Pirate Ship Bunk Bed Project

Welcome with me, our first guest author, Robert Tinker. He is a self-taught wood worker, aviation enthusiast, and principal in Moe Victoria, Australia. As you'll see, Bob has honed the art of woodworking, so I hope you enjoy this project as much as I have and maybe if we're lucky this won't be the last piece he submits. 

Two years ago, the natural expansion of my daughter’s family required that her two young boys bunk up together in the same room… the price of acquiring a new sister.  The older one faced moving from a novelty single bed, in the shape of a safari jeep, to a perhaps more standard bunk setting.  This is where the idea to build a set of novelty bunks came into being.  The initial request was for a London double decker bus, but it’s interesting how various experiences come together to mold unexpected outcomes.  At the time, I was reading a series of 27 novels by Alexander Kent that involved the British Navy during the late seventeen hundreds, and quite by accident, my daughter saw a picture of another set of pirate ship bunks while looking at a real estate property online.  The pictured bunks were a little abstract, and so, as men do, I sought to improve on a good idea.

Plans For a Custom Garage Workbench

The workbench is the heart of any shop. It reflects the worker using it, and it's quality impacts the quality of the parts being built. I've designed this bench from some great ideas others came up with- I picked the ones I liked and the result is this bench which is great for a garage or basement. It features a transportable miter saw table, a heavy duty assembly table, plenty of tool storage and it's compact design allows it to fit in the workspace you have. The table can be built on a tight budget and with just a few basic tools.

Project Inspiration

Preview of the KTF Workbench Project

Recently I've been on a kick to build something. Anything. (Hence all the posts like this and this, and some of the ones that are in the works like how to build a workbench, and plans for a sweet man cave...) So before we go back to our regularly scheduled programming, I thought I'd share a neat tool I've found to help get all those mental masterpieces into a more tangible format.

The Essential Toolbox List

One year when I was growing up, my dad had the great idea to help us start building a tool collection. That Christmas, all four of us little tykes (my sisters included) got a hefty, Craftsman tool box. Every year since, we get a little something to add to our box and by the time I moved out on my own I had tool boxes with enough tools to tackle most household chores. So if you find yourself using a butter knife to screw in hooks for a picture frame it might be time for a trip to one of men's favorite shopping grounds.

Spring Cleaning Part II: The Grill

Imagine digging into your fridge and grabbing some foul smelling ground beef then going to town to make some patties, or pulling out some hot dogs that are marinading in a dark brown sludge that smells like roadkill. Not exactly the ingredients you want to serve up to your friends or family... but generally we don't think about those things once they go on the grill. It's hot- so it has to be clean, right? To keep your food tasting as good as possible and your grill working to it's best it requires some maintenance. For this project we'll look at tackling the best part of our backyard- the grill and getting it ready for this year's cooking season.

Spring Cleaning Part I: Household Inventory

Welcome to March, one of the more comfortable months here in the state of Texas- I thought it'd be good to share some inspiration for spring cleaning. I've got a few ideas for more "man of the house" type projects that we can get done that I'll post in later articles. As a famous Canadian philosopher once said: "If the women don't find you handsome, they should at least find you handy."