WoodMarvels Blog

One of the items Zhi Wen bought "online" from WoodMarvels.com in the year 2140

Here is how I would see the typical Chinese citizen living their life in the year 2140. Why Chinese? Because China WILL lead the environmental crusade through this century. They have the brain power (population x education x competition), the will and importantly, don’t live in a democratic country… these billions of people will be pushed into changing their lifestyle fundamentally with little choice but to comply or face severe consequences.

7am: Zhi Wen wakes-up to a flowing symphony of environmental beauty

Paper-like screens cover ALL walls in her home, including doors and windows so she can remodel her place at her whim, no more paint, no more drywall nor wallpaper. The floor is covered with kinetic capture devices that produce energy as people walk around their home due to shifts in body weight.

8am: She gets the kids out of bed

Beds all fold-away into the wall or floor, meaning each room has many different uses depending on time or mood so you can live in a smaller place. People live in ONE large room, reducing the amount of materials required to build a typical dwelling and what is used, comes from natural, fully recycled materials.

9am: She and the kids eat breakfast and take a shower while brushing their teeth

Brushing your teeth in the shower saves energy, there is no need for toothpaste as lasers are used instead of bristles. Shower”water” actually is pressured water droplets which come from recycled water used throughout the house so no shampoo is needed as all the bodies natural odors are water soluble. Breakfast comes from genetically modified plants grown in their own greenhouse that filter the air while growing back a few hours later.

10am: After dropping the kids off at school, Zhi Wen goes to work

All schools are solar powered and for temperature, use geothermal recycling and located no more than a few kilometers from where people live. Communities are built around schools to reduce public transit use or the need for personal transportation. Zhi Wen works at home and telecommutes so no need for office buildings, people use holographic avatars to interact in virtual words to work together.

11am: Time for some shopping!

Zhi Wen got out of work early today because she did a good job so she decides to go shopping, she goes “online” to WoodMarvels.com using her holographic avatar and orders a few items which get manufactured on-demand by the school her children attend which she can pick-up with the kids. People in 2040 have their own small desktop manufacturing machines for small items but larger ones that can build cars and other large items are centrally located in schools. Kids learn about manufacturing and technology at an early age, exposing them to the entire process is essential!

Noon: Time for Lunch!

On today’s menu, fresh algae with a few grasshoppers and meal worms, algae is incredibly nutritious, as are insects and can live off general household waste, algae needs sun and fertilizer provided by the bathroom while insects feed on the kitchen scraps. Plates and cutlery are made of bamboo which is durable, easy to clean and recycled.

1pm: Boss calls, need some quick work done

Zhi Wen is technically off-work but her boss needs a few things urgently, so she just puts back onto her head a visor and works for the next few hours using her hollographic avatar in a virtual business to finish her job. Keyboards and computers are a thing of the past, the entire processes of creation occur directly in the mind. All is powered by a mix of solar power and kinetic energy while going through the movements. You don’t just “sit” and think of working, you are actively moving as you would in real life but in a virtual environment which your room transforms into.

5pm: Boyfriend comes back home

People learn to think for themselves so they no need for religion nor marriage for that matter, ghosts and the supernatural are told as stories, not taken as facts. Her boyfriend finished upgrading the solar panels on their exterior walls which helps to power items within their home. People live in huge mega-complexes which are made-up of up to 20 000 units per building). There are no cities but mega-communities lined-up one next to the other, separated by natural forests and farmland.

6pm: Super time!

Zhi Wen and her boyfriend Yan Lee prepared some delicious fish and chicken, grown in the communal buildings aquariums and hatcheries, everything is recycled and almost nothing is thrown away. For desert, meal worms with a little fruit grown from the communal rooftop gardens.

7:30pm: Entertainment and family time

People can change their scenery at a whim, so their “kitchen” is also their “bedroom”, “living-room” and so on. In this case, they decide to go on a trip to “Washington” to see what use to be one of the world’s leading super powers that has since dwindled due into obscurity due to multiple defaults on foreign loans. People might be living in a communist country but they are free to do as they please, the government isn’t overly intrusive when it comes to education, only relating to wasteful and environmentally unfriedly practices. You can have as many children as you want as food is plenty and energy is essentially free due to kinetic, wind, water and solar power to name but a few. Nuclear power was phased-out 50 years ago after all the coal burning power plants where shut-down. Everything from “cars” to planes, watches to washing machines are now powerd by naturally occuring processes.

