The chair at SD Botanic Gardens.

I filed this attraction of hers away in my head, and like Roy in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, it started to eat away at me.  I collected plans for dozens of different styles of adirondack chairs (all normal scale), I drew my own plans both on paper and on the computer, and I stood staring at the hardware store’s lumber aisle envisioning how the different sizes of boards would work together.  No chairs were built from mashed potatoes, but only for a lack of that dish being on the menu.

I would have to build this chair, and Mother’s Day gave me a perfect excuse.

Not surprisingly, there is a distinct lack of plans online for giant adirondack chairs. I’d have to figure it out on my own.  The pictures I’d taken in California that had Sara in them were most helpful, since I could use her as a scale reference.  Being the most patient and trusting wife ever, she never really questioned me when I asked her to stretch her arms out and measure from wrist to wrist, or from her hip to mid-calf (see the picture above for relevance).  With these measurements in hand, it was a relatively simple matter to determine what size everything was, and the good news was that everything could be built using standard-dimension lumber with very little waste.

Like the adage about the best way to eat an elephant, giant chairs are planned and built one piece at a time. First would be the seat.  With that put together, I could sit on it and figure out exactly how far back the backrest should be.  Once that was done I could build the backrest.  Once that was done I could tilt the whole thing and try it out to figure out the best angle so that the front supports could be attached.  With front supports and a backrest, I could figure out how the armrests fit. One piece at a time, each contributing to the next piece of the puzzle.

I worked at night, telling Sara I was heading out to the garage to work on my secret project.  Yes, those were my exact words. When you have a long enough history of crazy secret projects going on, an understanding partner doesn’t get too alarmed or unduly curious when another one comes along.

A late night peek into the workshop.

After a couple weeks of work — an hour or so a night — I had an enormous chair filling most of my garage/workshop.  So enormous, in fact, that there was no getting around the chair, there was only going under the chair.  I covered the windows so nobody would accidentally see in and have a surprise spoiled.

With everything cut and fit, it now had to come apart for painting.  It’s all held together with bolts and deck screws, so disassembly was relatively painless. If I thought the chair took up room before, that was nothing compared to what the pieces took up when laid out for painting — there was one fewer dimension in which to keep them!

The night before Mother’s Day, a friend of my wife who was in on the plot took her out for drinks.  Friends and neighbors rushed over as soon as they left and the chair was installed in a corner of the back yard, ready to be revealed the next day.  Needless to say, she loved it.

I’m trying to write up some plans so you can build your own, but that’s almost proving more difficult than making the chair  in the first place.

Some my earliest dates with my wife were playing Skeeball at the Seaside arcade.  I wanted to commemorate those good times, but our house doesn’t have room for a full Skeeball game, so I thought I’d give her the next best thing — a backlit scoreboard.

Over the course of a month, I ordered 3 different Skeeball marquees from eBay before I came to the realization that I wouldn’t find a perfect one so instead I’d have to retouch the printing, which is done on the back of a sheet of plexiglas.  Most of the problems were with scratches in the black section, so color matching wouldn’t be a big problem.  I spent a few evenings alternating between hunching over it with the paintbrush and holding it up to the light looking for the next scratch or pinhole to retouch, but I finally got everything filled (or so I thought).

Next it was time to make a frame.  For this I miter-cut, dado-cut,  and routed 4 pieces of 1×4.  Actually, I dadoed and routed 7 pieces, and screwed up 3 of them.  Sigh…

The profile of the frame, showing the notch for the backboard, the groove for the marquee, and the biscuit cut.

For the numbers, I had some vinyl numbers cut by Teresa at Custom Vinyl Signs (she’s always so helpful with these projects of mine), and it’s here I ran into one of the hardest parts of the project: what score to put on there.  It needed be plausible and look good, but I thought it should still have some meaning.  I ended up using the month of my wife’s birthday, the day of our son’s birthday, and the month of my birthday.  If I were playing, I’d be pretty happy with 320 points in 5 balls.

The front panel is a sandwich of materials in this order:

• Marquee
• Red lighting gel cut to fit over the score and ball count
• Vinyl numbers
• Frosted plexiglass for light dispersion

The numbers are stuck to the frosted plexi, so that there’s no risk of them pulling off the marquee’s printing if I ever take this apart to re-do it.  The idea behind the frosted plexi was to disperse the backlight evenly, but the lights ended up being so bright and so close in the frame that you can still see where the actual tubes are through the score numbers.  This is visible in the big picture at the top.  There’s also still some light transmission even where I painted over the scratches, due to the brightness of the lamps.

The corners were glued up with the front-panel sandwiched in place in the groove, and the whole thing held sturdy with biscuit joints. I used nylon ratcheting straps to pull everything together while it dried.

Now, to light it.  I started with three 12″ fluorescent lamps, but that ended up being complete overkill and didn’t light evenly, so I went with two 18″ instead.  They’re mounted on their sides — as they would be in the under-counter role for which they were intended — to a removable panel that screws into the back of the frame.  As mentioned a couple of paragraphs up, it’s not completely even lighting, but good enough.

A good view of the numbers and the lighting.

The lights are wired to a junction box mounted to the inside of the frame, and from there a lamp cord runs through a hole in the back panel and to the outlet.  I added an inline switch to the cord to make it easy to turn off and on.

The switch on the power cord.

Once everything was wired up, it was time for a lighting test.  It’s good to make sure everything works before it gets sealed up.

Let there be light!

