Salvaged Wreath

Making a wreath is an easy and inexpensive way to brighten up your home or apartment in the winter. Even if you don’t have an evergreen that needs trimming, you can still get free greens, albeit after December 25th. How? Discarded Christmas trees abound these days and are an excellent source of greens to make a wreath.

Start out with a wire coat hanger for the base. One hanger will make a small wreath but I wanted a larger one so I strung two together. Use three or four and you will have a very large wreath. You can use the twist in the neck of the hanger to daisy chain them together. Then just straighten them into a circle. Make sure to keep one of the coat hanger hooks as this will be your hook to hang the wreath.

Take a hatchet or shears and cut the branches off an old Christmas tree. Try to get them into the range of 10-12”, depending on how large a wreath you’re making. Try to keep as much greenery as possible, with a minimal amount of woodsy branches. Next take some bailing or hobby wire and begin wrapping the branches lapped on top of each other around the coat hanger. Try and tie the branch to the wire as you loop around, leaving the green needle part free.

Then just fill in with additional branches where it looks sparse and trim where it looks too large or mangy. If you made a large wreath, its own weight may cause it to droop, so tie some of the bailing wire from the top to the bottom so it maintains its circular shape. Now just hook the coat hanger hook into your mount and you’re done! A wreath that looks better and more authentic than store bought, and is free!

Ever wonder how foreign countries makes stuff cheaper than America?

Someone emailed this to me and I thought it was pretty funny, especially for the DIY types who probably read my blog.

The Construction Site Hard Hat:
The Dust and Particle Free Breathing Mask

OSHA Approved Scaffolding

The New Lightweight Welders Mask

Tea Kettle Humidifier

With the cold winter comes a warm and cozy home. But interior heat also creates dry air which, aside from making it feel colder than it is, can cause nosebleeds, chapped lips and dry skin. It’s also much more difficult to sleep, especially when you are sick.

Tea kettles are a common sight atop wood stoves for this exact reason. I live in New York City and don’t have a woodstove (yet) but I’ve done the next best thing. I live in an old walk up tenement building which has a retrofitted heating system. One of my radiators runs at such a high temperature, you can’t even touch it. A perfect stand-in for a woodstove.

I found an old tea kettle sitting out for the trash the other day which is still in good shape and will do the job nicely. We haven’t had a cold snap yet, but I’m sure the water in the kettle will get quite hot and evaporate rapidly, increasing the moisture in the air.

Sweet Stout

Last night it was time to keg the sweet stout I made a few weeks ago. I sterilized the keg with boiling water, which I use whenever possible as don’t like using chemical sanitizers. Then I racked the stout and purged the air with my CO2 tank.

I gave the beer a taste and it was pretty great. The black patent and chocolate malts really came through. My original gravity was 1.056 and the final came out at 1.020, so the beer will be slightly sweet but also have a good alcohol profile at 4.7% ABV. I brewed this with Fat Tire Ale yeast from the New Belgium Beer Company, which was recently released for sale to brewers across the country. Great yeast that always seems to finish at about 1.020. Can’t wait for a cold winter day to enjoy this stout.

Compost, Yourself!

My parents need a little encouragement with their compost bin. They love the idea of taking their food scraps and turning them into “black gold”, with the help of some red wiggler worms, but in practice they don’t do a good job of saving scraps and taking them out to their compost bin.

To make composting a little easier, I bought them a table top container to collect food scraps. Now they only need to take periodic trips to the backyard compost bin. The container is a handsome white (so you don’t have to look at the scraps) and has a clamping lid. But something was missing….

To drive home the point, and to give it some old country charm, I decided to label the container “Compost” similar to tabletop containers labeled “Sugar” or “Flour”. To accomplish this I used some glass paint available at any art store. This paint looks great on glass and ceramic and creates a near permanent mark after baking in a conventional oven. The paint is even dishwasher safe.


Since I have messy handwriting, I enlisted the help of a friend of mine with a very steady hand. I think it turned out beautifully!

Paddling in a River of Beer

In this post I’ll describe how I made a large beer wort stirring ladle out of an old canoe paddle.

