot-tall pegboard wall for one corner of the studio. The top 40% contains elements designed by myself and some other facilitators and kids, which are meant to stay in place for the most part. There is a spiraling cylinder pulled from a donated gum ball machine, and a pachinko machine that uses screws as pegs. Pulley systems are set up on both sides of the pegboard to allow kids to crank marbles to the top of the marble run and let them loose.

 

The rest of the pegboard is entirely for tinkering. Kids can make elements such as ramps and funnels to add and move around, using wood, power tools, and recycled materials. Every day includes playing with the marble run wall!

 

Take a look at the videos below showing the process of making this installation and some of the first elements.

 

Barb Makes Things: December and January

A roundup of my videos on Barb Makes Things from the last month or so:

 

LayeredringthefirstPhoto Dec 15 8 14 56 PM  1Photo Dec 20 9 13 47 AM

 

Layered Wood Pendant Necklace

I’ve been making a fair amount of jewelry lately, and Rockler has tons of great, super thin veneer sheets. There are a few tutorials on instructables about making bent wood rings, I decided to go another direction… literally. I’ve now made several rings with many glued layers, and which I finish with tung oil and cyanoacrylate (super glue), and in this video, I make a necklace in a similar style.

 

3D Cookies

When I say 3D, I mean that in multiple ways: I 3D modeled and printed custom cookie cutters, and the resulting pieces slot together to make a shape that stands up. I only show the process of modeling the tree cookie cutters, but I also created ones for a moose, which you do see toward the end of the video. They were tasty, and an awful lot of fun to make.

 

Tiled Desk

This is actually footage from back when I was first setting up my desk, so it’s technically my first video. I used floor tiles and hot glued them to a piece of plywood that rests on two small bookshelves. I could have used a more permanent adhesive, or done a finishing coat over the whole thing, but I wanted the flexibility to peel up and replace individual tiles, should they get damaged. And a hot glue gun is an often underestimated tool; the tiles are all staying perfectly.

 

Wooden Camera Arm

I’ve done a number of tutorial videos in the past, and the tripod is simultaneously helpful, and a huge pain. Getting the camera in the right place for the right shot is one thing, but when you need to reach around it to try to make something, all the while paying extra attention to staying in the shot, well… I knew there had to be a better solution. My first attempt was a custom frame for my camera that would hang from four hooks in the ceiling. It worked for a while, but wasn’t entirely reliable, and wasn’t remotely adjustable. Hence, the custom camera arm. I love mechanisms, especially ones made from wood, and this extending arm does the trick.

 

Wooden Toy Car

My work at the reDiscover Center focuses mainly on reusing materials, so this video shows a project that someone might make there (actually, cars are a popular thing with the kids who come in). I also spend most of this video working at the kids’ makerspace, so you get to see some of the tools that we (and the kids!) use there.

Barb Makes Things: 3D Papercut and Frame

Week 2 on Barb Makes Things: a dimensional papercut and custom frame. I’ve done a lot of papercuts before (including some that have prints available on society6), so I decided to do a small piece with a design I’ve done before.

 

Watch, enjoy, subscribe, and let me know what I should make next!

 

Woodcraft and Tinkering School Teaser

 I’ve been spending a lot of time in the workshop lately, creating more of my wooden ragbots and wooden jewelry for my upcoming Etsy shop. 

 

IMG 6767new wooden ragbotlayered ring

 

We’ve been quite busy with the launch of reDiscover Center’s new Tinkering Club program – tinkering every day of the week!  Expect a recap of summer Tinkering School at reDiscover Center soon, with oh so many pictures. To whet your appetite, here’s a video from one of the light and shadow plays a group of campers created (they wrote it, made the stage/screen, designed all of the puppets, and did the lighting).

 

State of the Makin

I’ve done a lot of instructables lately. Last week was the end of their Makerspace competition, which had a lot of fabulous entries, and our very own CRASHspace won with my Hexachord instructable. Woohoo! My Light-up Hobbit Papercut Bookmark also won second prize in the papercraft contest.

