Monthly Archives: January 2020

Pallet Wood Florida

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I am not really into the shabby chic movement as a whole. I guess it is good to repurpose things, but it isn’t really my style. That said, I have seen some cool pallet art that is of different states made out of random bits of wood. I liked this idea and decided to go with it. My rock project came in on 10 pallets, so there was no shortage in available materials.

I started by using my mini projector to project a silhouette of Florida onto a sheet of butcher paper. It is such a weirdly shaped state that I had to add a little panhandle extension to the paper. I traced the shape while making simplifications for all the waterways, and cut it out.

With a serviceable template in hand I headed to the shop and set about tracing it onto a sheet of 1/2″ plywood. I wanted this to serve as the backbone of the sign. I didn’t want it to show up around the edges, so after tracing it I offset the line inwards to hide it behind the pallet parts.

With that cut I assembled pieces of pallet from my collection in the rough shape of Florida. I used the template to make sure I had enough coverage. I clamped them together and again traced the outline.

Now I can go through and trim up each individual piece to shape. It took a lot of time with a jigsaw and my spindle sander, but I got the shapes I wanted. A heavy smear of glue and a lot of pin nails holds all the pallet pieces down to the plywood I cut earlier. The plywood is recessed enough that you can’t even tell it is there from the front.

I gave everything a super thick coating of Boiled Linseed Oil and let it dry. A wire across the back acts as hanging gear where I put it up on the porch. It makes a really nice addition in the corner where I have my grill and smoker sitting.

Holiday Lighting

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This is the second Christmas at our new house. Last year I didn’t get much decorating done because of how much there was to do still. This year has us in better shape from a maintenance standpoint. Last year I started with some printed cones to go around the carriage lights. I also had little inserts that went in the small lantern yard lights. I didn’t document those last year. This year I added the spotlights to the mix.

Cone Shades for Carriage Lights

I 3D printed some cone shaped shades that go around the LED light bulbs in our carriage lights. CFLs would likely be too hot for PLA plastic, and incandescent bulbs would melt everything for sure! They are a single layer thick which you can do with the vase setting on most bits of slicer software.

A single layer thick is going to make them delicate, but they spend most of their life in storage or hanging off a bulb. I printed enough to do all 3 lights as orange for halloween and have the two by the garage be red and green for Christmas.

Lantern Lights

I replaced all the incandescent landscape lights with LEDs really early on. That gave me the ability to add a color hood to each one. These also were a single perimeter width so they would be thin enough to let the light through.

Spotlight Colors

Instead of doing 3D printing alone I picked up some color gel plastic to filter the spotlights in our front yard. I figured this would handle the heat better and let a lot more light through. I printed rings to go around the LED spotlight bulbs. These were glued down to the light gels with E6000 and trimmed once cured.

The results were pretty spectacular. Our icicle lights are overpowering when shooting with my camera, but everything looks really cool. Lots of color all across the yard and front of the house.

At least it DID look good for the first few days. I noticed the reds were looking really pale. I pulled a few of the filters off to inspect. The reds must absorb more than the greens, it completely bleached the gel filter right where the emitters were. The green one got hot enough that the printed part deformed and stuck itself to the LED bulb. Clearly this is going to need a re-think. Next year. It is well after Christmas and I haven’t sat down to work on a solution yet.

I did print a canister that holds all the piece parts for next year. The cone lights stack inside each other to be really compact. The lantern bulb covers are tiny and jingle around the bottom. The spotlight filters are junk at this point, so they don’t need to be stored.