I’ve been making beer for a while now, so I decided it was time to step it up to larger batches. Recently I acquired an old keg, cut off the top and started using it as a brew kettle. It’s illegal and unethical to simply not return a keg to your liquor store. Kegs actually cost over $100 new; the deposit price is simply an encouragement to return the keg promptly, it does not represent its value. Fortunately there are a number of companies that sell used kegs which have been taken out of circulation. From there its simply a matter of cutting off the top with a torch or angle grinder and you have a 15.5 gallon stainless steel brew pot at a very reasonable price.

Some people attach welded or weldless spigots to the bottom of their brew kettles, which comes in handy when moving the hot wort. It is also useful when laudering and sparging- the process of extracting the last sweet wort from the grains. Currently I use malt extract so I haven’t done this myself. I’d love to do all grain batches, but getting malted barley (in quantity) in New York City is impossible, so I buy 100kg of malt extract at a time, enough to last a year. Note that dry malt extract is pretty much like flour- it will last for years in a dry dark place. Liquid malt extract on the other hand, will spoil sooner or at least add unfavorable flavors to your beer. Keep the extract in a sealed bucket (like a wine kit bucket) as rodents and insects would love to munch on the sweet powder.

Kegs are great for brewing because you can fill them with about 12 to 13 gallons of wort, which leaves you enough head room for boilovers (beer tends to boil over). After evaporation from the boil, you’re left with about 10 gallons, which is the perfect amount for two five gallon batches. You’re not necessarily tied to two batches of the same beer either. You can dry hop with different varieties, use different yeasts or add different adjuncts and spices. I recently made a batch of IPA and Pumpkin Ale from the same wort. The ended up tasting completely different even though they had the same malt and hop base.

From here, it's into the fermentation buckets to let the yeast do its magic, then into a secondary carboy and then into cornelius kegs for aging and serving. I’ll talk more about this process in a future post, as this is actually about making a beer ladle!

Brewing in a keg requires two additional things- a large propane cooker to heat the beer and a large stirring implement. I have the cooker (which I call the “beer jet engine”) but I needed a ladle. My brother is a canoe guide in Maine, so he gave me one of his camp’s old paddles to work off of. Its made of spruce, which is inferior to ash or maple for this purpose, but it will still serve its purpose. Ash and maple have dense grains that resist absorbing liquid and splitting. The spruce will still serve its function well, but probably won't have the life of ash or maple. As with any wood, I’ll have to be careful not to stir the wort once it has cooled as that may introduce bacteria from the wood into the beer, which will negatively affect flavor.

I began by drawing an outline of the ladle on the old paddle. The goal here was to lower and decrease the stirring surface area. Then I cut it out on the band saw.




















Next came the shaping. I used a spoke shave to shape the ladle in much the same way the canoe paddle was shaped initially.
















When I was satisfied with the shape, I sanded the edges as well as the remaining finish. This is going into a food product so I don't want any stains or varnishes on the ladle. In the end, it was a functional and beautiful tool. Maybe someday I’ll make one from maple!

The Hatchet

A hatchet is a very useful tool around the yard and the house. I’ve had this hatchet since I was about six. I used it for about anything and everything during my childhood, including some things I probably shouldn’t have.

It’s a one piece hatchet with a steel shim running through the handle. The years of use have left the leather on the handle rotten and the head quite banged up. I decided it was time to bring this old tool back to life.

I started by removing the old handle and cleaning the piece with a wire brush. Then I soaked it in lemon juice and salt for about two hours to clean the surface. Then more time with the wire brush.

I made the handle from a piece of maple from the woodpile. I cut a circular piece and then halved it. Then I traced the outline of the shim on the wood, and hollowed out the inside using a forstner bit and a hand chisel. I didn’t worry too much about the outside of the handle at this point because it was going to be easier to clean that up later than to line it up perfectly from the beginning.

With the center hollowed out, I drilled holes for two bolts to secure the two handle pieces. I countersunk the screw heads and the nuts into the handle. Then I shaped the handle with a spoke shave and then sanding, sanding, sanding... and sharpening!

