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

    • Planter Boxes and Outdoor Furniture

      I’ve been scheming on the future over the last few days. My daughter will be in preschool later this year and my wife will be going back to work in the summer, so I’m going to have a decent amount of free time on my hands during the week days. I get off work at noon every day so from 11:30am to 3:00pm I’ll have time to progress woodworking.

      I’ll be looking to create something sort of lame, but also sort of cool. I’m going to start building planter boxes from cheap materials. I’ll be attempting to sell these on Facebook Marketplace. I went to Home Depot yesterday to purchase a compressor and some other miscellaneous items. I got the compressor for my brad nailer which will make assembling planter boxes much faster. I’m using 1×8 material and 1×3 material pre cut to 4′ from home depot to make these boxes. It should be really straight forward. I’ll cut the pieces to length, apply some glue, pin nail them together, sand, apply some finish and they’ll be done.

      I’m also looking to make some outdoor furniture for our patio space. I watched a video yesterday and got some inspiration for them. The video had a quick link to some nice cushions on Amazon. In my head, finding nice cushions was the largest hurdle for this project. I’m looking at maybe purchasing a pocket hole jig system to build these as well. Being able to pin nail, and do pocket holes should greatly increase the capabilities of my shop to build furniture faster.

      Before making the outdoor patio furniture, I’ll need a place to put my two kayaks. So to fix that problem I’m looking to make a rack in the near future that will hold them. I’ll possibly be getting some construction lumber to build these with, and it should be straight forward. I’ll be butting this rack up against our fence and if I take my time, it should be very durable and not take away from the overall look of our back yard. Lots of things coming and if I can knock these projects out before April or June I’ll be in really good shape.

    • Small Bedroom Shelf

      I had a brutal day of work last Friday. Everything was going really well, then right at the end of my shift an email hit my inbox that really sent me into a negative spiral. I did not retaliate, and I when I got home I made some music. I’m still pissed even after the weekend and it’s making me wish that I did not have to work anymore, much like the rest of the US.

      I was able to do some woodworking on my Saturday morning. I got a late start so I cleaned the shop a bunch and then when my family woke up I was able to take measurements for a shelf that my wife wanted me to build. I ended up building this shelf to be 5 or so inches wide by 3 feet long. I found the 2 studs in the wall and they were on 16″ centers. I used that measurement to apply the perpendicular supporting pieces to the shelf. I’ve attached some pictures of the shelf.

      I got super lazy yesterday morning and did not end up doing anything in the shop. I played around 4 or 5 hours of a video game and made breakfast for my daughter and myself. My daughter somehow got sick AGAIN at her preschool. She’s been sick now four times since she started late last fall. It seems to be very mild so she’s getting over it pretty quickly. It has been really wet in our region, but I’m gearing up to do some more outdoorsy stuff like camp cooking in the back yard on weekdays. It’ll be good for my daughter and help her to get outside. She’s getting much bigger and with that, she’s getting more and more involved in these activities which is awesome.

    • Fixed the Fold out Stool

      When you’re building furniture for your home, that you’re going to use, you can take certain liberties in quality control. The fold out step stool from earlier this year split on the seat big time. In the first picture I’ve already used a circular saw to cut the crack out of the seat. The section that I took out is larger than the actual crack because that whole section warped upward by about a quarter of an inch.

      I went ahead and filled the gap that was left with a scrap piece of white oak. I’ve been meaning to do this for weeks, and it is one of the many projects that I’ve been procrastinating. We use this stool to help my preschool aged daughter get to counter height so she can be involved in cooking and baking projects.

      I had a very mild case of food poisoning yesterday, so I did not post and today is my Friday. This weekend I’ll be looking to make some shelves, organize the ice fishing gear into storage, and possibly try to crank out that huge butchers block table/cutting board. I’m definitely looking forward to that cutting board project to help with the summer cooking over the camp fire. I’ll need some longer chunks of wood because I’m planning on making it rather large. It’ll be at least one foot by two foot. maybe bigger. Depends on how much wood I have. Should be a good weekend with lots to talk about next week.

    • Update to the Ice Rod Holder

      I’ve been crazy busy with work related tasks and my supervisor may be leaving the company, so the amount of work I’ll end up doing at work could be increasing here over the coming months. I haven’t really been doing much making lately. I’ve been doing a lot of daydreaming about owning a homestead and trying to pull that effort together. I’d love to buy some land to build things on, sort of a family retreat a couple hours north that we can go to when we feel like getting away from everything. It could possibly double as a deer camp as well.

      I was out ice fishing with my brother last weekend and we were talking about the ice rod holders. In the old design, the holder came as one piece and so it was an extremely awkward shape to pack in and out of the 5 gallon bucket. It’d be hard to pack more than one into any container. It was a total space hog. Now the holder breaks down into two pieces and screws together at the base. This way the base can stack flat, and the holder can fall into any open voids in any container easily.

