Noah B Woodworks

A woodworking page for the free time foot soldier

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about

Hello there! My name is Noah Budd and I am a woodworker from southeast Michigan. I hail from a small set of towns in the Upper Peninsula called Houghton/Hancock. I lived there for 24 of my 31 years, and graduated from Michigan Tech in 2019 in audio production.

In my free time I am a dad first and hobbyist second. I make music, read books, smoke pipes, and kayak fish. I am a broadcast engineer in my professional life, working an early morning 3:30 – 11:30 am shift. The early bird has most definitely gotten a worm or two.

Thanks for stopping by my site and feel free to reach out to me on Instagram @noahbwoodworks or via the email found on the contact page

-Noah

    • Life is Weird

      I’m going to get personal for a second. This week has been heavy for my friends and family. My wife lost her biological mom last night, which was awful. Grandma June left this world somewhat comfortably in the hospital shortly after experiencing a collapsed lung. The doctors gave her morphine, which helped. Her passing was bittersweet, as she suffered a traumatic brain injury when she was just 16 years old, over 30 years ago. It’s strange, the doctors said she was never supposed to live this long, and her life was a testament to her immense strength as an individual.

      My boss’s dad died last Wednesday, which was slightly more tragic because it happened out of the blue. He’s technically my boss, but he’s more of a friend. My buddy expressed early last week that his dad was in the hospital for pneumonia, and there wasn’t too much to worry about. Things took a turn for the worse on Wednesday night. He returns to work today and I’m sure he’s in distraction mode, just looking for anything to take his mind off what happened last week. It hurts to see the people whom I’m closest with in life hurting like this.

      Needless to say, its been a rough few days. I’ll attempt to return to discussing the tasks at hand, and what progress I’ve made recently in my crafting endeavors. At this point in the week, I’ll expect to finish the tessellated box project this weekend, and make that the goal. It would be interesting to make more than one, and what’s important is getting through the first box with no hiccups. I haven’t started editing the video but because it’s being shot with the nice camera, I’m confident that the footage is good. I’m hoping it will make for a good video.

      We’ll see what the ice looks like this weekend. We’ve been having very warm weather for winter in southeast Michigan, so I’m guessing the ice will be sketchy. I’ll most likely need to order a higher quality spud bar to make sure I can get out there safely. Lake St. Clair might be a good look, and we’ll see what the ice report has to say. I’d like to travel about an hour north and hit some inland lakes if they’re frozen over.

      I successfully 3D printed a housing for my fish finder. It turned out awesome. It takes 14 hours to print, so its a huge time investment. I discovered a reliable way to glue 3D printed pieces together that are made from PETG filament. JB weld makes a glue called plastic weld that literally fuses the plastic pieces together. It gives me a lot more confidence than super glue. I discovered that if you’re going to have parts that fit into each other, there needs to be a tolerance of around 0.1 mm on all sides for the pieces to slip together nicely. I’ve attached a couple of pictures of the fish finder.

      Next on the 3D printing list is printing a housing for the 3D printer itself. I ordered the enclosure kit off Amazon and it should help with fumes and noise, which are my two biggest concerns when it comes to 3D printing. It would be best to filter the air coming out of the printer, but that is a problem for a different day.

    • Tessellated Box and Garmin FF

      Unfortunately due to unforeseen circumstances I was unable to progress the tessellated box project. It should be fairly straightforward from here though and I’ll post pictures and a link to the video once it’s completed. I just need to go slow and take my time with the miters, making sure that they’re perfect. the whole concept will look bad if the miters aren’t done well. The tessellations are supposed to wrap through the miters, which is the whole gimmick behind what makes this box unique.

      Once the miters are glued, I’m debating how to do the top and bottom. I know I’d like to do a rabbeted plate where the sides of the rabbet show outside of the box, but I’m debating whether I’d like to do them on the CNC or cut the rabbets with a router. The CNC would be more precise, but possibly take longer to program and set up. Sometimes cutting rabbets with the router leaves the rabbets cut poorly at the beginning/end of the cut. We’ll see but I’m thinking I’ll be doing them on the CNC.

      I was able to do something yesterday though. I ran a massive 14 hour 3D print. It’s a small carrying case for my ice fishing fish finder. I’ve got a Garmin Striker 4 and it came with a kayak that I bought last summer. The transducer is integrated/glued into the kayak, so using I didn’t want to remove it just to ice fish for a few months. I bit the bullet and purchased the ice fishing transducer, that has a flotation ring around the wire and designed a little carrying case that is similar to the Vexilar flasher Genz case.

