Thread: It's that time of year again..... Home made gift season

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Very nice! Sanding... how come all the good project involve sanding??? LOL..


Good Luck with the glue and construction paper. Could be funny tho.. you trying to explain the glitter covered fingers at the VFW!

More gifts being made. We built another bench. We just have to sand it and get rid of it. I built 2 clocks for 2 new members coming into the family. I am going to clear coat them, then add the numbers.

Those are great Ryan! Very creative. I got a busted generator at work.. I wonder if the insurance companies would miss a twisted conn rod??? LOL...

Manly shop clocks!

Here are better pics of the clocks after I got them finished up. I really didn't want to give the gear one up.

Very clever, and a good example of thinking outside the square.

Thanks johnboy!

Time to knock the dust off this thread again. Since we don't have enough going on right now....... My wife decided we would be making some presents for my middle brother Nick's wife's baby shower that is this weekend. They decided not to find out if it is a boy or a girl until he or she is born. Their theme is barn yard animals. Allyson put together a basket with some stuffed animals in it, and made a tractor out of diapers and a supply basket. She still has to finish it because the teddy bear is supposed to be setting on the back of it.

Here's where my part comes in...... We received a coffee table from my youngest brother and his wife last Christmas. It was made from a sheet of plywood and had wood crates on the top of the plywood on their side for the table top. It was nice, and it worked. But since we have 3 kids that go non stop, they broke it within 3 days. Then it became a hazard so we removed it. I robbed 2 of the crates from this table and re purposed them in this project. Allyson found the idea on pinterest. It is a tractor toy box. I used Roberts's jig saw in a vice trick. I didn't use his fancy cruise control though. I did use cheap zip tie version of cruise control and it worked pretty good. My biggest issue is my cheapy jig saw allows the blade to wander side to side pretty far so it will be time to look for a better quality tool to do said shady wood cutting techniques with . I even broke out my new belt/pad sander I purchased about 5 months ago. It worked pretty well to sand my not so round beaver cut wheels, to looking like round wheels. Here it is, the tractor toy box. If I find the other head light I cut out, I'll add those. Either the pecker head little lab pup we got, ran off with it, or one of the kids picked it up and ran off with it.

That's sweet! You folks always come up with the neatest ideas..

Very nice toy box Ryan! I wish I had seen that when my grandkids were smaller. For better or worse they are growing and interests are changing. We went from 3 large tubs of toys (one for each Grandkid) in the Arizona room to a single large tub a couple of years ago. Then a few months ago that was reduced to a tub about 1/2the size. Kind of nice getting my Arizona room back, but kind of miss the mayhem and toys all around the room when the kids came over.

I missed your post about the clocks. We parted out some big trucks at the local wrecking yard 20 years ago and I saved the rear end coversw off a couple. This one came off a big 1946 (?) wrecker we scrapped.

GMC Clock by M Patterson, on Flickr


this one was from a WWII era International 5 ton that had been bought as surplus after the war and converted to a big Wrecker. I used epoxy to attach all the data tags from the dash to the inside of it. Yeah it needs dusted.


International Clock by M Patterson, on Flickr


This one is my favorite. It hangs in the shop. It’s the air cooled bellhousing that attached the original Powerflight transmission to the 331 Hemi that’s in the 37 Dodge.


Hemi Clock by M Patterson, on Flickr



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Those are some awesome looking clocks for a shop. It reminded me of when I was a lot younger, I cut out a pretty lady in a silk pajama top from a catalog. I took a clock apart and put her top part as the center of the clock and glued her legs to the clock hands. I'll let you figure out what she looked like at certain times of the day

Those are awesome clocks Mike! Now I know what to do with the 6.9 diesel 4 speed bell housing I'll never use.

This is not as cool as your clocks Mike, but here is some string art the wife made for the shower too. The only stuff I had to do was cut the boards, sand them, and put the hangers on the back. Oh, wait. I guess I did tear down a barn to get that piece of wood 2 falls ago.

Those are neat Ryan ! I love old barn wood. It was a big deal back in the 70s-80s. Back home in Illinois guys were paying good money to tear down old unused barns to salvage the wood. I ended up with an old board from the barn that used to stand on the home place. It started out 8' X 18" X 1" (and it was a true 18" X 1" ). You can see the big circular saw marks where it was cut into a board.

I've used a bit of it for shelves in a table a made years ago when I was in my ornamental iron phase. I had just gotten my first MIG and was welding everything in sight .

I have a metal bender and flat stock was cheap back then. I always thought the shelves in the shelf units I made would have looked better with barn wood instead of the pine I used. I still have it in the back of my mind to dig up some barn wood (if I can) and build a bigger set of shelves of this style for the Arizona room.

Shelves stands by M Patterson, on Flickr



Like I said I was welding a lot. I really enjoyed building the little stands, and gave a bunch of them away for ashtray stands, flower pot holders, light tables etc.

The bubble gum machine is one that still makes me smile. I won the gum machine at a cruise night raffle in Salinas California when I was stationed at Ft Ord. The balls that are currently in are those damn hard rubber balls that seem to bounce forever (and are hard enough to break things in the house or go thru a window). The Grandkids have all been told that if Grandpa catches them being bounced in the house or close to windows outside.....or they get left here, they are Grandpas. As you can see by the number of balls the grandkids push that rule on occasion.

I have told my daughter (who finds it all rather amusing) that one of my main goals in life is to live long enough for the Grandkids to have kids of their own (not too soon hopefully). Then when they are around 4 or 5, I'm going to split them up, wrap them and give them to her grandkids some Christmas at her house.



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Wow, that metal work and stands are awesome Mike! That is too cool. Barn wood once again is back to extreme highs. It is pretty nuts. I see old barns up here all the time rotting away. I'd tear another down if I knew I could get it all down affordably, and quick enough. Not likely right now. Haha