DIY – Welcome to Our Bear House!

April 29, 2019April 29, 2019

DIY Cajon Drum

My wife, Sara, likes to tap on things to the beat of the music… even if she can’t necessarily hear the rhythm. [Sara: Har har har. Very funny.] So in order to improve this from a habit to a skill, I decided to make her a cajon. Essentially, it’s a wood box that you both sit on and play as a percussion instrument. It has recently become more popular today, but originally was (and is) very widely used in Peruvian music. My knowledge of the instrument was limited and mostly derived from Mr. Ramsey’s Woodworking for Mere Mortals design.

These are some sample cajons:

To understand how to actually make this instrument, I needed to know the main components and how they work together. I broke down the project into three main components:

The box
The side of the box you hit (tapa)
The snare

The Box

My box was made of ¾-inch Baltic Birch plywood measuring approximately 12” X 12” X 18” tall. The top and bottom pieces have ¾-inch dados/rabbets along three sides. The top and bottom pieces are identical and measure 12” x 12”. The two side pieces have a single ¾-inch dado/rabbet running along its length and measure 12” x 18”.

The back panel is a single piece of ¾-inch plywood cut to fit. There was no need to cut dados or rabbets on this panel.

Before assembling the box, I considered the location of the sound hole and holes necessary to mount the snare. The sound hole is simply a hole in the back panel (the panel with no rabbet/dados), so I decided to put my hole toward the bottom center of the panel for aesthetic purposes. A hole was drilled in each of the side panels to allow a 1 ½-inch dowel to pass through (this is where the snare would be attached). It’s easiest if these sides are lined up, clamped together, and drilled at the same time to guarantee the holes are in the same place.

The Tapa

The tapa was made of a thinner plywood than the sides. I had some extra thin plywood lying around the shop that was slightly less than ¼-inch thick, so I decided to use that for the tapa side.

Assembly of the box was simple–just clamp and glue the five ¾-inch plywood sides together. The tapa was then cut to the exact dimension of the missing side of the box. The tapa is eventually screwed on the front opening, but access to the inside still necessary to install the snare assembly.

The Snare

The snare is a series of stiff wires that rest against a surface to produce a sharp rattling sound when the surface is struck and give the cajon the “drum” sound. From the inside of the cajon, the snare presses against the tapa (the side of the instrument you hit) to create that rattling sound typical in drums. The snare is mounted on a 1 ½-inch diameter wooden dowel that has the ability to turn, which allows the user to adjust the amount of snare sound heard during drumming–whether you want no snare for a more “wild” tone or more snare for more “drum” sound.

I purchased this snare from Amazon for the project. The length of the snare was adjusted by cutting it to a length of 5 inches with wire clippers. The goal was to get the snare to engage and disengage the tapa by the turning the wooden dowel.

Snare Assembly

For the permanently fixed knob, I glued the walnut knob securely to the end of the dowel rod. To make sure the knob was adequately glued in place, I also drilled a 1 ½-inch diameter recess to accept the end of the dowel. This allowed for a little more glue surface area and a more solid end cap.

To create the snare assembly, I created two knobs out of walnut for the exterior ends of the dowel rod. One knob would permanently be affixed to one dowel end, while the other would loosen and tighten the dowel within the box.

For the adjustable knob, I tapped ¼-inch-20 threads into the end grain of the rod to accept a 1/4 inch-20 threaded bolt. I used a ¼ inch-20 bolt and cut it to a length that would allow the knob to tighten the dowel assembly. The bolt was then epoxied into a small recess in the knob.

Final Assembly

The rod was fitted into the box and then the snare was screwed into place. Once I had the snare turning to my satisfaction, I moved on to the tapa.

View of the epoxied bolt into the knob hole before being screwed into the dowel. Casey had to make her mark (of course.. hehe).

Although the snare may look strange sticking out of the cajon, when it is pressed against the face of the tapa, it will create that “drum” sound.

The tapa just needed some recessed screw holes to attach it to the box for a cleaner look. I used some small screws to secure it in place onto the box.

Recessed holes for the screws to sit flat.

Here you can see that when the knob is turned, the snare will either be touching the face of the drum, or if turned more, will not be touching any part of the drum. This will change the tone of the drum from a more tribal sound to a more typical drum sound.

After everything was completed, the box was still looking a bit plain, so I added some walnut inlay around the sides and sound hole for decoration.

The end product was an attractive cajon that sounds pretty good!

Aerial photo of the walnut inlay and one of the knobs

Back view of the finished product branded at the top

My wife approves.

