Mommy's Little Helper Tower

[Dewald Swanepoel]

Here's another project that barely qualifies as a woodworking project but I thought I'd post it anyway. Someone might just like it - or have som eadvice to dispense.

 

I'm really keen to get started on my garden gate but my wife came up with this idea for a project and it seems that the projects that the wife thinks of do enter the TODO list higher than the others. I didn't mind though as this gave me the opportunity to practice some techniques on cheap materials.

 

So here is the design. Just a fairly basic frame with hinges on the corners so the whole thing can fold flat and rungs on the sides with a platform that can be set to different heights.

 

For the arched cross members at the top I used one plank, cut out the lower arch and used the off cut to mark the rest of the lines for the arches.

 

The idea behind that was to get the two arches and the two sides of each arch as uniform as possible. Lesson learnt though, a jigsaw is a terribly inaccurate tool. The blade flexes way too much during the course of the cut. This is problematic in particular where the upper edge of the one arch and the lower edge of the other is one cut. It really would be much better to make a whole bunch of cuts perpendicular to the curve that stops just before the line and then make the curved cut. Oh well, I'll bear that in mind with my next project.

 

So here are all the elements that would ultimately make the tower

[Dewald Swanepoel]

I've asked this question in another discussion (dowels and holes vs. mortise and tenon). I realise that a M&T really is a better join but for this project I decided to go the dowels and holes route as it would be easier given the tools I have and I really didn't think that it would make much of a difference on such a cheap and light weight project.

So I first measured and drilled the holes in the upright members

These holes were drilled with a handheld power drill and, as you can see they're not really very well lined up. Drilling the holes into the ends of the horizontal members was a bigger challenge though. Drilling accurately with a handheld drill into endgrain is pretty much impossible - or to me it was. The drill bit simply follows the path of least resistance. I'm not sure if this would be easier on a harder wood where the year rings aren't as widely spaced and where the wood is overall harder and doesn't offer such soft channels for the bit to bite into.

Oh well, what's done is done and this just meant that I'd be doing a LOT of sanding afterwards to get the faces to line up nicely. I assembled each frame in one go which basically meant 10 double dowel joints having to be aligned, glued and clamped simultaneously. This was a little daunting but nothing too problematic.

Just a quick selfie. This is the perpetrator of the crime you are currently witnessing.

Probably wasn't necessary but I thought I'd cut lap joints into the bottom support beams to half-fit over the upright members. I always enjoy using a router and, so far, this project had not required one. So lap joint it is. I used a right angle as a crude fence for the router but it worked rather nicely.

Another lesson learnt: Rather cut the lap joint recess slightly undersize and use chisels to widen it out to exactly the right size - lest you end up with one lap joint that looks like this

Oh well, I think the glue will hold those pieces together regardless. The other joints looked better at least. For those wondering about that but joint for the little piece that forms the tip resistor, yeah, I used wood screws (and glue). I just felt that, seeing as the wood screw head will be on the side of the upright that is inside the lap joint, no-one would know.

The two frames are then connected with horizontal supports

These horizontal supports connect to the frames by hinges. Two diagonally opposite corners have the hinges on the inside while the other two diagonally opposite corners have hinges on the outside. This way, the whole thing can fold flat like so

And when it's open, the platform that sits on top of the rungs keeps the tower square. And, if you can survive the tedium of painting (how I hate painting), you can even have it in red.

The customer seems happy and my wife seems to think enough of my potential that she's agreed to buy me a table saw for my birthday. Happy days.

[TerryMcK]

Nicely done I like it for one and hope baby likes it. Good to put a face to the author too 

Great news on the table saw purchase too

All the best

 

Terry

[Dewald Swanepoel]

Great news on the table saw purchase too

Yeah well, you've read that thread. I'm not feeling like I'm really hitting on a good buy yet. I'm thinking more and more that I should put the table saw purchase off until some other time that I can afford a better machine and rather get wifey to buy me a drill press now. It would help tremendously with cutting mortise holes and I might even put a barrel sander on it to help with sanding down these arched sections - a challenge I will be faced with if I make the garden gate.

[RichardA]

Who was that masked man, Tonto?

[Coop]

Neat design and well executed.

[wdwerker]

Dowel jigs make those holes much straighter . I don't use as many dowels these days as I used to but occasionally it's the only choice. My jig is from " Dowel it " and it has served me well. Use a sharp bit and clean out the chips frequently.

Great project !

[Dewald Swanepoel]

Dowel jigs make those holes much straighter . I don't use as many dowels these days as I used to but occasionally it's the only choice. My jig is from " Dowel it " and it has served me well. Use a sharp bit and clean out the chips frequently.

Great project !

Thanks. I saw a dowel jig just the other day that's not even all that expensive. I'll consider getting it perhaps if it looks like I might be doing another bunch of dowel joints.