What would YOU make with THIS?

[Old Greenhorn]

Taking a stab at a new thread here for general input from the learned mass we have here. Hopefully others might add their own conundrums. The input I receive for our muddled mass of closet geniuses over the years had led me into many new adventures and techniques I had never considered before. So rather than start a project and then get input that changes my direction, I thought I would try doing it up front before I start.
Just about this time every year I look around my shop at all the oddities I have collected and try to decide what I can make from them that is saleable. Sometimes it's for the sale, sometimes it's just to use them up and get rid of them (a quick cheap sale).
SO to start this off, I have two subject items. The first is a plain old cookie:



 

This is a Maple cookie measuring about 15 x 18 x 3" thick. I need to run it on the slabmizer to flatten it a bit, but it is not split. I did start doing crack fills with left over epoxy from other jobs, but I knew I would do that anyway. I had thought of a clock in the middle of a big epoxy pour, but man, that is going to be a lot of epoxy to fill that hole! I am wondering if anyone has other ideas?

The second item is routine, a set of sewing machine legs:


 

The difference for me on these legs is that they have the treadle which functions like new. Yes, I will put a nice top on it, probably ERC, but I am wondering if there is something I can do to use that treadle? perhaps something that would amuse children at Grandma's house? I thought of a little generator with a light, but that would get boring pretty quick. I think this group would come up with something just bordering on whacky, or cute, or off the wall, or downright neat.

So I am calling out all the 'alternative thinking folks" (which is just about everybody here) and I will name a few like @doc henderson  @Larry , @WV Sawmiller , @tule peak timber , @Trimguy , @CustonSawyer , @YellowHammer , @Southside and anybody else I didn't think of off the top of my head to be named later.
Please help me figure out what to make from this stuff. Please.

[Southside]

A treadle powered cream separator comes to mind. The hand crank ones had a bell that only rang when you had the handle spinning fast enough.  Maybe something along that line?

[Wlmedley]

I wonder if a small wood lathe could be ran with that treadle.I've saw some ran with a piece of rope ran around the wood being turned and looped around the operators feet so the treadle would have to be a big improvement over that.

[WV Sawmiller]

Tom,

   I still have 2 of those frames to use for something. One still has a stiff but working treadle.

   Maybe you can hook the treadle to a lazy Susan in the middle of the table top and use the foot pedal to rotate the Lazy Susan. :D

    I see great things from the cookie but it requires skill and experience with epoxy that I don't have. (Maybe the cookie will be the Lazy Susan ;)).

[Nebraska]

That cookie with some black walnut legs or carved willow would make a neat 3 legged stool. Kind of thick for a clock face. A fair bit of epoxy will be used either way. A Custom swivel seat for one of those deluxe mushroom inoculating tables.  What were they called... the "sporminator" or some such name. 

[fluidpowerpro]

Mount a big truck brake drum on top and run a blower with the treadel to make a coal forge. With all of the new Forged in Fire blacksmiths out there someone will buy it.

[twar]

Use the cookie as a tabletop. Put a round-cut piece of hardened glass that extends slightly beyond the cookie edges to "close" the hole. Maybe the glass can rest on discreetly placed rubber "bumpers", pads, suction cups etc. to stabilize it. Just brainstorming here...

[doc henderson]

Fred Flintstone needs a spare tire, and a motor upgrade with the treadle.  i will have to think a bit more.

[trimguy]

For the cookie, put it on the mill and cut 1" off for the clock and use the 2" for a stool, small table.

[trimguy]

You could also put a mirror in the 1" piece instead of a clock.

[customsawyer]

With the sewing machine base you could always put a sewing machine on it. ;D  Don't y'all have some apple orchards up that way? You could put one of those spinning apple peeler type of things on it. This would allow the user to have both hands free to handle the apples.
Don't have much yet for the cookie that others haven't already said.

