Wood Stove Lid Lifter

One of the things we need for the cabin is a lid lifter for the small cast iron wood stove we restored and are using for heat.  We didn't find the original in my Aunt and Uncle's shed that we dug it out of.  We looked at several different ones at various antique stores, but never found one we were sure would work.

So I decided to make on.  Made good progress on it before it got too late to keep grinding on it.

Started with a piece of scrap 3/16" steel I had laying around.  Is actually part of the rear engine hanger for a Type 3 VW engine.

 Laid out a rough design on a flat section of the material.

 After cutting out the basic shape and welding a small tab on the end and doing a bunch of grinding I ended up with this.

 ...and with it installed in the lid.

Close-up.

We really liked some of the antique handles we saw that had a coil spring wrapped around them to help keep the part you touch a little cooler.  So I stole one of the spring handles from our fire-pit.

After some more cutting, welding, and grinding, this is what I ended up with.  Had to cut the end of the handle off to ge the spring on and then reweld the end on.  Little more grinder, hit it with the sandblaster and powder-coat it and it will be good to go.

Fun little project.

Cabin Trim Milling...

Went out and bought the materials for the wainscoting trim for the cabin today.  6 sheets of 3/4" MDF and 5 sheets of 3/8" beadboard plywood.   

Then I headed over to TechShop and got all the pieces rough cut.








This is what you get cut 11 sheets of material into a cabin's worth of trim. This is the baseboard molding, the chair rail and panels.  It is also all the window sills and window and door trim.







Using the panel saw and the large table saw with the 8 foot outfeed table at TechShop really made this job easier.

I still need to router some of the details into some of the pieces and cut some rabbets in some of them, but the bulk of the forming is done.   LOTS of priming and painting to do.

Recent projects.....

Been trying to get all the fairy doors posted up over on my Fairy Door blog....but really haven't done anything with this one.  Thought I would post some pics of a few recent projects.

First up are a couple of pictures of the cabinet i built a couple of weeks ago for our bathroom.  We had an awkward sized space and couldn't find the right size cabinet to buy...so I design and built my own.

and the second project is one I worked on this weekend.  These are sample pieces of the wainscoting trim that we are going to put up at the cabin in Minnesota this summer.  The baseboard, shoe molding, and chair rail will be cut and routed from MDF.  We will buy the bead board paneling.  We are also planning a picture rail molding for near the top of the wall to hang artwork and such from.  The MDF will work nicely since all the trim on the inside is going to be painted.

and finally for tonight....a drawing showing the configuration of the wainscoting and door and window trim.  Not sure about the colors just yet, but something like this....