10pm: Time for bed!

In this future, people go to bed early because they can’t wait to wake-up in the morning to continue their environmentally friendly lifestyle, 9 hours of sleep is optimal.

One of our environmental puzzles displaying Earth with a fever!

I believe that things will get far worse environmentally before they get better, I also believe that we are but on the fine cusp of a HUGE fundamental shift in how the glocal economies of this world operate… and desktop on-demand manufacturing is a vital piece towards solving the global warming puzzle.

What is desktop on-demand manufacturing?

Change this question to “what is a desktop printer” to get an idea of how much of a revolution on-demand desktop manufacturing will become and multiply that by ten-fold. Right now, just about every modern product goes through a vast array of middle-men from raw resource to working in your home. Each step along this supply line creates emitions in one form or another, wasted resources and worse, a slight up-selling to generate a profit.

From forest to workshop: Wood Supply Chains

Right now, if you want to buy a piece of lumber from Home Depot, it was first cut by a lumberjack, dragged by a timberjack to a waiting transport carrier, transported to a mill sometimes hundreds of kilometers away, cut into pieces along enormous assembly lines, packaged and put onto a waiting train then off-loaded onto a transport truck then “maybe” to a lumber yard where you drive your pick-up to bring it to your home. That is a heck of a lot of fuel, time and resources wasted isn’t it!

How manufacturing MUST happen in the future

I believe in 50 years, the above scenario will no longer be the status quo, if you want to get a nice wooden desk, instead of all this transport taking place, you would either:

a) order timber directly from a locally run bamboo plantation mill (grows fast, very strong vs hardwoods or softwoods) and once the board arrives at your home, stick it into a machine to that will slice and dice your raw material into the item of your choice (whose plans you bought online from WoodMarvels.com of course).

or

b) order a finished product, flat-packed and shipped right to your home if you cannot afford the upkeep of a desktop on-demand manufacturing unit.

Jobs and companies WILL disappear!

There are already closee to seven billion people on this planet and short of a major epidemic or war to cut our numbers down, we will easily double or triple our global population over the next several decades. What will happen to all the businesses and people who need things to remain the way they are for their livelyhood? Desktop on-demand manufacturing isn’t just for wooden items, it includes complex machinery construction such as cars, trucks… basically ANYTHING you can currently buy at the local department store will be made (and recycled) in a seamless manner when you need it for only as long as you need it. That guy filling-in the shelves at aisle 5 will not be needed, nor will his manager or the friendly cashier for that manner. If you think the job losses NOW are bad, wait till retail shops of all sizes become a thing of the past!

So, when will this fundamental re-structuring of the worlds economies begin?

It already has and will continue to do so at an ever increasing rate. Desktop manufacturing units exist NOW, the use of CNC machines and technologies associated with their function have evolved dramatically and are available NOW. The entire cost of running a manufacturing business has dropped dramatically and is within reach of  the average person right now! How cheap? Well, there are units available for desktop manufacturing for under 5K$! To put this into perspective, laser printers use to be about that price 15 years ago… so it isn’t much of a stretch to say that for a few hundred dollars in the next decade, the same will hold true for desktop manufacturing units.

The future is blindingly bright!

Each and everyday I work on WoodMarvels.com (and my other sites), I feel I am that much closer towards realizing a goal of changing peoples attitudes. The shift from mass-production to on-demand will have huge ramifications socially, economically and geographically. You can either try to fight this change or embrass it with open arms! I can’t wait to wake-up every morning and learn new manufacturing techniques, get more designers to join our ranks and better yet, help in the adoption of on-demand merchandise. The future is nothing but blindingly bright in my opinion!

The Bottom Line

On-Demand is here to stay and needs to be adopted for a prosperous future!

We have just launched our laser cut dolphin kit available in two sizes, 6mm and 10mm. The nice thing about the 10mm kit is you get two with that order! You can find it on WoodMarvels.com under Theme / Sea Life and the approximate dimension of the 6mm kit are 16cm long, 10cm high and with a width of 3cm while for the 10mm kit, 27cm long, 7cm high and with a width of 5cm.

