{"id":3002,"date":"2015-01-05T21:08:34","date_gmt":"2015-01-06T02:08:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.summet.com\/blog\/?p=3002"},"modified":"2015-01-05T21:26:07","modified_gmt":"2015-01-06T02:26:07","slug":"custom-gingerbread-house-cookie-cutters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.summet.com\/blog\/2015\/01\/05\/custom-gingerbread-house-cookie-cutters\/","title":{"rendered":"Fabricating Gingerbread House Cookie Cutters"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"three_cutters_done\"<\/a><\/p>\n

One of my relatives makes a large number of gingerbread houses for all the kids (and me!) to decorate for the holidays. They have been cutting the house panels out of rolled gingerbread dough using a knife and paper templates. I volunteered to make them some custom cookie cutters, as the three panels (2x roof, 2x wall, 2x end pieces) are geometrically very simple (two rectangles, and a triangle sitting on top of a rectangle.)<\/p>\n

\"alunimum_soldering_tools\"<\/a>
\nI bought some 1\/2″ angle aluminum at the the big box (I would have preferred 3\/4″…but they didn’t stock it…), along with some aluminum “welding rod” which is really a low melting temperature aluminum alloy solder. After doing some math, I marked the cutouts for the corners, cut them out with a band saw, and bent and soldered them into rectangles.
\n\"rectangle_marked\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"rectangle_cut\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"rectangle_folded_clamped\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"rectangle_soldered\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The rectangles were easy, with 90 degree cutouts on all four corners. The end pieces required a bit of geometry, but I eventually determined that the angles were 90, 30, 120, 30, and 90. Using a 3x4x5 triangle gave me all of the angles I needed (doubling up the 60 to get 120….)
\n\"30x60x90-triangle\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"end_piece_marked\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"end_piece_cut\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"end_piece_folded\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"end_piece_soldered\"<\/a><\/p>\n

By the last joint I was getting relatively good at soldering aluminum.
\n\"solder_joint\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I also bought some aluminum wire for my MIG welder, and at some point I’m going to test out actually welding aluminum instead of soldering it. (Assuming I can get my knockoff MIG welder to feed aluminum wire without a spoolgun…something the Internet tells me is almost impossible to do without getting a rats nest of aluminum wire…….) But hey, I have a lot of spare pieces to practice on after making many miscalculations, mis-cuts, and a few complete meltdowns. (Practice makes it work well enough….)<\/p>\n

\"all_the_bad_ones\"<\/a><\/p>\n

If you are following along at home and want to make your own, the wall pieces are 3×5 inches, the roof pieces are 3″x6.5″ (This gives overhanging eaves, use 6″ for no overhangs), and all five sides of the end piece are 3″ long.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of my relatives makes a large number of gingerbread houses for all the kids (and me!) to decorate for the holidays. They have been cutting the house panels out of rolled gingerbread dough using a knife and paper templates. … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3002","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-projects"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.summet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3002","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.summet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.summet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.summet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.summet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3002"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"https:\/\/www.summet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3002\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3034,"href":"https:\/\/www.summet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3002\/revisions\/3034"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.summet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3002"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.summet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3002"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.summet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3002"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}