Another newbie saying hello

July 30, 201213 yr

Hi,

I suppose I'm best described as a bit of a Jill of all Trades. I've many diverse interests, and am fairly artistic. I grew up with an extremely handy father, and a Master Carpenter grandfather, so making things was always part of life. I can rewire a socket or put a new cord on a lamp, but more than most things, I've always liked making things out of wood. I love the way wood looks and feels and the grains and colours in it.

Because I live in a small apartment and have some disability problems, I have no workshop as such, so my projects are mainly small. But I taught myself to make very good picture frames, mainly from stock mouldings I glued up in combinations, and I also frame pictures. Last year I came up with some simple but useful gadgets to alter the closets in my mother's home, as she had bad shoulders that made reaching her clothes quite a challenge. I like solving little problems like that, and while Â my hanging bar gadgets were not exactly things of beauty, they were quite functional.

Right now I'm trying to figure out a design for some free standing slatted shelf units that were intended, at first, simply to support a lot of plants. But then I got back into keeping fish and now I want to be able to put small, 4 - 5 gallon size aquariums, Â on a couple of the shelves, and a modified tank that's a bit larger still on another shelf over the existing 30 gallon tank I have set up. It's proving to be a challenge to come up with a workable design, so I hope I can learn what I need to know here.