Pot Handle

I bought a used set of copper pots recently. One of them was missing a handle, so screwed on a wine cork. An easy fix, plus it wont conduct the heat of the pot. I used a bronze screw to attach the cork however, because it'll be exposed to moisture.

Making Cottage Cheese

Making cheese is a mysterious process to most people, but its actually quite easy. Cheese requires three things- a bacteria culture, rennet and milk. Rennet is a naturally occurring mammalian enzyme that breaks down milk into curds and whey. The bacteria culture will be different depending on the type of cheese you want to make. Once the curds and whey have seperated, you press the whey out of the curds to a moisture content dictated by the cheese you are making. I’ll go into this in more detail in a future project. However, making cottage is an easy intro because you only strain the curds, you don’t need to press them.

The curds can be separated from the whey by heating milk to 70-80 degrees and adding a small amount of yogurt (with “live active cultures") and a very small amount of rennet. I’ve skipped the rennet before and it still works pretty well. Cover and let stand for a few hours. Once the curds harden up, increase the heat to about 100-110 for about half an hour. Then drain the curds into a colander, salt to taste and put in the fridge.

Note that you can collect the whey from this process and make Ricotta. Mix in a small amount of vinegar and heat to 170-180 degrees. After about 15 minutes, it should begin to harden. Drain into a colander lined with cheese cloth and when you’ve removed as much liquid as possible, put in the refrigerator.

The Cool Stool

Looking at a traditional rushed chair recently, I couldn’t help thinking how interesting it would be to rush a chair with rope or some other types of banding. Why stick to that plain brown stuff that looks like what you’d use to tie down wood at the hardware store. Why not use something more interesting? So I kept my eye out for a chair to use for this project. In no time I found a very cool oak stool that would do nicely.

Unfortunately the stool had a round top that wouldn’t work for this project, so I created a square frame from oak flooring. I drilled holes for the legs and installed the side support pieces and then primed and painted the stool.

There is a big advantage to using standard rush- cost. Using climbing rope was not cheap. For a 12” square top I used almost 30 feet of rope. But the color and texture makes for a very cool finished product.

Rushing is not difficult, as long as you follow the pattern and keep it tight. If you allow the rope or rush to go slack, you will not be happy with the results. Start by tacking the rope to one interior section of the seat (piece 1 as you’re going around the seat). Then run the rope across the tacked piece and over to the support directly adjacent to it (piece 2). The rope is now parallel to piece 1. Pull the rope up through the middle of the seat and bring it over the section of rope you just pulled across as well as piece 1. Next pull it back up through the middle of the chair (coming from the bottom) and over the top of piece 3 (which is across from the first section). The pattern repeats all the way around the chair and winds in to the middle of the seat as you progress. When you’re in the middle of the chair, tie the rope down to the bottom of the chair so it doesn’t unravel.

Confused? Although this pattern is easy to do, it’s hard to explain. Check out these pictures I found on the internet

And the result:

Save your wax!

It may be one of my more idiosyncratic thrifty hobbies, but I save all my old pieces of wax to be melted down and reused. I save cheese wax, old candles, etc. in an old metal soup can. When it gets full, I put it on the stove on low until it has liquefied. Then I pour the melted wax off the top into another metal can, leaving behind the old wicks and other non-wax contaminants.

You can make new candles out of this wax from lead core wicks available at craft stores. I also use the wax to seal bottles of my homemade wine. I only do this for bottles I’m going to give away, as it makes for a really nice presentation. I don’t bother for ones I keep because its time consuming and makes it much harder to use the bottles again for future batches.

Found Antique Pine Desk

Walking home from work the other day, I came across a dilapidated Shaker style pine desk that someone had left out for the trash. The piece was falling apart but I could tell immediately from the patina that it was a very old antique that needed to be rescued.

I began by taking the desk apart piece by piece and marking the relationship of the pieces. The piece was built with front and side pieces mortised into the legs and secured with dowels. However at some point, the legs became loose and someone decided to drive nails into the legs to secure the mortised joint.

