Here’s the videos showing the first two so you can gain an understanding of the process we’ve been through bringing these newest designs to market and why.

Of course, before doing a refreshed design of our square hardwood banks, I did the same with our rounded banks which were in far higher dyer needs.

For this production round, other than the banks, I decided to magnificently upgrade our Thermwood CNC router beast to have LED lights under the gantry as I was so tired of having poor lighting where most of the work was happening in the shop.

The jigs I made at the very start of this journey towards making custom hardwood banks for SandboxRanch.com customers, square or otherwise, are now starting to show their age and I have enough experience with them now to start revising them to be more functional for their intended purposes.

Even simple tasks like just joining sticks of wood together and gluing is quite an art form to get right, too much pressure, it bows (thus requiring more flattening and making the overall slab thinner) and not enough, they fall apart or have spaces in them.

See that light under the gantry, it really plays a number on the camera and video but wow, I don’t know how I lived without it for the past year, it’s so nice to be able to see brilliantly, I used two T8 LED strips, during production to see how well the carving is taking place for these custom square hardwood banks for SandboxRanch.com.

This is quite a change from the very first run of custom hardwood banks I made for SandboxRanch.com.

You see the shininess on the seams of the poplar hardwood slab I laminated in the shop? That’s glue, and that all needs to be taken off, as you see in the related picture below, in order to have a nice clean and smooth piece of wood before SandboxRanch.com actually transforms this into solid square hardwood banks.

Once both sides of the slab are cleaned-up, the next step is making the banks, just about all of the banks we make at SandboxRanch.com have a chamfer, it’s a simple upgrade that really adds a lot aesthetically to the physical hardwood banks.

Custom hardwood banks made by SandboxRanch.com can be made into any shape or size, here’s what I made for my son Simon.

With the light shinning over the work being made, you can actually see far better any deviations in height, and the clarity on the wood itself really shines a lot, now I can see things without having to squint or with any doubts.

Each time I do a production run of these custom hardwood banks with my CNC router, it’s better than my previous run, incremental improvements might be small but over time, they build-up even if I’m the only one that notices and not necessarily SandboxRanch.com customers.

To me, a custom hardwood bank, which I call generational banks, represent a harmonious fusion of artistry and functionality, SandboxRanch.com is thus offering you a unique opportunity to own a meticulously crafted, personalized, and environmentally sustainable object.

Whether it’s for personal use or as a thoughtful gift, a custom hardwood bank becomes a testament to the enduring allure of crafted excellence in an increasingly mass-produced world, each one of SandboxRanch.com‘s hardwood banks is unique in its own special way.

Couple’s banks are always a popular choice, two banks made “together”.

The major difference between Poplar and Oak, which are the most popular options on SandboxRanch.com really comes down to the aesthetic you are after, if you plan on painting or staining your bank, or have us do it, then Poplar is the best choice forward but if you want something with very strong grain patterns and a bit more weight to it, Oak is the winner.

Once most of the carving is finished, you can see how the banks will mostly look like and this is also where I can see any issues such as problem knots etc. but in this case, everything looks great!

Now for the coolest part, drilling the holes, it’s a very small thing for a machine this big and powerful but doing this on the CNC machine was really a game changer for SandboxRanch.com, no more templates to manually drill holes, just get the machine to do it precisely each and every time!

SandboxRanch.com can produce custom hardwood banks using any wood species you want, if you want something truly unique, contact us ahead of time and we can make these out of Mahogany as easily as Zebrawood!

The drilling operation is generally when I change the dust extraction skirt, as the final cutting out of the custom hardwood poplar banks is almost all the way through the laminated slab so I need a less-high one to get the dust extraction to work properly.

There are two steps towards fully cutting out these square hardwood banks, the first is the roughing bit, this removes most of the material and then the second finishing bit cleans-up and smooths out all the edges so very little sanding is required afterwards at SandboxRanch.com.

Right off the machine, these square hardwood banks are just about ready to ship, they need a little laser work before being packed-up and ready to go to their new homes.

Although these videos might seem to get a little repetitive, they really aren’t, every aspects of production is improved in between each production run for SandboxRanch.com products.

After the CNC routing is done, it’s time to route these again using a power tool, this process goes even faster as I’m just removing a very very thin skin left over from the CNC on these custom square hardwood banks.

Before the routing can be done though, I find it better to just cut-out all the scrap around the banks using my bandsaw, this way, the routing is just along the edge and nothing else is left, though in my next run, when the banks are at the point you see below, I can just router them directly as the process is faster than using the bandsaw to remove this for SandboxRanch.com customers.

You can clearly see the little skin left from the CNC router in the image below and the spinning router in the middle of the table that will re moving this from the soon to be generational banks.

This is s two-pronged approach, while the router is doing it’s magic, the laser is doing its, I don’t have both running at the same time typically though I easily could, just because I want to document the entire process and I only have one camera to do it with but both machines, and then some, could easily be running at the same time.

Any shape, size, wood species or anything you really want… REALLY!

The back of the banks can also be laser engraved with the SandboxRanch.com logo once the acrylic is done and this is where a message could also be added to the back, technically, I could be busy routing out the shapes while the laser does it’s work and the router making more banks to cut production time by 2/3rds but at this point, I don’t have that much of a time crunch to contend with and have the machines doing other work for CNCROi.com in the meantime.

Once this run of banks is all assembled and ready to go, this is typically where I’d start packing, but for this run, the 3rd of 3, I kept all the custom square hardwood banks I made to this point to take a group photo.

Here’s the mix of banks I made in this run of both square, many extra rounded letters and the special heart bank for SandboxRanch.com…

And here’s the group photo of all the V2 custom square hardwood banks, just love the updated design and how they all come so well together!

SandboxRanch.com is now exclusively producing V2 of these custom square hardwood banks, the old ones, the file are kept, but consider this a relaunch of our most popular style of banks.

Need custom banks? Order online or contact SandboxRanch.com right now!

The post Custom V2 Square Hardwood Banks All Updated! appeared first on SandboxRanch.com.

Going from V1 to V2 was a MASSIVE improvement across the board, and now I’m so happy that I can share it with my customers, they are bigger, they are stronger and they look better than ever.

Regardless of the improvements that happen across three stages, design themselves, wood processing and production cycles, you can rest assured that you aren’t just buying a good kid’s or even adult’s bank made to your specs but an awesome one that, if you so choose, you can finish yourself or have us do this part for you.

Laminating poplar is something I finally got my head around, it seems to simple, but it took so long to get it right to get as little warping and slippage as possible, these custom V2 square banks now have perfect seams and it makes such a world of difference for SandboxRanch.com customers.

Literally any shape can be transformed into a custom wooden bank, whether you want a custom letter bank or a shape bank or an animal bank or a dinosaur bank or whatever, no problem for SandboxRanch.com!

Now that I have many of the production issues sorted out, I can now think about shaving off seconds per bank production wise, think of more efficient methods of actually making them and optimizing the design, laser through router, until any possible small issues are fixed way before they become a big problems.

Poplar is a hardwood, it’s a lot harder than Pine or Basswood for instance, but about half the hardness of Oak or Maple but also at half the cost not just in raw material terms but also in abuse on the bits that cut this out, sanding belts etc.

I hope all these videos help you understand how much of an evolution and hard work for physically and virtually, it has been to bring these custom wood banks to market in the fashion that I did.

The steps involved with carving out these custom V2 square banks have changed over the past year but that’s just experience playing its part, finding the optimal production “setting” to make the absolute best custom square bank in the least amount of time for SandboxRanch.com customers.

I really enjoy using my Thermwood CNC router, it’s a beast of a machine and wow can it do amazing work for my customers, it’s equivalent to using a Ferrari to go get groceries most of the time but having such a powerful machine really makes working with it enjoyable as it works so seamlessly.