— Tim

November 13, 2018

Simple Cutting Board

I picked up some 4/4 rough cumaru (aka Brazilian teak) on sale at my local hardwood lumberyard a couple years ago and I finally found a fun use for it. I made a series of simple cutting boards for family and friends. This little project is all about bringing out the beauty of rough lumber.

First, I cut the lumber to its approximate final dimensions using my miter saw and table saw. This cutting board ended up being about 10 inches by 14 inches.

The project’s width was limited to 10” due to my jointer’s capacity. I own an INCA 510 combination jointer/planer. These days, you can only find these machines in used condition because the company, INCA, no longer exists. This tool was likely built in Switzerland in the 1980s.

INCA 510 (343.190.01) with single phase Dayton 1-1/2 hp motor

1980’s INCA equipped with the original mobile table

10-1/4 inch jointer and planer capacity. Check out that nifty articulating blade guard.

The 10 ¼ inch capacity on the jointer is one of my favorite features of this tool. After passing one side over the jointer to check flatness, I placed the board jointed side down on my table saw cast iron to see if it sat perfectly flat. If I detected any sort of wobble, I sent it back to the jointer for another pass. Once I established flatness on one side, I placed the flat side down on the planer bed to plane the other side. I sent it through several times taking care not to overload my INCA. The end result is a ¾ inch thick board that has equal thickness throughout.

To take all the sharp edges off, I gave the cutting board a 1/8 inch round-over on my router table.

Temporary shop built router table with 1/8 inch round-over bit

I sanded the cumaru first with 150 then with 220. There were minor imperfections with the edge routing that were easily sanded out. My planer leaves minimal snipe, so I’m comfortable cutting the work piece to final dimensions before planning. If there is snipe present, it’s nearly invisible and easily sanded out.

DeWalt DWE6421 random orbital sander and down-draft table setup.

Finally, I branded the cutting board with my custom branding iron and applied some butcher-block oil.

Another shot of the cumaru cutting board

This is hardwood is extremely dense and heavy. Part of the reason I love this wood is that the board sits stationary on the countertop during chopping even though has no “feet.” I originally had concerns with silica content of this hardwood, making it a poorer choice for a cutting board due to knife dulling, but after some trial by family and friends, we found that the character of the wood has little to no dulling effect.

Cheers!

-Tim

September 18, 2018September 18, 2018

Pair of Studio Tables

Our church was considering purchasing two tables for their new filming studio, but there was not really an affordable option that fit the dimension requirements that we needed. I volunteered my woodshop for the project and designed two tables that would fit the bill. A few requirements I had to consider when designing were:

66” long x 18” wide x 30” tall
Table apron/overhang that extended past the knee on the side facing the camera to not distract from the film subject
Weight is light enough for a single person to move easily

I wanted to work with a hardwood for the legs and rails, but I knew a solid hardwood top would be too heavy, so I figured I could create a grid structure out of pine and then laminate ¼” sheets of plywood to either side. Then I could trim the top with hardwood to conceal any unsightly plywood and pine that was showing. This top would be strong and light, but the idea of a cheap plywood top paired with a beautiful hardwood base would look a little mismatched. After a lot of consideration on the type of material I would use for the top, I settled on painting the plywood portion of the top black. The apron would also be painted black to match.

I purchased 37 board feet (BF) of 6/4 Cherry for the legs, rails, and trim. The hardwood store’s selection of wood suitable for the legs was unsatisfactory—mostly on account of its price ($4.66/BF for 6/4 Cherry vs. $25.00/BF for Cherry leg blanks). It was more cost effective to laminate the 6/4 Cherry for the legs.

37 board feet of cherry wood

The hardwood sat in my garage for a couple months before I actually got around to the project.

Charlie giving moral support

I milled all the lumber required for the legs first. Once all the legs were laminated, they were cut to final length.

Milled legs

A taper was applied to the inside leg faces with my table saw using a custom shop-made jig.

Base joinery was mortise in tenon. I cut a dado in the legs and rails that would accept the panels forming the apron. The mortises were cut on my makeshift router table using a ¼” straight bit and the dados were cut on the table saw using a single blade from my dado stack. I squared and cleaned up the mortises with a 1/2” chisel. Tenons were cut on table saw using a shop made jig. Fortunately, the height of the garage allowed me to cut the rails vertically on the table saw using the jig.

Dados in legs and rail pieces

A dry fit of all the components was done to plan for a successful glue up.

The grid for the top was formed with some pine purchased from the local Home Depot, and I milled the pine down to ensure it would form a perfectly flat grid once assembled. Pocket holes were used to create the grid skeleton.

