Noah B Woodworks

A woodworking page for the free time foot soldier

recent posts

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

    • Tis the Season

      Yesterday we got the presents wrapped for our toddlers 3rd Christmas tomorrow. We went grocery shopping and cleaned the entire house so we can have family over for Christmas. I finished the epoxy piece for my brother and it turned out great. I’m amazed at how easy these are to make. Run the carve on the CNC, fill the void with epoxy, sand, put finish on and it’s done! I usually like to make things that are inherently functional, but it’s good to make objects that are visually interesting from time to time as well.

      I’ve got Christmas day off from work, and then it’s into the weekend. My brother is coming to stay with us, so I’m not sure how much woodworking I’ll be able to get done. I’ll be cooking and hopefully playing some board games with the little toddler running around tonight. If I don’t get too drunk I’ll most likely wake up early to try and start the 3D relief carving for my dad’s Christmas gift. It would be good to pack the desktop CNC into a box as well, just to get that moved into place. I’m curious to see how long it’ll take the 3D relief carving to finish.

      The 3D relief carving that I have yet to complete is a topographic map of the shorefront at our cabin in minnesota. Half of it is Lake Superior, so on the flat section of water I’ve raised a rectangle out of. Once the relief carving is done, I can then V-carve letters that say “Encampment Forest Association est. 1921” on it. This should make for a very cool looking piece of wood at the end of the day.

      I’ve completely neglected to make something for my sister, so I’m thinking I’ll get her something from her Christmas list, and perhaps try to do an engraved epoxy work for her as well. I’d actually need to do that tomorrow morning on the CNC instead of the topo map, because the timeline I’ve given myself is so short. Luckily my wife got her something from her Christmas list already and signed it for all of us, but I can do better for her, especially if I’ve made something for everyone else already. It’s a lot to juggle but it’s almost over 😀 Happy holidays

    • Getting Back Into It

      Yesterday I was in a bit of a funk, so I ended up going out to the woodshop after work to decompress. I was interested in continuing the epoxy work I’ve been developing. I’ve made quite a few epoxy works over the last few weeks and I figured I might as well make one that is less Christmassy and more artsy. In Carveco, I changed some settings on my v-carving bit as well. The software was thinking that the tip of the bit was .01mm instead of .01 inches and it was taking a millennium to carve anything and took a lot more processing power to run the simulations. I believe I have it dialed now, and I should be able to do some really efficient carvings with these settings. The one from yesterday was 8in x 9.5 inches and it took under an hour to carve, which is a drastic improvement from the 3in x 3in carving that took 5 hours last weekend.

      The holidays are almost over but they sure are a huge distraction from the day to day. I have a fairly large list of lingering projects that need to be handled. In no particular order I need to: 3D print a housing for my camera, go crazy making a bunch of drawers for the shop, finish 3D printing gridfinity boxes for our house, 3D print a bunch of holders for sanding pads, finish the 3D topographic map for my dad for Christmas then mail that out with the old tabletop CNC, finish the three speaker boxes for my brother, and make some mechanisms for puzzle boxes. Once all of this is done I’ll be good to go for 2026.

      All of the 3D printing stuff will just take time inside, but the rest I’m hoping I can knock out in a month or two. I’m definitely looking to do the shop furniture when I have more funds to purchase a good amount of sheet material. If I could start a box and finish the topo map this weekend I’d be thrilled, but its Christmas and I’m worried for compromised glue joints due to cold weather. I’m remembering now that I have to put off the speaker boxes until it is a little warmer so the glue can set correctly. Those boxes will be relying on mitered joinery, so it’s inherently less strong. Good glue adhesion is a must.

      The cold is honestly why the epoxy work is so interesting to me right now. I can do a carve outside, sort of linger inside, monitoring with my surveillance camera and fill the void with the craft epoxy inside. Then I’ll wait 24 hours, sand the epoxy off, route the edges and put finish on. I can make quite a few art pieces this way. The drawers might be a good thing to tackle while it’s still cold out too, as they’re getting some structural integrity from pin nails, so it wont matter as much if the glue joints are compromised for now. Problem is I’ll have to pony up a bunch of money to buy the materials for that project. Seems totally worth it.

