I love Christmas, but I hate having to buy presents.

It almost makes me angry, because if it was down to me, I wouldn’t do presents at all. Having to spend your time and money on things your close ones don’t really need… except if you have a good idea, but then that’s once a year for one person, the other 99% get some random candle or pair of socks.

But last year, I was even lazy about buying presents. I woke up on Friday morning and thought “I really need to get my presents sorted before I leave for France on Tuesday”. I had decided to make a coffee table for my parents, so I headed to the fab lab, thinking I’d try and design it super quickly so I can make it that day and have time to varnish it twice before I had to leave Barcelona.

I arrived at the Fab Lab at 11am and was told that from 12pm onwards I wouldn’t be able to make any noise as they had a lecture in the main hall, just next to where the noisy machines are… well, that puts my “designing a table and make it this afternoon” idea out of the window, although… Let’s try and make it without noisy complex tools!

Also, let’s point it out, I don’t have any materials collected, so I have to recycle stuff I find around the lab.

Coffee table Simon and Vincent

I took some leftover materials from another project of mine actually, for the fab lab (this one).

I cut a piece that was more or less triangular and finished cutting it by hand (well, with a jigsaw). Cut and bent the metal bars, polished them off with some metal wool and WD-40 sprayed on it, made some holes in the table top and hammered in the metal feet.

It’s good to keep in mind I wanted to make it so it’s dismountable, as my brothers live in the U.K. so it had to be travel friendly. The feet can be taken off by pulling hard. It doesn’t need any hard fixation as the metal bars naturally want to come back to a wider shape, you have to squeeze the hands together before hammering them into the wood. That tension keeps it all together.

Here are the pics of the making.

  • The leftover material from the OpenDesk desk I made
  • After cutting that beauty
  • Needed some sanding
  • Better
  • Making holes to welcome the metal legs

I am quite happy how well it fits in my brothers’ living room. Stroke of luck if you ask me, I didn’t know what their living room looked like! (but shh ?)

It actually worked perfectly as it fitted with the other furniture they had (bottom right)

I originally made this table for my parents, but in the end I thought it looked too modern for them and would work better for my brothers, who live together.

Coffee table for the parents

The only thing I had planned was “a coffee table for the parents”. That’s it. I still had to make presents for siblings and other family members.

I found a nice piece of wood in the lab and decided that’d for the coffee table. There was some metals bars hanging around that Mikel had found in the streets. Let’s make it simple: sand the wood and varnish it, bend the metal bars and stab them into the wood and hope it stands up.

It mostly did, although the table wasn’t very stable, so I decided it’d be better to make holes that went through the wood. I was worried that maybe the metal bars would go through the piece of wood so I decided to weld washers to the metal bar.

  • The piece of wood I found. I cut a piece to save for another project
  • After cutting and sanding it, drawing where to make the holes
  • Cleaning the metal bars, it’s as simple as spraying WD-40 on metal wool and rubbing the bars
  • Cutting the metal bars to size
  • The first version without the feet going through
  • Closer up
  • My set up to weld washers onto the metal bar
  • Done
  • All of them
  • I’m not the best at final pictures, that’s in the elevator.
  • Where it’s meant to be, at home

It was a fun quick project.

Mug coasters with Precious Plastic and Recycled Wood

For my two brothers, who already had their coffee table, I also made coasters for their mugs. They both work for the same golf company in the U.K., Taylor Made, and I know they both love the company, so I thought I’d use their logo, because why not!

I used some blocks recycled plastics using the Precious Plastic method. I like it because 1. it’s recycled plastic, and 2. the mix of colour is pretty cool, and unique.

I also used that piece of wood I saved from my parents’ coffee table.

  • Plastic after being shredded, before being melted
  • Some plastic sheets that were made
  • The elected ones
  • Using http://mods.cba.mit.edu/ developed at MIT for making the G-code file to mill it
  • Yep, that seems about right
  • It’s cut, negative space
  • The positive part
  • Assembled with the milled wood
  • Almost finished, just need some sanding to flatten it all nicely.

For some reason I can’t upload videos in the gallery, so you have to imagine it being between the 3D T above, and the cut piece.

After milling is done

Macrame with Precious Plastic beads

I’ve been enjoying learning macrame during the confinement. It’s a nice relaxing thing to do. It’s pretty much the exact same 2 knots over and over, but in different combinations. It’s a nice thing to do while listening to a podcast or watching a series that isn’t good enough to require your full time vision.

I used the leftover Precious Plastic from the previous project to make some colourful beads for some macrame pot hangers I made for my sister. I also used some leftover recycled sheet of material hanging around in the lab.