The nails are all slightly different, a sure sign that they were made by a blacksmith. Commercially produced nails became available around the early 1800’s after Eli Whitney came up with the idea of interchangeable parts, in essence "standardization" of parts. Whitney saw the inefficiency in making specialized parts by hand for every application. Soon many companies began turning out standardized uniform parts.

But it is clear that these nails were added at some point after the table was made, so I continued to dig deeper. My research revealed "unofficially" that the deep mortises secured with dowels was a design popular in the 1700’s. The dowels looked to be machine made, not hand cut, so that narrows the estimate to the late 1700’s.

Quite a find to pick up an antique pine desk from the late 1700’s off the streets of New York City! Just think of the stories this piece of furniture could tell. And that even before it was furniture, this wood came from a tree that was probably hundreds of years old. It was probably a seedling when Columbus landed in America.





Once I took all the pieces apart, I was apparent that the finish could not be saved. It was cut, chipping, dirty and looked generally terrible. Plus this wasn’t the type of furniture that refinishing harms the value. So I began sanding off the old finish with a rough grit sandpaper and then worked my way up to 220 grit. This was a long process but surface prep is very important to finishing. It also eliminates a lot of the undesirable blemishes in the wood while preserving the character of the piece.







I then dry fitted all the pieces to ensure a good fit. It lined up nicely so I glued the joints with Gorilla Glue, which is very strong and expands to fill gaps the way normal wood glue will not. Then I took my strap wrench and pulled the piece together and set it aside to dry.





Next came some serious finish sanding until the piece was really smooth. I treated it with wood conditioner to ensure even stain application and applied Bartley Gel Stain followed by clear varnish. The piece looked great but was still missing the finishing touches. In the end, it looked beautiful.

The Sustainable Walnut and Oak Coffee Table

I found a really cool hand carved table out in the trash a few months ago. The table had a hideous top that someone attached to it, but the bottom was beautiful carved oak in a whimsical vine style. I threw away the top and went to sanding and stripping the bottom.

Because this table was so ornately carved, a sander is pretty much useless. Therefore, I went at it with citrus stripper. Although I prefer elbow grease over chemicals, this stuff is less toxic than traditional strippers and is useful in situations where sanding isn’t possible or practical. After several recoats to get everything off, I cleaned the piece with a rag and spent hours and hours sanding it by hand.

To find a top, I searched high and low to find the perfect piece of wood. Large pieces of hardwood are very expensive and rare because most of the large old growth trees have been felled. Needless to say, this is a huge problem. We should be preserving these trees, especially the exotics like mahogany and teak. By driving up prices for these rare woods, we only encourage the poorest people in poor countries to loot their forests. This may feed them for a day, but ecosystem destruction always leads to economic destruction. Read “Collapse” by Jared Diamond for a great book on this subject

Another source for large pieces of hardwood is salvaging old furniture. There is a lot of furniture out there that is beaten up and falling apart and is worth little as is, but is made of extremely valuable wood. It’s for this reason that it’s often significantly cheaper to buy antiques than to buy new wood and make new furniture. So check out craigslist, dumps and the street on trash day for old furniture made of expensive wood. Whenever I see this stuff on the streets of Manhattan, I take it home, take it apart, and add it to my cache of reclaimed wood. This goes for hardware too- rescue hinges, brackets, knobs, etc. and save them for your next project. Cheaper than running to the hardware store every time you need something and you’ll end up with much more interesting stuff.

Another source for high grade wood is a new movement called “urban forestry”. All across America there are large beautiful trees in people’s yards and in parks that fall down in storms or need to removed for other reasons. These are often beautiful and rare trees like black walnut, chestnut, black locust as well as more common oaks and maples. In established neighborhoods, these trees can be huge and can yield high value board feet. Wood turners cherish the stumps of these trees for turning bowls and other projects. It’s a shame that a lot of these trees end up as firewood, or worse yet, garbage.