Pine grid for table top

The frame was lightly sanded before laminating the ¼” plywood to the top.

Light sanding of top with laminated plywood

The tops and aprons were painted black using General Finishes Lamp Black milk paint.

The rails and legs were sanded with 150 grit and then 220 grit. All the edges got an 1/8” round over on the router table.

I prefinished all the components with three coats of General Finishes Arm-R-Seal, and I was careful not to apply finish to the mortises or tenons, as these glue surfaces would be ineffective if covered with Arm-R-Seal.

After 3rd coat of prefinish on legs and rails

I glued the base together carefully to get the orientation of each piece exactly right. Pocket holes had been predrilled prior to finishing and assembly, and these holes were used to fasten the top to the base.

Base glue-up with aprons

The final step was to create the mitered trim and finish the top. I didn’t have the right size stock left over for the cherry trim so I had to pick up an extra board to finish the project, and ended up trimming the top to the right length at the miter saw. This eventually made the corners have really tight miters.

The top was finished with four coats of Arm-R-Seal and a final buffing.

The final product was a simply designed, very light yet durable table suitable for a film studio.

August 24, 2018August 30, 2018

Modern Downstairs Bathroom Remodel

Since Sara and I moved into our house in October 2016, we’ve been wanting to upgrade all the bathrooms. Our top priority was remodeling our only downstairs bathroom, a dark forest green half bath eyesore. This picture is from when we were first previewing our house and the decor before we moved in.

Before:

After:

We took to Pinterest for some bathroom design inspiration and eventually settled on a modern-style bathroom with cool grays and a white quartz countertop.

Credit: Kylie M. Interiors, Decor Pad

I wanted to minimize the amount of time that the restroom would be out of commission, so I planned on prepping as much as I could before the demolition. To get started, I purchased a remnant piece of Carrera white quartz from a stone fabrication shop in Fullerton, CA, for $150 in February 2018. The piece was too large for transport in my small Ford Ranger, so the shop I was purchasing it from offered to cut the stone down to manageable size for an additional $100.

This was enough countertop to complete the downstairs bathroom and one additional full upstairs bathroom. I secured the quartz upright for transport and it made the 25-mile journey home. With the help of a neighbor, I was able to offload the quartz into my garage. Moving this stuff by myself would not have be possible.

I wasn’t able to fabricate the stone until May 2018, since my woodshop was going through some major upgrades, including a Paulk-style outfeed table, dust collection system, and the addition of a refurbished cabinet saw. In this time, we purchased some items for the bathroom renovation including the sink (KES undermount sink) and the sink hardware, a Delta Lahara faucet, from Amazon.

My father-in-law is a general contractor and was nice enough to lend me his stone fabrication suite of tools. This included a worm drive circular saw with a stone-cutting 7” diamond blade, Dewalt angle grinder with stone cutting disc, a Metabo polisher with 8 grits of polishing pads (50,120, 220, 400, 800, 1200, 3500, 8000), and a waterproof apron. I set up the stone on some sawhorses in my front yard and went to work. I cut the countertop to final dimensions and then made the hole for the undermount sink using the paper template included by the manufacturer. The exposed edges would get a simple round over. This process was tedious—getting into the tight corners of the undermount hole proved to be difficult, but I was pretty happy with the end result.

I went to test fit the sink to the underside of the stone and noticed that stone would overhang the sink by about ¾” all the way around. This seemed like a bit much, but I found that the manufactures template for the sink is the defacto guide for undermount cuts as related to overhang, so I’ll just be sure to seal it well and clean underneath the overhang every so often.

Our goal was to give the stone the appearance of being thicker on the front and sides so I purchased some knife grade polyester resin in order to glue a strip of stone to the front and sides. I experimented a little with the resin before trying it on the workpiece. Once all was glued up, I polished the front and sides.

(In progress view of the strip of stone being glued on)

The holes for the faucet were drilled with a stone cutting drill bit purchased from Amazon as well. I carefully laid out the location of each hole, made a simple drill guide and constantly sprayed the bit with water to keep it cool while I drilled the hole.

Once the stone was done and ready for installation we turned our attention to the existing bathroom. We decided the peel all the paint off the walls since the previous paint job was done rather poor and sloppy, and it ended up being a good decision, because when we started peeling the green, there was a shade of mustard yellow underneath!

