Friday, November 19, 2010

A diversion from boatbuilding...

DS and a couple of his buddies were interested in being Cub Scouts and I managed to get myself roped in to being a Den Leader. I guess it must be fate.

As part of one of their requirements for the Bear badge, they had to build something useful out of wood. We discussed a few options for things that they could make out of wood. These included the usual suspects of a shelf, birdhouses and the like. From the list of presented options they decided that they would like to build some journeyman style toolboxes.

Fortunately, I have a friend who is a tree farmer and a sawyer who had sold me some nice Eastern White Pine which I had in the cellar. The pine had been in the basement for a number of years waiting for an appropriate use and I figured that the time had come. Based on a design that I'd seen, I sat down at my work computer at lunch-time and designed a tool box in the CAD system. I then made a prototype from the drawing which was nice. I bought some screws and a few oak dowels and cut enough parts for the 6 boys in the Den to make their own toolboxes. Quite frankly it was a labor of love as there were lots of parts.

Last Wednesday night we had our Den meeting where the boys and their parents worked as a team to put together these toolboxes. They got to clamp together the assemblies, drill the holes for the screws that went into the boxes and screw them together. I brought along a small compressor and pneumatic stapler which they used to assemble the drawers with a little help. I think they had a good time building the tool boxes and that Santa Claus may hear some requests for pneumatic staple guns over the next month or so....

Here are the results of DS's work:


It's not clothes that make the man - it's the tools!

3 comments:

Unknown said...

Nice going!
I think we only made a wooden serving tray in cub scouts.

Cat Sittingstill said...

Very nice!

Canoez said...

Thanks!

When I was a Cub Scout I think we made a bird feeder - it was mounted on a post outside the kitchen window and more often than not had squirrels in it!

Somehow I think DH and his friends will make more use of their toolbox. Maybe even for making boats! ;-D