Drying the pine

The fir that has been stacked in the guest suite is now dry. I moved this down to the workshop and stacked some of the wet pine. The moisture tester showed that it the moisture content was above 20%. The wood has some nice character, much of the wood has nice beatle stain and the quality of the wood looks good.

I will have to restack the rest of the wood and put stickers between the boards to ensure that they dry evenly. That will be tomorrows job.

Dollar Saver lumber mill is awesome

Homer and I dropped off 2 lifts of 1x8 pine that Ernie Kragt had milled up for me. The two lifts were a bit on the wet side so the trailer was nicely loaded. Dollar Saver initially told me that they didn't know when the lifts would be done. They called me the next day and told me the lifts were finished.

Wow now that is efficient.

Bax, my right hand man

Bax cut up 10 box sides. I decided to put them behind my stove. They already are pretty dry but it never hurts to dry them further.

Here bax is trimming the sides to the bottom of the boxes. I took the picture through the hole in the floor from the second floor guest suite to the workshop below. This is a great way to supervise the progress.

It is always important for a test fit.

Here bax is trimming the bottom of the boxes to ensure a good fit.


Rounding over the edges ensure that the bottom edge looks finished. It still will be necessary to complete with some additional sanding.

Bench for cut off saw

This morning I worked on a bench for the cut off saw. Homer had donated some rollers which worked nicely. I can't wait to put this baby to some good use.

Shop floor

Today I worked on putting the wood floor on my shop. The flooring is 3x6" fir. I am notching it out so that I can put a 1x4 in between each plank. I think this will give me a tighter floor and I should be able to adjust it if it starts to shrink.

Time to start putting some boxes together

I brought my lumber home from Dollar Saver planer mill. It looked awesome, it was neatly stacked, bundled and tarped. I borrowed a friends (homer's) truck and a friend (Martin's) trailer to get it home. I initially thought that I would have to hand bomb it all off the truck but I sat down and did some figuring first to see if I could offload it as a package.

I think physics is really cool when put in practical applications. I used three logs to roll the wood off the trailer into my dry shop.

Simple Fir Box

This week has been spent working on packaging my boxes. I have found a supplier of cardboard and have access to a plastic strapping machine. I need to determine if this is the best way to package my boxes or if I should try plastic wrap. I don't like the idea of plastic since it is not recyclable, whereas cardboard can be recycled.

I spoke with DHL. The boxes are approximately 120 lbs and can be shipped to all major destinations in one package. The cost should be from $100-$150 depending on destination. If I send the box to a smaller city I may have to break up the box into two separate packages as the maximum weight for the satellite offices is 90 lbs.

I built a fir box from some of the wood that I received from McBride. The final product looks excellent. I will try and upload an image. The cost for this box may be a little bit higher but I believe that customers will be very satisfied with the product.

The other issue that I struggled with on Tuesday was trying to write assembly instructions for the box. I have assembled many boxes and the assembly for me is fairly straight forward. To translate this to people who may have little woodworking experience is very challenging. I am working on a colour coding system to simplify labelling the parts of the box. I will then ask a few friends to use the instructions and see if there are any issues.

Lots happening

I recognize that there has not been many new posts. Seem all my energy has been directed at the tangible part of starting the business. There has been numerous changes the past month.

The main project has been working on the shop. I am trying really hard to have the walls and floor on before the snow flies. I hate talking about snow in September, however the thought of snow motivates me to work harder. My current workspace is too small especially if I have to make several boxes at once. In a perfect world I would also be able to heat this space, however this is unlikely.

The solar kiln in the shop (to dry the wood) is still in the works. I may have to supplement heat with electricity or wood.

Dragon's Den Store

I received some exciting news last week that has been stressing me totally out. Apparently with the launch of season 3 they are setting up a store to sell the products featured on the Dragon's Den. I have no idea how many products I would potentially sell and I still have to sort out packaging and shipping, not to mention knowing how much wood I need to keep in my inventory.

On a positive note I have found a source of 1x8 fir. The cost is reasonable and the product is exceptional. I would like to make most of the box floors with this material as it superior to pine structurally. I may even make some boxes totally from fir as it is very esthetically pleasing as well.

Dragon's Den update

I was watching the Olympics yesterday. During the commercial break, season 3 of Dragon's Den was being advertised. That is when Noah and I were featured, for about 1/2 a second. What caught my eye was Noah's bright purple shirt. We waited a few hours and the commercial aired again so we taped the commercial for posterity sake. This maybe a hopeful sign that our pitch maybe featured in the upcoming season.

Click the title of this blog entry to see the trailer.

crazy chicken's club

For those of you who have not seen the show this header is a quote from Kevin, one of the dragon's. He rarely likes an idea, it totally preoccupied on making money and if you are out there far enough he refers to you as a crazy chicken.

The couple in the black and red are inventors of a toe nail polish removal system. He is a podiatrist and had painted his toe nails for his pitch.
These thumbs up photoguys were actually returning from season 2 with another invention. They were clearly here for the free advertising and had no interested in getting a deal with the dragon's.

The people in the above photo may be familiar to some as these guys were returning from last year. This is Chris and Emmanuel the inventors of the fruit picker and owners of the hippie fruit picking company. This season they are back pitching van go TV. (www.vangotv.ca)

I never did find out how this guys toilet was different. We will see if he is on the show.

I did some calculations and figured that approximately 50 % of the pitches will end up on TV.

These gals in blue invented a type of game. I am thinking they might face the fire of the dragon's as they usually are not too keen on games.

Go

Here Noah is practicing his pitch for the final time.




Hanging out in the "green room"




CBC studios is just down the street from the CN centre

set

Here the set director and the props director are deciding if they can allow me to come out of the box.


Molly our producer is explaining our pitching plan to the floor director.




Pictures from the den
Jim's pile of money. Apparently it is real
The floor director


Some people just want to have fun or get into trouble
The idea is for the director to tell all the pitchers were they are going to stand and work out final placement for props.

Ready

Putting the box together with my new friend Ben. Ben is 3 years old. I stayed with Ben and his family Craig and Esther. Craig was my treeplanting boss over 20 years ago. Boy do I sound old

Noah helping put the shelves in the unit.

The finished box with Noah as my Vanna White.

CBC

We thought we would stop by the studio a day early to ensure a drop off time for the box.

Arriving in TO

We shipped the box flat. It ended up weighing in at 93 lbs. A little ackward carrying through Union station when we arrived in TO. We had to shuttle our stuff back and forth to the street.
Our stuff was too much for a regular taxi so we had to wait for a van taxi