Using my CNC router to flatten and make the sticks that end-up being the finished slab I use to make these custom generational square banks allows for perfect seams, as such, production is very smooth making these, there are no pieces of wooden shrapnel flying across the shop from stress or warping issues once these banks are done.

Keep in mind that SandboxRanch.com makes custom wooden banks on-demand, as such, we can absolutely combine them however you wish to make custom couple’s banks too!

Aesthetically speaking, these banks are looking fantastic start to finish, everything that needs to be sharp is and the same goes for curved areas, it has taken over a year now to get to this point for SandboxRanch.com banks specifically.

SandboxRanch.com, like my main business CNCROi.com, is build on a continuous improvement cycle, each time I do a project, regardless of what it is, I try to think if I were to redo it again, how would I do it faster, better and with less headaches.

This is why I “bothered” to make the massive improvement with V2 square banks, although my original designs were good for what they were, there were always things that could be made better and eventually, these start to stack-up onto one another and additionally, over time, the return on these stacks gets less and less, thus, it’s best to start fresh using all those accumulated lessons and go for another version.

Although I tend to only show one acrylic front style for this production run of banks, there are many options available, and yes, we can engrave both the acrylic and the wood however you wish for SandboxRanch.com customers.

This is the aspect I love most about SandboxRanch.com that really isn’t present to this extreme with CNCROi.com because I can endlessly improve on things on a regular basis, for instance, in this run, I managed to double the speed of making the holes for the screws in the poplar, a small change, that pays huge time savings, and produces the same result as going slower.

Carving out these V2 square banks, you’ll also notice that I clean-up the slab between the roughing and the finishing stages of cutting out these custom V2 square banks, I found this improves on the overall finish as there isn’t crap moving around with the down cut bit to scratch the sides of the banks up.

I think the results speak for themselves, this is why I say, over and over again, that each time I make another run of custom kids banks for SandboxRanch.com, it’s the best run yet!

These V2 square banks look amazing! Making them bigger really was a fantastic idea, yes, they are only, by default, 1″ proportionally taller than the rounded banks library also available at SandboxRanch.com but it makes a HUGE difference.

When it comes to making custom banks, for kids or adults, or even companies and special events, SandboxRanch.com has the experience to make them in any quantity you want at pretty much any spec you could desire.

After cutting out these custom square banks and getting the wood aspect of them brought up to snuff, it’s time to cut out the acrylic fronts, through of course, if you want, we could also make this using bullet proof glass – it’s an option for SandboxRanch.com customers!

Once the acrylic fronts and the wooden banks are all finished, it’s time to unify them, if there was some finishing required, this is also the step where I’d do that BEFORE bringing them together, you don’t want stain or seal to go onto the plastic.

As mentioned in the video, my acrylic supplier ran out of the acrylic I use by default for these banks, so their replacement is a bit more green but I also have completely transparent acrylic in the shop as well, so you can choose a slightly darker green vs transparent, there isn’t any in between for now.

Want a custom generational bank? Buy online at SandboxRanch.com right now!

The post Custom V2 Square Banks appeared first on SandboxRanch.com.

I’ve been wanting to make custom pencil holders from the very beginning of SandboxRanch.com, there is so much design wise that can be made on that aspect of our product range alone that it’s just as infinite as our banking options and even our coinage possibilities.

As I get more and more experience designing items that can be made on-order with the slabs of wood I make in the shop for just this purpose, there are always voids or spots not being used best and that’s where having other products that are smaller works out great for customers and SandboxRanch.com alike.

I want to offer SandboxRanch.com customers absolute flexibility with their designs regarding what we are producing for them, and that means sometimes we make banks that are 12″ or even 16″ tall which can leave some rather large areas that are too small for other banks but large enough for custom pencil holders and other smaller items I’ve got in the works.

End-to-end control of every aspect of production from the slab sizing to the finishing on the banks and other items means the more efficient I can be, especially when it comes to optimizing the designs being made in this very important CNC router stage, the better it is for the long term viability of SandboxRanch.com.

I’ve been making various types of pen and pencil holders through the years, here’s one I made for my parents a while back for their birthday.

The pen and pencil holders that I made in this production run of V2 square hardwood banks is a perfect example of space optimization, I had a small area that no bank could have gone into but I was able to produce two holder prototypes to see how my ideas come to fruition in real life.

You’ll also notice the imagery that I’m now producing for these blog posts and the video has a lot more contrast now, decided to play things up a bit on the visual front to make things pop a bit more after noticing most of my stuff looks rather flat, probably due to the awful lighting in my shop, hopefully this counteracts a bit of that.

The reason for re-envisioning the custom square banks on offer at SandboxRanch.com was to be able to offer customers the culmination of a year of design through fabrication experience into the revised design, you can only make so many slight modifications to a design before you need to really redo it completely, and like my custom round banks, the square banks were due for a major refresh as well.

The custom square banks for this run were all perfect right out of the gate, I will of course do a few slight modifications to the design, as I did with the previous ones, in order to produce a better product but it’s light years over the old ones in my opinion in both storage capacity and overall aesthetics.

Back when I use to sell digital files, here’s one of my pen and pencil holder designs animated in 3D.

and another

When I made my very first batch of custom banks, the one below in the video where I produced mostly scrap for the fire pit, it was the first time I laminated sticks through tried to make tight designs like these, so the past year has really opened my eyes and given me a ton of experience on these fronts that I’m able to fully utilize with this V2.

It continues to blow my mind just how much of a journey I’ve been on with just these banks over the past year, so much has changed in such a small piece of time!

As for the custom pencil holders, the same experience I used for the banks is being applied directly to that, there are many things that I think about when it comes to making the best pencil holders in the world but before actually designing through fabricating it in my shop, you really don’t know the nuances of such a simple upcoming SandboxRanch.com product.

For these custom V2 square banks and essentially V1 pencil holders, you’ll notice they are being made at the same time using the same slab, this is on purpose, so I can mix and match designs, including the rounded banks, regardless of size, into one production at a time, meaning one slab can “satisfy” many orders at once rather than having to make one slab for one product at a time.

I have started to keep minimal inventory for SandboxRanch.com and will soon be offering quick-ship options as well, truth be told, not everybody wants to play with the nuances that are their banks and holders, as such, here’s what you get, here’s the price and it’s at your door a few days later has advantages rather than waiting for a slab to be filled with orders before proceeding to make a production run of it.

There are lots of ways to keep a desk organized, here’s a card holder I did a few years back for an idea.

More often that not, I’ve had customers NOT order a custom bank because the birthday or event was within a day or two of them discovering SandboxRanch.com, as such, yes, we offer next-day shipping, but it’s still faster than a few days to glue a slab together, router it out, make the acrylic front then package it for shipping.

You can see the custom pencil holders in the bottom right of this slab, after using these for a bit, I realized the error of my ways and will be adding internal slots to keep pencils upright, even if you only have a few, these are BIG and the current design just lets the pencils fall into these custom pencil holder bottoms, making them hard to retrieve.

Another “new” design that I’ve been wanting to make for a while is the new skull bank now available on SandboxRanch.com, it really showcases just how much customization is possible not only in the shape of the wood but the acrylic engraving possible as well.

This production run of custom V2 square banks and custom pencil holders came out great, they are bigger by an inch, as mentioned in the video at the top of this blog post, in order to proportionally increase the amount of volume inside the banks as so much is lost in the squariness of the overall style of these, it was the only solution I could think of.

Just looking at the almost finished V2 square banks above, I can see an immediate change in the D, I’ve since made that middle part thicker as the screw works fine at this thickness but to make sure that isn’t luck, having more material will make sure it’s less prone to splitting, producing a sub-par generational bank at SandboxRanch.com!

