Rustic Coin Box

Christmas is coming. The Secret Santa theme for our study group was "ethical, reclaimed, recycled, fair-trade" etc. So I decided to build a rustic money box out of relcaimed pallet timber I'd scavenged the year before.

I had some BEAUTIFUL redwood timber of varying red-li-ness that I ripped lengthwise, and sash clamped together to form a workpiece. The alignment isn't fully optimised to "left justify" one edge, as the timber is quite bowed in all directions, and seating them in a best fit scenario was quite the tetris-challenge.

Doweling is for chumps. Just glue together and hold everything down from exploding under pressure somehow. The F-Clamps are used to align the stray ends. Pallet timber is warped like the Enterprise (groan). ...one day I'm buying a thickness planer.

Test fitting, rough n ready.

I've said this before. BUY YOUR MAN MORE CLAMPS. There are never enough.

I decided some coins inlaid into the top would look nice.

A small swinging polycarbonate access door for the base. I've positioned it so that it can't swing out of the user's reach as it bumps against the side in both directions before getting too far away.

I got pressed for time, so took it to work on the day it was to be gifted in order to finish it off throughout the day!! Here I'm about to attack it with my electric planer before routing the edges and giving it a final sand down.

It looks awesome!!

Coins are hot-glued into the top. A few coats of Tung-Oil are applied.

I attached this letter to the box.

I don't know where other people's interests lie, but to me this thing is gorgeous. I was actually quite mortified to give it away, particularly in a random Kringle style gifting method. I got lucky and my boss ended up with it. He lives in Ferntree Gully so hopefully there's some appreciation for that rustic timber look. :)
I have enough leftover timber to make a 2nd one. (as seen from an earlier picture). I may keep that one for myself. :D

Biggest bed in the galaxy.

Beds are too small. "Double beds" are akin to saying a "3 man tent" is adequate for three people camping. I've always wanted a monster bed, and finally did it.

Stage 1 was to prep the bed for widening. This meant raising the existing bed slats to become flush with the top of the outer rim of the bed all round. You can see here I've added an extra runner down the full length of the bed on top of the old one in order to raise those slats.

The intention was to leave the old queen sized bed completely intact. That meant I'd need to cut a new support beam for the new outer-length of the bed. I did this from the last of my leftover reclaimed deck timber.

Here you get an idea of what is actually going on.

New slats in place. This whole new section is quickly removable with 6 allen key screws. (I used threaded inserts, made the job easy)

My queen sized bed is now KING length in both dimensions, making it a MONSTER-KING.

I've had this spare narrow mattress for years. It fills the gap well. I now sleep across the bed at 90 degrees to the old intended direction, meaning my feet are on the new part. This ensures my hips/shoulders etc are on the nice futon part. You don't even feel the break in the bed across your legs. Eventually I'll buy king fitted sheets to stop that extra mattress bit from sliding away every now and then.

C25K update.

Dave and I have been slowly plodding through the "Couch to 5km", or C25K jogging plan. It's a 9 week plan that we've been implementing between workout days when we decide we need a cardio day. That means we've taken about 7 months to get to the week-6 stage 'cus workout cardio isn't my thing.

The ultimate goal is to run 5km non-stop. With a secondary goal to perform that run in a 30minute or less timeframe. But either goal on their own also qualifies. Today I did the week 6, day 3 plan. Run 25mins non-stop. I got 5km exactly in that time.

In conclusion. I'm awesome. I'd like to thank Cadbury's Chocolate for giving me the remorse I needed to complete this run after having eaten 1/2 a block of their chocolate in about 5 minutes...Also thanks to the swines at my study group for putting chocolate in their secret santa gifts in the first place. :)