Nothing In It – Being the new blog of Elliott C. "Eeyore" Evans.

Monitor Booster

Posted on 2025.09.12 by Elliott Evans

Here’s a silly little quick project that barely even rates a blog post, but here it is anyway. So I have this external monitor that I used to use for work back when I worked from home. You can see in the photo that if I have the tablet in its charging stand, it blocks the lower-right corner of the monitor. The monitor’s stand is not height-adjustable. I only needed to boost the monitor up by like 1.25″ to get it above the edge of the tablet.

Luckily, regular “l by” lumber is 3/4″ thick, so stacking two layers would get me 1.5″ of boost. I still had some of the same cherry-stain pine shelving that I made the little desk hutch out of, so it was just a mater of cutting one piece the same size as the footprint of the monitor stand, and making four little feet. The whole thing is just glued together, and I put some cork pads on the feet to make it just a little nicer.

Enjoy the reflection of my messy studio.

Crate for a Single Sawhorse

Posted on 2025.09.11 by Elliott Evans

So last year I made a crate to hold the pieces for two sawhorses. The only problem with that project is that a crate big enough to hold all the pieces for two sawhorses plus all the pieces for two sawhorses is quite heavy and two sawhorses is not enough sawhorses for most work. I usually like to have at least three sawhorses, that’s why I made four sawhorses. Anyway, I decided to make a crate that would be somewhat smaller, and would be sized to only hold the pieces for one sawhorse. I started this a while back, but only just put the final touches on it.

I started with a couple of pine 1-by-8s, cut all the corner joinery by hand, ripped the surplus lumber into slats for the bottom, then assembled the crate with some nice copper nails I found at Rollier’s. I wound up cutting the holes for the handles using a jigsaw, because cutting those by hand with a keyhole saw is very annoying. I used more of the palm rope from Hida Tools.

The crate is actually spacious enough that if you’re willing to overfill it, you can carry all the pieces for two sawhorses. If you use it along side the other crate, you can distribute the different shapes between the crates such that the two crates hold all the pieces for four sawhorses without overfilling.

Anyway, with these two crates I feel like I have fulfilled all my needs for sawhorse storage and transport. The crates also serve as valuable supports for tool chests, and holders for surplus lumber while the sawhorses are in use.

Phone / Tablet Stand

Posted on 2025.09.10 by Elliott Evans

For a short period of time (ten weeks) I worked for a local Pittsburgh company with an office up in Cranberry. This was the first company I’ve ever worked for that handed me a smartphone on day 1 and said, “We don’t have desk phones any more. This is your phone.” I have worked for companies that did voice-over-IP through your computer, and I have worked for companies that just did calls through Teams, but never a mobile phone.

Consequently, this was the first job I ever had where I was sitting at my desk with two phones to keep track of. I have made a couple of wooden phone stands before, but never one wide enough to hold more than one phone at a time.

That’s all it is. I had a chunk of some kind of tropical lumber, and I cut it to shape. There’ a little bit of oil finish. Here’s how it looks with my personal phone and a small 8″ tablet.

It’s totally wide enough to support two or maybe three phones or one extra-large tablet. No, it’s not possible to charge the device if the USB port is at the bottom, but I don’t buy devices that are that power-hungry anyway.

I don’t have that job any more (My only regret is ever taking the job in the first place.), but I took my swanky stand with me when I left.

Violet Silk Kosode

Posted on 2025.09.09 by Elliott Evans

Last summer we were out in Rockaway for a niece’s wedding, and realized two things: we were probably close enough to Brooklyn that we could probably find a few bottles of Brooklyn Gin, and we were probably close enough to the fashion district that we could probably find a good fabric store. It turns out we were right on both counts! The fabric store had a lot of great silks, and I got some shiny violet silk that I knew would make a very fancy kosode.

This was great to sew. I have not worked with this kind of silk in many years, since I made the Gray Silk Kosode in 2006. I had a really hard time with it back then, and it was nice to see that my fabric handling ability and sewing skills have improved considerably over time.

I have also enjoyed drinking the gin. Mmm, gin.

Japanese “Travel Coat”

Posted on 2025.09.08 by Elliott Evans

I was watching the thoroughly inappropriate cut of the 2010 ridiculously entertaining Japanese action movie, “13 Assassins“, and while on the road, everybody had these great travel outfits. We go to a fair percentage of events where the event is primarily outdoors, and the weather turns out to be terrible. I figured that something like what they were wearing, only made to be waterproof and super-warm would be about the right thing to have in my wardrobe. Hence, the travel coat.

I made mine out of cotton canvas. It’s huge, with 18″-wide panels so it will fit over just about anything else I am likely to wear. I tried treating the canvas with kakishibu (fermented persimmon juice) to waterproof it, but it turns out you need many many coats of kakishibu to waterproof fabric, so I eventually sprayed it with a couple cans of waterproofing spray.

I lined the coat with poly-fleece fabric. Combined with the water resistant and windproof shell fabric, this is basically a bedspread with sleeves. I have not tried it in a driving snowstorm or downpour, but there was one damp, chilly night at Pennsic where I was awfully glad to have this with me.

