Products and Other Projects

This is a collection of miscellaneous projects, some of which have been commissioned and some solely for fun.

Woodworking

Cajon

A cajon is a box shaped Peruvian percussive instrument.

There are two broad categories of cajon: snare and string. Each dictates the method of producing the drum-like sound. A snare cajon produces a sound much like a modern snare drum, while a string cajon can produce a range of sounds depending on where the string is placed and the location of the player’s hands while playing.

A soundboard, called the tapa, is installed against the percussive element and tapped upon by the player. This board is typically a hardwood and planed to 3mm so as to transmit the sound effectively.

I designed the cajon to be sized such that it was comfortable for me to sit on the cajon and play. I wanted to combine both percussive elements. Across the top corners are steel strings with a half snare installed against the bottom center.

Tensegrity End Table

A tensegrity structure is one wherein all elements are held together by tension. These are typically made so that no components are touching directly, but are held by rope, string or other tensioning devices.

This principle has spawned a lot of interesting furniture and art. I made a simple square end table out of scraps as a test. It turned out well enough that it’s still in use today.

Note, due to a miscalculation the inner “arms” of each half of the end table do touch. There is no load being distributed there, I simply didn’t offset the arms enough so that their distance apart would be emphasized. The top half is truly hanging from the bottom half via a short piece of clear plastic wire.

Booth Dividers

A project commissioned by Republic Cantina.

The design was for dividers to partition booths to give customers some privacy while having a visual flair and homage to the owner’s Texan roots.

Anti-vibration Menu Peg Boards

A project commissioned by Republic Cantina.

The design was for a flexible peg-board menu system where the menu items could be moved around frequently without vibrating out of place due to the hustle and bustle of the kitchen.

This was accomplished by sandwiching a base plywood, a thin layer of rubber, and a top layer of oak ply. Holes were then milled at regular spacings. Rubber, generally, isn’t going to machine well because it doesn’t hold its shape.

I used this to my advantage as the anti-vibration mechanism. Most of the rubber would be milled, leaving a slightly undersized hole in only the rubber. This gave the pegs on the menus the hold they needed.

Misc

Brass Knox Bridge

This was a design for an auxillary bridge for an acoustic guitar. The bridge is meant to be placed forward of the existing bridge.

This has the effect of “short circuiting” the existing frets and giving each string a fixed note on both sides of the new bridge. In effect, it turns the guitar into an acoustic 12-string harp.

I went through two versions. I designed V1 to be compressive, but this ended up sucking too much energy out of the string and left it sound dull.

The second iteration was designed to be more rigid and I machined it out of brass instead of aluminum.