      I wasn’t going to put the effort in to redesign these little holders, but they’re so useful. My brother was telling me that his friend, Chris, was interested in getting one. I took it as a good sign that there was even a smidgen of demand for this product and now I’ve got it on Facebook marketplace to gauge the demand even more. I could also attempt to try to sell the .STL files so folks can print these at home. I should also mention that I made the actual holder diameter larger by around 10mm. My Mags rod was getting stuck because the castration bands that hold the reel on protrude out sort of far and made getting the rod in and out of the holder really awkward.

      Its sort of a shame, because we’re coming into the last couple of weekends of the ice fishing season for my region so I’m sure the interest/demand for a product like this is seasonal. I’d be wise to try again next fall and see how it does with better timing. I’ve attached some pictures of the old holder, and the new design that screws together at the base.

    • Butchers Block Fold Out Table Cutting Board

      I had an idea as I was driving home from work yesterday to build a big butchers block for camp cooking. The vision is to have fold out legs on the bottom carved into the bottom so it lies flat. It’ll be a fold-out table butchers block cutting board. I figure that would be pretty useful around the campfire or camp site. I’ve definitely been longing to get outside and do some camping, so that’ll be the focus this year. I’d like to film as much of it as I can and do some adventure camping this summer if possible.

      So I’m thinking I’ll try to make this folding butcher block table cutting board fairly big. Probably at least an inch to an inch and a half thick, at least 1 foot by 2 foot in size. The trick will be making it big enough to be very useful but not so big that it’s annoying to move around. I figure I could start doing some day trips with it, film some outdoor cooking videos. I’m thinking that I’ll 3D print the legs for the table, or make them out of wood. I’m struggling right now to understand how I’ll attach the legs to the bottom. I’m thinking I’ll CNC the recess for the legs into the bottom, and perhaps use some sort of mechanism that allows the legs to fold out and lock into place, but also allows the legs to be attached nicely to the bottom.

      I’ve got a fire pit in the back yard so it will be fun for me and my preschooler to do some fire making and cooking. This little butchers block table cutting board will be a cool thing to have for that as well. If you can’t tell I’ve been craving hanging out around the fire, doing some camp cooking and enjoying some warm weather.

      This weekend I’m planning on doing a bunch more ice fishing because there will only be a couple more weekends to make use of all of the equipment that I purchased. It’s my mom’s birthday on Monday, so we’re going to early dinner on Saturday. I’ll probably hit Lake St. Clair Friday morning for a couple hours targeting perch, then we’ve got a meeting with our preschoolers school in the early afternoon to get her enrolled. Saturday morning we’ll hit Union for an early morning walleye bite and then early dinner with the family.

    • Getting Back to the Grind

      I didn’t post yesterday because I felt like there wasn’t much to say. I haven’t been doing much woodworking lately and I’ve been feeling sort of stuck in life. I’d love to do my music work and woodworking full time, but I’m also a full time dad and employee, so I’m experiencing the struggle of basically everyone else in the world right now. I suppose that in itself is comforting. I’ll have a little time today to do some sort of work while our preschooler is at preschool.

      I need to fix the stool that I made a few months ago. The dryness of the season got to it and the figured walnut on the seat has split apart. I’ll most likely try to plane it flat and the router the whole crack out of the seat. I’ll replace the routed section with a strip of cherry or walnut depending on how flashy I’d like to be. I believe that is next on the to-do list.

      Once we get our next big warm up I need to do a couple of things. I need a haircut, I need to figure out a roof rack for the kayaks, and then I need to finish the speaker boxes for my brother. I learned my lesson last winter trying to do big glue ups when it was too cold. I need to be patient and allow the weather to get warm enough to do the big glue ups I’ve got planned. I’d also like to continue the puzzle box work I was doing a few months ago, or at least make a bunch more boxes this year. I’d like to get a system down for creating very high quality, hand made boxes. I liked the idea of puzzle boxes because it’s an opportunity to tell stories and combine 3D printing, CNC and woodworking all in one small package.

    • Ice Season Coming to an End

      I spent nearly the entire weekend ice fishing, and the ice rod case did its job very well. I was very happy to be able to transport my rods safely and jam pack a bunch of gear on top of them. Snapping my fragile jigging rods was never a worry and so that in itself was worth the effort. The entry was melted on the first lake that I tried Friday morning, so I shifted to another nearby lake that ended up being pretty sweet. I was shooting for panfish, and I found a school of bluegill and pulled a few out of the water. Most of them were dinks, I might have caught one decent one.

      I set up the shanty and before long the winds were gusting the pop up walls in. I had never experienced this, and I actually discovered that I could have prevented this by staking the pop up walls down from the outside. I bought a fairly cheap clam insulated pop up on a really good sale at Bass Pro. I paid $350 for a $450 3-4 person insulated pop up shanty. What is annoying about the shanty is that it only came with 4 ice stakes when you really need 8. 4 for the inside and 4 for the outside on windy days. I don’t know why they only included 4 because on windy days this pop up is useless.

