Counterengineer

Being an engineer means following two rules: Have an end goal. Reduce waste on the path to the goal. That's it. ...

Bought two plants today for the start of my collection. :) There was a beautiful braided ficus alii that would make a perfect "canopy" plant, but I didn't want to spend $200 quite yet. I think the first order of business is making cutaway planters. Think seeing the roots is going to be really cool! ...

One of the things I struggle with in gardening is figuring out how wet my soil is throughout the planter. A cool woodworking project would be a planter bowl with a acrylic cutaway that allows me to see the roots & soil. Basically like this, where the grey face is transparent: ...

I love how bonsai invokes the feeling of a tree on a miniature level. What is like to do with my gardening + woodworking project is invoke the feeling of a forest or jungle. The idea would be to have one or two "canopy" plants covering smaller plants. Like this for the canopy: And this below it: Think that'd look neat. I'm deciding between having the plants separate on a bench vs. having them all in a trough planter. For aesthetic purposes the trough would really pull things together. Could ...

Sealed bottle gardens, which enclose a complete ecosystem in a bottle, have always fascinated me. Take a look at this one: I wonder if a similar thing can be done inside. I'm working on getting more plants into my place. Having that be more than some houseplants but a living soil system would be really cool. ...

This weekend I took Woodworking 2 and 3 classes at Maker Nexus. In Woodworking 2 we built bullroarers (left item). First, we split a block lengthwise on the larger bandsaw. Then we honed down the shape using a smaller bandsaw. On a disk sander we smoothed the shape, then created an aerofoil effect through careful sanding at an angle. That 3D shape was further worked on through handsanding. An opening for the string was created on a drill press. Spin it on the string and you get a nice loud wo...