Hallway Lights

Post 22

Hallway lights

This was a much older build however I never posted it anywhere. Now that I have decided to start my blogs back up I figured this is a perfect project for my steampunk blog. So as you can see this light in the hallway of my old apartment was well......... bad looking. Scratched that it was straight up ugly as sin. So I wanted to do something about that. At the time I thought I was going to stay there for a while so I wanted it to be more steampunk to make it more like my home a place I wanted to be.

I had to start by ripping out the old light lucking I did this in a way that I could put it all back together. I really glad I did that because I was happy to get my deposit back. lol With the little electrical back ground I have from home remodeling this was a two minute job. but now looked way worse then before.

Next I found these reproduction oil lanterns at walmart for $5 each. these are working oil lanterns and I love the way they look while burning. However an oil fueled lantern is not a very smart thing to have burning in the home for a light source. Also to light it every time you want light would be a terrible way of living. at least now a days.

Next I ripped all the internals out of the lantern so it no longer burns oil. I also inserted a light socket into the top of the lantern. Now the lantern can be hooked up to a power source and be lite with a normal light bulb.

then it was time to make the lanterns a little more antique looking. A little Rub N Buff to the lanterns and it was looking a lot better. this was a slight bit of a pain in the butt with all the little crevasses. however after a little time I had both lanterns looking much less bard new.  

I spiced both lanterns to the electrical wire that was leading to the old wall light. after which I hung both lanterns off the wall with a couple of planter hooks. I loved the way they looked hanging on the wall but now had a huge nasty looking hole to deal with.

I'm not 100% sure how i came across it but I had an old PA speaker from one of the schools in town that was remodeled. Someone took the time to save this speaker from the trash and I am so glad they did because not only was it almost perfect size to cover that god awful whole in the wall but it also have a very steampunk look to it hanging next to the two lanterns.

These lanterns made the hallway look way better then ever before and now my apartment had a much more steampunk look to it. I don't think I could have wished for it to come out any better.

For more pictures and projects you can check out my website 

AmazingJayman.com

Also you can check out my Carpentry Blog
Or my terrible Video Game Blog

or my YouTube channel www.youtube.com/AmazingJayman 

Have a great day and thanks again for reading. 

End Tables #1

Post 21

Steampunk End Tables Part 1

Been really loving making reclaimed pallet wood builds. My Pallet desk really set me off on this Pallet wood fixation. I am a huge steampunk fan and pallet wood works very well for this. With that being said like before If any build works for this blog and my Carpentry blog it will posted on both. you can find that blog here. ( Carpentry Blog )

With that said on to the blog post.

 So unlike my other pallet builds I wasn't going to do this one in all Reclaimed pallet wood. I started with a pile of 1x4 pine stock. I cut enough for the legs down to 26" for a rough cut finish cut would later be cut to 22".

 Ripped all the pieces on a 45 degree angle on both sides. Started gluing and nailing the quadrants together. The main reason for this for anyone who doesn't know was to have four legs solid with no end grains.

 I then made the top rails for the table tops. again this is pretty self explanatory. Then added a piece of 3/4 plywood to the top so that the pour on poly cant leak through the pallet wood chunks when its time to do the poly.



The pallet wood part is really my favorite parts of this build. This part is an awful lot like making and putting together a jigsaw puzzle. The hardest part of this part is less fitting the pieces together and more trying to get a more random look to it. however I think it came out pretty good and fairly random.

I finished the pallet wood part of both the end tables and cut of all the extra wood. I really loved the way the tables looked with the wood jutting off in all directions however for an end table it wouldn't work very well. So I cut off all the extra wood reluctantly as to finish the tables with nice flat sides so nothing could get cought on them.

After I added yet another layer of wood around the outsides of the end tables so as to have a tubed section for the poly to fill. 

And with that we come to then of this post next for these tables is a nice thick coating of pour on poly some stain and finish routing.

Stay tuned for updates.

Hope you enjoyed reading!
As I said before any post that fits for my carpentry blog and this one will be posted to both You can check out my Carpentry blog Here!