Now if we only had a game room to keep this in.  For now, a place of honor on the living room bookshelf.

Instead of being for the storage of thank you notes and accessories, I wanted to make a pack my wife or I could throw in the diaper bag so we’d always have some entertainment for our then 18-month-old at restaurants.  They’re not all thoughtful enough to provide colorable place mats and crayons, and when they do the crayons are so often just broken nubs scarred with the teethmarks of a hundred children before.

I kept the tri-fold design, but the left pocket is enlarged to hold the cardboard backing for a 5×8 pad of paper.  The middle section has loops to hold small pencils and a pocket to hold crayons (loose or in the box), and the right-hand flap is just for closing the pack.  Closure is with Velcro, rather than a tie.

The one pictured is the third that I’ve finished.  Sorry there aren’t any in-process pics, but I was working on it late at night when there’s no good light, rushing to get it finished to give as a gift the next day.

The pictures should be enough to give you some ideas on the construction.  Let me know if you want a more detailed write-up, and I’ll try to do a step-by-step the next time I make one.

I’d recently started sewing, and this seemed like a project I could tackle.  I took apart a neckwarmer I already had to see how it was put together, consulted with a couple of friends who are far better at sewing than I am, and promptly began turning out some trainwrecks.

Eventually, things started to come together.  I optimized the process so I could make one in less than the 3 hours each it took to make the first few. I put a few on Etsy and got a good response, even a few requests for custom designs.

I’m really excited to find that other people have the same sense of humor and fashion (although I use that term loosely) as I do.  My dream at the moment is to be able to chase after a random stranger I see on the streets, yelling “Hey!  I made that!”  The odds are getting better and better every day.

About the Neckwarmers

The neckwarmer is made from two pieces of fleece: one color called “camel” (how appealing!) and one “charcoal.”  A single piece would be a lot easier, but I think the look is really made by the way it angles along the jawline and mimics the shape of the face.  It’s double-layered, and because the two layers are only attached at the seam it can be “rolled” to place the mustache in a different location in relation to the top of the neckwarmer.

The mustaches are also made from fleece.  Usually three layers, stitched around the edges.  The extra layers give the ‘stache some volume and rigidity, so that the handlebars will stand out appropriately.  They’re attached to the neckwarmer down the middle and partway across the top, so that the ends are free to pop out.

UPDATE! Mustachiod Neckwarmers 2010 Styles
For the fall of 2010 I’ve got some awesome new designs, now featuring hardcore handlebars. The neckwarmer is still the same, but you can now get mustaches in thick wool felt or leather. These are laser cut for extra futuristic awesomeness. See the last four pictures in the gallery below, or visit my etsy shop. With the introduction of these new styles, I’ll be phasing out the most intricate of the fleece mustaches because they were such a pain in the rear to make.

A diagram from the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices

It turns out that the regulation size for those signs is 9″ x 48″, crossed in the middle.  Conveniently enough, 48″ is one dimension of a sheet of plywood.  The other dimension is 8 feet, but I didn’t need to make 10 crossbars.   Many lumber stores, including the big box ones, sell 1/4 sheets of plywood — 2′ x 4′ — which are a lot easier to get into the car.  I went with one of those quarter sheets in 1/4″ thickness.

I’ve got the tools to cut these to size myself, but they may be willing to do so at the store.  Just ask for two 9″ x 48″ pieces to be cut from it.  Then head over to the paint aisle and pick up some semi-gloss white paint.  I prefer something water-based for easier cleanup and fewer noxious fumes.  Put on a few coats and give it time to really dry.

Now it’s math time.  We need the two arms to cross at 90 degrees in the center.  Measure the length and width of your crosspieces.  Don’t assume they’re exactly 9″ x 48″.  Subtract the width from the length: 39″ if the measurements are exact.  Divide that by two to get 19.5″.  This is the length from the end of a crosspiece to the edge of the arm crossing it.  Make a light mark on each one, then align the marks in a corner.  If you’ve got a square, use that to make sure the pieces are truly at right angles.  Look good?  Now take it apart, put some glue between the pieces, and put it back together again, lining everything up one more time.  Clamp the pieces together or stack some heavy books on them, and let it dry according to the instructions for your glue.

But what about the letters, you’re asking.  I’m all about authenticity, so it wouldn’t work to just hand paint on any old letters.  I needed the actual font for the sign, and Google didn’t let me down.  After downloading the font, I layed out the spacing in Adobe Illustrator and converted the characters to the outlines needed for cutting vinyl.

Peeling the backing from the letters.

I got in touch with Teresa at Custom Vinyl Signs — we’ve worked on other projects together before — and she was able to cut the letters from black vinyl. I’ve attached the EPS file with the layout of the letters that she or almost any other vinyl cutter would need.  The great thing is that everything is already spaced and aligned on a backing paper, so there’s no need to align individual letters on the sign.

Now study some pictures of real signs.  You want to make sure everything is going in the right direction.  ”Railroad” is on the back crosspiece, and goes from upper-left to lower-right.  ”Crossing” is on the front piece, going from lower-left to upper-right.

After some careful placement and quadruple-checking of measurements, peel the backing and press those letters down.  Get it right, because once they’re down, they’re down.

That’s it, you’re done!

The finished sign hanging on the wall.

Approximate costs:

Add a few more dollars if you need a paintbrush, wood glue, etc., but the whole thing should still easily be under $40.

Download the EPS file needed for cutting the letters here.