Small Cooler Karabitsu

Posted on 2025.09.052025.09.05 by Elliott Evans

Sweetie ordered some frozen food from someplace, and it arrived packed in a small cooler. I had the bright idea to make a small karabitsu to hold/hide the cooler, and that was all she needed to hear. I grabbed some 1/2″ pine and some surplus 2×4 for legs, and got to work.

The body of the karabitsu is 13″x10.5″x11″. I used traditional box joints at the corners. The legs are simply glued on, though they do hook under the body to support the floor. The floor is fully captive inside the walls, and nailed in place. The lid is a 3/4″-thick piece of “premium pine”, and it is rebated to fit the body of the box like a box lid.

Here you can see the rebated lid, and how nicely the little cooler fits inside the body. The handle ropes pass through holes in the ends of the body, and the rope does a good job of keeping the cooler in place. The exterior of the karabitsu is finished with clear polyurethane, so if it gets rained on or otherwise splashed with water it should be OK.

This is a nice little cooler that should be good for chilling beverages for an afternoon, or for packing lunch to an event.

New Plant Shelf

Posted on 2025.09.03 by Elliott Evans

I made a few of these “plant shelves” at the old house, but we left most of them behind when we moved. A plant shelf is a shelf that goes in front of the window so that the plants get sunlight, and that has a raised edge of some kind so that the potted plants can’t fall off or get pushed off the shelf by cats.

Sweetie asked me if I’d build a plant shelf for the house we live in, you know, now. Most of the dining room furniture we have is made from cherry wood, so I went up to the Alben Sawmill to buy enough cherry to make this plant shelf. Ray Alben gave me a fantastic deal on a couple of stunning cherry boards, and he threw in a couple bonus boards to sweeten the deal.

After taking way too much time to plane the boards down to 3/4″ (Ray suggested new planer knives. Spoiler: He was right!) I cut the shelf part of the shelf down to size. Then, I cut the other board down into the “railing” pieces, mitered the ends for joining, and cut dadoes into them to hold the shelf part of the shelf. Tape, glue, and boiled linseed oil later, and we had a new plant shelf.

The trick is mounting it to the brackets so that the shelf itself stays away from the venetian blinds. Anyway, I’m really happy with how this came out, and with how easy this project seemed while I was doing it. The first three plant shelves that I made, I guess like 15 years ago at least, were a huge pain and had a couple of problems that I never resolved. The fact that this went smoothly means that I’m actually getting somewhere with all this practice.

Anyway, here’s what it looks like full of plants:

Kaminari Camp Shelves

Posted on 2025.09.02 by Elliott Evans

In our camp each year, there is always a pile of random stuff in one corner of our common pavilion. Things like empty storage boxes, bulk packages of paper towels, and random office supplies. Camp leadership asked me to noodle on the idea of shelves for that corner, so at least things would look a little more organized and not just piled up. I had some ideas, and luckily for me they already worked out!

The lumber I had was three 48″ long stair treads. Stair treads are usually a full inch thick, so they should sag a lot less than the 3/4″ pine I usually use. I drilled holes near the corners of each shelf for the hardware to pass through. The base is cut from 2-by-4, and I added hand-cut half-lap joinery. The uprights are also cut from 2-by-4, and they have lag screws and dowel screws running into their ends to join them through the holes in the shelves and the base. Each upright is 18″, so the total height is about 5 feet tall.

Here is what they look like without picturesque stuff decorating them:

Here is the historical design I was imitating:

The original joinery in the book is shown as a double-shouldered mortise and tenon joint. I was pretty sure that would exceed my current capabilities and definitely deteriorate over time. I figured the hardware route was faster and more solid. It all joins rigidly together. Given that the shelves were a gift, that I only bought about $20 in lumber and $15 in hardware, and that I had all of the finishing materials I needed already, this was a very affordable project.

Duck Hollow Girders

Posted on 2025.09.02 by Elliott Evans

I am “between jobs” right now, which gives me plenty of time for projects, posting about projects, and taking long walks. One side benefit of the long walks is seeing things and taking pictures of them.

Yes, I walked all the way from our home in Point Breeze to Duck Hollow and back. Yes, I still take pictures of the organic reclamation of inorganic objects. Yes, you can download that image as a desktop if you wish.

Small Traditional Japanese Tool Chest

Posted on 2025.09.01 by Elliott Evans

As you know, I have made quite a few Japanese style tool chests over the years, in several different styles. In addition to being useful for toting woodworking tools, they come in very handy when I need to take kumihimo supplies somewhere. If I have a a lot of supplies, a large or medium size chest is good, and if I only need a few small things I can use my little bamboo box. What I felt I was lacking was a box for somewhere in the middle. I had not yet made the Edo suzuribako, so I made this small chest from some half-inch thick cedar.

You can’t really tell the size of that without context, so here it is with a pair of fabric shears.

Overall, the chest is only 12.5″ long, 6.5″ wide, and 5″ tall. That is small enough to fit into the “double height” drawer slot of the small chest of drawers I have not documented because it is still kind of a work in progress.