For more pictures and projects you can check out my website 

AmazingJayman.com

Also you can check out my terrible Video Game Blog

or my YouTube channel www.youtube.com/AmazingJayman 

Have a great day and thanks again for reading.

Pirates Chest #1

Post 20

The Pirates Chest part 1

 Starting off yet another pallet wood build I first have to rip apart a bunch of pallets. Now I started doing this with no clear idea of what I was going to build at all. I got to the point of having a pile of pallet wood laying there and nothing to build with it. So I drank a beer and stared at the pile while listening to some music. This is when a song from Alestorm came on if you don't know Alestorm is a pirate themed metal band. As soon as I herd that music come on I knew what I was going to build a big Pirates chest.

Using my new Kreg Jig I just bought earlier that day I started Jointing together the planks to make the sides of the chest. I never tried doing this before so this was not only a test for me but pretty fun at the same time.


After all the sides were jointed together I then started to build the box. This part was pretty self expiatory cut on 45 degree angles on each corner and glued and nailed together. Problems arose when I realized cutting the 45s and then jointing the planks together was not the best way to go about this. The corners didn't line up the best. In fact it was far less then I wished I almost scraped the build from the way the corners came out but I figured screw it I can fix that later. I don't have any pictures of it but the bottom of the chest is tho only wood that is not reclaimed from the pallets. The bottom is a piece of 3/4 plywood that was left over from a different project.

Now it was onto the top. now this was the part I was most excited for I love to make round objects from wood. Again like the side I toke two planks of the pallets wood and jointed them together then figured out just how much of a round top I want. I looked up a bunch of pictures of pirates chests and decided I wanted to make a a full half radius. starting flush with one side and doing a full 180 to be flush with the other.


The slats were also a bit of a pain in the but to get right. Now I was sure on the formula to figure out the right angles and I had a few beers by this point so I didn't even want to try to figure it out. I just did it by trial and error. Got the angles really close and just went with it. I cut so many slats before I had enough to build the whole top but after cutting and cutting I had enough. and put them all together to make a nice round top.

At this time the box and lid were done and now was ready to be sanded and all the trim added.

Post #2 for the pirates chest soon to come. Stay Tuned.

Hope you enjoyed reading!
As I said before any post that fits for my carpentry blog and this one will be posted to both You can check out my Carpentry blog Here!

For more pictures and projects you can check out my website 

AmazingJayman.com

Also you can check out my terrible Video Game Blog

or my YouTube channel www.youtube.com/AmazingJayman 

Have a great day and thanks again for reading.

Pallet Desk part 2

Post 19

Pallet Desk part 2

Part one of pallet desk post can be found Here!

As of this time the top of the desk is built and the pour on poly was drying. It was now time to build and attach the legs. Continuing with 100% reclaimed pallet construction I used the 2x4s that were the pallets cross beams. I took two of the 2x4s and glued them together for each leg. I wasn't to worried about any blemishes, cuts, nail holes or anything else mainly because I was really looking for a used battered look.

After all four of the legs were glued and dry I then decided I wanted them to at the very least take some stain nicely so I sanded them down so as to take off as much dirt and stains as I could. As you could see from the picture on the right the belt sander made easy work of this. most of the nail holes and other imperfection could still be see but now it was nice and clean. I cut then down to 27" long because the top was 1.5" thick save for the boarder. 

The boarded of around the top of the table was 3/4" thick and hung down 2" from the bottom of the main part of the top. Next I cut a 2" tall by 3/4" deep notch in two sides of the top of the legs.

The legs were then cut down to an overall length of 26.5". They fit very nicely onto the top and now the table sat at a very nice height of 28" tall.

I chose this height from the comfortable height I like while sitting in an office chair. I then screwed the legs onto the table straight through the face of the table boarded to keep with the rough built look.

It was then time for a coat of stain.

Keeping with the idea of wanting a nice steampunk desk for my PC I decided to use a very dark brown stain. Minwax Early American stain was a perfect color for the look I wanted.