We have also released a smaller size of our submarine due to popular demand which you can find under Theme / Weapons of Mass Fun. The 6mm thick laser cut kit has approximate dimensions of 18cm long, 7cm high and with a fin span of 6cm. Material thickness is 6mm (wheels are 4mm thick).

Woodmarvels.com is proud to release our brontosaurus laser-cut kit now to include our integrated square dowel system! This is the second kit that we have launched today and we hope to get the entire dinosaur family done within the next few days. Here is the info as to what dimensions this great looking wooden brontosaurus can be purchased with.

> Laser-Cut Kits (10mm)
Approximate dimensions: 42cm long, 27cm high and with a width of 6.5cm. Material thickness is 10mm.

> Laser-Cut Kits (6mm)
25cm long, 16cm high and with a width of 4cm. Material thickness is 10mm. You get twins with this order.

> Laser-Cut Kits (4mm)
Approximate dimensions: 17cm long, 11cm high and with a width of 2.6cm. Material thickness is 4mm.

You can find the complete laser-cut kit collection of our wooden brontosaur on our Woodmarvels.com site under Theme / Pre-Historic / Dinosaurs.

Here at WoodMarvels.com, we pride ourselves on creating sustainable, environmentally friendly items that help you both save a tonne of money and fight climate change. Nothing is more environmentally friendly then wood! If managed properly, forests can provide a limitless source of materials that improve the lives of people while helping to fight off soil erosion, providing habitat for a multitude of organisms and helping to purify both the water and the air. The solution to climate change is a simple one, stop shipping tonnes of useless junk and use local building materials! But before we delve into the world of sustainable practices, we must first solve the greater evils, lack of clean water and easy power generation.

Simple Solutions: Water and Electricity

It’s no secret that the third world, haven been taken advantage of for centuries by colonists and always pushed into proxy wars by other countries, the poorest among us will be the first to suffer the effects of global climate change. If you don’t have access to clean water for your family, then you fall prey to many diseases and your focus becomes rather narrow (ei: survive another day) instead of sustainable practices. I studied environmental policy in university and educate myself constantly on what people around the world are doing to improve their lives in a sustainable fashion. Here are four simple solutions that are making a very big difference for the poorest of this world, hopefully this can humble us into not taking our lifestyles of excess for granted.

Dean Kamen’s Miracle Water Distiller

It’s no secret that clean, pure water is in very short supply around the world. Water is also the source of a lot of diseases such as Malaria, Guinea worm and even Polio! As a result, the very first step in helping a population get away from the ravages of destitute poverty is a clean source of water! Dean Kamen is a maverick inventor who, with the help of his team, develops revolutionary products for various fields. Basically, hook-up this machine to any water source and it produces gallons of clean, pure, distilled water regardless of how contaminated it is!

Hippo Water Roller

Imagine having to spend HOURS everyday walking back and forth from a water supply that is several miles away. Now imagine having to do this while you are in a state of dehydration, malnutrition and desperation! Water is pretty darn heavy no matter how you carry it, which is why this simple solution is such a fantastic one. Use the weight of the water to your advantage and bring a heck of a lot more of it to your remote village using the Hippo Water Roller. This idea is frustratingly simple yet provides an exponential boost in the quality of the lives of the citizens who have this.

Playpumps Water System

Kids love to play, why not use their energies in order to help an entire community? This is the idea behind the playpump water system. The more kids play on this “toy”, the more clean water they produce! It gives parents peace of mind and kids a new reason to burn off their excess energy!

See-Saw Power Generation

Once the specters that come with a lack of water are resolved, the next one on the list has to be electricity! With clean water, you can grow crops, feed animals and prevent a number of diseases but, in the end, you are still lacking the possibility of educating your children out of the fate that comes with poverty. With electricity, you can now have lighting, run a 100$ laptop to educate yourself about the world and most importantly, communicate with the outside world. They soon realize that they are no longer alone and develop a larger picture of the planet!

The results of these and other programs

Once people no longer need to waste their time on menial tasks, they can help build stronger communities, are able to get out of the grind of abject poverty and most importantly, can begin on the path towards an environmentally friendly lifestyle.