      On Saturday my brother and I went out to Union Lake to try to get an early morning walleye bite. I purchased some more ice stakes from the bait shop as we picked up our minnows. We ended up getting a bunch of rock bass and perch early and then got skunked going into the afternoon. It was a ton of fun and the shanty did awesome because I staked it down properly for gusty wind.

      As far as woodworking goes, the weather is getting warmer so it’ll be easier to glue and take on bigger projects. My primary focus will be on getting the rest of my brother Jack’s speaker system done. I’ll post pictures as that’s happening. I might try to start working on that again in early march. I’m still fishing obsessed so I’ll most likely be trying to do one day of fishing and one morning of woodworking a weekend. My preschooler is getting into preschool, so I’ll have a little more time to do focus on these hobbies later this year.

    • Ice Rod Case is 99% There

      I ran to the hardware store yesterday after work before returning home and picked up a small metal handle and four sets of stainless steel bolts, nuts and washers. I was on daddy duty yesterday afternoon so I tricked my preschooler into going outside. I kicked the soccer ball and she retrieved it, and in between retrieves I drilled the holes for the stainless steel bolts. Once my wife returned home from work I did the leather work for this case in a hurried and rushed fashion. I had around an hour to do everything. I created two buckles to hold the lid shut, and that is pictured below. These work, but would benefit from a small piece of leather to hold the strap down, like you’d find on a normal belt buckle.

      It’s hard to see in the picture that I took yesterday, but there are leather straps that hold the rods in place inside of the case. The color of the leather straps match the color of the case so the one that wraps around the middle 3D printed insert blends into the stained cherry wood background. I 3D printed little knobs onto the 3D printed inserts on either end of the case for the smaller leather straps to attach to. This fastening method works well and I am able to turn the case on it’s side to carry the case. The internal leather straps are important because when you’re packing things up on the ice, things get tossed around, so I wanted the rods to be very secure inside of the case.

      All that’s left to do is put a healthy coating of oil onto the sides to provide a bit more water resistance and maybe add little leather rings to the leather straps to help contain the straps when they’re fastened inside of the buckle. For all intents and purposes though, the case is ready for use. The weather is supposed to be terrible this weekend, and I’m fairly certain that there will only be a few more weekends of ice fishing left in the season. The case might get maximum 3-6 uses before the season ends, but it will still be good to have for storage this summer.

    • Epoxy Work is Done

      It might not look like much, but this is practically the final result of the ice rod case that I’ve been working on for the last couple of weeks. I poured the last two rounds of epoxy yesterday and it is ready for the last finalizing steps. I 3D printed the center spacer that helps the rods not droop so much in the middle. It can hold four rods, which is one more than I currently own. I’ve got one rod that is dedicated to my tip up, and two jigging rods. If you look closely the two 3D printed inserts at the top and bottom have little extrusions on the top that are for a leather or rubber strap to be used to fasten the rod handles in place. I probably should have put a couple onto the middle insert as well, but I’m hoping that it’ll be held well enough on the ends. It’s okay if they rattle around a little bit, the whole purpose of this case is so that the rods don’t get crushed in my car on the way to the lake.

      I’ve got to make a trip to the hardware store to finish the case. I need six sets of most likely stainless steel bolts, nuts and washers. I might get the black oxidized bolts instead because I like the look of them but stainless would be a smarter choice for the long run. I need two sets for the leather handle, and then I need four sets for the leather straps that will hold the whole thing together. I’ll install some belt buckles onto these straps and space them so that the lid stays firmly shut when strapped in. I’ll apply some oil finish at some point to help the water resistance of the sides and it’ll officially be done.

    • Buckles for the Ice Rod Case

      I was on daddy duty yesterday so there is nothing new to report on. I’ve got to finalize the rod case this week, which entails a few tedious steps detailed in yesterdays blog post. Yesterday was 50 degrees and sunny so I took the little one out for a long walk and then played dragons and castles with her for a while. I’ll most likely try to 3d print the middle insert and then perhaps do another round of epoxy overnight on the bottom of the case. I’m sort of running out of vertical space as the epoxy is making the bottom thicker. I need to pour epoxy into the top as well which means I need to devise a way to keep it level while the epoxy dries.

      I also need to do the leatherwork for this. I’m looking to do a leather strap piece that will keep the lid shut and then another set of straps that will keep the rods in place. I’ll most likely use a bolt to fasten the leather strap to the case and then fashion some sort of buckle. Come to think of it, I’ve got some small buckles that might just work for this. So I’ll use a nut, bolt and some washers to fasten the leather straps, then attach the buckle to one side, and then poke holes in the other side and I’ll have a fairly reliable latch. I could do two for extra sturdiness.