November 5th 2008
The Best Way to Earn Your Man Card
Carpentry.
More specifically, the kind that is spontaneous and manifests itself out of pure apathy and laziness. In Chicago, having a system map from the CTA is like a right of passage. It’s like a small piece of cred that you wave around to look legit. I’ve had one of these for about 5 years now, having always intended on getting it framed or something. Well frames are ridiculous exepensive, so I started thinking about other options.
Stainless Steel/Sheet Metal would be nice because it is more authentic to the look of the holders for these maps on the actual train. I also thought of a simplistic idea where I bind the top and bottom edge with 1/2″ PVC piping. What took so many of these options out of play was that I didn’t have the necessary tools for the job (like a router for instance. $200!) Further complicating things was my lack of available work space where I could make a huge mess, and I did.
I ended up settling for the kitchen table. We have a nice sized table about 5′ x 11′ that was given as a hand-me-down. I was completely prepared to fuck this entire thing up with some stupid mistake. I haven’t done any woodworking in a long time, and the experience I do have is severely limited.
I managed to find all my supplies and raw materials at Home Depot, which was rather surprising. I spent a good 30 minutes before trying to find some kind of hobby store with a better selection of wood. HD has plenty of wood, but most of it is construction wood that isn’t quite precision-cut and rather rough. I wanted this to look nice. Despite not having the tools, I originally wanted to do this somehow with sheet metal. Even though I knew I couldn’t pull it off, I decided to inquire about sheet metals. It turns out this is where the depot is lacking. They basically have one endcap sized space with samples on it. I’m sure you can probably get giant sheets, but there was no information or clear pricing around it.
So. 3 hours later I whip up this bad boy and mount it in the living room. The trains in chicago also curve the map in their mounting, which is what I was going for. Later on, I’ll probably give it a nice lacquer finish so the two types of wood don’t look ridiculous right next to each other. I’m way proud of this quick project right now, especially because for once it went smoothly most of the way through. Later on, I’ll have to fix the miter on the top mounting. That one needs to curve a little differently to look natural.
The raw materials cost me right around $20 with a 4 foot length of wood left over. For that price I’ve got a quirky, one-of-a-kind CTA poster frame. It doesn’t get much better than that. I was inspired to make this thanks to this DIY Frame Instructable.