As with the V2 square banks, the custom pencil holders also have a skin to keep them in place during production, as such, this must be routed off after they have been individually cut out of the slab I made a few days ago, the ongoing theme here at SandboxRanch.com is that things take time and the steps involved over the past year have increased but they have also become more efficient and as a result, produce a better final result for the customer.

I plan to also release lots of other custom to order items on SandboxRanch.com as it keeps evolving beyond just woodworking, but that will always be the foundational product for me.

Once all the hardwood products are finished being “finished” without a finish, it’s time to cut out the acrylic front, as these are all initially going to be photographed, I want a consistent look on our website so they will all have the same spec, this will be updated shortly thereafter to take into account customer variations and requirements.

We use our laser to cut the acrylic, our router to carve out the wood and lots of power and hand tools to put it all together to make a finished product, truth be told, the only real difference between a custom square bank (in this case) and a custom pencil holder is the size of the slot, coins have a far smaller one to contain the coins if gravity ever gets reversed, with pencils, it doesn’t really matter.

I really enjoy the entire process of bringing these custom banks to life, they all have such a distinctive texture and grain pattern, each is unique like a snowflake and it’s fun getting feedback from SandboxRanch.com customers how these are by far the best custom banks they’ve ever layed eyes on and got the pleasure to use.

Don’t forget, I also have 3D kits on SandboxRanch.com to make rather unique banks too.

The mating process is relatively straight forward, the masking is kept on the acrylic until the very last moment to prevent scratching, these banks will be tagged and shipped after they are photographed at the shop and individually branded!

In this production run, being the first time I bring these V2 square banks into existence, there were a few minor issues that were as much wood related as they were design, so those were fixed so that the next batch of those banks, you guessed it, will be even better than this already awesome batch was for SandboxRanch.com customers!

Need custom hardwood banks and custom pencil holders? You are at the right place!

The post Custom V2 Square Banks & Pencil Holders appeared first on SandboxRanch.com.

And here’s the first batch of custom rounded V2 piggy banks video below.

SandboxRanch.com can now focus on bringing-up the square version of our custom wooden piggy banks up to par with these ones, again, a year later, much was learned and as such, that experience can be put towards providing the absolute best generational banking experience possible for our clients!

Although these steps may look repetitive, that being, the production of these custom hardwood generational custom wooden piggy banks at SandboxRanch.com, many nuances are applied each time, based on experience from the last run, to make things to smoother and better.

Even just the glue-up process has changed quite a bit, I use to use a roller to spread the glue out, now I use a modified widget I made that works better without requiring any of the clean-up for instance, and although I still put too much glue on these, the overall amount is less.

If you are wondering how the custom coins are made at SandboxRanch.com, the ones that come with each and every bank, check this video out… and yes, I’m about to run out of these yet again so I’ll make another production run very shortly.

Regardless of the process, the one machine that shines prominently throughout the production process is our Thermwood industrial CNC router, it not only makes the banks, but makes the sticks that I table saw flat and parallel, perfect for glue-ups, cleans-up all surfaces before production and is an essential multi-tool that does a wonderful job no matter what I throw at it at SandboxRanch.com.

Just look at how clean the surface is above after cleaning it up, and yes, it did look just like the one below before starting on it’s journey towards becoming generational custom wooden piggy banks.

The bits I use to make these generational custom wooden piggy banks has also changed, they are bigger, more expensive and produce a cleaner result than what I used in my initial prototyping runs, so not only has the machine been fully upgraded, but also the bits it uses and the software as well as the overall designs now too.

There are always bottlenecks that I try to remove when making these generational custom wooden piggy banks, things can be improved upon each and every time I make these items, and that’s a bit part of the fun with making SandboxRanch.com products, unlike the general one-offs I do with my main business CNCROi.com.

Big or small, unique or same-old, SandboxRanch.com can fabricate a custom bank to any spec you want, whether it’s reliving your childhood or something as a corporate gift, we can make it for you in any quantity you want.

This production run did have one mistake though, that was the literal piggy bank, at the last minute, I saw something that was “off” and fixed it, but I forgot to update the cut files in the process, as such, alignment of the piggy bank you see below, in the shape of the pig, was destined for the fire pit before ever having a chance to hold even a dime.

These last minute tweaks and thus, mistakes,  are all added to my growing list of things I have to double and triple check for before going ahead and making a production run of generational custom wooden piggy banks, that’s why it has taken so long to get to this point, it’s a process of figuring out what not to do until you figure out how to best do things for SandboxRanch.com products.

I really enjoy the overall process of making these generational custom wooden piggy banks, turning wood into keepsakes for SandboxRanch.com customers, being able to endlessly modify and see the results get better and better makes the process very rewarding.

Birthdays especially SCREAM custom bank from SandboxRanch.com, it’s a predictable date for a person who you know… so why not get them something special that’s been tested and retested endlessly to be the absolute best possible.

If you look closely at the image below, you can see the alignment issue with the generational custom wooden piggy bank, the lip at the top is twice as thick and the bottom almost none-existent, this is because I updated one layer but not the others, I saw it too late to do anything about it, lesson learned!

After carving out all the inside parts of the generational custom wooden piggy banks and inspecting it all, it’s time to cut them out from the poplar hardwood slab I laminated from which these will come out of, just love how these look and feel straight off the machine at SandboxRanch.com!

You’ll also notice a new shape has been added, it was actually present on one of my earlier banking videos but I didn’t have the experience to pull it off correctly, yep, I’m now going to be offering more adult themed custom generational banks, in this case, it’s a beer coin bank!

I’m very proud of our square banks as well, but after seeing the massive evolution of these rounded ones, you’ll love these as well, here’s how V1 of our square banks evolved over time.

The fun part of SandboxRanch.com production is coming out and testing new ideas, having a year to hone my skills hardware through software, means I can literally turn anything into a working generational custom wooden piggy bank.

After the CNC router end of things to make these banks whole, it’s time to cut them out, they all have a very slight skin at the bottom to make sure they don’t move during production, so after cutting them out using the bandsaw, it’s time to throw them on the router to completely remove this.

When it comes to the processes involved with making these generational custom wooden piggy banks, you can just see the amount of work involved with bringing them to life, manual, power and CNC tools must all work perfectly start to finish to produce a final bank you’ll enjoy at your home from SandboxRanch.com.

The important part of this production run was to make sure I got all the letters done, which I did, so now the entire alphabet regarding rounded banks is complete and fully tested out, each letter is another shape so essentially, I updated a total of 52 shapes during this production run of both rounded and square banks, which you’ll see in the next blog post.

Any shape can be turned into a bank, want a submarine that’s 4ft across and proportionally just as high? Yep, SandboxRanch.com can make it for you!

The front windows are out of acrylic, laser cut, so they have a nice flame polish, that process hasn’t really changed much from my initial testing and prototyping stages over the past year, it’s just cut through and a far simpler process that doesn’t involve bits, speeds, feeds and wood of all types.

After these masked clear acrylic SandboxRanch.com front windows are done, it’s just a matter of unifying the plastic to the wood and shipping it out!

I always do a dry test fit first, even though there isn’t any glue involved, it’s always a good idea to find problems before they becoming a bigger one at SandboxRanch.com.

With each cycle that I make more and more banks, I learned how to make them better than the previous round, here’s how it all began!

I still have my little box of screws that I used over a year ago to make these generational custom wooden piggy banks, if it works, keep it, though I’m going to have to start thinking of a better system for managing these as the production runs get bigger at SandboxRanch.com.

And here are the finished custom rounded banks V2, I’m so proud to show you the results of a year of experimentation and experience coming to life!

Here’s the same photo at another angle, each and every one of these banks is truly a labor of love that I look forward to sharing with others as they bring a little custom into their lives with SandboxRanch.com.