[Old Greenhorn]

Well, interesting stuff so far. Many of you are thinking of semi-practical things that folks like us would want. I learned a long time ago that nobody in the general public is like 'us'. ;D
I was thinking of something that would be amusing for anybody in today's world. Separating cream for instance has a relatively low demographic appeal, even though I think it's a cool idea.
A lazy susan turning at 25rpm or so is a little scary, but also kind of cool. How would you keep stuff on it though? :D
The mirror idea I have done (have one in my stock now and another in work), but perhaps. I like Arnold's idea of splitting the cookie and may go that way. Two sales for the material of one, kind of like when your stock splits. :D (OK, maybe not quite.)
For the treadle I was trying to come up with something anybody today could grasp. Maybe a USB charger that you could use to teach kids 'device discipline'. i.e. 'You can only use your tablet as long as you charge it with the treadle generator' or something like that.
Or maybe a carousel type thing with little birds on swings that rotates with the treadle and the swings 'swing out' as it goes faster? Something I could have at a show that says 'try me' and would attract kids to pump the peddle and watch it work. That might draw a crowd with parents always following kids around at shows. Also, I would like to have it somewhat removable so that if they want it to be 'just a table' that is not hard to do. Also something within my skills range.
I can hear the wheels spinning out there. Something is going to pop up, I just know it.

[21incher]

A green energy  desk. Put a top on it with a led light.  Hook a small generator to the pedal and you have a green machine worth 10x the investment.  Advertise as a green exercise machine. Maybe  even a cell phone charger or emergency  radio would add to the value  ;D

[Stephen1]

I'm not on the list..but....cut 1" off the cookie, put your picture in the hole and give it to your wife for Christmas, she can hang it on the wall and look at you all day long while your out and about. 8) 8) 8) 8) 8)

[dougtrr2]

For the cookie I would use it to display something.  Either permanently under a glass top, or encased in clear epoxy.

For the treadle, I think you could adapt it to one of those hand cranked marble races


Doug in SW IA

[WV Sawmiller]

    That reminds me that after leaving Jake's place last April we went to see my Aunt in Lake City Fla and on the way back home we stopped at the Stephen Foster Memorial at a Fla State Park there along the Suwannee River. One of the songs Steven Foster wrote appears to have been Camptown Races and they had a big display with little model horses and riders on a track. You'd push a button and the song would play and he horses and jockeys would run around the track.

    Maybe you could build something like that hooked to the pedal and the horses could run around the track. Either that or use a toy dinosaur chasing a scientist with a Jurassic Park theme and the faster you pedal the faster they both run around a track. :D

[Hilltop366]

I was thinking of a merry-go round for the sewing machine, incorporate a music box movement and tiny lights with generator.

[Big_eddy]

The maple cookie looks to be tap-hole maple, with the various stains and holes from old taps. If it were me, I would take that nice big hole in the middle and enlarge / reshape it into a large maple leaf shape. You are already almost there - it just needs a couple more lobes added. Then turn it into a display case with a dark (or maple leaf red) backing, and a glass top secured with a few strategically placed fasteners.

Then when you go to sell it, tell the story of the tap-hole staining. I have found that once a potential customer hears the story and understands what caused those patterns, they just "have to have it".

[Big_eddy]

Or then slice it into 3 thinner cookies and make 3 maple leaf clocks to hang on the sugar house wall. Use an old auger bit for the minute hand, and a newer tapping drill for the hour hand. Stick and old tap or two in the hole before filling with epoxy.

[Larry]

The sewing machine peddle could turn a crankshaft below the table.  Affixed to the crankshaft lobes would be rods that pop up through the top.  On the end of each rod above the table have something like maybe animals.  Bugs bunny on one rod and maybe a hunter on another rod.  Sounds like lots of work....

Turn the cookie into wall art.  In the center maybe a picture of me, no that would be too scary.

[doc henderson]

Larry, maybe your face could pop up like the rest of the animals!   :D :D :D

[Hilltop366]

Miniature train set under a glass top that runs when you operate the generator.

[Old Greenhorn]

Well, I think the juices are flowing better now and I like some of these ideas. Many are a bit beyond me but would be really cool to see.
Now I am wondering about just doing a fan, something with wood blades, but I would have to get the pulley ratios right so it doesn't spin like an egg beater. ;D
Still thinking, if something else comes to mind from the above ideas.
BTW, that cookie is not from a tap hole tree, it is red maple and never had a tap. The cookie in the photo was butt trim from right above the stump.

