Advice for Painting Crankbaits from Dakota Lakes Tackle

I am always interested to know how to do everything and when it comes to fishing one of the best DIY projects is painting your own lures (crankbaits).  My friend Jake has posted some great videos on Youtube covering the best methods to paint them yourself.  You can visit Jake at www.dakotalakestackle.com to purchase the unpainted crankbait bodies and stencils.

 

How to Make Wooden Farm Toys Book

I have just released a new book with the plans for the wooden farm toys I have been making for my kids. It’s called How to Make Wooden Farm Toys: Scroll Saw Patterns and Plans.  It includes plans to build a toy combine with two interchangeable heads, a toy skid steer loader, a tractor and a disk to pull behind the tractor.  Some pictures of the completed combine along with a link to buy the book on Amazon are posted below.

 

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year to all of our readers.  2008 is going to be a great year.  Look for some big improvements here at justbuildstuff.com.

A Little Paint and a New Look

We all get the itch to change the look of our homes and to accomplish this we usually go out to buy something new, but you don’t have to. Sometimes a little paint is all you need to make a big difference. To get a new look for our wall, we took an existing metal wall hanging and applied a little bit of inexpensive spray paint. Now it fits in perfectly with the rest of the room’s decor.

The Stockings Were Hung… Build a Simple Wall Hanging for your Christmas Stockings

Everybody knows that the stockings were hung by the chimney with care, but what if you don’t have a chimney? No chimney, no problem! A beautiful way to display your family’s stockings is with a “The stockings were hung…” wall plaque and justbuildstuff.com is going to tell you how to make one.

We used the following materials for this project:

• Board
• Can of red spray paint
• 120 grit sandpaper
• White paint
• Small paintbrush
• Router
• Roman Ogee Router bit
• Hanging Brackets

To start, cut a piece of scrap softwood lumber (pine or fir – most construction lumber is softwood) to 29″ by 5 1/2″ by 3/4″, router the edges with an Roman Ogee router bit and spray paint it red.

To give it a more aged look, rub the edges with some used 120-grit sandpaper saved from previous projects. Also lightly rub the face of the board to take away some of the shine and make it match the edges. See the photos below to see how the board looks at this point.

To create the letters we found a font we liked and printed the phrase in the appropriate size. Keeping in mind where the hooks would eventually be placed, we taped the phrase to the board as shown in the photo below. With the lettering taped to the board, we traced an outline into the board using a dull pencil. Because we used softwood lumber for the project, it indented easily to make an impression of the letters into the board.

Then, with a thin paintbrush and the white paint, we painted the phrase in using the indented letters as a guide.

After the paint dried, it was time to add the hooks for the stockings. We used single hooks screwed in at even spacing.

The final step was to add a hanging bracket to the back, place it on the wall and hang the stockings.

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Now the only thing left is to wait for Santa to come and fill the stockings with Christmas goodies!

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