Want custom banks? You are at the right place!

The post Custom Wooden Piggy Banks: V2 Release pt2 appeared first on SandboxRanch.com.

Custom wooden piggy banks are a popular way for people to save their money in a stylish and personalized way, and SandboxRanch.com fabricates each and every one of them from rough sawed kiln dried lumber, regardless of the species they are made from.

If you aren’t into letters, let us make any shaped bank you want!

These custom wooden piggy banks are not only functional, but also add a unique touch to any room they are placed in and as they are made on-demand, can be further customized to suit just about any occasion as they can be any size, wood species and finished in just about any color you can imagine.

There are a wide variety of designs and finishes available, so there is sure to be a piggy bank that matches the decor of any room or the personality you are giving this custom wooden piggy bank to.

The journey to get to this point and literally make the absolute best custom banks I’ve ever gone has taken more than a year, and the changes that this alone has brought to my shop have been tremendous, from new equipment to setting-up our own shipping department, it’s incredible what an idea can spawn.

The glue-up you see being done at SandboxRanch.com is the process we perform for each and every custom wooden piggy bank that we make, from the rough sawed lumber, they are cut into sticks then using our CNC router, made square and parallel for the final slab that will then become custom banks.

This processing of raw lumber to finished product in our shop means that every aspect of these custom wooden piggy banks is controlled, monitored and optimized for our clients, each one is completely unique, like a fingerprint but using modern equipment, repeatable enough to be affordable and yet, endlessly customizable at any stage of production.

My goal with SandboxRanch.com is to bring a little custom to everybody’s lives, and I think these banks are a fantastic way of accomplishing this goal.

Custom wooden piggy banks is that they can be personalized in a number of ways, where some people choose to have their name or initials engraved on the bank, others may opt for a specific design or symbol that has personal meaning to them, this is why SandboxRanch.com offers more than just letters on our site and can make custom shapes as well to best suit the receiver.

Custom wooden piggy banks by SandboxRanch.com are designed to be super sturdy and durable, my goal with making these isn’t to just make a bank, but a generational bank, something that will last a very long time and be something that can be handed down later and cherished over a lifetime.

The machine you see below here is a 12 000 pound beast, it’s wicked overkill for this application but that means that what comes off the table of our CNC router is almost ship-ready, saving a ton of time that would otherwise be used for sanding.

I came-up with custom rounded banks after releasing the square ones because I wanted something that didn’t have any sharp angles, not everybody likes that style and so, the contrast offers you an alternative whether it’s for decor or financial keepsake reasons.

There are many different ways to use a custom wooden piggy bank beyond just as a cool birthday gift for children of all ages.

For children, it can be a fun and educational way to learn about money and the importance of saving while for parents can encourage their children to save a portion of their allowance or earnings, and periodically help them count and deposit the money in the piggy bank.

Having a tool changer is a life changer for these custom wooden piggy banks production wise, in the picture above, you can get an idea of the tool pathing that I’ve programmed and thus, is being followed perfectly by our CNC router.

What I enjoy about making custom shaped banks is the endless variety of what our customers come-up with, you want a butterfly bank, a revolver bank or a mountain shaped bank, SandboxRanch.com can make it!

Regardless of whether you are an adult or a child, a custom wooden piggy bank by SandboxRanch.com helps to instill good financial habits and can set the stage for responsible money management.

For adults, custom wooden piggy banks can be a way to save up for specific goals or purchases, such as a vacation or a down payment on a house as by regularly depositing money into the piggy bank, people can see their savings grow over time and feel a sense of accomplishment as they work towards their goal.

So there you have it, custom wooden piggy banks are the perfect gift for a wide variety of reasons and personalities, and SandboxRanch.com offers you endless ways to make it a personalized and individualized gift for just about anybody.

No two banks made at SandboxRanch.com are the same, each one has a different wood grain, texture and finishing option, in addition to different colored front window options.

Now that the machining end of things is done with these custom wooden piggy banks, it’s time to go back to using power tools and cut them out of the slab I created days ago.

You’ll notice these wooden banks have a skin at the bottom, it is yet another aspect of production that I’ve added, along with endless other improvements through the year, to make sure that these banks do not move, as any movement means more sanding by me!

Once I’ve removed the skin on all of these using my table router, the next step is to review each one of them and see if there are any areas that need extra attention such as a little sanding.

There are many ways to make custom wooden piggy banks, I hope these videos and photos show you just how much evolution has happened at SandboxRanch.com for these over the past year.

Once everything is perfect, it’s time to use the laser to cut out the front windows of all these custom wooden piggy banks, in this case, they aren’t engraved yet, I generally do this for SandboxRanch.com customers afterwards as it makes placement easier to see the entire finished piece.

The reason the front windows aren’t transparent is because they still have a protective masking on both sides, generally, I leave this on for shipping to protect it, it’s easy enough to remove for SandboxRanch.com customers.

You can now see the successful finish of these custom wooden piggy banks made by SandboxRanch.com.

Want a custom wooden piggy bank? Buy online right now at SandboxRanch.com or contact us for totally custom offerings.

The post Custom Wooden Piggy Banks: V2 Release appeared first on SandboxRanch.com.

As with all the banks that we made at SandboxRanch.com, they begin with rough sawed lumber from the mill, in this case, we are using Poplar, a wood species I’ve grown very fond of as it paints and stains way better than Oak and is easier to work with.

The first step after bringing in a few hundred pounds of rough sawed kiln dried lumber into the shop is to begin processing it into smaller, more manageable pieces so that it can be more easily transformed into high quality custom hardwood banks.

There is quite a bit of woodwork involved with getting the slabs ready to transform into custom hardwood banks, several steps of cutting and planning, before I can finally make items of joy for people across North America.

This isn’t my first volcano bank that I plan on making, I designed this one YEARS ago, a different process certainly, but the result is the same, a fantastically unique bank!

My shop isn’t the biggest but it’s efficient and has all the tools I need to more than keep-up with production schedules of not only SandboxRanch.com but also the custom fabrication projects over at my main business CNCROi.com.

Once I have rough sawed Poplar lumber cut into sticks, it’s time to go ahead and glue it all back together into slabs, beforehand, I need to flatten and clean-up the two opposing sides to make sure I have a perfect seam so there aren’t any voids.

I bought a 6″ jointer to do the work you see my Thermwood CNC router doing here, flattening and cleaning two sides of the wood sticks, but after using it a bit, I decided the CNC is the best way forward, it’s faster, produces a better result and far less physically taxing on me.

After two opposing sides of the Poplar sticks that will be transformed into custom hardwood banks shortly are flat, clean and parallel, the next step is gluing them together – everything up to this point has been prep, not production at SandboxRanch.com.

I’m always amazed at just how fantastically tight the seams are with the slabs of hardwood that I make at my shop, I guess it a testimony to having every side of these sticks cleaned-up multiple times.

This video shows you how the T-Rex was made, many of the steps you see in that video are similar to what you see in this blog post but there are small refinements that if you pay attention, will show you a gentle further evolution of production efficiencies.

Once the glue is dry and fully cured, I can then stick the laminated slab of (in this case) Poplar onto my CNC router bed and flatten and make parallel the front and the back, this is where I end-up with an incredibly clean slate to begin making custom hardwood banks for SandboxRanch.com with.

You can compare the slab just a few pictures up and the one below, it’s the same slab, but wow does it look clean and then I can begin production almost immediately, the nice thing about this approach is that time and machine is used, not too much of my physical body, which saves a lot of time and make the custom hardwood banks cost-effective yet still totally made to order.

It’s great to be able to not only control but be able to optimize each and every aspect of the production of custom hardwood banks, from wood to pixels, it just gives me so much creative freedom to innovate for SandboxRanch.com customers.