For this project I found a furniture maker in Brooklyn who is also an urban forester. He had an incredible cache of extremely rare woods and had them in huge dimensions. Some was reclaimed from barns and other buildings and some was from trees in neighborhoods around New York City. As an example, he had multiple pieces of black walnut 40 inches across, 2 inches thick and 12 feet long. A piece of wood like that is incredibly rare and costs thousands of dollars. I opted for a piece of black walnut 24” x 1.5” x 55” for $125. A great bargain for a beautiful piece of wood. He even agreed to run it through his industrial surface plainer.
The wood was so beautiful, I couldn’t even bear to cut it. I left one edge rough cut with the edge of the tree showing. This looked very cool and really showed off the burl of the wood. It gives a connection to the tree that produced this wood which makes the table that much more beautiful.

After sanding, sanding, and more sanding, I rubbed the piece with a tack cloth to remove dust and stained with Bartley Gel Stain, which in my experience provides the best and deepest color of any stain on the market. You rub it in and wipe off any excess, dry and recoat, about 3-5 times. Then I varnished it with Gel Varnish twice and allowed to dry completely. What a beautiful table!

Walnut Mallet

Check out this picture of a walnut mallet with ash handle I made. I made the head on the lathe out of walnut stump from my parent’s house in Connecticut. After drilling a hold for the handle, I fitted a section of an old axe handle into the hole, with a wooden shim and a metal shim holding it all together, just like an axe. A handsome mallet great for tenderizing meat and in the workshop.

Wooden Spoons

I like making kitchen stirring spoons as small gifts for people around the holidays. They are beautiful, unique and functional gifts- and not that tough to make. A maple tree at my parents house in Connecticut fell down in a storm a few months ago. It was quite rotten and most of it ended up as mulch or firewood for my parents wood stove. Works out for them as they heat most of their house with wood! They are often trudging around the neighborhood helping neighbors cut up downed trees. Sort of like an Amish barn raising. Then comes the hauling and splitting, ahh the memories of childhood!

I took a nice piece of rock maple off the woodpile and trimmed it into rough 90 degree angles with a hatchet. It is imperative to use a wood like maple, which has very tight grains and resists bending, breaking and splintering. I cut the individual pieces on the table saw creating thin planks about 3/8ths to half an inch thick. Then I drew a few spoon and spatchula shapes onto the boards. If you’d like, you can trace other spoon shapes you like and base your design off those. Then I cut out the designs on the band saw into the rough spoon shape.

With the rough cuts made, I began rounding the handles with a spoke shave, which is a flat knife with handles on each end that originally was used by wheelers to make the spokes for wagon wheels. For the spoon area I scooped out the spoon area with a curved chisel as shown in the picture. I also shaped the edges and back to give it a nice round shape.

Next comes the all important sanding. I started with a rough sandpaper to smooth and shape the spoons. Then I worked my way up to a fine grain to make the spoons super smooth. I wouldn’t finish these with anything as they will be touching food and look beautiful on their own. However if you want, you can rub them with olive oil. An easy and beautiful gift!

Custom Cabinetry, Sort of

Although the end result of this project isn’t that impressive (simply a shelf for my office at work), the process I used to make it is pretty interesting. I decided to make the shelf with only three sides- a base and two ends. This is inherently structurally unsound, so I needed a very strong joint. There are many ways to join wood, but they all revolve around increasing the surface area between the two pieces. Dovetails (which are shaped like interlocking Vs) are very strong and quite common on fine furniture. Unfortunately, I don’t have a router or a dovetail jig, so I decided to make myself a jig to cut finger joints, which are essentially interlocking boxes cut out from the end of the pieces of wood.I made this project out of some beautiful hardwood plywood I found out in the trash. It’s maple plywood, probably leftovers from cabinetry making. 

To make the joint, I measured out the area I wanted to remove out of the end of the two end pieces, which is simply every other ¾” section. Then I hammered a sacrificial board to my workbench, to which I clamped my maple plywood. Then you set the depth of the saw blade to the width of the wood (as it will accept the width of the joined piece) and removed each marked section. When all you have is a circular saw, this is a great way to make advanced cuts. It will never be as precise as a table saw or router, but is good in a pinch.After cutting the fingers, (note, not MY fingers) I traced out the reverse cut on the base piece. If you have a standard jig, you don’t need to do this as your finger pattern will be exact, but with my little contraption it wasn’t as perfect as it could be. With the pieces traced, I cut the fingers on the bottom the same way I cut the sides.