The Bottom Line

Technology is both the cause and cure for the world’s problems.

Buzvia: LennTech - Water Borne Diseases, DEKA Research (Dean Karmen’s Company), Hippo Water Roller, Playpumps International, See-Saw Power Generation

At WoodMarvels.com, we pride ourselves with providing great plans at an affordable price but even better, we try to make our wooden marvels as easy to produce as possible using the fewest steps from start to finishing. Unless otherwise indicated, most of our joint cuts are at 90 degrees and usually require no more then a good jigsaw, sharp woodworkers chisel, some glue and a drill as equipment. You will notice that we rarely have a need to use nails in our plans, the reason for this is:

• our models aren’t usually supporting a load or under heavy stress
• we use each piece of wood to re-enforce the other where they join, you will notice a heavy use of pins to achieve this
• we tend to over-build our models, this is done on purpose so that they last as long as possible

What is the difference between pins and dovetails?

Although both are used extensively in the furniture building industries, you don’t see these types of joints very often in other applications. Basically, a pin, as illustrated above, are straight 90 degree cuts while dovetails are at an angle. The reason why they are used is as a re-enforcing mechanism, especially for drawers and they also look great. Other more advanced methods of creating structurally strong joints are by using biscuit joints, mitered joints, mortising chisel (using a drill press), mortise and tenon joint, lap joint and dowel joint. WoodMarvels.com has stayed away from these advanced methods so far in our models but we do use dowels in many of our plans to act as both a guide and re-enforcing method across multiple pieces of wood.

How do you make pins without a router?

Here is the easiest method for achieving the pin look using only the simplest of tools. Of course, if you do enough of these freehand, you will want to get yourself a jig and router but they aren’t essential. So far, none of our models are built using dovetails or more advanced joining methods because our goal at WoodMarvels.com is to keep things as easy as possible for the woodworker with a limited tool set.

Remember the rule, measure twice and cut once… well, always mark your cuts before you cut them.

Drill a pilot hole or as many as necessary for the length of the pin you want. This will save you a lot of wear and tear on your jig saw and nobody wants to chisel for hours on end. The reason why you drill your pilot holes FIRST is because you want to drill into a solid board, not one that has been cut before which is prone to vibration and shearing.

Now you are free to clear out the material within the outline you made previously. The easiest method is to cut 90 degrees into the board followed by cross-cuts. You can then use the chisel to get to harder to reach areas followed by rough sand paper if needed. Be sure to watch your hands during this process so as to not add a red stain to your wooden marvel!

Conclusion

That wasn’t so hard was it? Well, be sure to get lots of practice using scraps from your scrap wood pile before jumping onto a project, of course, there are other methods of producing these which we will cover another time.

The Bottom Line

If things seem as simple as they look, they usually are.

If you live in North America or Europe, odds are that you have a real Christmas tree in your house as part of the Christmas festivities. Here is how you get the most Christmas tree enjoyment during that time.

November Forestry

Most Christmas trees are grown on commercial farms and are harvested in November before the winter season has a profound effect on the trees survival mechanisms. For instance, a decrease in light leads to the tree sending much more water fluids into the root system, this may cause some dehydration if it isn’t cut before this process begins. So ask when the tree was cut, if it’s a fresh Christmas Tree, odds are, the needles will begin falling soon after it enters your home.

Home Maintenance

Once the Christmas tree enters your house, be sure to cut half an inch off the base and place the tree trunk inside of a bowl containing plenty of water and a little sugar. It’s important that you have as clean a cut as possible as this will lead to an efficient fluid delivery system for the tree as it becomes part of your living room. Remember, a dehydrated tree looses it’s needles at an increasing rate, so always make sure the bowl has plenty of water in it.

After Christmas

After Christmas, what do you do with the Christmas Tree? Well, you can mulch it, bring it into a local forest for nature to take its course or even better, keep it in your yard. A Christmas tree is a wonderful resource for the local wildlife population, the needles are used by birds for their home construction, insects use the tree structure for their home and allowing it to naturally decompose is a nice reminder that nature wastes nothing.

The Bottom Line

Christmas trees need to be taken care of both before and after their use.

