The Adventures of Golden Boy, my Rebound E30

[CubbyChowder]

Thanks for all the kind words guys I'm excited that you're interested in seeing more than just Golden Boy updates. I'll start throwing in shop related stuff on top of e30 content.

I'll include a little project that I knocked out on Monday. Been wanting to build a rolling stand for my bead roller since I bought it. Dragging it around has proven to be annoying and also very risky, it almost tipped over on me the other day while I was moving it which had my heart pounding for a few minutes afterwards, it's just very top heavy. Almost every tool/table I own is portable in some way, so it's only fitting that my biggest heaviest tool should get the same treatment. Gotta have everything mobile with how often I move things around. I finally found the time to get that taken care of so I grabbed some scrap 1.5" square tubing and a set of casters that I had laying around and built this simple little stand:




The bead roller sits pretty tall as it is, so I didn't want it to be too tall to use once it was on the stand, which is why I designed it to sit inside of the frame rather than on top of it. It actually worked out great because now it's the perfect height to use while standing, the table is about chest height which allows me to easily get eye level with the dies as I'm sending the sheet metal through. That wasn't really planned out but it worked out great, very happy about it. Plus it's so nice to finally be able to roll it around easily.




I also made a few little finishing touches on that platform I built. The idea of it being up there during an earthquake has been on my mind a lot, so I re-evaluated where I ran the lift mounts and I ran a removable chain across the front section to hopefully keep things from falling down if that should happen. I also replaced the original casters with taller and beefier ones, which allows it to roll around much smoother and makes it loading it up on the lift easier because it barely cleared the lift arms before. Win Win!



Quick backstory, my girlfriend Janine started wood working about a year ago after I showed her how to make some designs and use the chop saw. She never left my shop after that day, and she started her own little business doing wall decor and some furniture related stuff. She now has her own dedicated section of my shop where she built her own work table and made it look all tits and that's where she works out of now. We're both in the shop everyday and it's a lot of fun, I'm very grateful to be in this situation. You can check her stuff out at www.ifyougiveagirlasaw.com and her Instagram is @ifyougiveagirlasaw, she builds some pretty cool stuff. Here she is working away filling orders:



We keep our work separate for the most part but collaborate on projects here and there. About 2 weeks ago our shop neighbor approached us and asked if we could build them something. He owns a rad coffee shop in downtown San Luis Obispo and we've become pretty good friends with him. He commissioned us to build them an events bar which will mainly be used for Farmer's Market on Thursday nights but will be used for any other event they do. It was fun getting to build something together, and I think it turned out pretty sweet. He has a really cool new espresso machine that will be placed on top of it. I'm still getting the hang of editing product photography so I'm sorry if it looks choppy or improper, but you get the idea:

[E30_Pare]

Only thing I'd complain about in your product pic's is that it needs more lighting! I'd love to see some up and closely shots of the handy work/fit n finish.

[stonea]

Checked out your girlfriends shop and thought of the perfect christmas present for my mom, but I doubt it'd get done in time. Maybe for her birthday in February... Anyways its pretty cool you guys share a shop together.

Also great looking e30. I think the Bronzit, early model, and diving boards work together.

[CubbyChowder]

Only thing I'd complain about in your product pic's is that it needs more lighting! I'd love to see some up and closely shots of the handy work/fit n finish.

Thanks for the input, I wish I would've taken some more detail shots, I was kind of rushed when I took these.

Checked out your girlfriends shop and thought of the perfect christmas present for my mom, but I doubt it'd get done in time. Maybe for her birthday in February... Anyways its pretty cool you guys share a shop together.

Also great looking e30. I think the Bronzit, early model, and diving boards work together.

Thanks man, the Bronzit is growing on me more and more but it's unlikely that I'll keep it. And yeah I think her Christmas cutoff is past at this point, that'd be rad if you got something for your mom though!

[oprahhwinfreyy]

you win

[Staszek]

Subscribed, this is going to be awesome. Love your shop ideas too!

[Jb325is]

Good to see you working on an e30, I was a big fan of the direction you were going and execution of the '02 project. Good luck with the e30 and don't forget to enjoy the car along the way

I showed my girlfriend some of your girlfriend's stuff and I think she's going to pick up a wall piece for our room, or something. Good stuff!

[CubbyChowder]

^^^Thanks guys!

I am sorry to report that I have no new progress on the E30. I am still waiting for the '02 to be picked up, so it's going to be just a little bit longer. I am thinking the car will be gone by this weekend though, so expect good updates soon!

Since this thread will sort of double as my shop thread, I'll post an update on what's been happening since my last post. Spent most of the holidays with my lady, friends and family so I wasn't in the shop all that much, but still got a few things done.

I wanted to build Janine some new lighting in her corner of the shop as a Christmas present because it's pretty dark back there and she had mentioned a few times that she can't see very well when she's working. I wanted to create some sort of hanging pendant light setup to follow the aesthetic she has going on back there, and decided to build them from scratch instead of forking out $100+ per light. So off to Bed Bath & Beyond I went in search of some mixing bowls and then headed to Home Depot for the rest of the supplies and came back with this:



I drilled a few holes in the mixing bowls and prepped them for paint:



Primer:



Paint:





I then sprayed these guys a metallic silver color with hopes that they'd blend into the polished stainless portion of the mixing bowl:



This might have been kind of a funky way to mount a bulb in the bowls, but I didn't really know of a better way, realistically I don't really know what I'm doing. I started wiring them up and had to make a small spacer out of a nut to allow room for the wiring to do it's thing once they were bolted to the bowls:




Then came time to do all the wiring. I tapped into the main shop light wiring so that they would turn on with the main light switch. I ran all the lights and main power supply into one box up in the rafters and connected everything in there, don't really have any pictures to show of that, but here's how I was working haha:



Don't worry, the table actually has a lip on the edge and the ladder was resting against that, so it was safe (kind of).