    • Cribbage Board

      I made a cribbage board for my mom and stepdad for Christmas. It has engraved lettering that says “The Buddsons est. 2006” on it with other engraved embellishments. I filled these engravings with black epoxy. The really interesting thing about this cribbage board was that the holder for the pins was 3D printed. I made a small box that has a lid that slides and clicks into place, then engraved the box into the bottom of the board. I then superglued it into place and 3D printed more pins to play the game with. I absolutely love that I was able to marry the woodworking, CNC and 3D printer in such a way that made a really cool object.

    • Holiday Progressions

      I had a pretty decent weekend of crafting and woodworking. After making those ornaments for my co workers, I ended up doing more epoxy work. It’s a fairly convenient way to get a decent result with the CNC without having to do all the complicated setup for wood on wood inlays. I made another ornament for our Christmas tree, and an epoxied cribbage board for my mom and stepdad. I held off on the EFA topo map for my dad. I did a bunch of the CAD work only to realize I didn’t have the right router bit. I’m fairly certain that the CNC carve for this topo map is going to take a very long time. It’s a 7.5 x 7.5 inch square, and I’m sure it’ll take most of next weekend to complete. I’d like to put a frame around it and make it into a wall hanging piece and send him a nice big 3d printed topo map he can carry around to meetings as a visual aid for where work is getting done.

      I’ve printed a ton of gridfinity which is an organizational system for drawers and small workspaces. I’m looking to do our catch-all drawer in the kitchen next. This will most likely take the rest of next week. It took almost a week and a half to do an entire drawer in my office, and there are a few more to go. I printed the grids for another drawer in my office, which took around 8 hours. There are four 4×4 grids and they fit perfectly into these drawers that came with my desk. I’ll most likely stick to the translucent blue filament I used for the first drawer, but I need to order more.

      I changed the blade on my band saw, which was long overdue. I also purchase a few different sized blades to see which I like most. I used the middle size one, which I believe was 3/8″. It seemed to cut much better than the old blade, and I’m getting more familiar with the bigger saw’s setup, which is also long overdue. It is a very useful tool.

      I’ve been weary of doing a bunch of projects right now. The cold makes wood glue not work and after last year’s mishaps I can’t stand compromised joints. It feels like wasted time. I’d like to make a bunch of end grain blanks for the CNC, but these require a lot of glue ups. End grain blanks are made by rip cutting a bunch of strips of wood, gluing them together again, and then cross cutting even widths along the length of the glued board. Then you turn these widths 90 degrees so the end grain is facing upwards and downwards, then regluing the pieces back together. It’s how end-grain cutting boards are made, but they’re also very useful for 3d carving as the end grain does not shear away as easily as side grain, making detailed 3D CNC carves more accurate.

    • Topo Maps and CAD

      At the end of yesterdays blog post I was exploring ideas for a gift I could make for my dad for Christmas and his birthday. He is a difficult person to get gifts for; a person who needs for nothing. He loves tools though so I figured regifting my not-so-great desktop CNC might be fun for him, but then I got to thinking… It would be really cool to make a topographic map that shows the landscape of where our cabin is located in northern Minnesota. He’s been doing a lot of forestry and ecologic preservation work up there and I figured it might be useful to have a 3d map of the landscape.

      I got to looking and found a website https://touchterrain.geol.iastate.edu/main that generates .stl files. STL files (standard tessellation language) are meshes that fusion 360 and other CAD softwares can read including slicers for 3D printers. It was surprisingly easy to gather an STL of the terrain. You can adjust the Z scaling so the landscape becomes more and more mountainous, almost comically so.

      After a little tweaking I had a mesh and imported it into Fusion. I figured I would go over the top and add labels to some of the landscape that show where each cabin is. I labeled all of our closest friends and family cabins by creating a rectangle and extruding it up through the landscape. I 3D printed a test, and I’d like to do a carve out of wood on the CNC this weekend.

      The 3D printing was tricky, because I had to size it up to get it to print the letters correctly. The slicing software showed me a preview and my initial model had font that was not going to work at all with printing. Also, I found it was better to use multicolored filament because it printed a gradient that was easier to see the change in elevation. I’m thinking I’d like to eventually make a really big one out of wood with little houses/cabins instead of the text letters representing where all of the cabins are. It would be good to do every cabin instead of just the friends of the Budds. I believe there are like 25 or so cabins. It would be a huge task but a good way to positively impact our small community.

      After the holiday season ends, I’ll be looking to finish the looming speaker project for my brother and looking to get back into puzzle box making. I’m doing my best not to lose sight of that. I was thinking it would be fun to make a puzzle box for the people up at our cabin as well, with clues that relate to the geography of the landscape and reiterate some of the history of the association.