Buzvia: Somerville Nurseries Inc.

It seems that with every paradigm shift within any industry, there are those who stick to old methods at their own detriment, mostly due to fear.

New ways ARE superior

I have seen more then my fair share of websites dedicated to why the “old” way of doing things is far superior to “new” advances. The reasons why the new things are inferior are usually pushed by those with a vested interest in keeping the status-quo. Woodworking websites are one of the many industries I plan on entering with the hopes of modernizing and improving upon. Gone are the days of mail-order blueprints that cost $19.95 plus shipping and handling, gone are the days when it took a few trees and weeks in a woodworking shop to perfect a design and most importantly, gone are the days when you have to be a master carpenter to “not” screw-up following confusing step-by-step instructions that are full of mumbo-jumbo and words of days gone bye. Yes, my friends, these old days are replaced with computer designed models, pdf files that can be easily e-mailed and best of all, making what use to be a very obscure trade open to everybody regardless of experience.

But…

The naysayers are adamant, they truly believe, like the days where horses where better then cars, film cameras where better then digital and ice was better then refrigeration using compressors… that the old craftsman methods are the best way to design. I am here to say they are WRONG! Not by a little bit either, but we are already well on our way into a revolution in the woodworking field, where CNC machines will becoming cheap enough so that people can simply program a lathe to produce 100 identical pins, where molded electrostatic machines can create a 3 dimensional physical model in only a few hours out of hard resin and where the traditional methods of construction will be replaced with far more superior and efficient methods. I did this when I offered 3D animation services back in 1996 to draftsmen who said “paper and pencil is the only way to true design”, web design services to marketing companies who believed that “printed brochures are better then a website” and now, electronic documents for WoodMarvels.

WoodMarvels.com Revolution: Why computerized designs ARE better

There are tonnes of reason why 3D models built from scratch in a computer are vastly superior to pencil, hours in the shop and photographs.

Design flexibility

The first is simply the advantages of using an electronic medium, for instance, if I cut a piece of wood and realize I need an extra 1/8th of an inch for a snug fit, I either have to re-cut other pieces of the model to fit or grab a new piece of wood. Not so in a computer, I can cut, re-cut, lathe… you name it, anything can be modified at any time during the active designing process. A great example was when I built the Mayan Temple Bank (in the “Banks” category), at first, I envisioned simply having the top come “off” in order to remove the money that was put inside of it, similar to how the Volcano Bank works, but instead, I decided to cut away on one side and actually make the staircase the mechanism for removing the money. If I had thought of doing this with wood, hours of sanding and re-cutting would have had to be performed. Going through that trouble in a woodworking shpo may well have had me simply give up as well, opting for the simpler design. This required extensive redesigning but I was able to change the width of openings, modify the size of each stair and fix up the top dowels with ease.

Healthier

Whether woodworkers want to admit it or not, being surrounded by wood dust is actually considered a big hazard. Working on a computer causes no health effects as long as you supplement it with plenty of activities that keep the waistline in check. I also think it’s healthier for the customer as well, they can simply trace out the models and cut, no need to measure ANYTHING. If you played with Lego, then you have more then enough skills to build your very own WoodMarvels.

Precision

The designs can be as precise down to the 1/1000th of an inch but plenty, and I mean PLENTY, of room is given as wood expands and contracts depending on humidity levels. I come from a family of accomplished woodcrafters and have taken classes myself as well. These designs aren’t built by somebody who never touched wood but who has intimate knowledge about how it performs under various stresses. A computer is great to design but at the end of the day, understanding of the medium at hand is just as vital.

Like any engineer, the models on WoodMarvels are generally over-built, meaning that as each part fit into the other, overall strength of the model is increased. This is also done by using internal dowels for added rigidity, double supports such as seen in the “Crab” model (see “Crustaceans” category) and a host of layering. The last thing you want to do is build a model that falls apart! We do this without using any nails, screws, only glue and layering. Of course, if you wish to use screws, feel free but they are not necessary. The level of precision needed to accomplish this is a challenge even to great traditional craftsmen.

