Adam's Side Quests

I’ve always been a lifelong learner, which means I’m constantly diving into new and sometimes unexpected hobbies. Whether it’s teaching myself computer programming to build a steel analysis tool for class, exploring computer networking to set up a network-wide ad blocker, creating a private home movie streaming service, modeling 3D parts for a friend’s printer, or even handcrafting cutting boards as Christmas gifts for my family—I love taking on new challenges and turning curiosity into projects. This space is a collection of those explorations, and I’m excited to share them with you. Feel free to look around, and don’t hesitate to reach out if you have any questions or just want to connect! 

Project 6: Tailgate bench. 

July 2025

For nearly as long as I can remember, my grandpa always had a '36 dodge pickup truck in his garage. For 25 years he was "almost done" restoring it, and he unfortunately never got around to finishing that last step (whatever it was). When he passed, his friend agreed to take the truck and finish it up in his honor. However, this truck was a part of my grandpa's identity and garage for so long, we just couldn't let it go without taking something to remember it by. 

It's time for a bit of a confession (sorry Ricky Miller): we stole the tailgate off of the back with the intention of turning it into a bench. My mom recently watched a TikTok where someone had done just that and made the split decision call to hide it before the truck was hauled off. I'm glad she did, because the bench that we were able to make was the perfect homage. 

We debated on what to make it out of, since a lot of the benches online just use dimensional lumber. I personally think that dimensional lumber looks like salmon and is hard to finish. I wanted the bench to look not like salmon, so I decided to use red oak. I thought the red hue in the oak would look good with the rusty tailgate, and it really does. 

As with any wood, red oak can be costly. To cut back on the costs without compromising quality or aesthetics, I built the underlying structure out of 2x4s and covered it with 1/8" red oak veneers. The posts and the seat are made from solid oak, but the slats that run underneath the seat and behind the tailgate are all dimensional lumber. 

The most astute of you may realize that this bench 1) has no arms and 2) is not finished. Thank you for pointing that out! I almost forgot.

I actually just ran out of time on the weekend that I was in Wichita to build it and haven't been able to get back out to the garage to finish. The next steps are cutting the arms out of a thicker red oak piece and playing around with some different finishing options. The bench is for my grandma, so she ultimately gets the final say on what finish I am going to use.

Check back soon to see how it finishes up! 

Project 5: Leather belt. 

July 2025

I want to take you on a journey. A journey into my brain and how I end up picking up yet another new hobby. This one started in early spring when I wanted to get better at chess. My little cousin, who has a ridiculous memory and is very intelligent was starting to learn how to play. In the past, he was into memorizing country flags, and after trying to compete with him, I realized I was outclassed by a 5 year old. Honestly, my ego couldn't take another hit, so just in case he ever challenged me to a game, I decided I needed to up my own. I downloaded Duolingo and was off to the races. In case you didn't know, Duolingo offers chess lessons which are really helpful. I really got into it for a while and even started playing on Chess.com. 

In my momentary obsession, I started to look at purchasing a nice chess board. I always tell people that my biggest red flag is that I can look at something and truly believe that I could make it myself. Naturally, I decided I was going to make a chess board and turn the pieces. After spending the time picking out what woods I thought would look best and designing some cool looking chess pieces, I saw it. It was amazing. It was a leather travel chess set that had magnetic pieces. I hate travel chess sets because the pieces always fall over, which defeats the purpose of playing chess on the road. That day my red flag was flying high, because instead of buying the $100 chess set, I decided to spend nearly $200 in leather and leather making supplies to do it myself. 

While I may be a bit overconfident in my abilities, I do also acknowledge that there is a learning curve and need to start simple (they do say that humility is my third best trait after 1) good looks, and 2) great humor). I distinctly remember my fiancé complaining to me one time about how her belt does not work with her high waisted jeans, since the holes are sized for low waisted jeans. Naturally, I decided to make her a brand new belt! It was pretty simple to pull off. A few saddle stitches here, a few holes poked there, and voila a brand new belt. Yes, it actually fits her, and yes, she wears it. 

All in all, I am glad that I picked this hobby up. It is a nice change of pace from woodworking, and it will eventually come in handy when I inevitably get into furniture making. I have always had dreams of designing and building the perfect chair. Actually, now that I am writing this, I just realized that I never ended up playing a single game of chess against my cousin! 

Project 4: Butcher block leg. 

