Over the years I have accumulated a growing pile of pliers, screwdrivers, wrenches, and other miscellaneous small tools. It long ago outgrew the little toolbox I have, turning into more of a tool pile or perhaps a tool dumping ground. I needed a new, bigger toolbox. Having recently built some new toys, namely a bending brake and spot welder, I knew I needed to build my own toolbox.

I wanted to make some metal boxes and trays. I have plenty of scrap sheet metal from things like old PC cases and microwave ovens. I already built a sheet metal bending brake. Now I just need a way to fasten parts together. Something easier than drilling a bunch of holes and screwing or pop-riveting. Something less messy than soldering or glueing. Something where I can just magically zap the parts and have them stick together instantly. Eureka! Spot welding. Time to dig through Google. And the trash can.

I got a new pen plotter recently, an HP 7585B. New to me, of course-- this thing was built around 1987.

I have wanted a larger printer for a while, for printing sheet metal designs and similar miscellaneous uses. Of course I can print on regular 8x11-inch letter-size paper or 14-inch legal-size paper, cut the unprintable margins, and tape pages together, trying to get them straight. That, my friends, is annoying.

I built my own sheetmetal bending brake. I used some scrap angle steel pieces which I welded with my arc welder.

According to the backyard foundry experts, the most useful casting metal that's even easier to melt than aluminum is zinc. It melts around 420°C/800°F, so you can even melt it on a hot stove. It casts harder than aluminum for better wear, and zinc/aluminum alloys can approach cast iron in strength and durability. Sounds great! All you have to do is buy some nice clean zinc ingots, and... Whoa nelly, what?! Buy ingots? I'm way too cheap-@$$ frugal for that. We're going to melt our own. Easy as pie, right? Turns out that melting zinc is easy. Cleaning it? Not quite so much.

Let's melt metal in the backyard!

Yeah, that teensy-weensy little pool of molten metal in arc welding was cool, but it was time to move up to the next level. A big glowing pot full of silver liquid awesomeness. Oh, yeah.

I built a stylish energy-efficient desk lamp, entirely from scratch. I have always enjoyed Art Deco and Machine Age industrial styling, and was inspired to use it for the lamp when my son and I were watching Batman, the Animated Series. A desk lamp worthy of Wayne Manor was in order.

Here is my crazy aviator costume from Halloween 2008. I was inspired by a recent steampunk ornithopter picture.

I made the aviator helmet using a leather jacket from the thrift store and the goggles from last year's explorer costume. I made the pattern for the helmet by taping newspaper to my head. Then I cut out pieces from the jacket to match and sewed them together. The copper buckle is household solid electrical wire.

Jessica bought a flat panel TV, and wanted to attach it to the wall with some sort of swing-arm mount. The prices at the store were outrageous. Armed with my moderately-trustworthy arc welder and couple of discarded bed frames, we set out to construct one ourselves.

I received a Baldor metal grinder with 10-inch wheels, on its own pedestal floor stand, discarded from a school metal shop program. Several owners before me did not know what to do with it, mainly because the motor is wired for three-phase industrial power which is not found in U.S. residential homes. My job was to fix it up and get it working.

There were two major tasks to the restoration: cleaning/repainting, and making the three-phase motor work.

I received a Baldor metal grinder with 10-inch wheels, with a motor wired for three-phase industrial power. Three-phase power is not provided in U.S. residential homes, so I needed to power it from normal single-phase power. My solution was to build a balanced static phase converter, requiring only a few relatively inexpensive capacitors. (Much less expensive than the nuclear reactor I was considering.)

The handle broke off my manual lawn aerator. It had been welded in place, and since I have an arc welder, I figured I should weld it back on. This was the first time I attempted to arc weld something with a real purpose to it. There were a few details to work out, such as the fact that I don't know if the welder works right, and I don't know if my welding rods are any good, and what was the other one? Oh yeah, I don't know how to arc weld. Well OK then, time to get started.

When I fixed up an old drill press, I found that the switch plate for the on/off switch was fairly worn. The original paint and lettering was worn away, so that the start/stop wording was almost unreadable. Even though I am clever enough to figure out that the big red button means "stop", it needed a clearly readable switch plate label.

My new grinder needed some task lighting for the grinding wheels. I decided to build a dedicated lamp for each side, controlled by the grinder power switch. This worked in perfectly with my latest obsession, I mean interest, which is LED lighting.

Any trained machinist will tell you that a drill press with a cheap jig is no substitute for a proper lathe. I'm not a trained machinist, so now that I've said that, let's get on to accomplishing something interesting.