{"id":14,"date":"2004-03-22T12:37:26","date_gmt":"2004-03-22T19:37:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.danshapiro.com\/blog\/?p=14"},"modified":"2010-05-28T02:12:15","modified_gmt":"2010-05-28T09:12:15","slug":"a-2-hour-heirloom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.danshapiro.com\/blog\/2004\/03\/a-2-hour-heirloom\/","title":{"rendered":"A 2-hour heirloom"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>One of the good things about being a woodworker is that you can whip out great gifts with very little work.  The trick is to pick the gifts&#8211;you want stuff that requires very few operations on the machines, but looks cool and either is very expensive or can&#8217;t be bought.  This afternoon my neighbor gave me a great suggestion right up this alley.<br \/>\nBlocks!<br \/>\nThat&#8217;s right, kids building blocks.  How simple is this:<br \/>\n1) Glue up some 4\/4 scrap so it&#8217;s two inches thick (gotta be smaller than mouth-sized)<br \/>\n2) Cut into blocks<br \/>\n3) Stack all the blocks together, clamp them so they don&#8217;t fly all over the place, and sand one face.  Rotate and repeat six times.<br \/>\n4) Run each corner of each block over some 100 grit sandpaper (by hand) to get rid of the sharp corner<br \/>\n5) Put on a coat of shellac<br \/>\n6) Run each face over some 320 grit paper, lightly<br \/>\n7) Put on another coat of shellac<br \/>\nAnd done!  You can use *pure* tung oil, walnut oil, mineral oil, or any other nontoxic natural finish instead, or just leave them unfinished.  I whipped these suckers out while I was waiting for a glueup to dry&#8211;I did a lousy job of shellacking them, but baby won&#8217;t care, right?<br \/>\nTry making a set for your next baby shower.  You&#8217;ll thank me for it.<br \/>\n<a href = \"http:\/\/www.danshapiro.com\/blog\/archives\/Blocks.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" data-src=\"http:\/\/www.danshapiro.com\/blog\/archives\/BlocksThumbnail.jpg\" src=\"data:image\/svg+xml;base64,PHN2ZyB3aWR0aD0iMSIgaGVpZ2h0PSIxIiB4bWxucz0iaHR0cDovL3d3dy53My5vcmcvMjAwMC9zdmciPjwvc3ZnPg==\" class=\"lazyload\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p><!--more--><br \/>\n(I made six blocks of maple, cut from a scrap from an 8\/4 slab, and six blocks of walnut, from some 4\/4 scraps face-glued)<br \/>\n(For those wondering, the maple buying trip yesterday was awesome.  Let me know if you need a lumber hookup in the Seattle area.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One of the good things about being a woodworker is that you can whip out great gifts with very little work.  This afternoon my neighbor gave me a great suggestion right up this alley.  Blocks!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-woodworking"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danshapiro.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danshapiro.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danshapiro.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danshapiro.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danshapiro.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.danshapiro.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danshapiro.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danshapiro.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danshapiro.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}