As you can see from the picture below, I could easily mass produce A LOT MORE BANKS in one shot, and even set-up a multi-step process where one part of my 5ft x 10ft table could flatten the sticks and make them parallel (a fast process) as I make custom banks, across several batches on laminated slabs, at the other end.

Each and every aspect of these banks has been optimized, and each time I make these, I further improve on the design and processes involved with making these custom hardwood banks for SandboxRanch.com – so things are just getting better between each production run.

I designed a whole series of laser cut banks, which will soon be coming to SandboxRanch.com, it’s just an alternative method to produce something that has a different aesthetic to it.

Having a super-rigid machine and wickedly overpowered spindle and associated CNC router means that what I produce is almost ship-ready, using Poplar hardwood does produce a few little fuzzies here and there that are quickly sanded but otherwise, what comes off the table is basically ready to ship right away to SandboxRanch.com custom hardwood banks customers.

Making these custom hardwood banks is a multi-step process, each time I carve out one detail, it’s followed by another one and so on, until the entire bank is almost cut-out and ready to be refined with my table router.

The longer this laminated slab of Poplar stays big and together, the less likely I am to have production problems for these SandboxRanch.com products, the slab is of course screwed town as well as being vacuumed down to make sure nothing moves from start to finish.

You can now finally see the massive volcano bank that I made that will go in the background of Simon’s bank, this custom hardwood bank is 22″ tall for reference, the other letters you see on this slab are a few other orders I had to get done at SandboxRanch.com using square letter bank shapes.

Want to see how far things have changed making these custom banks in early 2022 to end of 2023? Watch this video right after watching the one I produced at the top of this blog post.

A bit of clean-up and you can see how fantastic these custom hardwood banks look, they have their screw holes already done and best of all, these will totally match what I make with my CNC laser for the front acrylic window so that process of unification is so much easier than how I did things in the first run earlier in the year.

After these custom hardwood banks are cut out using my table router, only a little spot sanding is required as some areas of the Poplar are harder than others, more fuzzy than others and as a result, need a little fine tuning before shipping.

I decided it was time to make a rough test to see how Simon’s bank would look like once fully assembled, the Tyrannosaurus Rex was made earlier and as it’s so tall with not much depth, it needed a back support, which is the main purpose of the volcano custom hardwood bank.

Poplar stains wonderfully, that’s what the grey is, and the inside of the volcano bank is painted, again, poplar works great for this as well, Oak would have taken a lot more steps to get to the same ending and cost more as well.

This batch of custom hardwood banks all had light green front acrylic windows so I cut them all in one shot for SandboxRanch.com, I think the light greed looks fantastic with natural Poplar, the contrast is just enough to accentuate the wood.

I’m definitely no stranger to doing work with my laser, it’s one of the most used machines in my shop, and it’s amazing just how versatile it is, here’s a plaque I made just the other day, where instead of making a bank, I made a recognition plaque.

The acrylic has masking on both sides to protect the window during the transportation of the sheet, as such, it must be removed to reveal the acrylic after it has been laser cut, laser cutting produces smoke and can burn the acrylic as well where it isn’t intended to happen, so the masking protects against that as well.

Letters, volcanoes, it makes no difference, the laser cuts it all out no problem, above was light green and below as clear acrylic, both 1/8″ thick for the SandboxRanch.com custom hardwood banks.

Here’s a close-up of Simon’s bank after I finished the assembly of all the components, this doesn’t photograph very well in the shop so a close-up was the best way to show the painted part inside the volcano and the mirror finish on the inside of the dinosaur.

And the finished bank assembly, two banks, should hold Simon over for 2023 as he filled-up his 12″ tall S bank within a month of receiving it.

Looking for custom hardwood banks? You’ve found SandboxRanch.com!

The post Custom Hardwood Banks: Simon’s Christmas Bank appeared first on SandboxRanch.com.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DFxPxVDa9GI/

As we make everything to order once an order is received, it means that SandboxRanch.com can offer you endless flexibility when it comes to what we make, although we can offer just simple letters to our customers, the possibilities are endless regarding how those letters are represented.

As with every bank we make at SandboxRanch.com, they begin life as rough sawed kiln dried lumber which we then cut into strips and glue together, this gives the end-products we produce a tremendous amount of strength and rigidity.

I got tired of looking at a blank wall so I made-up a little banner to fill-up the wall next to my Thermwood CNC router, the one that makes all these custom combination banks, that is a 6ft wide banner and gives you a scale of just how larger this router is!

After flattening one side of the dried and laminated slab, it’s time to flip it around and do the same on the other side, this assures that all the glue seams are flawless – as of yesterday, I now have a jointer so some of this tedious processing will no longer be done using my router so as with everything else at SandboxRanch.com, things keep evolving for higher efficiency!

I’ve certainly come a very long way since first starting down this journey of custom wooden banks, just so much streamlining all around, I can’t imagine how much I’ve learned this year transforming the idea of SandboxRanch.com from digital to physical… this was just done in February of 2022!

After one side is cleaned-up and evened-out, it’s time to flip the slab and mill flat and parallel the other side of this poplar chunk of wood that will be transformed into a variety of custom combination banks among a few other things.

The first step is adding a chamfer to the banks that want them, I’ve grown quite fond of this process, it double checks placement and makes sure that what I programmed is true to what will be produced at SandboxRanch.com.

There doesn’t seem like there is much on this laminated poplar slab but you have to keep in mind, unlike the previous production runs I’ve done where most of the custom letter banks and wooden shape banks are 8″ tall, this one has a mix of 12″ tall individual letters and 10″ tall custom combination banks, so the scales are deceiving.

Each production run has a lot of additional tweaks performed onto my source code that churns out these custom wooden letter banks, custom combination banks are just the fruits of those labors as now I can easily combine all of what I made endlessly.

When it comes to making custom banks, the journey has been long but now I have so much in the rear view mirror that it’s fun to see the progress that’s been documented since then – I still have a tremendous amount of ideas that I want to play with, these custom combination banks are only the beginning of what SandboxRanch.com can offer!

This production run produced the absolute best banks that have ever left the shop, and each time I make another run, a few additional changes are done and the whole cycle is repeated with better and better results at SandboxRanch.com.

This is the aspect of custom bank manufacturing that I’ve grown to relish, as with CNCROi.com, most of what I do is one-off, meaning there is little room for optimization and improving code through production but when it comes to a product I manufacture at the shop for SandboxRanch.com, each run presents additional opportunities to improve upon the last.

In the image below, you can get an idea of the scale of the custom combination banks and the bigger 12″ tall banks, those two “Ds” are actually the typical 8″ tall banks we make at SandboxRanch.com.

Taking a look at this production run of custom combination banks and bigger wooden banks, you can further see just how much of a different size plays in how much storage these custom banks can offer, as an additional reference of scale, that board is 40″ wide!

I started off with custom red oak banks because they were the hardest to produce, and the square shape is also more challenging, all the lessons I learned from that were applied to the rounded banks library.

Now only has SandboxRanch.com gotten a jointer (yesterday) but I also got a little bandsaw that will hopefully mean the end of my life using a jigsaw cutting these out, it isn’t the massive bandsaw I was hoping for but a hold-me-over until I do.

As with everything else at SandboxRanch.com, if I’m doing a new size or shape, I always do a test using paper or cardboard to make sure everything fits as it should, whether it’s custom combination banks or shapes.

Above is paper that I had laying around and below is cardboard, literally anything can be used to test out the form, fit and function of custom letter banks made out of wood.

I’m so happy to have two distinct letter bank alphabets on SandboxRanch.com, of course, if you want to mix and match them to have your own custom combination banks, that’s no problem, as well as shapes and anything else you may have in mind.