After peeling all the paint, we decided on the color pallet for the walls, cabinet and ceiling/baseboard. From the samples at Home Depot, we decided on “Sterling” for the walls, “Lunar Surface” for the cabinet, and “Bit of Sugar” for the ceiling/baseboard. The grade of paint we went with was Behr Ultra. We also need paint supplies so I bought the 8 piece roller tray set from Home Depot (https://www.homedepot.com/p/8-Piece-Roller-Tray-Set-RS-701-SP/100064287), which served its purpose well for the bathroom, and should work for our other bathroom renovations as well.

We weren’t ready to paint quite yet however, since I still needed to demo the existing countertop and patch/clean the walls. We wanted to keep the existing cabinet, but I would create new door and drawer fronts to achieve the “full face” effect, where the front of the cabinet would have no gaps at all.

During the demo I accidentally damaged the drywall just above the cabinet so I had to move a large section and repatch it. The prep work for the countertop took far longer than the actual installation. Also, at this time, I decided to change the light switches to the flat switches and added a timer for the ceiling fan. Ah, yes, the ceiling fan.

The existing ceiling fan was obnoxious and needed replacing. I purchased a quiet Panasonic fan with a built-in light. Installation of this fan was so much harder than I planned for, and honestly, the main takeaway is make sure you read ALL the installation instructions before you start cutting holes in your house. Nonetheless, I got the thing installed and it works great!

(Here is a picture of the fan already installed since I forgot to take one in progress).

We ended up painting the walls, cabinet and ceiling/baseboard with two coats of paint, as recommended by Behr . Once everything looked fresh and clean, we installed the countertop. I cut a ½” plywood board for extra support under the quartz and adhered the countertop with silicone. I intentionally waited until this point to create the backsplash so that my dimensions would be dead on. I polished the backsplash with the same rounded over edges as the countertop. The backsplash was cut 1/8” from the edge of the countertop in order to maintain the 1/8” bevel on the countertop edge. Everything was sealed with white silicone purchased from Home Depot. I was really pleased with the results!

(You can see the large part of drywall cut out)

(Patched drywall)

Next was faucet hardware installation. I wanted to complete this before the sink went in so I’d have more space to work. I followed directions provided by the manufacturer and everything went smoothly. I waited to install the sink drain plug until after the sink was installed.

The sink was installed directly to the quartz bottom using silicone. In addition to the silicone, I created support pieces for the underside of the sink out of ¾” plywood to add some mechanical support. The new sink was in a slightly different location than the old one so I had to extend the drain catch by adding a small piece of drain pipe.

(Drainpipe off slightly – before extension)

We ended up picking out a modern looking light fixture from Home Depot for above the mirror. There were no surprises during installation, as the previous light fixture used a very similar mounting box as the new one.

I was so relieved to be finally finished with all the non-woodworking stuff, since all that was left to do were cabinet doors, drawer fronts, mirror frame, and the floating shelves. I began with the cabinet doors constructed using ¾” MDF in 5 sections.

This was my first experience with overlay hinges. I purchased these Blum hinges off Amazon. I like them because they allow for quite a bit of wiggle room to get your reveal exactly how you want it.

(Painted and installed doors – with penguin dog toy)

The drawer fronts are simply ¾” MDF cut to size. The hardware we used was also from Amazon. We liked the look of these satin nickel pulls, as they matched our faucet hardware really nicely.

Throughout our house, we have a couple of walnut accent pieces, so I wanted to carry that theme into the bathroom. The mirror frame and floating shelves were made out of a single piece of 8/4 walnut. After I had removed the old mirror, I had cut it to size with a glasscutter and created the frame using those dimensions. I splined the corners of mirror frame with hard maple for additional strength, then stained it with boiled linseed oil.

For the floating shelves, I bought some metal rods designed for supporting floating shelves from Amazon. The trick to getting these to work is to drill a perfectly vertical hole in the shelf to accept the rod. I started the hole on the drill press and finished it with a cordless drill.

And finally, just for fun, I also made a tissue box cover out of walnut. All walnut was wiped with 3 coats of boiled linseed oil.

Add some art and we’ve got ourselves a decent looking modern bathroom!

Itemized cost list:

Quartz $250
Sink $80
Faucet $172
Fan $145
Paint $50
Paint supplies $20
Light fixture $70
Cabinet door hinges $16
Drawer pulls $22
Polyester resin $23
Walnut and other wood $60
Fan timer $20
Shelf supports $22

Total = $950

Finished:

Final thoughts:

This bathroom renovation/model was totally worth it to us! It probably would have cost us at least double of what we paid in materials. Hopefully we learned a little about our remodel, what to expect, and what we can do better for the next one. We still have two more bathrooms, so we’ll see what happens!

– Tim