More Environmentally Friendly

Working on a computer, I use a fraction of the electricity designing a model then I would in a woodworking shop. I also prevent trees from uselessly being cut down as I work out the kinks in your WoodMarvels. In addition to this, offering the documents electronically means no fossil fuels are spent to deliver a hard copy, you can just print the document you purchased at our leisure. No trees cut for oil reserves, no trees cut in testing nor any trees cut in creating promotional materials. Life sure is grand!

3D Bonuses

There are also a number of bonuses to creating a model within a 3D program, in this case 3D Studio Max. You may not be familiar with the program but if you saw any Hollywood movie in the last 15 years, you have seen the power of this program in the fields of visual effects. After a model is designed, full-color renders (photographs) can be taken of the model with semi-transparency if needed to show how things fit with one another. This prevents lots of guessing on your part and greatly increases efficiency. In addition, a 3D animation showing how each part, and I mean EVERY PART of the model fit into one another simply makes then entire building process incredibly easy even if you never worked in woodcrafts before. I couldn’t imagine doing these animations using stop-action film photography neither

The Bottom Line

Computer aided design is here to stay, join the future or die in the past.

There isn’t a day in the past few months where lead or other toxic ingredients have found their way in consumer related products originating from China. But you have to ask yourself… what exactly are you surprised about?

Why are Chinese products so cheap?

Let’s backup for a moment, the reason why production of all sorts has moved from (name your country) to mostly China is due to cost. Well, you don’t get anything for nothing, these costs come at the expense of the environment, it’s citizens and most importantly to ourselves. Let me explain:

Environmental Costs

When you have very lax or non-existent environmental laws, there are some major savings to be granted to factories. No need for that sewage treatment plant, no need for the heavy metal recovery system and water is plentiful. Got a few extra cartons of materials or some garbage to dispose of, well, just burn it in the backyard. I saw this first hand when I was in Malaysia, people in smaller cities would bring their days garbage into the middle of the street and burn it, there where bond fires EVERYWHERE at night. What I found funny at the time was even after people where finished cutting their grass, instead of picking up the lawn clippings, they would get the blow torch… I kid you not! Now, this says nothing about the added pollution from bad coal firing plants, transportation costs and the list goes on.

Slavery

Let’s call it what it is, the communist party, companies and a few select individuals are profiting from a large population of uneducated slaves coming from the countryside. I have heard second hand stories from quite a few company owners that did plant visits in factories to find out that hearing protection, eye protection, the basics in any factory setting where not even available! This says nothing about workers compensation, “living” at the factory in huge communes with this money being deducted form their pay and the list goes on. Are you willing to work 6 days a week, 16 hours a day for months on end? What is going on in China in factories across the country is nothing more then organized slavery that puts the European practice a few centuries ago to shame.

Local Economic Costs

With relatively high paying jobs being outsourced to the third world, local economies experience a fundamental shift. Costs go down, yes, but so do salaries and working standards for those who wish to keep their jobs. There is no surprise that big box retailers are making a fortune selling cheap “made in China” products but if people really knew the true cost of what those items cost, I am sure they would be repulsed.

It isn’t only China nor is it their fault

Now, this is definitely not an anti-China tirade, there is some very good businesses and entrepreneurs in China that do care about their production facilities, employees and so forth. These poor working conditions and environmental standards can be found around the globe, from the sweatshops of India and Bangladesh to the gold mines in South Africa. In an era where the cheapest production facility globally gets the business, China is the most diversified and hard working among them. For all of China’s faults, there are some positives as well, their society is quickly being transformed into a more educated populous. Their influence is rapidly expanding and best of all, they are forcing businesses around the world, especially in Italy, to become more efficient in the light of some heavy competition. To be honest, there are some very bad businesses even in the developed world, it just happens that China has a larger proportion due to their closed society and population size.

Solution

I have a very easy solution to all these problems, instead of using plastic to buy plastic at the local mega store, just buy yourself a few wood scraps, a jig saw with some sand paper and build your very own stuff! The cost will be cheaper then what even China can produce, the environmental effect will be relatively carbon neutral and best of all, you will have a wood marvel to pass on for generations to come. Woodcrafts are really not a difficult hobby to jump into, you can even use hand tools if you really want a challenge!

The Bottom Line

Learning woodcrafts is within everyones ability, environmentalism starts at home!