      Here’s a picture of the 3D model. Doing this saved almost $300 over a different fish finder and $150 on the Garmin Striker 4 ice fishing bundle. Figured it’ll be handy to have out on the ice for years to come. There may also be opportunities to sell this in the future. The Garmin Striker 4 is very common, and most budget friendly FF out there. So we’ll see if people like this setup.

    • Continuations

      Last weekend was very productive and lots of things got done, albeit lots of it was not related to woodworking. I cleaned out our entire garage, and made space for my car to fit again. It’s a tight fit, but I’m making much better use of my wall of bins and purged a ton of unused items from storage. I went to an ice fishing expo with my brother and a friend of his. I bought a new jigging combo, a jaw jacker and some baits. I’m really looking forward to getting back out on the ice hopefully next weekend. I need a better spud bar and I’m looking to upgrade the auger next.

      I finished 3D printing the camera housing and I’ve attached a few pictures to this post. Its very functional and I’ve already started filming another video for YouTube. The clasp on the top of the battery housing is a little loose, so I wrapped it with E tape to make sure the camera never slips out of there when tilted forward. The tripod is a little flimsy for the rig, but I think that’s okay for now. I ordered new batteries for the monitor, as the old ones don’t hold a charge anymore. The monitor is nice because the camera needs to be manually focused.

      I started filming the tessellated box CNC project with the new rig yesterday. I cut the v-carve 4 times into some birds eye maple that’s been sitting around for a long time. I filled the voids with epoxy yesterday and I’ll sand them down today when I get home from work. I’m thinking I’ll run the cut out carves with a quarter inch bit, cut the miters on the table saw and try to glue the four sides of the box together today. I’m paranoid about one thing though. The miter jig I’ve made for the table saw doesn’t play well with small parts. I’m tempted to cut some extra material onto the ends of each box side, that way when I cut the miter, it wont bind into the table saw blade and cause havoc. There will be enough meat on either end to stay on top of the jig. Small pieces tend to get into the throat of the jig and the saw sends them flying in chaotic directions.

    • Weekend Shenanigans

      I’ve definitely been in a funk this week. Getting back to work from a short vacation last week has me feeling down. It was way worse yesterday, and I’m hoping that next week will be better. You can tell by the length of a blog post how much I’m feeling like taking on the weight of the day. When the new year comes around, it’s strange because in the grand scheme of things nothing has changed, yet our society is hell-bent on renewal and rebirth. I don’t feel like anything has changed, and it’s just a normal week for me, which is adding to the strangeness I’ve been experiencing.

      I’m definitely looking forward to the weekend, and today is my Friday, even though it’s Thursday. My brother called yesterday and it looks like we’re going to an ice fishing expo tonight in the late afternoon. I was planning on going ice fishing tomorrow morning, but the weather is going to be crazy warm. It’s going to be 50 degrees and raining, so I may need to pivot my plans. I’m sort thinking I may go on Saturday morning, and woodwork on Friday. Friday seems like a good day for woodworking.

      The goal for this weekend is to make the tessellation box, and film it for YouTube. I’m very excited for this project, as it should look really sweet. I’ll do the CNC work on Friday, then fill the voids with epoxy. If Saturday is a bust for ice fishing, I’ll sand the epoxy away, cut and glue the box together. Then Sunday after I work I’ll finalize the box. I’ll edit the video next week and hope to upload midweek to Youtube.

      I’m getting very close to finishing the camera housing. The battery and camera are mostly done, but the monitor housing is giving me some trouble. I made it beefier and thickened the walls. It is still a tight fit and I’ve got to make holes for the connectors on the side. After the next print or two it should be a done deal. Hopefully I can use the new camera rig to film the tessellation box. It’s slowly coming together.

    • 3D Printing and Box Making

      I’ve been doing a lot of 3D printing this week, trying to get the camera chassis finished. I took a huge step forward two days ago when the biggest print in the project was successful. Now it’s a matter of getting the hardware from the hardware store, and finishing the last prints. I tried printing the housing for the monitor and the monitor arms yesterday but I was a few millimeters off on my measurements. Luckily this print takes less than two hours, so it’ll be fairly easy to get it done.

      This weekend I’ll most likely try to go ice fishing in the morning on Friday, and then look to woodwork on Saturday morning. I’ll be attempting to make the tessellated box that I discussed in a previous blog post. It should be fairly straightforward. There’s an ice fishing expo near me that my brother invited me out to, so I’ll most likely be cut short woodworking this week even more than losing out on Fridays session. The goal is to get that box done, but I’ve got to do the carves, pour the epoxy, sand the epoxy, carve again, cut the joinery, glue everything together, cut the lid from the body then finally sand and finish. All things considered, unfortunately I believe it is a 2-3 day project. Maybe I can get out into the shop today or Thursday to make up for time lost ice fishing, or shift the work into the afternoon. Luckily, I’ve got a clear idea in mind as to what the box will look like.