[YellowHammer]

Sorry it took so long to chime in, I really liked the cookie a lot, but couldn't figure out how match things together with the sewing machine.  Had to sleep on it a little, but then bang, I had it. 

Now I know what I would do, Martha is a big recycler for aluminum drink cans, plastic drink bottles, stuff like that.  We even have a recycle bin in the showroom right next to the trash bin for customers to throw their stuff in.   I'm sure you've seen the ones that look like a bin with a round hole cut in the top....

So I would use the sewing machine base, it's a great piece of old rustic history, add a little more something to it to make it a bin, like black wrought iron screen or something, (remember the old school, black wire screen on city park garbage bins?) then work the cookie a little and make it into the top, with a hole in the middle for the recyclables to be thrown in.  An old school, rustic, recycling bin made from a recycled cookie with a big hole in as the top, and and old, recycled, sewing machine base.  It would be a work of art. 

Or mount a bin on the base of the sewing machine and still use the cookie with the hole as the top.  I think I might make one myself!  Too late for Christmas I think, maybe not. 

[WV Sawmiller]

Robert,

   That cookie is too pretty to use for something like that. I think you should be able to find big hollow pine cookie and an old Bear Bryant picture with a big mouth opening over it to put trash recycles into. The quality of recycles may vary between Alabama fans and customers favoring other SEC teams but you should do great things for the environment. ;) :D

[YellowHammer]

I know, we will probably have one too many national championship trophies this year in q few weeks, so we may as well start recycling them or build a bigger trophy building.

[Big_eddy]

Sorry it took so long to chime in, I really liked the cookie a lot, but couldn't figure out how match things together with the sewing machine.  Had to sleep on it a little, but then bang, I had it. 

Now I know what I would do, Martha is a big recycler for aluminum drink cans, plastic drink bottles, stuff like that.  We even have a recycle bin in the showroom right next to the trash bin for customers to throw their stuff in.   I'm sure you've seen the ones that look like a bin with a round hole cut in the top....

So I would use the sewing machine base, it's a great piece of old rustic history, add a little more something to it to make it a bin, like black wrought iron screen or something, (remember the old school, black wire screen on city park garbage bins?) then work the cookie a little and make it into the top, with a hole in the middle for the recyclables to be thrown in.  An old school, rustic, recycling bin made from a recycled cookie with a big hole in as the top, and and old, recycled, sewing machine base.  It would be a work of art. 

Or mount a bin on the base of the sewing machine and still use the cookie with the hole as the top.  I think I might make one myself!  Too late for Christmas I think, maybe not.

And use the treadle to operate a can crusher to compress things on the way down

[Old Greenhorn]

I thought of the can crusher idea when I was reading YH's post, but in this state you can't get your nickel back on crushed cans. >:( So that would be a show stopper. Back when I had my machine shop in the last century we were contracted to build a pair of machines to crush industrial diamonds. It was a fun (and very weird) project. When I had the first one running of course I had no diamonds to test it, so I rigged it with a spacer block and crushed a couple of beer cans. I could make them .025 thick. :D :D But that is another story.

I never intended to use the cookie with the sewing legs. I thought of them as two different questions and hopefully two different sales will result.

Frankly I like the ideas, but when I look in the bottom of what ever I use to collect beer, juice, and soda soda cans out in the shop or at a party, it's kind of ugly and doesn't smell very nice. So with respect, I think I will steer away from the recycling ideas. ;D I did like the train under glass, but I don't have the smarts to pull that off, or the train set, and the final sale price would be fairly high, I think.

I ponder these things for a while before I start so if y'all think of something, keep the ideas coming. I have other jobs to do before I start on these.

In a previous life when I was a design engineer and we would get a new client come in with a concept he/she wanted us to make we would get all our guys in a room covered with whiteboards and spitball ideas for hours trying to find the best way to start on a solution we could present to the client. Although I don't miss the pressure of that job I do miss those sessions where anything was fair game for discussion, nothing was stupid, and off the wall ideas lead to some pretty innovative final designs that none of us had thought of going into it. Ture collaboration is beautiful when it actually happens. So I am hoping you guys can help get my juices flowing.

