Marble Run

27 years... It was 27 years ago I saw some classmates playing with a wooden marble run game during an indoor recess. It was the most sought after toy during these rare rainy days that left us confined to our classroom. I was always too late to the game box and only once did I get a chance to interact with a few of the pieces. But I was drawn in and have thought about that game ever since. Then it dawned on me. I have a woodshop. I have several poplar boards just sitting around. Let's do this!

 

I went ahead and decided to make (3) sets. One for my nephews and two for my kids. Who am I kidding two of them would be for me, but I'd share. I did some math comparing marble sizes www.landofmarbles.com, looked at the thickness of the poplar wood (3/4"), and determined the best width to maximize my boards. In the end I kept all lengths in 1-1/2" increments. The trick is to remember to account for sanding. I cut many linear feet of 1-1/2" x 3/4" pieces on my table saw that day without knowing how many pieces I would end up with. When you are about to embark on a mission of cutting and sanding a lot of pieces, ignorance is preferred.

 

I purchased a 3/4" core box router bit for the trough of the straight-a-ways and used a 3/4" fornster bit for the holes. The cube transition blocks are just (2) 3/4" pieces glued together. I did a little trial and error on these cubes. Where the marble enters the cube I kept the hole centered. I did the same for the exit but sometimes the marble would get stuck. So I ended up creating a jig to hold the cubes at a slight angle under the drill press so even if the marble didn't "kick" out it would roll out plenty quick enough with the help of gravity. Hindsight I would have drilled both holes at an angle so the marble could enter/exit either hole.

 

I had a blast picking out the marbles for everyone. I made sure that each person got the same quantity/color/etc. It was easy for me to get carried away on the website though since they were about $0.15 per marble. I won't tell you the obscene amount of money I ended up dropping on them. 

While playing with and sorting the marbles I had a lot of memories resurface of when I was in grade school and had this red and blue leather marble bag adorned with native american bead work around the outside. I remember the cotton draw strings that closed the top of the bag up and had round bells at their ends, most likely as a security measure to make sure no one would steal my marbles. I haven't seen that marble bag for 15+ years but still think about it even today.

To finish the project I bought some cheap photo memory boxes from a local hobby store and placed the marbles in a zip lock bag. 

Wood Pens

This is a short story about how I salvaged some Maple from and old tree, violated at least 20 woodworking safety rules, and made 2 small pens.

As with another one of my other projects the wood came from some large branches from this tree. A strong storm came by snapping the main branch over the driveway. I had enough lumber already stock piled for years of small projects but I couldn't stand by and watch a large part of this amazing tree just go to a bon fire. So I "milled" my first bit of lumber.

I took various cuts of some of the smaller branches and let them dry in my garage for quite some time. I then tried some unusual methods to convert that log into some fine woodworking piece.

I won't tell you the specifics on how I was able to split the log in half so cleanly but since I didn't have a band saw handy it involved a homemade jig and a table saw set to the "dangerous" setting.

As I was able to start to square off the edges it became easier to work with. And once I hit it with some sandpaper I could see some of the color and texture pop out.

I continued to run it through the table saw until I had made some small 'blanks' and prepped them to be turned. I decided to do a similar exercise on a walnut branch that was given to me as well. 

So a proper woodworker would turn a pen on a lathe. The problem was I didn't have a lathe so I had to do some online researching. Eventually I was able to find these mandrels that could potentially be used in my drill press. Not the best idea but for a couple small pens I think it should be fine. Right?

My greatest fear in using this makeshift lathe setup (aside from losing a finger) was putting my drill press under unusual stress. The mandrel became a sort of lever that whenever I would press on the far end I could see it move which meant it was potentially twisting the drill itself. 

What did I use to take away the wood one may ask. Whatever I could find. Rasps, bastard files, other dangerous tools you should have anywhere around fast rotating blocks of wood. I wore thick leather gloves and kept a tight grip on everything... just in case.

Before I knew it I had turned myself 2 pieces to use for my pen sets. I sanded down as fine as I could and then coated each piece with a double layer coat of super glue. Yea, it actually works well as a finish. While it worked pretty well I really doubt I'll be making things in this manner moving forward. A woodworker can only be so lucky.