Now

• We bought 20 wood bowls from Ikea. And then they fell to the ground, and some of them exploded. So, we have exploding bowls! We will make a thing with them. #IkeaHacking.
• We have two summer students now! Mat and Zeph are helping with the Bells project. It’s a big project.
• I upgraded the depth gauge in the planer – weirdly retrofitting a gauge made for portable planers into a giant planer. Not sure it’s successful, but it’s interesting.
• Working on some projects for the house renovation. I’m on the hook for a table, a custom door, and a few other things. I’m not sure how I get myself into these things. No is a complete sentence. 
• Updated the sign outside our studio twice already this month! The latest message is an odd one – just an interesting message someone posted to Instagram a few months ago.
• Kinda sorry I missed Makers Central in Birmingham this year. Looks like it was fun!

• We updated the sign with a reference to the recently discovered aperiodic monotile called “The Hat.”

Some details: Mathematicians have discovered an aperiodic monotile. As I understand it, it’s a single shape, like a puzzle piece that can make a non repeating pattern forever. This is a huge discovery in math – a 2 tile version was discovered in the 70’s. Article: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2023/apr/03/new-einstein-shape-aperiodic-monotile Some very interesting discussion about this is here, including the about-to-be published paper: https://discourse.mcneel.com/t/an-aperiodic-monotile/156830 Generator here to make your own: https://cs.uwaterloo.ca/~csk/hat/app.h

• We’ve been updating some of our camera equipment, hoping to do more video content soon.
• We are enjoying some spring, but also some severe storms, which are annoying.
• We repaired out banana shaped postcard box that’s attached to our outdoor sign. Grab a postcard if you like!
• Did a quick repair job on some ancient Muskoka chairs that were made from pine, and had disintegrated over time. We’re going to put them outside the studio and see if they get stolen. I guess we should put some air tags in em!
• Made a pretty cool shower stool, based on a design I saw recently in Japan.

  

• Not a crazy amount of activity in the shop these days as I’ve been traveling for the last two weeks, and for the first few weeks of March as well. Back in business here March 20th. You can see what I’m up to on Instagram, for the day-by-day feed.
• I missed Workbenchcon this year, but it was fun to see all my friends there having a good time. It’s nice to see friends make the move from attendee to presenter (Hello Doug Pisik) at these sort of shows. I’ll miss MakersCentral in Birmingham, May 13-14, as well this year.
• Brooke has been continuing the work on animations to describe how the Voronoi patterns in the Voronoi Evolution project are created. She’s becoming quite the expert on DaVinci Resolve Fusion programming.
• Updated the sign outside our studio today

  

• We changed up the sign for Groundhog Day to say “FRED’S DEAD, BABY” which is a reference to the untimely passing of Fred la Marmotte in Quebec, early in the morning of Groundhog Day, and of course, the movie “Pulp Fiction.”
• I bought a set of “Jessem Clear-Cut TS™ Stock Guides“ and installed them on our SawStop table saw. I’m very impressed with the hardware – it’s extremely high quality and well designed. Nice that they include the necessary drill bit, screw driver, and have excellent instructions. Very happy with this purchase so far.
• We’re still working on animations for the Voronoi Evolution project. It’s looking good!
• It’s another month with a lot of travel for me, so won’t be a crazy busy month of builds. I’m off to Japan, and then Florida for the second half of the month.
• Updated the sign in a bit of a self referential way…

• Doing some design work in RhinoCAD again. I don’t use it anywhere near as much as I used to, but it’s nice to be back into it for a while. Of course, I forget all the commands and tricks…
• Doing some planning work for the installation of a sliding door using the Magic2 sliding mechanism. The instructions are quite cryptic – mostly because they are published using almost no words. Kind of like Ikea instructions, but for something far more complicated. Especially, when you’re trying to install it in a non-standard way… The link I’ve included above is for a supplier that had it in stock and shipped it quickly for a very good price. The mechanism is from Italy. 
• We’ve been doing a lot of stuff with Fusion inside DaVinci Resolve. It is quite amazing what this NLE can accomplish, for a very reasonable price. 

• A huge amount of progress on the Voronoi box project. We bought a bunch of table bases, and have been making cute little tables to display the boxes. And, we’ve been working on filming the boxes in order to make some videos to show how the pattern evolves.
• I designed and built 6 supports for a desk out of 1/4″ steel. The supports mount on wall joists and will support the middle segment of a long, 36″ deep desk in a house. Nice project on the plasma cutter and quite a lot of TIG and MIG welding.
• Updated the sign to say “ARE YOU YOU” which is a phrase made famous by Shantel Martin

• I support an Ottawa service called the Ottawa Tool Library. They are a great resource for people who need a tool for a specific project, but don’t want to buy or store it. They have a huge selection of tools for outdoor work, building, repairing, etc. And, they have a workshop area, which is great for working on projects you can’t do at home. For fun I took the Intro to Tools 101 course at the OTL and learned how to use a chop saw, bandsaw, drill press and a sander! And I made a small weird cutting board! It was a fun evening.
• Updated the sign again – this time with the Fibonacci Sequence.
• Still working on filming and documenting the Voronoi Evolution project. Brooke has been working on a video, with some explanations about how the design is created, using Fusion animations in Davinci Resolve. We’ve also been building small tables to display the boxes.