I finished everything and stepped back to see if it all lined up and looked decent:



Then it was the moment of truth to find out whether I'm a huge idiot or not. I cleaned up, installed the bulbs, hit the breaker and then the light switch and alas, all was working well. Her station is lit up much better now and she was very excited and happy when I surprised her on Christmas with it. I'm glad it all worked out:





A good friend of mine sent me a photo the other day of a bed frame he found on Pinterest (he loves Pinterest more than your average housewife) and said it was his new project for his week off from work. Of course this translated to my new project for his week off from work haha. I enjoy working on projects with him though, we've built him a ton of stuff for his house and it's always fun so I agreed to help him. He wanted to do it as cheap as possible and throw some of his own touches into it, so we assessed some details, simplified the design and went material shopping. We had to make all the cuts ahead of time so we could assemble everything up in his room. This was the first photo I took of this project:



By the end of that evening we had this:



We ripped down a few sheets of very thin plywood into 6" strips so he could stain them in various colors and layer them for the head board. He chose all the colors he wanted and also bought some exterior lights that he wanted integrated into it. He mounted the boards and I mounted/wired up the lights (the bulbs were just for testing, the final bulbs aren't nearly as bright). We also installed the floating frame boards which go around the mattress:



We built and installed floating night stands on each side of the bed:



Then the final step was to build a top mantle shelf which holds six flush-set dimmable puck lights that illuminate the wall behind the frame. The finished product is pretty awesome, he's super stoked about it. It's the ultimate baby makin' station now (sorry for the dark pic):



I'll get better photos of that setup soon. I think in total he spent about $250 for everything, not bad! He's gonna have a fun time taking that all apart when he has to move, it's too bad that I'll be too busy at the shop to help him that day ;)

Another good friend of mine wanted me to build him a cutting board as a Christmas gift for his girlfriend who loves to cook. I've never built a cutting board before so I was excited to try something new. I happened to have some scrap Walnut and Honduran Mahogany around that would work perfect and we went and bought some Maple for the rest of it. He gave me free reign on the design of it, so I just cut a bunch of strips of each wood because it's all I could really do with the scraps I was working with. After some time with the jointer, planer and table saw I ended up with these:



I then proceeded to apply way too much wood glue and made a huge mess clamping everything together, it was mayhem:




My friend Jory offered to run it through his huge drum sander to level both surfaces nice and flat. My planer can only handle 12" wide boards and this cutting board is 18"x22" so that was a huge help. Here's how it looked after squaring it up and running it through the drum sander:



I recently got a router and wanted to try it out so I beveled the edges to 45 degrees on the top and bottom:



I then gave it a final sand and applied some cutting board mineral oil and am amazed at how much all the colors popped, I'm so happy with how it turned out. Can't wait to give it to him tomorrow (it's a late Christmas gift as his girlfriend was out of town during the holidays and they are reuniting on Jan 7th):



Thanks for looking and I promise I will have E30 updates soon! Happy new year everyone!

[Skarpa]

Awesime projects! You were wondering if you mounted the mixing bowls the funky way. Another option would have been to buy celing light cords that have external thread for mounting the shade. Something like this:



You just make about 40mm hole in the bottom of the bowl, put the base of the bulb through it and fasten it in place with a large hand-tightened nut. Your way works just as well though. Just one question: did you make some kind of strain relief for the cord or is the lamp hanging by the connector screws? That would not be so good.

[M-technik-3]

Very cool, my GC allows me free reign in his woodshop. I will be doing some cool projects for my post and beam building soon

[ohthejosh]

If you dont mind me asking, whats the rate for having a shop that size?

[Staszek]

That bed headboard is so awesome!

[2mAn]

Something about properly finished wood gives me wood

[CubbyChowder]

Awesime projects! You were wondering if you mounted the mixing bowls the funky way. Another option would have been to buy celing light cords that have external thread for mounting the shade. Something like this:

You just make about 40mm hole in the bottom of the bowl, put the base of the bulb through it and fasten it in place with a large hand-tightened nut. Your way works just as well though. Just one question: did you make some kind of strain relief for the cord or is the lamp hanging by the connector screws? That would not be so good.

That's actually exactly what I had in mind when I was shopping around! I remember seeing something very similar at Ikea one time, but Home Depot didn't really have anything like that. There's a rubber grommet which sits very snug around the wire so that is taking a lot of the weight off the wiring. The light fixtures are pretty light too. I think it'll be alright.

Would you mind making the picture you posted a little bit smaller? It's gigantic haha.

Very cool, my GC allows me free reign in his woodshop. I will be doing some cool projects for my post and beam building soon

Nice!

If you dont mind me asking, whats the rate for having a shop that size?

In my area it's typically around $1 per square foot

That bed headboard is so awesome!

Thanks!

Something about properly finished wood gives me wood

haha yes it's quite satisfying

[ohthejosh]

In my area it's typically around $1 per square foot

Damn thats a great price at least compared to the stuff im seeing in my area which is around 2.25/sq.ft.

Got a nice thing going on there man, Im quite envious!