[YellowHammer]

When you said "spitball" it triggered (pun intended) another idea.   I'm looking for a custom rifle, any way you could turn it into one of those? :D :D 

The "OG Mark V" has kind of a ring to it. 

[21incher]

I got it for the cookie.  Fill it with yellow epoxy to look like the sun, then make a sliding cover that looks like the moon and call it an eclipse tracker.  One of those crazy people from around the world coming to NY in 2024 to witness the total eclipse may have a couple extra SGUs to take home a unique souvenir.

[Don P]

I try to keep an eye out for good hollow logs and its usually a red maple, there's sort of a standing order. I've never charged but I heard of one fellow who was charging enough to make me blow coffee out my nose. It's more performance art I guess  :D.



 

[WV Sawmiller]

Don,

   That hollow stump triggers all kind of thoughts. It is neat for a fire but that is a one time use. If you use LED lighting you can use that over and over. I'm thinking to place them along less well traveled areas with neat faces carved in them like in the photo. Hook up appropriate lights and a sound system to a motion sensor and when an unwary trespasser gets within range it lights up and yells and such and use them as a security system. :D

[Brad_bb]

I like Robert's idea of the recycle bin.  I think the wire mesh he was referring to looked like this:


 

I purchased some of this type of wire mesh from a local company Indiana wire products, for a project I haven't finished yet.

I had another idea.  I've always loved the old neon spinner clocks.  Problem is they go for a lot of money.  But a wooden spinner clock?

@Don P   Thomas Cundiff calls those Stumpkins.  I used to see him post burning those a lot.  Maybe that's who you saw? His user name is Stumpkin here on the forum, though I haven't seen him post in a long time.  I am facebook friends with him so he is still out doing his thing.

[Don P]

Yup, I think his avatar was a stumpkin with the house plans rolled up like a cigarette in its mouth  :D.
I've also though about standing a hollow log up like that and vertically opening up about 120 degrees or so of it and installing shelves, a curio cabinet.

[Old Greenhorn]

Well for hollow logs,  This is what you want to make: https://gary-mead.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/mother-and-child-pantry_01-1600x2400.jpg  My friend Gary made two of these I think the one in the photo sold for around $22K. He had a lot of hours into it. Took him a few years to part with it. Turned down a huge offer from a Chinese buyer and wound up selling it to some one abut 5 miles from his shop who actually owned the property where the tree was cut. But that's not the kind of work anybody can do. ;D

As for the recycle bin idea, you guys can knock yourselves out making your own, it's just not in the cards for me. :D Sorry, it's a failure on my part I know, but I just can't wrap my brain around that being appealing to somebody at a craft show or otherwise. That doesn't mean I will stop thinking about it or considering it, just that I won't do it with this piece.

I had a cute little 6 year old girl in the shop yesterday and she saw that cookie and asked what I was going to make with it. I asked her what SHE thought I should make with it because I don't know. She thought about it and came up with 'a mirror' but I told her I have already done that and was looking for another idea. She said she 'will get back to me'. :D She will turn 7 tomorrow, so maybe she will have a better idea when she is older. ;D

[Old Greenhorn]

Well I have a new challenge here. I have a friend  who is in the final days and weeks of his life fighting the end stages of cancer. They only thing I can do is go and visit with him every few days and talk about 'stuff'. Not only am I happy to do it, but it's something of an honor for me. However the one thing I dread is that each time I visit he tried to give me something of his. This makes me feel very awkward because I just want to be a friend and I really don't want him to think that he should give me something. Most times I can talk him out of whatever he had on his mind but this last visit he insisted I take this board he has been carrying around for decades. He used to rebuild very old homes as his major income source, working on many for a year or more. This board was one of many floorboards he removed from a 300+ year old home that the owner wanted replaced with hardwood. He used some of the boards in other jobs, but a couple he saved. He tells me this came out of the oldest home in Orange County NY which has plenty of these homes. In my town we have homes going back to the 1650's, so it's not unusual.
 This is about 5' long by 21" or so wide by 7/8 thick. He wants me to make something nice out of it.