Whether you want a custom bank for birthdays, anniversaries, novelty or whatever, we can make it just for you in any quantity and spec range you can come up with.

Below you can see how much of a difference a 12″ custom wooden letter bank is compared to it’s 8″ tall cousin, again, SandboxRanch.com isn’t just making the letter banks taller, but proportionally taller, which also makes them wider.

Mixing in the 12″ tall letter banks with the custom combination banks, you can see how much of a difference even going from 10″ to 12″ has, notice the B especially, that’s a huge amount of coinage that can go in there!

Here are some individual product shots of the 12″ poplar with black onyx screws, unlike Oak, Poplar paints and stains wonderfully, which is why I offer that on SandboxRanch.com as well… both are hardwoods by the way.

Making custom wooden banks is fun, it’s amazing how much equipment is required to make something so simple but that’s the fun part, so many different woodworking steps involved start to finish!

As I tell my customers, custom combination banks offer a whole new set of opportunities to have your very own unique bank for your kids, parents or entire family!

Being able to add color, backings, engraving and wow, you will really have a truly unique offering for birthdays and anniversaries, wedding and funerals!

Of course, I knew that eventually, a child would break the front acrylic of their custom bank, and as such, that’s why I offer polycarbonate (bullet proof glass) as an option, if your kid is an especially special one whose rough on his toys, give him a front window that’s impossible to break!

Polycarbonate is what they use to make safety glasses and it’s laminated in car windows to make them bullet proof, and of course, this offering is available even on custom combination banks at SandboxRanch.com.

As for the marking, it’s permanent, no inks, dyes or paints are used, we use our fiber laser source and permanently etch the surface black – and yes, you can have any color you want as long as it’s black.

Polycarbonate is optically clear as well, meaning the clarity is second to none and it’s more scratch resistant than acrylic.

Although most of the polycarbonate that we use in the shop is slated for industrial use, we do have fun with it for other unique applications as well.

Of course with these custom combination banks, I also did some testing using cardboard before cutting the more expensive acrylic, and yes, you aren’t limited to just clear acrylic neither with SandboxRanch.com, we got a whole bunch of different color options available with both painted and just etched options.

These custom combination banks really look amazing!

I have fun on the side designing banks that don’t even look like banks – here’s one I designed a long time ago and yes, I plan on releasing them on SandboxRanch.com eventually.

Of course, you can have these custom combination banks stacked vertically, horizontally, using more than just two shapes and letter combinations as well – absolute and total customization is no problem!

The reason I came-out with poplar as an option for these custom combination banks as well as everything else on SandboxRanch.com is stains, you don’t want to stain oak, it looks beautiful the way it is, but poplar is a more cost-effective hardwood that just loves paint and stains, so yes, yet another level of customization!

Want a custom bank? Contact us and shop online at SandboxRanch.com!

https://vimeo.com//746395236

The post Custom Combination Banks & 12″ Letters Banks appeared first on SandboxRanch.com.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rXyLN8zJkN4/

SandboxRanch.com doesn’t just make custom toddler banks, we make banks for all ages of course.

As with all the custom banks made at SandboxRanch.com, they start off life as rough sawed kiln dried lumber that’s then cut down to size and glued-up together to create strong banks, in this case, these banks are made out of poplar hardwood.

After the glue has dried on these soon to be custom toddler banks, it’s time to clean-up the front and the back of the new slab before transforming what you see into custom banks for people to enjoy all around the world with.

Now that I have a clean surface, front and back for these custom toddler banks, it’s time to go ahead and cut all the letter and dinosaur banks.

My history with making custom banks is decades in the making, here’s one concept I had that I plan on releasing shortly on the website, there is more than one way to store money!

The first step of making these custom toddler banks, in this case, that’s where all these are going for, is carving out the coin slot and then the area holding the money as each pass I make over this glued-up slab of poplar weakens it, so you want to carve out the biggest pieces first and work your way down the list, hence why having a tool changer is such a massive upgrade for SandboxRanch.com.

Without a tool changer, I was severely limited in the number of tooling I could use and the type, and as manually changing it was a process that could be prone to errors, it’s something you want to do as little as possible for the integrity of the final product, but with an automatic tool changer, who cares, switch around tools as often as I want at SandboxRanch.com!

Round or square letter banks, animal shapes, birds, or whatever else you can imagine, SandboxRanch.com can make them for you to spec!

It’s seriously night and day the processes I used from my very first batch of prototype banks earlier in the year compared to what I use now, the results are not only better, but dramatically faster and repeatable to no end, these custom toddler banks are a direct beneficiary of that.

I’ve grown to really enjoy the process, literally from rough lumber to finished shipped product – each step along the ladder is just so enjoyable to work with and optimize, this is something that I don’t get much of with my main business CNCROi.com because it’s mostly one-offs of customer’s designs and there isn’t much need or room for prototyping and process optimizing as there is for SandboxRanch.com, custom toddler banks or other wise.

This batch of custom toddler banks finishes up the prototyping (more like proof of concept) of the rounded letter banks now all available on SandboxRanch.com, I now have a complete square and rounded bank options on the site… and that’s only the beginning for me as I have way more ideas than I’ll ever have wood.

Unlike carving, drilling is one of those operations that’s tedious to do and I’m so happy that I no longer have to do it manually with a drill, so many alignment issues that I no longer need to contend with for SandboxRanch.com banks!

After all the internal carving is all finished, it’s time to make all the drill holes that will match perfectly with the laser cut acrylic fronts, I absolutely love this process because I use to do this manually with a drill!

After the drill holes are all done, the next step is cutting these custom toddler banks out of the glued-up slab I made earlier, as you can see, there is very little scrap left after all these processes are done, I probably turn half of the glue-up into saw dust and the other half goes off to the fire pit for even more enjoyment!

You can see the finished slab made at SandboxRanch.com below, these custom toddler banks look fantastic and you can see Simon’s T-Rex bank is a formidable size compared to the other 8″ tall banks.

Custom kids banks are for more than just birthdays, though that is a wonderful time to give these out to celebrate another year and another bank that needs to be filled-up.

The next process is something I look forward to optimizing a lot more with a very large industrial bandsaw, using a jigsaw to this type of work is not what I would call a joyful process.

After the jigsaw work, it’s time to go ahead and router off the ledge all around these banks, I leave this on the finished banks from the CNC to make sure everything stays flat until the final bit of wood chipping for these custom toddler banks.

The finished cut-out custom toddler banks are now ready for their acrylic front or for Simon’s bank, time to head to the finishing department for making it a nice dark color and other customization options I will be adding to the website shortly like acrylic mirror inlays.

It’s amazing how much virtual pixels, CNC machines and a mix of power and hand tools are required to make each and every one of these custom toddler banks, it really covers many aspects of woodworking, skills through equipment.

When I first started SandboxRanch.com, I was concerned that 8″ was too big, but now that I’ve done some massive custom wooden banks, it feels short, it’s funny how perspectives change over time.

The next step along the journey for Simon’s T-Rex bank is to stain it, this will transform the poplar hardwood it’s made from into a very dark cherry look without the expense of doing this out of solid hardwood cherry (which SandboxRanch.com can of course do as well).

Comparing the above and below picture, you can really see just how much of a transformation happens just by staining every surface of this custom toddler bank for my son Simon.

The next step is to see how my inlay fits inside the bank, this is a new feature I will be launching shortly at SandboxRanch.com for all the banks, basically, it allows you to create a very unique look, further down the total customization path, for your very own child’s (or adult) wooden bank.

Once the cheap cardboard is tested and works, the next step is to migrate to the expensive gold mirror that will go inside of Simon’s dinosaur bank, this way, regardless of what coins he puts into it, they will be doubled and reflected as gold coins!

