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ArjinFerman  Tinfoil Gigachad  1mo ago (text post)   438 thread views

Tinker Tuesday for November 11, 2025

This thread is for anyone working on personal projects to share their progress, and hold themselves somewhat accountable to a group of peers.

Post your project, your progress from last week, and what you hope to accomplish this week.

If you want to be pinged with a reminder asking about your project, let me know, and I'll harass you each week until you cancel the service

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Did cloudflare take down the weekly tinker threads too?

Maybe I'll move this if it ever shows up.

When last I left you I had the cases made for my bookshelves out of birch plywood.

It's been a hectic two weeks, but I managed to mill the soft maple for the faces. A two, a three, four. Also drilled all the holes for the adjustable shelf pins. Using a jig and getting those done was the most economical method over trying to install six foot rails. I couldn't find a local supplier for them, and having them shipped incured freight charges on account of their size. Plus this saves me having to route out channels for them.

I am noticing more that almost none of the pieces I cut are perfectly square. Not massively so, and you really can't tell. There is maybe a 16th an inch of wobble that some shims will take out. The floor of my basement isn't exactly perfectly flat either. But in the future, if I ever redo the cabinets in my kitchen, I think I need to invest in a tracksaw to break down the sheet goods. Also the pocket screws, despite copious clamping and jigs, still walked on me when I drilled them in, pulling the whole box slightly out of square. Once again, maybe a 32nd of an inch, but it's every joint, and those errors compound. I think in the future I'm just going to suck it up and route rabbet joints. Should invest in some route bits that are perfectly sized for plywood thicknesses.

I did a test stain of the black, and I think I hate it. Tried out a black walnut stain I have, and I like the warmness of the brown tones a lot more. Think I'm going to go with that instead. Probably also worth doing a prestain treatment because the plywood was a pretty blotchy. Probably from the manufacturing process. I swear you can see where the rollers didn't apply preasure evenly across the sheet how the stain absorbs. I also got my last sheet of plywood mostly broken down into the widths I'll need for the shelves. The side cases get 4 shelves each, the top middle gets 2 and the bottom center gets 1.

The next week I aim to get sanding done, headers and footers, and if I'm lucky all the shelves and trim pieces. I doubt I will be lucky.

suck it up and route rabbet joints.

A biscuit jointer is... kind of uncool, but "strong enough, perfect alignment" is sort of the whole deal with 'em -- very fast to assemble, you still need clamps and dry time though.

You know, I've been eyeballing a Makita biscuit joiner, but mostly for large panel glue ups, like table tops and such. I'm just not sure I like the idea of biscuit joining a butt joint. Although... combine it with pocket screws and it would keep things from walking I presume. But then again, I already have a doweling jig which probably also would have worked, which I didn't use because I was making an attempt at speed over obsessive accuracy on this project.

Ah well, next time maybe.

Yeah like said they don't exactly give you that "look at me the fine craftsman" feeling -- but in practice I've never had an issue, and the speed and precision are hard to beat.

The people who say things like "biscuits don't add strength" also say things like "a good glue joint is stronger than the wood" so I've just run with biscuits for any number of things and haven't really seen a downside.

If you can hold off, the Festool Domino patent ends in June 2026. I'm hoping to buy a cheaper decent quality knockoff if Makita releases one for their LTX line then.

It's not as classy as traditional mortise and tenon, but stronger than biscuits/pocket screws and less finicky than dowels.

I will keep that in mind. I'd written off dominoes as forever out of my price range.

Did cloudflare take down the weekly tinker threads too?

I posted it, but it's still filtered. @netstack (hoping you'll be first to see since you posted recently) can you approve the thread.

Thy will be done.

I guess I needed a break from my project, because something compelled me to start rearranging my OS'. In related news: Devuan is kinda cool... or I get the feeling it will, once I finish beating it into submission.

How are you doing @Southkraut?

Thanks for asking. Family duties, no progress.

Update on the project car:

Things have gone relatively well with it. The rear bumper/taillight had more damage hiding under the plastic than I expected but I was able to accomplish a 7-8/10 result for the cost of a $50 taillight and some time with a hammer. It's not perfect and not even good if you look closely at it but an untrained eye has to look for it so good enough and getting a perfect result would require a real body shop/far more money than is worth to me. I also got the last of the mud out. The car cleans up nice.

I replaced the front brakes, replaced the two bad tires, and got a four-wheel alignment. The car drives like a dream now and the suspension appears to be sound.

I have the part for the touchscreen but it isn't acting up so it's a low-priority item that I'll get to whenever I have time or it acts up (in which case I'll make time). I did replace the headlights because one of the LEDs died and I'm not a fan of blinding oncoming drivers.

The muffler is another low-priority item. The squeaking is annoying but a new replacement is expensive and reasonably-priced used options haven't popped up near me. I'll sit on it and either a local option will show up or I'll make time to drive however many miles round trip. In the meantime the car runs fine.

I have decided to keep the newer car and sell my old daily driver, the ricerboy Honda. That car is more fun to drive, but not that much more fun and I've had most if not all the amusement I'm going to get out of it, and it'll be easier to sell while being more expensive to keep. I have to put a fuel pump in it but that's a job that's more annoying (have to remove the back seat) than hard.

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