I have a tradition of creating useless Christmas gifts for my colleagues. The criteria is that it must be made by me and the more useless it is, the better. I think this year I have outdone myself…
Sign for IT support with Open & Closed indicator
We are setting up a new On-Site IT support team at work, as apparently our support monkey was not doing good enough job. I decided that they need a proper sign for their desk which can show if they are in the office or not. It’s a simple design made out of 3mm birch plywood,…
Carving Halloween pumpkins – with a laser!
My kids are still too young to handle a knife, so they can’t carve their own pumpkins. They first draw the design on the pumpkin before I carve it out. I always need remind them that the design doesn’t have to be perfect, and it might be that I can’t carve it out perfectly either….
A drawing paper stand
Both of my kids love to draw. The first thing that comes from their mouths when they get home is: “where do we have paper?”. We have piles of blank paper standing around everywhere, and if we don’t, it’ll be a bad day. I decided that now was the time to get organised and get…
No monkeying around @ NNIT
Right before my son was born around 8 years ago, my team at work gave me a huge stuffed monkey as a gift. It has followed me around the office ever since as my “replacement” when I’m not by my seat. Couple of weeks back I had to bring the monkey back home as the…
”I am bored” -die
I’m in the process of making a bit larger laser cutting project, and I had to do some testing about cutting tolerances for it. Instead of just wasting materials, I designed a die for the kids. It is to be used during those “I’m bored…” -moments. The die has some better and some worse options….
Qawale – A miniature strategy game
Me and my son love to play a strategy game called “Qawale”. It is very simple game, but requires a lot of thought. You could think it as a “Four in a Row” on steroids. The problem is that the board used for it is rather large and difficult to take with for the summer…
Question Block from Super Mario
My son has a keen sense of design already, and he often comes up with ideas of models I should help him to create. My usual answer is that he needs to make a blueprint for it so I can be sure that I understand what he means. It also helps him to think about…
Water Spraying Teapot
As you might have already figured out, this is a kids’ toy and not an actual teapot. It uses the same design as the Babar – The water spouting elephant, but the teapot has much larger volume and also has some small teacups to go with it.
Leather Hair Barrette
Yet another valentine’s day is here. I decided to make something special for my wife and only use scraps I had in the workshop. I had a nice piece of very thick leather I got when I ordered a custom apron for metalworking. It is somewhere around 3-4mm thick. For the wooden stick I used…