Wolverine's Lair Wand Company: Back in Business

A new wand, ready for Hogwarts

For several weeks, I worked on this wand, and wooden storage box, for a good friend of K's. She is in his grade, and lives across the street. She has the same love for Harry Potter and spell-casting as K, so the Wolverine's Lair leadership decided to resume production for a custom wand.

The wand was carved with a single knife out of basswood. It was shaped with a pullknife, a file, a card scraper, and the knife.

The box has finger joints and is made of poplar. It is lined with soft, red fabric and has a pillow that allows the magic to rest comfortably when it has a chance.

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Update with Lots of Links

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New and Used Electronics
M now has his own laptop for school work and YouTube browsing. He also has my old TracFone cell phone so he can call us from school if his soccer practice is over, but the bus hasn’t shown up. Both of these have him thinking he’s a little older than 11.

Gaffigan Jokes
A few fun quotes from Jim Gaffigan:

Have you ever been watching TV for a couple hours and you suddenly lose the remote? “I haven’t even gotten up! And I don’t remember throwing it…”

“Whenever you’re at a brunch buffet and you see that big metal tray filled with the four thousand pieces of bacon, don’t you almost expect a rainbow to be coming out of it?”


Fun Links
This is a neat project – turning an old candlestick phone into a modern, touch-tone phone.

Item #1201 of the things I’d like to build someday: Block Clock

Item #1202: A slightly different kind of clock.

I love this kind of thing, but if I made one, it would never look as cool as when someone else does it.

Not only is this beautiful beyond description, but it probably sounds good, too.

Get rid of the gullwing doors, and I’d buy one of these. I mean, if I didn’t already have a car. And I had a lot of money. And this were actually for sale.

Really nice watches, although look at how wide they are – almost 2” wide. But it is nice-looking, so you’d want to show it off.

As a non-cabinetmaker, I think these are pretty funny, and likely spot on. If I was a cabinet maker, they would probably leave me unable to decide between laughing and crying.

Video 1

Video 2

A YouTube lock-picking series. I haven't had a chance to watch it yet.

Coming Soon
A project I've been working on for a while is done - pictures and description coming soon!

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Run-a-thon Results

Wow! Look at those minutes!

The students of Lawton collectively logged over 15,000 minutes of walking tonight at the 10th annual Run-a-thon. The Run-a-thon benefits the Lawton PTO and the John Crosby Foundation.

The above image is from the computer program I wrote to help keep track of the minutes. There were some mix-ups between the people keeping track of the minutes for each student and me, but for the most part the time was reported correctly. According to the data file the program was using, there were 208 participants.

I'm so impressed with the effort the kids will make to benefit these great causes.

Wooden Box, School, and Links

Making a box. No power tools here, just saws, planes, pencils and squares.

School
School starts for 3/4 of our family on Tuesday: M to a new school for sixth grade, K to his comfortable old school for fourth, and J to her middle school as the Media Clerk. Work starts for me on Tuesday the way it always does, with Diet Mt. Dew and deleting most of the email I've received since the last time I was at work.

Soccer practice started Thursday. Someday I won't be reporting on soccer practices any more, but I'm expecting a few more years.

We took a quick weekend trip to Pittsburgh to see J's grandmother, who doesn't come close to acting her age. At her house, 97 looks like 80 for most people. She'll bury us all.

Projects
I'm obviously working on a wood project - this one is a secret until further notice, but it is similar to some projects I've done in the past. It involves a wooden box (poplar), carving (basswood), and magic incantations. Oops, I've said too much.

My Arduino project is on hold for now because I'm working on the wood project, and I was also sidetracked by the software I wrote for the Run-a-thon. But soon I'll be back with it. In the meantime, I made good on my threat to buy the book Making Things Move, and I also purchased this ultrasonic sensor, which I plan to use to help determine the position of a certain moving object that will be controlled by the Arduino and some user input. Stay tuned.

A Few Fun Links
Jeff De Boer's creations are pretty cool.

You've officially run out of excuses for not constructing your own Saturn V rocket or Hubble telescope.

I haven't had a lot of time to look at this PDF more closely, but it's full of interesting ideas for hiding things.

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