My son swims quite well for a 4 year old, and when he expressed an interest in diving from a diving board, I wanted to be an encouraging father. So I went out to the shop and rummaged around for a suitable plank. I had 5′ long 2″x6″ made of cedar. It was not quite long enough for the job but it was enough to test out a concept. I put the plank on the edge of the pool with about 2′ hanging over the edge of the pool. I stood on the land-lubber end, and provided the counterbalance for my son. He had a ball jumping in the pool. It was great fun to watch, but it got a bit tiring / boring for the counter balance. So it was off to the store to get a longer cedar 2″x6″ and some patio blocks. DISCLAIMER: Diving boards are inherently risky. I am not making any design recommendations here, only showing what I did.
The 2x6x8′ that Home Depot sells is rough sawn, so yahoo, I get to plane. I get to plane cedar…the stuff just smells so awesome. Planing cedar is pretty effortless. It is pretty fibrous so you don’t get a super smooth finish. I didn’t want my son getting splinters from the rough sawn wood, but I was concerned about it being too slippery when wet. So I decided to use a fun little trick to make some reverse texture.
Reverse Texture Trick
If you take a piece of wood, and compress the fibers, then apply water to the fibers, they often swell to nearly their original size. If you take a piece of smooth wood, compress the fibers with a ball peen hammer, or a pad from a C-clamp, you end up with a depression in the wood. Now plane the surrounding wood, down until the point where you can no longer see the depression (lower the field to the depression). Now wet the wood. The area where the depression was, will now swell to its old self, which will cause it to rise above the field of the wood (pop-out).
I wanted some of this texture to exist on the surface of the diving board.
The edge of an old leaf spring, and a large hammer help produce a pattern of crushed wood fibers.
I used an old leaf spring and a large hammer to crush the wood fibers of this diving board. In hindsight, I should have used a bigger hammer and the thinner end of the leaf spring to get a more appropriate crush of the fibers.
The crushed fibers can be seen in the wood.
After the pattern was pressed into the length of the board, I used my scrub plane to plane the field of the wood down to the depressed areas. In Hindsight, I should have planed the board flat first, and then pounded in the depressions, Then planed the field lower. The problem is that the board was dished so the biggest crushing took place nearer to the edges.
The scrub plane (an old Stanley Handyman Jack with a curved blade) lowers the field of the wood.
Since the wood was cupped, I had to use a smoothing plane set up like a scrub plane to lower the field in the middle section of the board.
After using the Smootthing scrub plane (a Stanley Handyman Smoother) The wood is smooth enough to see the reflection of the plane, which surprised me for such an aggressively configured plane.
When this smoothing was done, I went over corners of the board with an old small radius hollow plane. This gave the corners a nice radiused feel.
Now it was time to turn my attention to the block work. I needed to cut the center out of one of the patio blocks so that the board could sit in the middle.
I used a cementboard scoring tool, which has a carbide tip, to score the block on both sides. Hopefully it would break along these scored lines.
I placed a broom handle under the block and then jumped on both sides of the scored line. It broke pretty cleanly on the 4th jump. When it came to the second scored line, the block was too small on each side of the line to break. So I ended up using a cold chisel and an engineers hammer. The resluts of that method were pretty bad.
These two side rail pieces will support the other blocks that act as the counter weight.
The 5 counter balance blocks weigh about 170 lbs and are more than enough to support my 4yr old son. As he gets bigger, I can always add more blocks 😉
Previously
- Home Depot Choosing China Again
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- Good Plane Advice – Good Physics
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- Rustic Outdoor Lamp Posts
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- Kids Builds at Lowes and Home Depot
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- No Waste – High Tech Timberframing
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- Vaughan Hammer – Sad Gloat
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- Band Saw Set-up Video
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- Barn Moving
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- Mallet Head Angle
I’ve seen this issue come up and get discussed on several forums. A joiners mallet is pretty simple to make, so it is a quick and satisfying shop project to get one constructed, but then the question arises, “what angle should be put on the head?” This is an important question with advice ranging from […]
- Tuning Up a Cheap Spokeshave
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- Chisel – Long Lost Brother
Tool owner stamps always intrigue me. When I pick up one of my old wood planes and look at the layers of old owner stamps on them, I wonder who they were and what they did. Were they carpenters, or just hobbyists? Did they pass them on to their children? Did they save up for […]
- Portable Chisel Rack
For years I have kept my chisels in a drawer. I keep covers on the tips so they don’t damage each other, but as my chisel collection has grown, the drawer has gotten crowded and is just not the best way to store and access them repeatedly. So I decided to make a chisel rack. […]
- Old Tools Passed On
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- Making Chisel Handles
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- Replacement Chisel Handles
I have an odd collection of chisels ranging from a couple of modern plastic handled abominations to several old Stanley 750’s , an old Witherby, a PS&W and a D.R. Barton. I am gradually replacing the plastic handled chisels as I find older socket handled varieties. I like my old chisels, some belonged to my […]
- Early American Lumber
I found this painting online. It was first published in the National Park Service publication New Discoveries at Jamestown: Site of the First Successful English Settlement in America. The painting is artist, Sydney King’s interpretation of the lumber industry in colonial Jamestown. I find the painting fascinating as it focuses on so many aspects of […]
- Saw: Atkins 53
My son and I were on our way to the grocery store the other day, and on the way there, we saw a sign for a barn sale. I got a big smile on my face and said, “Do you want to go see if they have any old tools?” … he answered… I’m pretty […]
- Cheney Hammer
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