    • Holiday Gifts

      Yesterday I finished the Christmas ornaments that I made for my co workers. They’re fun quippy Christmas gnomes with lettering underneath that have been filled with epoxy. I’ve attached a picture to this blog post. While making these I learned a little bit about my CNC. I was hoping to make these ornaments inlaid with wood instead of epoxy, but I was cutting into side grain, which shears the fibers more easily than cutting into the end grain. Also, if you’re going to inlay into side grain, you want to do it on bigger carves on the order of 9 inches by 9 inches or larger. I realized that inlaying wood into these small ornaments just wasn’t going to work so I pivoted and did them in epoxy.

      This weekend I’m thinking about just making something for my mom and dad and not my siblings. My wife and I purchased gifts for everyone already, but I could probably do something special for those two. I was thinking about making my mom and stepdad an embellished or logoed magnetic bottle opener that would hang on their fridge in their new house. My dad is a little more challenging because he’s a guy that needs for nothing. His birthday was yesterday and I asked him if he’s done anything special and he responded by saying it was just another average work day. Made me think I need to go over the top for him this Christmas.

      My dad really enjoys useful items, and as I’m writing this I’m realizing I have a small bench top CNC, practically the smallest and cheapest that you can purchase. It sits in my garage completely unused because I upgraded to a maker CNC last year. It is not the easiest tool to use but it is definitely a really good starting point and would fit into his space really well. Something for my dad to toy around with and improve upon. He’s the type to enjoy a challenge like that and almost always makes the best of something imperfect. It would be interesting to see what he’s able to make with it and if it is even something he would enjoy. I still need to make him something but regifting a hardly used bench top CNC is perhaps a good starting point.

    • Regrouping

      I went through a bit of a literary phase a few weeks ago which prompted me to start writing these blog posts. It’s been just over a month and I’ve stayed disciplined to write these, which is good, but I haven’t stayed disciplined about continuing the habit of reading. It seems as though screens are dominating my life again, and unfortunately I’ve lost some fervor for the books I started reading a while ago. I made it all the way through The Hobbit, part of the way through The Stand by Stephen King and part of the way through The Fellowship of the Ring by Tolkien.

      Its a habits thing. I slowly stopped reading and was unable to discipline myself to continue. I fell out of the habit and it has had an effect on my day to day. Books sharpen the mind, so I have most definitely been feeling dull lately. I’ve also started playing chess again which is a terrible distraction and terrible for my mental health. It’s so fun though. It’s winter, so I haven’t been fishing in a while too so I can feel my patience growing shorter and shorter. Patience is a skill that needs practice.

      Alright so back to the woodworking. I’ve got some projects coming up. The ornaments for Christmas are coming along well. The ones for my co workers are almost done. I need to sand the epoxy away, sand and re route the edges, and finish them. I’m thinking I’ll use Osmo for the finish, but it’s tricky because it is winter time. Varnish infused finishes don’t play well in the cold. I’d prefer not to do any finishing in the house because it smells terrible, so I may resort to linseed oil for these. I might just let them soak for a while in a linseed oil bath, and that should do the trick. Linseed oil is Christmassy right?

      Once the Christmas season is over, I will be trying to finish at least one of the boxes for my brother’s sound system. I’ve got a ton of huge miters to do that have been causing me to drag my heels for a very long time on this project. Also, I need to glue together the black walnut face plate and re make the backing plate. Once those are done it should be fairly straight forward, just some mitered, rabbeted, and dadoed joinery, solder together the crossover, mount the speakers and it’ll be ready.

    • Getting Organized

      Last weekend I ran the CNC out in the shop for a while, and while it was running I spent a bunch of time rearranging and reorganizing my shop. I was able to build a little container at the base of my chair seat carving table for all of my old text books. This has 2 advantages: it contains the textbooks nicely out of the way and weighs down the table at the base. I’ve been looking for something to weight this table down and add mass to it, so the textbooks fit there perfectly.

      I realized I need to build a bunch of drawers and I would like to update my miter station to be a little more professional. The next miter station I am looking to make will have a countertop that is level with the miter saw’s cutting surface. There will also be a good amount of cabinets and perhaps better dust collection. Overall I am just looking to update things while the season is slow and cold. There are still some objects without homes, and an entire tool chest that has random objects slung into it. I purchased a small battery operated compressor, more batteries and a small 23 gauge pin nailer over the weekend. These tools should help immensely with the building of drawers. It’s one of those moments where if it’s worth doing it’s worth overdoing.

