Okay, so, today was a bit of a weird one, project-wise. I had this idea to combine a few things I had lying around: a rubber volleyball and some spare oak wooden flooring planks. Don’t ask me why, it just popped into my head! I thought maybe I could make… something.

The Starting Point

First, I gathered my materials. I had this old, slightly deflated rubber volleyball that the kids don’t use anymore. And in the garage, I had a stack of leftover oak flooring from when we redid the living room a few years back. They’re pretty solid planks, nice and smooth.

Brainstorming and Messing Around

Initially, I was thinking maybe I could make some kind of weird, textured… planter? I tried cutting the volleyball in half, which was way harder than I expected. That rubber is TOUGH. I ended up using a utility knife, and even then it was a struggle.

• Cut the volleyball: Seriously, this took a while. Lots of sawing back and forth.
• Inspected the flooring: Checked for any splinters or really rough spots.

Then, I played around with fitting the halves of the volleyball onto the wood. It looked… odd. Like a deflated, orange boob stuck on a piece of wood. Not exactly the aesthetic I was going for.

Change of Plans

I scrapped the planter idea. It just wasn’t working. I started thinking, what else could I do? I messed around with the wood, tapping it, feeling the weight. It’s good, solid oak.

Then it hit me: maybe I could use the wood as a base and the rubber as some kind of… dampener? Like, a stand for something that vibrates? I don’t even know. My washing machine does shake a bit… hmmm.

I also thought about the bouncy property of the rubber ball, and use oak wooden as a base.

The (Kind Of) Finished Product

I decided to keep it simple.I did not really have any further idea, so I cut the flooring plank into a smaller square, just a bit bigger than the volleyball half.I used a handsaw, because I didn’t want to drag out the power tools.

I want to keep the rubber and the oak wooden, so maybe I could make somethings else in the future. I’ll figure it out at that time.

So, yeah, that’s where I ended up. It’s not pretty, it’s not particularly useful (yet), but it was a fun little experiment. Maybe I’ll figure out a real use for it someday. Or maybe it’ll just sit in the garage, a reminder of that time I tried to combine a volleyball and some flooring. Who knows!