The finished look really looks spectacular, the inlay is glued into place, so there are no screws or hardware visible, though if you wanted to, SandboxRanch.com could also affix these inlays using said hardware for the custom toddler banks.

When it comes to making custom banks for kids and adults, offering total customization is my idea of fun, there is nothing standard about anything we make at SandboxRanch.com.

As I’m building-up a little inventory from making all the banks thus far, it’s time for a product shot and for the heck of it, a banner covering the ugly wall the CNC router is next to.

There are so many lessons learned from this picture of custom wooden banks made at SandboxRanch.com, the diversity of the offerings thus far after a year of work are very impressive but they will be all the more so in the years to come.

This is a lot of inventory that will wind itself down with orders coming into the website, but there are always more ideas to follow so I should have a constant influx of new inventory items that are ready to ship in a moment’s notice, but due to the nature of this business, there is no point holding onto inventory for any extended period of time.

Want custom toddler banks? Contact SandboxRanch.com and we’ll make it to order and ship it right to your door!

The post Custom Toddler Banks: Poplar Hardwood and Simon’s T-Rex appeared first on SandboxRanch.com.

As you saw, I also further diversified our shapes offering with a dinosaur, will be adding a lot more shapes once I’m done the rounded alphabet designs at SandboxRanch.com.

What you see in these pictures is a machine I no longer have at SandboxRanch.com, my goal after getting my Thermwood CNC router was to offload my ShopBot PRSAlpha, wonderful machine, but has now left the shop for a new home, making cabinetry for a new owner.

I’ve been with my ShopBot PRSAlpha for many years, it has served me very well, and its what I used to make the first round of custom banks and launch SandboxRanch.com into what it is today – I just needed too many upgrades to make it worthwhile for me, so moving to an industrial platform was the only way forward production wise for my business.

Many of the processes that I use to this day, were established on the PRSAlpha CNC router by Shopbot, the Thermwood just does it faster – in the above picture, I’m creating flat and parallel stick so of red oak so that I can then glue them edge to edge to create the laminated slab which will then become custom birthday banks.

I don’t really care about the surface top and bottom of the wood because this will be cleaned-up with my router anyways before making the hardwood banks, as a result, as long as I have two clean parallel edges, the glue works just fine, essentially, I’m using my CNC machine as a jointer at SandboxRanch.com.

From custom acrylic colors to endless engraving options and even paint filling, we are offering complete customization of these banks to suit just about any desire, custom shapes through sizing even!

I’ve been slowly migrating production of the custom birthday banks over to the Thermwood, it has a rigid structure and a tool changer, making production way easier and more efficient.

After flattening both sides, yet again, after the glue-up, the next step is to begin making custom red oak banks at SandboxRanch.com.

You can already see that things are looking rather rough, I wasn’t sure what was going on but a few things seemed off when I was making this round of rounded custom birthday banks.

Somewhere very early in the production of these banks, the tips of the router bit sheered off by about 1/16″ on both sides, which means that basically, I was 1/8″ “off” everywhere the tip of the finishing bit did its work, and this is the most important part of the bit for making these hardwood banks.

As a result of this bit chipping, without any clear reason as to why it happened, what I produced out of the red oak wasn’t saleable, I was able to fix-up a few of them so it wasn’t a total loss, but it’s frustrating regardless to go through all this work to produce a bunch of banks just to essentially make scrap out of it.

I’ve made a ton of red oak banks at SandboxRanch.com, so the next step is to further diversity into wood species, hardwood to start, as it makes things fun at the shop, diversity is an enjoyable thing when it comes to woodworking.

You can see below the symptom of the problem, these I was able to fix-up during production but the rest were no good, this has to be manually sanded, which is a step I can’t really do in full production as I have a lot of banks to make and sanding takes way too much time to do properly.

No problem though, I have some hardwood poplar in the shop and I decided that we’ll make another round of custom birthday banks using this material at SandboxRanch.com!

I started with red oak because it’s a very hard hardwood, this is a softer hardwood, but keep in mind, as mentioned in the video, there is some deviation in hardwood densities, meaning some red oak sections can be as soft as poplar and some sections of poplar can be as hard as red oak.

After cutting down the kiln dried poplar lumber, the next step is to convert it into sticks that will then be glued together to form a slab that is then transformed into another batch of custom birthday banks at SandboxRanch.com.

No longer having the ShopBot PRSAlpha in the shop is a sad thing, it’s in a good home though, but this provides me with an opportunity for SPACE that I can better utilize, making production far more efficient, from using my chop saw to table saw to transform lumber into banks.

I can’t really screw things into the spoil board of my Thermwood as I could with my ShopBot, so that means creating a jig to hold the sticks together to flatten both sides and make them parallel, yes, welcome to my new 5ft  x 10 ft jointer!

Custom shapes is something I want to drastically increase the number of on the website, the reason being, literally any shape can be made as we are essentially making one bank at at time, what the actual bank is, makes no difference to our machinery.

As poplar is a light colored wood without a very strong grain pattern, it can be hard to see what was flattened and cleaned-up, so I’m using pencil lines in order to mark the surface and once they are all gone, I know that every surface is dead-flat for the custom birthday banks to be able to move forward.

I really love my new jig, it does a wonderful job of holding the wood in place while I clean-up all the surfaces to get it ready for glue, having exact flatness means you barely see the seams in the wood slab after glue has been applied, the joints are that tight and flush to one another!

As you saw with the red oak slab earlier I screwed-up on, the glue-up happens in much the same way, regardless of species, I like having big slabs to work from as it makes overall production more efficient to make a dozen at once rather than just a hand full when the time comes at SandboxRanch.com.

I generally let these dry for a few days, the glue that you see may dry overnight, but the glue inside that isn’t in contact with much of any air may need a little more time to settle, I want to make solid custom birthday banks, not banks that have gluing problems the moment I cut them out with my CNC router.

As you can see, there is quite a bit of woodworking involved with making these custom birthday banks at SandboxRanch.com before they are even produced, and that’s what makes it fun, each design mix applied to the finished slab is different as is the grain pattern on the finished banks we make.

After the glue has dried thoroughly, I stick the newly minted slab of poplar (in this case) onto my Thermwood CNC router, it will then proceed to flatten both sides and make them parallel, which means awesome custom birthday banks!

Each step of the way thus far, I’ve been making saw dust, so the original poplar hardwood has gotten shaved repeatedly on all sides, and the final step is almost upon us before we can proceed and make custom birthday banks.

We are now more than 6 months since my first attempt at making these custom hardwood banks, as you can see, many of the processes and even machinery has changed, I use to make all of these using only two bits, as I had to manually change them which is a pain, now I can mix and match four of them with more on the way.

Once the slab is flattened on one side, I flip it over, no longer requiring my jig, and begin flattening the other side, this will be the side that ultimately becomes the front of the custom birthday banks that SandboxRanch.com is making.

As part of my ever-increasing checklist of things to watch for, making a chamfer on all the edges reveals to me that my design is sound, and that everything will fit accordingly, if you look at earlier videos of me making custom hardwood banks, I didn’t have this step all the time and as a result, yep, made lots of scrap in the process.

After the design is sound, I can then go into full production, I’m currently limited to four bits to make each one of these custom birthday banks but I make the most out of it, you have the roughing bit, the finishing bit, the chamfering bit and the drill bit – having more would just make things go faster but the quality would be the same for SandboxRanch.com products.

The more I can fit on a finished laminated slab, the better use of the hardwood I get, so I try to squish as much as possible and as you’ll see when production is done, there is very little wasted at the end of the wood chipping day.

I’ve used poplar many times before, it’s a wonderful wood whose aesthetic fits perfectly with the rounded look and feel of these custom birthday banks, the grain is subtle, the color is more muted and the durability is still awesome for SandboxRanch.com customers!