June 2025

After showing literally anyone and everyone my bowls and vase that I turned, I had a coworker approach me and ask me if I thought I could turn a table leg. I thought it was a weird question, but I said I definitely could, and the next day he brought me a leg off of an old butcher block to recreate. When he gained possession of the butcher block, there were only three of the four legs present. That's where I came in. 

Honestly, I thought the leg was going to be easy to turn, given how complex the wooden vase turned out to be. I was wrong. The leg actually ended up being the hardest thing I have turned to date. This was for a number of reasons, the primary three of which being the wood type, the size of the leg, and  the finish. 

First and foremost, I had no idea what kind of wood the original was made out of. I did a ton of research and found out that old butchers blocks were commonly made from hard maple or beech. After doing hours of googling of grain patterns, I ultimately made the call that it was most likely hard maple. To double check, I took the piece into Rockler and asked one of the workers there what he thought. Without googling or spending hours looking at grain patterns, he immediately said that it was probably hard maple. I couldn't help at laugh at how much time I would have saved by just asking for help.  

Now that I had a wood identified, I needed to purchase and make the blank. The leg was cut and turned from a single piece of 4x4 hard maple. For those who are unaware, a 4x4 hard maple turning blank costs almost as much as a 3 bedroom house. That left me with a dilemma, do I buy the solid wood piece to make the new leg as authentic as possible, or do I glue up a few pieces to get to the desired thickness but have a seam that could be unsightly and inauthentic. I quickly decided that instead of taking out a loan to purchase the wood, I was going to do a glue up. At the right angle, it would honestly just look like one piece of wood anyways. 

Lastly, I had to decide how to finish the leg to match it as close as possible to the other leg. This was particularly challenging, since maple tends to yellow over time. After learning my lesson, I took another trip to Rockler (this blog is starting to feel like an advertisement for Rockler #notsponsored) to ask what they would recommend, and they gave me some really good advice regarding finishing. After some experimentation I was able to match the color pretty close, and I was ready to start turning. 

Turning the piece was difficult due to its length. It was hard to center it correctly on the lathe and it ended up vibrating quite violently at the required spindle speeds. It was an iterative process to figure out the sweet spot, but once I hit it there was only minimal vibrations. The next challenge came in the process of copying the curves and intricate details of the existing leg. To make sure everything matched, I made marks on the blank to identify where I needed to keep square and where needed to be turned round. After that, it was just a slow and careful process, with lots of stops, to copy the existing leg to the blank. Just to note, I did all of the copying by hand and by eye, and I could not be more proud of how it turned out. Below is a picture of the existing leg with the blank while it was on the lathe. Also pictured below is the finished product next to the original. In that picture you can see why I was hesitant about gluing the two pieces together, since there are two distinct color regions. That is unfortunately just a product of making it out of two pieces. All in all, the coworker was super happy with how it turned out, and he eventually was able to sell the butchers block - even with a new leg! 

Project 3: Wood bowls. 

February 2025 - May 2025

Turning wood bowls was the last project that I was able to do with my Grandpa before he passed away in May. After many months of chemo and recovering from a full Whipple procedure, all he wanted to do was turn bowls and vases on his homemade lathe. Somehow through all of the sick days and the recovery process, he managed to strap a treadmill motor to an old lathe body he had in his garage, convert 120AC power to the 12V DC power that the treadmill needed, and then attach a dimmer switch mechanism to control the speed of the lathe. A picture of the Franken-lathe is directly below: 

After only one minor explosion - not kidding - the lathe did eventually work, but neither of us knew how to use it to actually turn something. We tried to do it once and the bit we used got snagged and flew across the garage (his garage is OSHA's worst nightmare), so we both decided to take a class at Rockler (the wood working store) over in Olathe. In the meantime, his cancer had unfortunately started to spread to his liver, so he started back on a more aggressive chemo. The morning that we were supposed to do the class, his blood sugar dropped to dangerously low levels. Instead of going to the doctor, or taking it easy, he just ate some sugary sweets and told everyone he was fine, because he was not going to miss this bowl turning class. At this point, we were all going to do everything in our power to make sure he made it to that class so, my family packed up in the car (with a ton of snacks) and drove the 2 hours from Wichita to Olathe to get him to that class on time. 

We spent nearly four hours turning our first bowls. It was a super fun class, however I spent the whole time worrying that he was going to have a hypoglycemic episode - in hindsight he was fine, but at the time I was horrified. In the end, our bowls (mine pictured below) turned out amazing, and now we were equipped with just enough knowledge to try it at home. 