The very last step was to router the edges. I am very partial to a colonial profile so without thinking I went with that bit. This was kind of an after thought so obviously these edges no were bare with no stain. I toke a step back and really loved the way it looked so I never restained them. the top edge I routered completely around the whole thing. However the bottom edge I started and stopped the profile 2" from each leg.

With that my new steampunk desk was done.
Built with 100% reclaimed pallet wood this desk is exactly what I wanted.

Hope you enjoyed reading!
As I said before any post that fits for my carpentry blog and this one will be posted to both You can check out my Carpentry blog Here!

For more pictures and projects you can check out my website 

AmazingJayman.com

Also you can check out my terrible Video Game Blog

or my YouTube channel www.youtube.com/AmazingJayman 

Have a great day and thanks again for reading.

GARBAGE LAMP!!!

POST 18

The Garbage lamp.

       For the setup of this post I would like to start off by saying I have a friend who makes a living buying and selling at swap meets and flea markets. He deals will darn near anything but he always has antiques. In the travels from place to place some of his product gets broke. when this happens he normally tosses it to the side of his shed till he had a day that he loads up a ton of crap broken and screwed up pieces and brings it to the dump.

        Well one day boys and girls when I
was over his house I became somewhat bored and said to myself. "Self let's see if we can fix any of this crap!" So I started to rummage through the junk. I found a bunch of cool things but most of it was either to broke to be fixed or just not worth the time. But then I found this thing. It's a boom lamp from a drafting table. now it looks like junk and it is but for some reason I love these
boom lamps

So naturally I found something I like so I ripped it apart. I painted

the boom with some strange metallic spray paint that had a really weird texture when it dried. as for the pieces that held the arm together (on right) I painted them with the same paint then applied a coat of gold Rub-N-Buff.

 As for the lamp shroud I sprayed it down with again that same dark gray metallic spray paint but instead of the gold Rub-N-Buff I used an antique copper color. It came out looking very nice so I wanted to put a clear coat over it, and that's when things got really weird. I'm not sure if the clear coat I used was just really old or if it had some sort of reaction with the first paint or possible the Rub-N-Buff but when I spray it on the whole lamp shroud look as if it was beginning to crack. 

And it looks AWESOME!!!! one of the best mistakes I've made in a long time.

Now it was time for a base Seeing how the lamp was originally attached to a table it had no way of standing on it's own any longer.

I began to rummage through the pile of junk again and found these beat up old tables every one of them had some thing wrong with it. I took them apart and made on nice one out of all the others so my friend could sell at least one of them but then had a pile of scrap from the others I crammed the lamp into the top of one of the pieces and kapow had a new base.

I repainted one of the broken table tops with the same spray paint again and mounted the to the bottom for added stability and just like that my Garbage lamp was done.

Now I really love this lamp. I have had so many people come to my house and go "WOW!!! That's one ugly lamp dude!!"

And I say "Yeah I know!" with a big smile on my face because the best part is that I made it from garbage with no intentions on making anything useful that day and I use this lamp every single night. So you might not like it but I love it. It really goes to show you one mas trash can truly be another mans treasure.

 I also made a video for my YouTube about this lamp.

     Hope you enjoyed reading and for more pictures and projects you can check out my website 

AmazingJayman.com

Also you can check out my Carpentry blog and my terrible Video Game Blog

or my YouTube channel www.youtube.com/AmazingJayman 

Have a great day and thanks for reading.

Pallet desk

POST 17

THE PALLET DESK part1

It's been a good amount of time since I posted anything but I feel it's time to start back up.
this blog is still going to be just my steampunk builds However I started a new blog that this post is a copy of.
the reason for this is that the new blog is going to be all my carpentry and this one will just be steampunk builds however if something falls under both I will post it to both.
You can check out my new carpentry blog here
AJcarpentry.blogspot.com
Now that's out of the way onto the build.

I first started off with a bunch of pallets Obviously. Then had to take them apart which was kind of a pain what with all the nails in those things. Every single darn nail had to be pulled out. That was a Nightmare.