    • Finally, A Big Print Went Well

      I’ve started to use the glue/adhesive that came with my 3D printer. It’s a strange glue because it looks like a liquid deodorant stick. It’s got a fabric applicator and is a clear liquid. You rub the tube on the bed of the 3D printer and it helps keep the first layer stuck to the bed, which happens to be wildly important in 3D printing. Before using this glue, around 2 of every 3 prints would fail. Sometimes they’d fail very far into the print, which was awful because you’re not only wasting filament, but a bunch of time as well.

      I had a successful 7 hour print yesterday and finally got the battery housing printed for the new camera rig. Now I’ve got to figure out how to attach the monitor to the camera body. I’ve attached a picture of what the setup looks like currently, and it’s already such a huge improvement over what it was. That huge battery used to sit in a plastic gallon freezer bag that hung from the hook under the tripod. Now that you have a visual reference for what I’ve been trying to accomplish, I should probably explain the setup a little more.

      The huge battery connects to a battery insert in the camera. This allows the camera to be powered for (rough estimate) over 16 hours. One of the things that drove me nuts about filming was always taking the time to futz with batteries, and making sure that they were charged. This big battery eliminates the need for that so I can focus on woodworking, as well as filming in a a little more streamlined fashion.

      The next step in this process is to figure out how to attach the monitor. I’ve CADed some swing arms that I’m hoping will attach to the frame of the camera with quarter 20 screws. I’ve also designed a housing for the monitor that is similar to the battery housing. These steps should take considerably less time than the battery housing took to print, which is awesome. I’m really looking forward to working with this new setup, and this camera has given me the best image quality by far.

    • Getting the Camera Housing Printed

      In yesterdays blog post, I mentioned that I had trouble 3D printing last week because my wife was sick and the noise from the printer is quite bothersome. Well I was able to get some printing done early in the week. I ended up finishing the entire kitchen junk drawer full of gridfinity containers. There are around 12 containers, each took around 2 hours to print. The next on the docket to print is the M50 case. I tried doing the upper half yesterday, but the overall design and dimensions needed some attention.

      I was very disappointed when the 4 hour print finished, and the camera didn’t fit into the housing. It was very discouraging. It made me think that perhaps the design could use some revision. Instead of printing an entire housing for the camera, why not attach a tripod mounting plate to the top of the battery housing? This way I could use the regular tripod mount to attach the camera to the battery. I’m thinking about 3D printing handles that have holes for quarter 20 screws, this way I can just mount the handles directly to the cameras metal shell.

      Now I just need to try printing the battery housing. With all of the supports, and extras that I’ve added to the housing, the print will take 7 or 8 hours. The plan is to start it immediately as I return home from work today. Hopefully it goes well, and the battery fits into place. I’ve also determined that the little door drawer slides needed to be adjusted from 1mm to 2mm. Hopefully it’ll be easier to remove the supports from the grooves.

    • 2026 Is Here

      It’s the new year and 2026 should be a good one. None of my plans are changing, but my wife is going back to school to get certified to teach middle school in Michigan, and will hopefully start in the fall of this year. That’ll be great for her, and she should have a long career in education. Over the new years break she got extremely sick with the flu, so I was on daddy/house duty for the majority of my break. I was able to do a little shop work in the mornings though, and yesterday I went ice fishing for the first time ever, which was so fun.

      I mostly wanted to get the shop back in order after all of the miscellaneous projects that I did for Christmas. The shop was a complete mess and a bunch of my stuff did not really have a home. A lot of miscellaneous gear was sitting out on the workbenches because I disassembled a rolling table to free up more floor space. I was thinking about making a bunch of cabinets with drawers, but didn’t want to spring for the sheet good materials. I ended up just finding homes for things, and rearranging some objects around. It cleaned up just fine for now and we’re good to go for 2026.

      I added lighting to the corner of the shop that houses the CNC and built an arm from the ceiling that the GoPro can mount onto. Speaking of camera gear, my wife is not the biggest fan of the noise that the 3D printer makes, so I was unable to print the Canon M50’s new housing while she was sick. I’ve re designed the housing in Fusion and it will only take around 9 hours to print the entire thing, which is great because before it was closer to 17 hours. Anyway, I mounted the GoPro above the CNC so I can take timelapses of the CNC working, which is great for social media. I made a few epoxy works just to test out the camera setup and video editing workflow. I can record on the GoPro, transfer the media to my phone, cut the video with the edits app, and post to Instagram. This should be an effective way to generate some media this year.