You can see immediately that the finish on these custom birthday banks is a lot cleaner than on their screwed-up red oak cousins, I replaced the bit with a fresh one and threw-out the chipped one, still have no idea what the other one hit but we’ve certainly moved on since then at SandboxRanch.com.

Having custom options is important, and my goal with this business it to bring a little custom to everybody’s lives, banking is only the start but an important one to achieve this milestone globally.

Periodically, you saw in the video, me vacuuming the surface of the production area, the reason for this are those little pieces of stray hardwood that can be flung across the shop if they get hit the right way by our CNC router, though this possibility has lessened quite a bit with the dust hood.

You can see now in the photo below the drilling bit I use to make the holes in the banks, I use to do this with a regular drill and wow, this is so much easier and consistent, and the holes match perfectly the holes made into the acrylic from our CNC laser, so the entire assembly process is dramatically more efficient at SandboxRanch.com.

After the drill has done its magic, it’s time to move onto the rouging and finishing bit once more, that’s where having a tool changer really comes in handy, because I don’t have to re-do the Z-axis zeroing each time and go through the process of manually changing them between each process of transforming this slab of poplar into custom birthday banks.

Below is what you see straight off the machine, a few splinters and wayward pieces of wood that need to be cleaned-up but overall, these are almost ship ready right off the machine, a process that has taken MONTHS to achieve on both the machine and design front at SandboxRanch.com.

There are endless possibilities when it comes to your own hardwood bank, if there is a shape or letter that you don’t see that you’d like on our website, contact us to turn that wish into reality.

Next step to streamline at the shop will be what you see below, the jigsaw is a good tool, but not optimal for cutting out these banks, as a result, a bandsaw is in my very near future, a big one, that can handle big slabs of wood like this with ease.

You can see the small ledge I leave on all the bank in the image below, after cutting out the various letter and shape banks using the jigsaw, I have to move to another tool in the shop, the table router, in order to remove this and make the hardwood poplar banks full again.

You can see below, the small amount of scrap that’s left over after making all these banks, it’s almost nothing!

Each process of making these custom birthday banks removes material, each surface by the time I’m done, has been touched in some manner, and this is the process that has taken a very long time to optimize to produce the best possible banks possible at SandboxRanch.com.

After the solid body of all these custom birthday banks is complete, the next step is making the fronts, as these designs are “new”, I test out the fronts using MDF to make sure fit, form and function are correct, it’s cheaper to use scrap MDF in the shop than expensive acrylic for this test.

You can see in the image above how the MDF corresponds to the custom birthday banks below, the next step is optimizing the design further and then making the acrylic fronts on all of them.

SandboxRanch.com offers transparent acrylic by default, but as you see on our website, that can also be customized in color and engraving, every aspect of these custom birthday banks is customizable by the customer.

In this batch, a few of these banks had to leave the shop before I had a chance to do the video, but below you can see what the engraving of acrylic looks like when complete (but still dirty before cleanup) at SandboxRanch.com.

Need custom products? Contact SandboxRanch.com and we’ll make it for you!

The post Custom Birthday Banks: Red Oak Screw-Ups & Poplar Hardwoods appeared first on SandboxRanch.com.

You can actually see the first set of round letter banks in the very first video I made for SandboxRanch.com before it came into being below, notice the S, L, C, J and L? Well, yes, all scrap for many many reasons but it was a very valuable lesson so it was by no means an absolute loss.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYlrz6dMwKk/

Now that I have a working and repeatable process established with the square letter banks, going back to the rounded letter banks is a breeze, there are so many issues that just no longer exist thanks to heavy investments in time and treasure.

Like everything else bank related at SandboxRanch.com, custom rounded letter banks begin life as laminated red oak boards which I make from rough sawed lumber, this adds strength and rigidity to the banks that are about to be made, which means more durability for the end-products we make with it.

There are MANY steps involved with making custom rounded letter banks, both before and after they are made at the shop on-demand, from getting the laminated slab ready to go with cleaning on both sides before the first bank is ever made to the finishing and window added to the front before shipping these out.

Now that I have my feeds and speeds dialed in for production of these custom rounded letter banks, all sorted out when I made their square variant, I can pretty much mix and match any bank on SandboxRanch.com to make them at the same time, whether they are a letter bank or a shape, another area I want to expand upon greatly in the coming years.

Here’s just a glimpse of what’s possible, a lot of show and tell!

For this specific production run, I wanted to see and hear the process of making the custom rounded letter banks, that’s how you tell if you are going too fast, slow or there are some issues with production that aren’t apparent when you have the music blaring on max and lots of other activities going on at the shop.

As the front part of the dust boot is missing, lots of chips escape, essentially, I’m removing more than half of the laminated slab I made as chips during the production of these custom rounded letter banks, and when that doesn’t end-up getting sucked out, it ends-up on the table, piles of it, all over the place at SandboxRanch.com.

Banks have been my interest for years, it started with a little loon I got when I was a kid and has evolved a lot since then now that I can make them myself.

Luckily, I have another vacuum system that I used throughout the production process to clean-up the chips that were being produced during the making of the custom rounded letter banks, so you don’t have photos and videos of just a pile of wood chips building up higher and higher until the whole job is complete.

Of course, I also made myself a loon, similar to what I had when I was a child and very much the inspiration for me getting into the custom wood banking business to begin with, way back when I was a child and going to school required going uphill both ways by foot through frozen snow.

What I really enjoy most about making this run of custom rounded letter banks is that I’m no longer producing scrap after scrap, basically, everything I make now, thanks to months and months of working out the kinks, is almost perfect right off the machine!

It still blows me away at how effortless my new CNC machine makes these banks, there are so many curves highly detailed areas where I’m carving in a very challenging wood and I’m able to do it at SandboxRanch.com as if I was cutting air with this beast of a machine.

As you review some of these older videos, you can start to see just how much has changed since I started making these banks earlier in the year.

The final step right before cutting out the outlines of these custom rounded letter banks is drilling all the holes for the screws, this alone took a very long time to sort out properly, and to think, I use to manually drill these all out myself one by one using a power drill.

After all the custom rounded letter banks are cut out, of course, I have some square letter banks and the loon in there with a square prototype, its time to get the jigsaw out and finish the cutting out process at SandboxRanch.com.

The jigsaw does an OK job of cutting out the various elements for these custom banks but I really need to make space for a proper band saw, and a big band saw at that, to make this aspect of the job a lot safer and more enjoyable.

After I employ the jigsaw on these custom rounded letter banks, the next step is routing them on my router table and then after that, making the matching front windows for all these banks.

The most enjoyable part of making all these banks is the diversity, I’m not just making the same thing each and every time, even if the letters are shapes are the same, they are all unique like a fingerprint, with their own color variations, textures and wood grain.

With every “new shape”, whether letter or animal, I always make a MDF prototype first, just to make sure all the endless design work performed previously is accurate within about 1/16″ so the screws fit in properly and the outline is beautiful.

There was a lot of testing between CNC machines, power tools and process in order to get SandboxRanch.com to this point, but all that hard work was well worth it, the quality right out of the machine is amazing, you can see below, this is straight out before any very fine tuning is performed.

Once the MDF checks out, then it’s time to cut out the custom rounded letter bank windows, this batch all called for clear acrylic, so that’s what I cut except for one square letter bank, which was a transparent blue.

Below is what this run of custom banks looks like with the still protective masking on the various acrylics used, if you have a very keen eye, you’ll notice none of the “C”s made it to this step yet, that’s because I screwed-up the design file and thus, made a C rounded letter bank that didn’t meet my specs.

Need custom letter banks or shaped banks? Contact us!

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