Practical Engineering

We got a kitten for Christmas. His name is Hank. We wanted a place for him to get away from the dog (if he wants) and a place where the dog couldn't get his food. This is what I came up with.

One of my coworkers gave me a nice chunk of 8/4 red oak. My policy is if you give me wood, I make you something. This bowl is about 5" in diameter and 2" tall. The rim is segmented wenge.

My wife made a tile mosaic on the top of this old end table. I added a border around the edges, helped her paint the wood, grout the tile, and epoxy-seal the top. Turn the volume down if you don't like jazz (: Thanks for watching!

The mortar and pestle are made from cherry. The accents are spectraply off cuts from my "Segmented Bowl Factory" video. Given another shot, I would have changed the shape of the business end of the pestle. I think it came out a bit small.

I made a handle for a new tool out of palm wood and red oak. It isn't perfect, but I learned a lot. What do you think?

The turning subreddit started up their monthly challenges again. February's challenge is to turn a sphere. I've had some ideas swirling around in my head about resin and dowels, and I decided to give it a shot. The mold came together beautifully, and my estimate for the volume of resin was dead on! But the final sphere was far from attractive. Some lessons learned:

This is my first attempt at multi-axis turning: a couple of scoops/spoons from walnut and paduak. Multi-axis turning is really an art form of woodworking in itself. It breaks the door wide open from traditional solids of revolution to far more interesting, complicated, free form shapes. And it is really a test of your imagination, because the geometry associated with this type of turning is actually quite complex.

I love career day because it gives me a chance to show kids how fun my job can be. This year I went all out and built a large display with running water, moving parts, and lot's of color. Bring on the bad puns!

Gardening in the modern age means making things more complicated and arduous, with electrons, bits, and bytes. Behold: the garduino. My brother got me an arduino microcontroller board for Christmas, which to me was a solution looking for a problem. I finally found the problem: fresh herbs are expensive at the grocery store. But apparently not as expensive as adding a bunch of sensors and electronics to your garden.

Moms love the stuff their kids make - even when their kids aren't kids anymore. You won't be able to hang these vases on the refrigerator, but I think they'll look nice on a shelf or window sill. They were a lot of fun to make, especially with my wife helping. Cutting and gluing can be very relaxing in the right mindset. We're still woodturning novices, but I think our mom's are going to love the vases for Mother's Day this year. Thanks for watching and let me know what you think.

We all like games, but who among us needs another screen in their life? This is my first foray in the world of interactivity. It's an arcade-style puzzle box mini game. Powered by an Arduino with completely custom wooden enclosure and components, the goal was to make it look like something your parents told you not to play with when you were a kid. The object of the game is to adjust the knobs so each needle points at its respective LED, but it's not as easy as it sounds (or is it!?).

I haven't disappeared! In fact I have quite a few cool projects in the works and not just woodworking. Follow me on instagram to keep up with what I'm working on (@gradyhillhouse).

There’s a growing movement of people who believe that our space agencies are underfunded (see: Penny4NASA) because humanity is just not paying enough attention to our present accomplishments and future plans in space exploration. Well, I know one way to direct attention to something: Point at it.

I was commissioned to build this model in support of a presentation about geotechnical engineering. The goal is to illustrate the flow paths that groundwater takes under an obstruction (e.g. a sheet pile or cutoff wall). So much of engineering is just theoretical work, so it was really cool to see such an elegant example of a geotechnical engineering concept borne out in real dirt and water. Thanks for watching and let me know what you think.

Not everyone has the thumb coordination to fly a quad copter, and few have a pilot buddy who can carry them skyward, but just about anyone can fly a kite. The hobby of Kite Aerial Photography (KAP) has been given a new wind with the advent of affordable, light-weight action cameras and advanced remote-controlled devices. Even though it’s been over a hundred years since George Lawrence took his famous panorama of San Francisco after the 1906 earthquake, the kite is still the simplest way to get a lofted perspective for your photography.

Whether you brew your own libations at home, or just consume enough of them to keep a tap on hand, the simplest way to spice up your kegerator is with a custom handle. It’s a quick, easy project on the lathe and there’s tons of room for creativity.

For me, discussing the weather is more than idle small talk. So when I got interested in web-enabled electronics (the Internet of Things), I knew immediately that my first project be related to the first thing I do when I log onto my computer at work each day: check the weather. This "weather station" simply pulls weather data from the internet and displays it using analog electrical panel meters.