The first thing that we made at home was with some maple and padauk that we had laying around. It ended up being some form of pen-holder thing that is now being used to hold candy. What we were most surprised about was how beautiful the padauk turned out when putting on the glossy finish. It almost glowed the red was so vibrant. Turning it at home, we learned two important things: you have to go slow or you'll end up with end grain tear out, and that end grain tear out is a real pain to fix.

At this point, we were both over confident to the point where we thought we could just move on to segmented vases. Also at this point, the chemo was really starting to take its toll, and working out in the garage was getting tough for him. The writing was on the wall, so I knew that this segmented vase might be one of, if not the last, thing we would probably be able to do together. With that, I began ASAP on getting this vase made. 

For those of you who are not familiar with how segmented vases are made, they are essentially a stack of wooden rings that are glued together to make a rough version of the final product. Then, the stack of rings is turned down on the lathe until it's a smooth, beautiful vase. Making the rings involves cutting and gluing 12 or 24 wedges together. The angle that these wedges make is critical to get correct, or else you will end up with gaps like what is pictured below. 

Part of the reason I mention this is so the next part of the story has some context. When I was working on fine tuning the jig that he made (while on a very aggressive chemotherapy - never fails to impress me), I found out the hard way why table saw kickbacks are so scary and dangerous. When cutting the wedges, it is critical that you move them away from the blade before moving the jig back to cut the next piece. If you don't, the piece will catch the blade and get rocketed right at your face, resulting in an injury similar to the one pictured below: 

When the piece of wood hit my face, my Grandpa was sitting in his chair out in the garage. He heard my gasp of shock and asked if everything was okay, since he couldn't see me directly. I know that he is squeamish about blood and was already weak from the chemo, so I told him I was fine and was just going to run inside to see if it was bad or not. I kept my cool until I got to the door, and as soon as I walked outside I let a few choice phrases regarding the saw fly out (not going to be sharing those on the blog). Then, after regaining my composure, I walked inside and checked my face in the mirror and upon realizing it was not as bad as it could have been, took the largest sigh of relief that I had ever taken. While I was inside cleaning up my scrape, my grandpa, who didn't hear me say I was alright, started to think that I, like him, was squeamish and passed out. Luckily, once he got up and saw I was gone, he sat back down and later told me he was just glad I didn't get blood on his good wood.

The most important thing that I learned from having that happen is that it can happen to anyone. Never in any of my years using table saws, chop saws, angle grinders, or any other tool had I had something like that happen. After a while, you begin to think that it won't ever happen and start to get complacent, and that's when it happens. I am so thankful that the piece really only scraped my face - there was no real cut or bruising, and it could have been a LOT worse. I now wear a face shield (sorry OSHA, I am a bit behind the curve) when cutting wood - in general - because I do not want something like that to happen ever again. Most importantly, I give each tool I use the respect it deserves, because things like this can and do happen to anyone. 

After a few weeks of school, and working up the courage to face the saws again, I finally had a free weekend to get back out in the garage and finish that vase. Unfortunately, during the week prior, him and his body had had enough of the chemo, and he decided it was time to for hospice. Luckily for him, he was healthy enough (kind of an oxymoron) to do home hospice. I dropped everything to get down to Wichita to see him and my family, and the first thing he said to me was that I better get working on that vase because he wanted to see it before anything bad happened (he did always have a dark sense of humor). So naturally, I got to work. Over the next two weekends, I balanced spending time with him and spending time out in the garage to finish the vase, so he could see it. My family also could see how important it was to get this vase finished, and they did everything in their power to help get it done. At one point we had an assembly line going to cut, sand, and glue the wedges together to make the rings. I couldn't be more thankful that they were willing to help, because I honestly couldn't have done it without them. 

Even though he wasn't in the garage with me, he was involved in every step of the process, and I made sure he got to see the vase as it came together. As I began to near completion (the pictures below show approximately where I was at in the process), disaster struck. I was getting it close to its final shape, and the bit snagged.

It broke. 

The vase broke. 

This vase, which was more than just another project, more than another "side quest" broke. It broke into two pieces, and I don't have time to make a new one. At least he got to see what it was going to look like. 

No. 

I refuse. I refuse to walk away from this until he sees this vase in its final form. 