It does have defects in the good face, either heavy wear of bug holes.



The back side is rough sawn and I am pretty certain it was milled on a sash saw, which would fit the period quite well. You can see the marks on this knot:



He tells me this is yellow pine, which is unusual in this area toady, but back at that time may have been common. We are at the top of the range for that species. I never see one in the woods and nobody around here that I know has any.

 This will sit for a while whilst I ponder it, but I did want to do something special, perhaps outside my comfort zone. I will have to search around and see if I can find some more of the same species. I would like to leave the top largely untouched, finish and all. The edges are T&G but pretty rough. Also I think I will leave the bottom as rough cut. One of the ideas that I had was to make a Hudson Valley Trestle Table, which I found in an old book I bought on early American Furniture back in the 70's. It seems that I might pull that off if I work with care and take a lot of time. It won't take a lot of material, but I do want to find Yellow pine, just because.

 I wonder if folks have thoughts on how I might treat that top, or not, whether there is something better I can make from this, or any other thoughts or ideas. I had in mind to write up a piece with the history and features seen on the wood and laminate it to the bottom, so it travels with it. Thoughts on that?

 I have lots of time on this and I'd like to do it right.

[doc henderson]

first, "good on you" as my great-uncle used to say.  second, I think a table would be great.  third, the amount of defects/history you leave showing is a matter of art and taste.  fourth, the most expert person I can think of is Rob, the WOC @tule peak timber.  In the end you will pick a spot on the continuum from pristine to rustic. fifth, if you write it (the history) up, I would be happy to laser engrave it on a thin piece of wood to glue or affix to the bottom side of the table.  sixth, in the end this piece as is only has value to you and him, in your minds and souls.  It will otherwise go into a dumpster when they clean the apartment.  seventh, it might be preserved as is with epoxy, thin and waxed, not the thick bar top stuff.  eighth, does he recall the address or location of the house?  ninth, I was hoping to get to ten.  Ten, I am done.

[Hilltop366]

I'm thinking that a different material than wood for a table base would be better at highlighting the top, so I guess for me metal is the the most likely.

A good cleaning and a finish that did not look like a finish and preserved the original look and colour maybe wax?

Sorry to hear about your friend.

 

[beenthere]

OGH
Accept his gift to you and be gracious. It's his way of getting rid of things that he wants to, before he passes. Doubt he is asking for anything in return. 
Good on you to accept his things. If nothing else, it will heat the shop for a short time and you can thank your friend for his heat and thoughtfulness. 

[Don P]

I'm not there to say for sure but that looks more like EWP to me which if so should make it easier to find more matching stock.

[Old Greenhorn]

Beenthere, there is no way I am making that board into BTU's. That would be a poor thing to do. That's not how I would honor a gift from a friend. If I don't find a use, it will hang around or on the wall and I will think of him often.
 
 Don, you may be right. The fuzz on the rough cut surface seems to indicate EWP to me also. But my friend was adamant about yellow pine. It will be a topic of conversation on my next visit, as well as more about the particular house it came from.
 Since this plank is only 7/8" thick I was thinking a trestle table with the support on the full width plus the rib down the center of the top would keep this thing pretty rigid. I could possibly scribe the cross supports to follow the slight cup in the board, then I would not have to plane it. I really don't want to remove the finish or even the rough cut on the bottom. If I cut it to trim I wll get a better look at the actual wood and perhaps know better. EWP is as common as dirt around here. I have 100 saplings along my short driveway alone.

[beenthere]

Beenthere, there is no way I am making that board into BTU's.

Wasn't saying you have to do that, nor might do that. But in the end, it wouldn't go to waste like it might if you don't accept it and someone cleaning house throws it in the dumpster. 

[Old Greenhorn]

Yeah, I get it. In fact, he has another that is hanging on a wall about 8' long and I wonder what it's destiny might be.

[thecfarm]

He knows you will do something with it. 

[Don P]

A simple sideboard/huntboard/serving table?

[21incher]

A kingsized headboard with the history engraved on the backside.   Easy SGU on Facebook