 

Which is not to say that I haven’t been creating physical things as well. The CNC router is just too much fun to leave alone, and I’ve made a couple wood signs, including this in-progress one of one of my favorite quotes from Steal Like an Artist. More pictures when it’s done.

 

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We’ve also been using a lot of T-Glase filament in the Bukito 3D printer, which is transparent(ish) and awesome for things like hanging air plant terrariums. Here’s the STL of the terrarium I designed in the picture above (where the clear filament looks more like silver). Oh, how I’d love to play with a resin printer.

 

This spring break and summer, I’ll be running the reDiscover Center’s Tinkering Camps, for which we have all kinds of fun plans, and starting this coming Saturday, February 7th, I’ll be doing Tinkering Studio afternoons as well. I am super excited about these upcoming events!

Latest: Hair Stick, Sofa Foot Box, and 3D Printed Monster

Lots of making recently.  My Dremel tinkering continues, in the form of a two-pronged hair stick (which works pretty well, and doesn’t pull on my hair as much as a regular hair tie), and a wooden box made from the repurposed foot of a sofa.

 

The hair stick was a straightforward process, a matter of drawing the desired shape on the top, and on the side, and then using the dremel tools (and scroll saw to start with) to carve it down to the desired shape.  I used some wenge wood, which is nicely solid (less likely to snap) and pretty.  It also smells really nice, incidentally, but I plan to lacquer the thing.  You’ll see in the sofa foot box, I got into a bit of marquetry, and am considering doing a little decoration on the wide end of this hair stick.  The color of it disappears a bit in my dark blond hair; putting a finish on and adding some patterned details should help.

 

Hair pin cut Hairpin w flowers Hairpin side Hairpin in hair

 

The full process of making my Repurposed Sofa Foot Box (with Bonus Marquetry) can be found on Instructables.  It’s pretty fun, and a good project for getting accustomed to the dremel Multi-Max.  It’s mostly made from used parts, except for the hinges.  Had I time, I would have made wooden hinges for it, from that same lovely wenge.  Wooden hinges and associated Instructable, future project.

 

Box fin back side Box fin redback

 

3D printing is something I haven’t done much since last year at the Exploratory on the Replicator 2.  Lately, I’ve been playing with 123D Design (lots of other software options out there to explore too), and recently put together this little monster based on a papercut I did a while back on hitRECord.  It’s largely an extrusion of a 2D image (exported from Illustrator to .svg and imported to 123D Design – in case you were wondering how to do that), with some adjustments to the edges, and holes for articulated arms.  There’s a bit of an overhang issue at those cut out spots, but it’s small enough and loose enough as to not cause a major problem.  I’ll probably come up with a different solution for the next version, especially as it’d be nice to have the limbs extend further into the body, which will require larger holes.  I attached the limbs with wire, curled at either end.  Another option would be to use a piece of filament and melt it at either end to hold the joints in place.  I shall experiment and let you know.

 

Monster printing Monster on bed monster on tiptoe

  

Instructables bot

Next on my plate is designing a 3d printed bot with a crank and various other mechanisms. I might make it look like the Instructables robot, cuz that thing is cute and looks like it should be moving.

Wooden Rag Doll Instructable

Ragbot sit1

 

If you’ve followed any of my recent posts, you’ll notice that I’ve been doing a lot of woodworking lately.  One result of that is having a ton of scraps, plain blocks, dowel pieces, and random shapes that never made their way into finished projects.  Crashspace was host to an Instructables and Dremel “July Build Night,” and in the spirit of reuse and repurposing, I decided to use the tools we were provided to create a wooden rag doll (or rag bot, as it were).

Take a look at the detailed (and featured!) instructable about how I created my Wooden Rag Doll Robot (especially the articulated joints and magnetic hand).