An Unlikely Re-purposed Project

From this:

To:

When the predecessor of the new pool cleaner, shown below, went kaput a while back, I threw away the cleaner itself but kept the two-wheel caddy.  I knew it will be useful someday but for months I did not know what its new purpose was going to be.

However, I knew there was going to be woodworking involved.  And indeed, for woodworkers anyhow, there are ideas to be had here.  Hopefully, for some, a construction tip here and there will be useful.

Parts no longer needed were removed. 

A round tube is always a challenge for attaching anything to it.  It calls for a semi-circular profile on the piece to be attached.  This is why a router table is one most useful tool in the workshop, next to the table saw and workbench, in my opinion.

Four anchor pieces are what they are: 

Pocket screws attached the cross piece support

I ripped 5-inch wide boards from 3/4 in. shelving material from several 12 in. planks that my next-door neighbor gave me from a renovation project. In effect, the shelves were re-purposed material too.

A pocket hole making jig, inexpensive but quite a useful tool

Pocket screws fastened all the joinery.  No glue this time.

My shop-made bow saw (discussed in an earlier posting) made easy work of cutting the rounded corners.  Rasp and sand paper did the rest.

One old (flea-market acquired) hand plane and a shop-made one (also in an earlier blog) did the flattening chore with ease.  As always when a hand tool can be employed, there is so much more pleasure derived from it. It is quieter and hardly is dust a problem.

I installed two swivel front wheels to make what was a two-wheel caddy into a more stable 4-wheel one.  And this in-house utility cart must be as light as possible; hence, the spartan use of material.

I had meant for this to wheel the laundry basket from our bedroom to the utility area and a caddy to wheel in large packages from the front door to mostly the kitchen area, especially for when frozen groceries are delivered.

My wife was a bit lukewarm to this project but I hope she will appreciate it someday when moving the clothes-laden laundry basket to and fro becomes more challenging as time moves along the golden years of senior living.

When in Doubt, Organisize

Wrong spelling  and one woodworker's corny attempt at humor aside, my woodworking hobby has one challenge other than completing projects - keeping my tools organized.  As good as I think some of my projects may have been, my wife is the first to tell me that keeping my tools organized is one never-ending quest with which I struggle just to make a passing grade. I can't argue with her on that.  It is an argument I can't win, not that I have any fantasy at all of winning that one.

So, the quest is to make it easy to return my tools to their proper places because: (1) that's the best way to find them later when you need them, again; (2) that's the best way to know where to put them back after each use.  Easier said than done, so over the years, as the reader shall see later at the bottom of this blog, I have had all kinds of projects toward that end.

Here is the thing. I find frequently used tools are not best kept in a tool box. Keeping these tools in plain sight is what I try to accomplish with this latest project.

Inside the house, not in the workshop, are frequently used tools that in the past were in a tool box.  I chose four that I have determined to frequently go to - other than kitchen tools or utensils, of course - and separated them from the less frequently used household ones. 

There is the multiple-bit-abled screw driver, of course. A pruning shear for the indoor plants. A heavy duty shear to open up those pesky clam shell plastic wrappers. And a box cutter to open up taped packages.

 

I glued together strips of the scrap wood for a wider board

Tried to configure best compartmentalization (a long word for any woodworker!) for the four tools

Flattening the now wider board with a hand [lane

Super glues are fast acting but if that is not fast enough, how about one second for the glue to set. Use an accelerator that when sprayed on the joint where you had just applied the super glue, the joint will set hard in one second flat.

Two rare earth magnets will hold in place the assortment of screw driver bits and the telescoping magnet-tipped pick-r-upper for picking up screws  or other ferrous materials, even other tools dropped on the floor

One strategic place to locate this in plain sight is the plant stand near the kitchen table. 

The screw driver is the one ubiquitous tool that is in almost every household. This one compact quick-connect-disconnect one will drive a variety of interchangeable bits.

Pocket knives are also good to have in plain sight/

Below: caddy for frequently used marking tools has magnets at its bottom to hold it in place but will easily slide to move it around the table saw top.

Work bench caddy for other tools

These are less than half of what needs organizing. I'm afraid I can't show the rest of the small workshop but it is work in progress.