2013 Posts

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Bandsaw Box

By Ben Nitkin on

My girlfriend, Helen, visited recently, and we were looking for reasonably quick woodworking projects. One book had a selection of - you guessed it - bandsaw boxes.

Bandsaw boxes are boxes made using a single large block of wood, cut down on the bandsaw. In general, the top and bottom are removed, then the center is hollowed out, and the entire box goes back together.

The pattern we found built a very cute bunny box. We started with a 4x6x10" piece of pine (well, actually a 2x4 laminated onto a 4x4.) With careful alignment, we found that there was enough wood to make two matching boxes.

Gingerbread Castle

By Ben Nitkin on

You know gingerbread houses, of course. Smallish houses, covered in all sorts of candies and dripping in frosting. They're popular around Christmas (not that I celebrate that holiday...).

Recently, my family was getting together, and I decided to make something fancy out of gingerbread. After considering Serenity (too hard), I decided to make a castle. I threw the dough together, rolled it into 9x16 sheets, and baked it.

Helen and I drafted plans for the castle, and she figured out what shapes and sizes everything should be.

I made the corner pieces by wrapping slices of gingerbread around a 1" dowel as soon as the cookies came out of the oven. For the rest, I let the gingerbread sit overnight to stale, then sliced it into rectangles.

The castle was assembled with Royal icing, then set afloat in a sea of jello with Sweedish Sharks.

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