This was what ran through my mind while I sat in defeat, staring at the two pieces in front of me. I refused to let that be the end of the story. I couldn't walk away until I had tried everything in my power to fix it. I took a second to calm down, locked in, and began brainstorming. What had happened was that I had turned the bowl too thin at one section. When it snagged on the bit, which happens occasionally, the bowl broke in two. Staring at the pieces, the solution hit me like a freight train. If the section was too thin, I was going to thicken it! Thickening the section would give it the support it needed and would also rejoin the pieces. Not only that, but with enough wood and glue this vase could survive a tornado, earthquake, or both at the same time. I quickly got to work cutting and gluing the pieces together, working well into the night. Once everything was glued up, I left the garage and could only hope I was right. 

The next morning - my last one in town. I walked over to the bowl, picked it up, and both halves moved as one. SUCCESS! We were back in business and ready to finish this thing off. I was very, very, very, very careful to go slow and take my time with this. I didn't have any room to mess up. After a few grueling hours of fine work, the bowl was turned down to its final form and ready for sanding. 

They say that woodworking is 20% cutting and gluing and 80% sanding. I completely agree with this sentiment. Sanding takes forever to do correctly. You spend a lot of time going over and over the piece, taking it down to its final form. While doing this, its easy to let your brain wander. While sanding the bowl, my brain wandered and finally came to the realization that this was it. I couldn't distract myself anymore. I had to finally face reality, and it was one of the hardest things I have ever had to do. Finishing the sanding and putting on the finish was bittersweet. It was a long journey to get to that point. One that I literally put my blood, sweat, and tears into. I was proud of how it turned out, and I was proud to walk upstairs and show him what we were able to accomplish. At the same time though, I had to face my fears and reality and walk up those stairs knowing it would be the last time. The look on his face when he saw the finished product washed all my fears away, making the entire journey worth every step. 

That was the last time I got to see him, and I wouldn't change a thing. You never know when your last project with someone will be, so never say no. Never turn down an opportunity to spend time with someone close to you. You'll be grateful you did! 

Also, cancer sucks! 

Project 2: Cutting boards! (I'm going for an Alien -> Aliens thing with the sequel to "cutting board") 

November 2023

After seeing my cutting board, my entire family wanted ones of their own! In particular, my fiancé's mom and two aunts wanted me to make them ones for Christmas. So... I called up my grandpa and asked if I could borrow his shop and expertise once again, but this time, for three cutting boards instead of one. We both agreed that the pen blanks were a terrible idea for cutting boards going forward, and we decided to use walnut and maple lumber instead. The process was mostly the same as with the first cutting board, except for the hours spent sanding and squaring individual pen blanks. After gluing the strips together, sanding them, cutting the new boards into strips, then gluing those together, we had ourselves three good looking cutting boards. We decided to add routered hand holds to these boards, which I believe added a really nice touch. Just as with the last board, I am really proud of how these ones turned out! 

In case you were wondering, my Fiancé's family loved the boards and were really happy with their gifts! 

Project 1: Cutting board! 

August 2023

I first got the idea to make a cutting board when I sat down to eat dinner one night, and an interesting video popped up in my YouTube recommended.  It was a simple video about how to make an end grain cutting board. I watched the whole thing, without skipping (except for the ads) a beat, and I proceeded to spend the whole night watching videos about making cutting boards. This continued for nearly a week before I finally decided to do it myself. I called my grandpa, who has a small woodshop of his own, to see if I could come down and 1) use his shop and 2) use his expertise to make a cutting board. He was glad to help, so I went to the local wood shop and bought 22 pen blanks. Pen blanks are small 1x1x12-in. pieces of wood that are meant to be turned on a lathe, not turned into a cutting board; they are not actually 1x1x12-in. and in reality, come in many shapes and sizes. It took us some serious work to square up all 22 of the blanks and make sure that they were the same size. Luckily, we managed to pull it off and make the first set of boards which are pictured below. 

We then squared everything up, cut them into strips, then put together the final board, ensuring that we alternated the colors to give it the checker pattern effect. I want to take a second to comment on the two strips of purple heart that got thrown into the mix. I know that they don't really match the aesthetic of the board, but I paid for them, so they were going to go into the board regardless. After some sanding, routing, and more sanding, we made what turned out to be a pretty good looking cutting board. I was definitely proud of it, and it was a fun opportunity to get to work with and spend time with my grandpa.