After that was done I made myself a nice little work bench out of one of the pallets and some 4x4's. (pic on left) 

Then started to lay out the top. I cut a bunch of pieces to 30" as the cross plates to screw the wood to.

I went piece by piece doing my best to pick out the most random pieces as far as size and color to make it have as much of a random look as I could. When I ran out of pieces that were different I started ripping them down and rubbing them in mud to get a different look. I payed absolutely no mind to my screw patterns of if the screw sunk in all the way and on some spots tried to crack the wood. My reasoning for this was the same as before trying to make it look random and carefree. After a few hours of messing around trying to make the wood look like

( Or more so like) garbage wood thrown together I finally finished what was to be the top of the desk. (pic on left) Now onto the rest now the wood the I used for the boarder is store bought however it is the only store bought wood in the finished table. Either way I applied the boarder and lifted it 3/8" above the rest of the table to give room for the poly.

On to the poly!!!

I used a two part pour on epoxy like polyurethane. The smell was tremendous but what was worse is not thinking I never puddled any of the holes in the wood so a lot of it drained right throw the table. That was one expensive learning experience. but the first coat still came out looking pretty good. Problem was it only gave me a 1/16" of coverage crossed the whole  table.

 After a day of drying I used some clear silicone caulk to fill most of the holes and cracks around the table and applied a second coat of poly.
the second coat filled much more of the table up and shined it like a brand new penny. the table was starting to come together just as I wanted it to. And for the look of it it was perfect the poly really brought out the different hues  of the wood much more then anything thing else I did to it.
At this point I was very very happy.

Hope you enjoyed reading and for more pictures and projects you can check out my website 

AmazingJayman.com

Also you can check out my Carpentry blog and my terrible Video Game Blog

or my YouTube channel www.youtube.com/AmazingJayman 

Have a great day and thanks for reading.

Lanterns of Tea 99.9% done!!!

          Post #16



          Alright guys this is going to most likely be my last post for these here Tea light lanterns for a while. They are what I would call 99.9% done (Hence the title of this post) Now the reason I will not say they are done is because the LED's do not give off nearly as much light as I would have liked so I am going to get new LED's in the future and replace them but this most likely won't happen for at least a few weeks.

           Until then THE LANTERNS ARE!!!! Done? Yes as done as they are going to be at least till the new lights.


        To finish these bad boys off I found these metal plant hangers at walmart for dirt cheap. (Picture to left) I bought them and brought them home and started "Antique-ing" them. (Picture to right)
Again going over them with some Rub N' Buff, and some choice paints. And got them looking pretty good. I think the black base coat that was on them from the store really brought out the color of said antique-ing a lot more. These things look great!!! I very very pleased with how they turned out.



      Then I looked around the room and tried to figure out where I was going to hang these things where 1. they are not going to get in the way. 2. they don't look out of place and pointless. And 3. where I could easily hid the wires in or behind something.  My computer monitor was my best choice and to be completely honest I'm very glad I made that choice. These things look great hanging off my computer! However it did make me realize that new I need to make my monitor match some how in some way. Hmmm........ I wonder how I could do that? So stay tuned for my to rip that 27" TV apart and start fooling around with that too!! XD


     



        Here is a nice shot of both the Lanterns hanging off either side of my computer monitor I really thing they look amazing. I truly am very happy with how these turned out.

This is a picture of how the Lanterns look at night. I know it's really hard to see and doesn't look like much of anything which is why I made the picture small because I am only uploading it to show they do turn on. However this is the only part of the lanterns I am disappointed in. The red LED's like I said before just are not as bright as I thought they would be and they really do not have the effect I was looking for. But hey live and learn right? Again like I said I plan on getting color changing LED stripes that work off a remote and revisiting these so to swap the LED's out.

       So that about it for this post Thank you for ready and if you like my builds please feel free to give it a like, A nice comment, And follow for my future builds. I have a great one in the works right now. Also again I will leave this with a video of the build and I'll see you guys later. Thanks for ready.