I find it odd that the first guinea pig cage I have seen posted on here came only a couple of days before I was finished and ready to post mine. This one was for my wife’s friend. It’s 1/2 inch shy of 6 ft. long, 5 ft. high, and 2 1/2 ft. deep. It’s two pieces. I completed and delivered the top/cage piece months ago, but just finished the bottom/cabinet piece. It’s all pine, with luan panels on the bottom. The wire on the top was squares that were sold as a set to be made into storage cubes, but I cut the outside wire frame off, bent all the wires at a 90 degree angle, and inserted them into the wood frame (predrilled and glued each hole, ughh!) The top has a small door in the center, but the entire front is hinged on the bottom also to fold down with chains to stop it horizontal to the ground to slide out the coroplast tray onto the door for cleaning. The bottom is identical to the top except for luan instead of wire panels and two doors, and I added a small shelf in the middle, plus the top has a real table top of glued up 3/4 pine. I painted the inside cabinet pieces white for better illumination. All the latches, top and bottom, are identical and are actually sold as window latches, but I thought they would work well for a cage. This was a good practice in mortise and tenons. By my count, there are 120 m&t joints. I cut two tenons with a handsaw, about a dozen with the bandsaw, and the rest with the router. This was an enjoyable project to build. I’m definitely open to criticism, good or bad.

Just a few simple projects I made in the past. The first two are curling iron/hair dryer holders one of which now belongs to my wife and one belongs to my sister. My wife wanted one years ago when the only tools I had were a drill and a jigsaw but I got it done. Hers is the second one shown, with the round loop for the hair dryer. The first one is my sister’s with a closeup of the box in the second pic. I looked them up online when my wife described what she wanted and there were a lot of them, some with shelves on the bottom, but none with boxes, so I made her one with a box to hold all of her hair stuff. My sister saw the pic and wanted one too. The folding basket I made was because my sister and a friend were at my aunt’s house and saw an apple shaped one and wanted one, but wanted it to be shaped like a heart. I thought I could make one with my jigsaw, but it won’t hold a precise enough angle and the kerf was too thick so I bought a scrollsaw and made a couple of these. The base is yellow pine and the basket is red oak. These are fun projects and good to develop skills for a new woodworker.

This is something I built late last summer for my kids. It’s all pressure treated pine. I cut notches in all the boards so they go together like lincoln logs, or actually more like the little popsicle stick type playsets if you’ve ever seen those. The full-length pieces are about 7.5 feet long and then there are shorter pieces to use for the windows and door. I cut some slanted pieces for the roof and all the really short connector pieces to give the areas around the door and windows more stability. For the roof, I just rabbited one edge of each board on the router. The first roof piece at the bottom catches on a nub I left sticking up on the end of the slanted piece, then the rest of them just overlap, on up to the top board. In the last picture, you can see the two pieces I have going from front to back for stability so it doesn’t spread apart and allow the roof boards to fall. My two oldest kids are 10 and 8 years old and they can easily disassemble this and reassemble it in about an hour as long as I help with the roof. They can change the height of the windows, or leave them out altogether, or build it higher, as I made extra full-length pieces too. There are no fasteners, yet it held up easily to the lake effect snow here this winter even though two of my neighbor’s garage roofs both went down in the last couple years. It was a fun project, although a little repetitive.

This is a drill press I made. I always thought I was pretty good at eyeballing a straight hole but I was making a movie rack with long dowels inserted in the holes I drilled and a four foot dowel really exaggerates even minor errors so I decided to make a drill press from some scrap wood so I could finish up the project. There are three basic parts to it which you can see. The 2×4 that mounts to my workbench, the mount for the drill and the “riser” or whatever you want to call it that the drill mount rides up and down on. I started by routing a 1/2” groove, 1/2” deep and 1/2” back from the edge of the 2’ 2×4. I then cut the 2×4 in half to use for the table mount and the drill mount. I then routed two longer boards in the same way to use for the riser and connect them using scrap pieces of 3/4 plywood. Last was the mount which you can see I custom made to hold my cheap B&D drill to the 2×4 section. It is hinged on the top with a wingnut to hold the drill in so it’s easily removable. I use a clamp to set the depth of cut. The piece of 2×4 mounted to the table has a stop on the side so when I slide the riser on, it doesn’t just drop all the way to the floor. I did some shimming on the mount to square it all up. The best thing about it is I can just remove the entire thing and set it aside except for the one piece that stays attached to the table leg. It works surprisingly well and is really pretty stable. I did make a second pass on the router table with all the pieces, with tiny adjustments made to loosen up the slots to just over 1/2” to allow it to slide up and down better. It’s not so much that I’m cheap, it’s just that I needed the tool and needed it that night so I made my own and have never seen a need for anything else since.

This is a sign I had just made for someone here locally. The carving is the Army Signal Corps flag insignia. The dimensions are 18” high by about 23” wide, made from some pine that I got for free and edge glued. This was the first sign I had made and the first project I sold. I left it up to here what she wanted to pay me. She said initially she would give me $65 but insisted I take $100 after it was finished. I don’t make things for money, I just enjoy it but since she offered…