      I recently had an idea to make a box using a tessellated epoxy pattern. The process is: cut the tessellated pattern on the CNC with the edges of the pattern cut where the pattern repeats, fill the pattern with epoxy, sand or CNC the epoxy back flush, cut four of the rectangular tessellated pieces out with the CNC, use the new miter table saw jig to miter the edges of the tessellated pattern into a box (the tessellation should continue through the mitered joints) and then do rabbeted lid and bottom. Once the six sides of the box are made, I can use the table saw, or a hand saw to cut the box open, then mount some lid hardware into the two pieces. This should make for a cool little video, and I can make a lot of these boxes because there are a bunch of different tessellation/wrap around patterns out there.

    • 3D Print Mishaps

      So yesterday I attempted printing the housing for the m50 camera I’ve been talking about for a few weeks and it failed about 4 hours into the print. I definitely need to break the model down into smaller, more digestible chunks for the 3D printer to handle. I’ll look at splitting the section for the camera apart from the section for the battery and try to use small hardware to tie them together. This should make it easier for the 3D printer to actually complete the print. I had another mishap yesterday. For the first time the spool got stuck and stopped feeding filament into the extruder. This was a very unfortunate thing to discover.

      Not all was lost though. I discovered that you can use a light glue to help with first layer adhesion, increasing the overall quality and consistency of prints. I believe I’m getting closer to getting the temperatures dialed, and it would seem that I need to build that enclosure modification sooner rather than later. I think fluctuating temperatures are messing with the print qualities, and I may be looking into building a plate or getting a paver to help with inertial vibration. The heavier the platform that the 3D printer sits on top of, the less vibration it will see.

      The filament that is loaded into my machine is the same color as the gridfinity bins I’ve been printing, so I think I’ll try to tackle the rest of the drawer I’ve been working to organize. I’ve got at least 10 more bins to print for the drawer, which should use up the rest of that spool of filament. I’m thinking I’ll go until the spool is finished, and then look to do the m50 housing. I’m thinking it doesn’t need a full re design, just split the two halves of the largest print in the project and make them smaller chunks. This discovery is also quite valuable moving forward. If I go into a design knowing the limitations of the printer, then I’ll have faster success in the future.

    • What a Relief

      I survived the Christmas weekend with family. It went fairly well. I was able to make an ornament for my little sister, and everyone except for my dad got their presents. With the holiday season behind us, I can turn my attention towards improving my shop and methods once again. I’ve got some PTO coming next week. I’m working Sunday (today), and Monday then I’ve got the rest of the week off, which is fantastic. I’ll most likely be waking up early those days to get out into the shop to do something productive.

      In preparing for Christmas I discovered that it is really easy to create epoxy works with the CNC. The CNC was pushed to do some better things in the last week or two. I finished the relief carving for my dad and relief carving on the CNC is no longer uncharted territory. I need a longer 8th inch ball nose router bit. The quarter inch shank rubbed against the top of the relief carving, but luckily it wasn’t bad enough to ruin the carving. My brother had some good ideas for how I could make the one I made for our dad better but I think the CNC really shines when it comes to inlays, either wood on wood or epoxied.

      With all of the extra time off for New Years, I’d like to finalize my camera setup by doing the massive 20+ hours of 3D printing it will take to print the camera housing. I’ll be very happy once that task is completed. After my most recent YouTube video I published earlier this year, I’m thinking I need to pull back and focus on the work. I’m not very good at talking to the camera, and that is okay. I’ll get around talking to the camera by doing a voiceover and shooting B-roll. It’s better to piece things together and take a “show don’t tell” approach. I’ve been reorganizing and freeing up space in the shop, so the larger and nicer box lights can live in the shop for more consistent and better lit shots. I also could get better at maximizing media. Thanks to work, I’ve got a nice iPhone with a nice camera on it. I could shoot vertical footage with that and start making Instagram reels again. I’m just feeling like I need to put myself out there more, but it can be challenging if you’re inconsistent, which I tend to be at times.

      At some point, I think it would be cool to create a streaming setup for the shop. Internet is the issue, I’d either need to run an ethernet cable out to the shop or purchase a Starlink subscription. Another barrier is camera setup. I’m a broadcast engineer in my professional life, so setting up a small studio would be a cakewalk, but they’re expensive. I’d like 2-3 PTZ (pan tilt zoom) cameras that I can control with a joystick controller, all running into a video switcher that is connected to the stream. The workflow would look something like: I need to use the table saw to make this cut, dial in the camera closest to the table saw, switch it on the switcher, make the cut, and continue woodworking. The idea is that there is camera coverage on every tool. I wouldn’t have to move anything around or fuss with tripods, it would just be point the camera, switch it, and go. I’m a long way away from doing anything like this, and it is definitely not a priority. In my head it makes sense though. I’m almost always in the shop at a specific time every week, so if I can leverage that consistency into something interactive, that seems like a solid strategic move.