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Found 27 results for the keyword ‘Design’

  • Alternative mouldings and hidden lighting

    Floor mouldings and crown mouldings were originally all made out of heavy plaster or real wood. Then they were produced out of MDF or compressed sawdust. Now you can find them made out of plastics and drywall as well.ProFlex is a rubber like moulding that is the champion at following curves...
  • Making panels follow a curve

    Often designers, or your own artistic urges, call for a curve in the riser of a stairway or perhaps a whole wall, and you have to figure out how to get that done.There is a great new invention for making the structure of curves walls. It is like the bottom track of a metal stud wall but it ha...
  • Speciality tools -- things you may not have even known existed

    What do you do with the wood plane in the first photo? Not only does the base adjust to different curves, but can be reversed for outside curves. This is the standard plane for making barrel staves and wagon wheels. Although I have never made a wagon wheel I have used it for finishing off ...
  • Solar energy is making the transition from experimental housing to mainstream housing.

    We visited a demonstration solar energy house in Guelph, Ontario and Teresa Paul from Nexus Solar Corp. who designed it. In this very standard looking house we could see the bringing together of all the basic concepts of solar energy for both winter and summer. To emphasise that this did no...
  • What is the proper height for a workbench?

    There are no hard and fixed rules, although there are some generally accepted standards. Actually, a lot depends on how tall you are and what kind of work you are doing. If you are doing small detailed work you may want a "counter" at about 40 inches off the floor. A standard woodworking workbe...
  • Back Lit street numbers & the best night light I have ever found

    Being able to read house numbers at night is quite a hit a miss thing.  This is not only frustrating when you are trying to visit someone, but could be life threatening when an emergency vehicle is looking for a particular house address.    Lighting everything except the number By the good gra...
  • What is a Rain Screen Wall?

    One of the most reliable ways of both keeping our walls dry, and allowing them to dry out if they do get wet, is to construct the wall with an outer shell that we call a rain screen. Rather than trying to make the siding on the house absolutely waterproof, which never works for a very long tim...
  • Drilling & Replacing ceramic tiles -- even with your own photo

            DRILLING A TILE When you want to hang something on ceramic tiles you will need to drill a hole. Regular metal cutting twist bits will not cut through the hard ceramic face, and in fact the ceramic material itself will destroy such a bit. You need to use a bit that has a carbide head....
  • Reversed Woodturning -- Revealing the hollow inside

    After you have mastered the basics of woodturning then your only limit is your own creativity. One of the most challanging projects, conceptually and technically is reversed turning, where you turn both the inside and the outside of spindle like objects. These can be just artistic objects, or bea...
  • Conceptual design tricks before starting your project

      For a project like building a deck, you will want to go as far as you can with realistic graphics before laying the foundation or building the structure because many people around you will certainly want changes as soon as they begin to visulize the deck itself. There are a lot of simple ...