      I’ve been 3D printing hooks for the last two days. I’ve printed eight large hooks for my cable collection to hang on. That little project finished yesterday and it freed up a ton of space in the drawers of my office desk. The desk drawers still need some help in the organization department so I started printing gridfinity grids. Gridfinity is a storage system that you can 3D print where the grid is made of 42x42mm squares. Little containers nest onto these squares and it helps makers organize their things. My plan is to go bonkers with gridfinity and make as many grids as will fit into my life. My guess is I’ll probably spend at least 10-20 hours printing gridfinity this week and only get a few drawers done. It will be well worth it though to have my stuff put away nicely.

    • Scattered

      We’re in the heat of holiday season. Christmas and new years are just under two weeks away, so I scrambled last weekend to figure out what to make for my co workers and family. I like to make the people who I am closest to in life something nice for the holidays if I can manage it. It seems like Sundays are always scattered for me. I’m either content with the way the woodworking weekend went, or feeling panicked and unsatisfied. Yesterday I felt very unsatisfied but I got a lot of good work done regardless.

      I used a ton of time on Saturday on the computer morning 3D modeling. I finished modeling the rough draft of the camera housing I am looking to 3D print, and made the Gcode for my Christmas gifts in Carveco. This year I’m making small ornaments, but I found a cool 2D black and white image of a bunch of cute Christmas gnomes, and I put quippy sayings under them. For one co worker I wrote “HR’s Favorite” and for another I wrote “Do they know it’s bad?”. Simple one liners. I was looking to use the CNC to inlay contrasting wood into the carving to really make them special. I learned a lot this weekend about inlaying with the CNC.

      If you’re going to inlay with the CNC, you need to do it on something large, and if you’re looking to do fine detailed smaller pieces, they need to be carved into the end grain. Doing small side grain pieces is near impossible, no matter how sharp the bit, because the small fibers will just shear off at the slightest bit of force. I pivoted from that idea and I’m filling the voids with epoxy. Hopefully I’ll still get a decent result. There is a lot of strange geometry as well when inlaying with the CNC. You have to consider everything from the angle of the v-bit you’re using to the depth of the offset for the mating piece. I spent a couple hours on this rabbit hole only to pivot, so that is why I was feeling so unsatisfied yesterday. I learned a lot but I feel like less got done. On to the next.

    • 3D Modeling Practice

      Yesterday I started working on a 3D model in fusion that will hopefully help my video making immensely. My old camera rig lived on a tripod, and has been a work in progress for a very long time. I have a Canon M50, a huge rechargeable USB battery (200mm x 150mm x 30mm), a small PortKeys HDMI confidence monitor and a small Rode mic. The USB battery is used so I don’t have to deal with changing the canon M50’s small rechargeable batteries. This large battery will go all day, but it is cumbersome and difficult to move around. I had it in a gallon zip loc freezer bag that hung from the hook on my cheap tripod’s central stabilizers.

      The 3D model I’m hoping to print and make is a housing for all of that equipment in one singular hard shell case. The battery will lie flat at the bottom, the camera and monitor on top. I’m hoping to have swing arms for the monitor so I can put it in a number of different viewing positions. There will be holes for internal wiring between these parts. I’m also hoping to put handles on either side of the housing so I can hold the camera with two hands. I’m looking to keep using the same tripod, so I’ll be putting a sturdy base at the bottom for the connection point between the tripod plate and camera housing.

      I printed off a set of 15 cm calipers yesterday to be used in measuring the components for this model. I just need a rough estimate, but I believe these calipers are fairly precise and somewhat rudimentary. The two pieces just click together and slide along a rail with no way to lock it. I have very accurate calipers but I figured it would be handy to have an extra pair that I can grab-and-go with.

      I’m using Fusion to model and it has been fantastic practice. I’m not sure if I’ve said this in previous blog posts but I’ve 3D modeled a bunch in Sketchup free and that modeling experience has helped immensely with learning Fusion. Fusion definitely has its quirks, like the difference between a component and a body is very important when it comes to modeling history and organization. It also is very weird that you have to create a sketch to create a line, and the line automatically disappears if you don’t use it right away. The sketch is still there, you just need to find it in the side bar and re-enable it if you want to use it in the future. Strange quirks I am slowly getting over with practice.