With the rough cuts made, I used a chisel to smooth out the base of the fingers and square up the joints. Then I dry fitted the pieces to ensure a good fit.

Gluing and clamping this piece was going to be very difficult as there are only three sides. First I applied Gorilla Glue, which is incredibly strong and great for projects like this. Then I put the joints together and set the angle with a framing square. Next I hammered on some sacrificial pieces of wood (from wine boxes actually) to the joints to ensure the angle would stay the same. Then I clamped down each end piece to the base, and used a strap wrench to pull the end pieces in towards each other. I had to be careful with the strap to keep it as close to the base as possible so as not to pull in the top of the end pieces. The wine box supports are only so strong!

With the joints tight, I set the piece to dry. After sanding the piece, I painted it brown and brought it to work. It hangs on a ridged metal grate by way of the heads of screws and some repurposed aluminum brackets. It’s so strong you could stand on it!

Gold Leafing Cape Cod Signs

As I talked about in a prior post, I made some personalized gifts for my friends who got married this past summer. One of these gifts was a custom carved quarter board sign of their new surname. These signs are found all over New England, but are typically referred to as “Cape Cod Signs” as they’re so prevalent out on the cape.

These signs were made out of clear pine, which was laid out using letters printed off the computer. I drew a free hand scroll on one of them, and a clam shell on the other. You can use an electric band saw or a hand saw to cut out the outlines of the scroll or shell, which will make for easier carving. I carved a small relief on the cross sign around the edge which I will gold leaf for a border.

As for the shell sign, I stenciled the shell (which I printed out off the internet) onto the end of the board. Then I drew a circle through the base of the shell, as the base of the sign runs through part of the shell. Then I shaped the shell byrounding the edges and working down to an even relief. The key to carving, especially with the letters, is to score a line in the wood where you want it to break. Otherise it will splinter farther than you want it to. However this is a very involved process and because this is easier shown by example, I’m going to go into detail in a future posting when I can take some pictures. As for this post, I’ll mainly describe the gold leafing procedure, which is a difficult project in and of it itself.

Gold leafing or “gilding” is an ancient process of applying extremely thin sheets of gold into various objects. Think ceilings of churches and domes of capitals. But it’s also perfect for making signs because it looks classy and will never tarnish. There are many types of gold out there, separated into various finishes and karats. There is also copper and aluminum leaf, as well as fake gold, which will tarnish quickly and will generally look terrible. The difference between real and fake gold leaf is so large, if the $40 book of leaf is too expensive you might as well save some time and just paint it with gold paint. However, results with real gold leaf are simply beautiful.

To apply gold leaf, you apply something called “sizing”. This is simply a watered down glue, though don’t try watering down your water based craft glue, because it dries differently. Sizing remains slightly sticky after it dries, and the gold leaf is attracted to it. It’s also attracted to other things so be careful when using it. Try putting baby powder on things you don’t want it to stick to and also keep your windows closed and drafts in your house to a minimum. Golf leaf is so light its almost impossible to work with when there is any air movement.

Apply the sizing with a paint brush exactly where you want it to go. In my example of a carved sign, paint it on the inside of the letters of the sign and on the shells. Art stores also sell something called “red base” if you’re applying the gold to a porous surface. But if you’ve painted the surface like I have, you can apply the sizing directly to the surface. Apply it sparingly, as you need to wait until the surface is dry and tacky before applying the gold.

To apply the gold, tear it into strips using an artist’s paint brush and lightly push it into the sizing. This will take a lot of practice to get good coverage and efficient use of the gold. Eventually you’ll get quite good and can cover your entire target with one step. Until then, don’t feel bad about going over it again with another round of sizing, drying and gold leafing. It usually takes me two rounds on most surfaces.

The baby powder should keep the gold off the parts you don’t want to gild. If something sticks, you can usually rub it off with your finger. Then use a stiffer brush to remove loose gold and wipe off with a damp rag. And you’re done!

Here's a picture of my friend Petra Baxter with her new sign: