I've been making things

It's been a little while since I posted last. That's been somewhat to do with changing jobs a couple times, working between 40 and 75 hours a week, and now going to school while dealing with other stuff that life's been tossing at me like barrels down an 8-bit ramp. Fortunately for my questionably existent viewers here, I've been making things other than ends meeting as of late as well. Here's they am.

Sock Monkey:
There were far too many socks that were worn to paper thin or full of holes and they were piling up, so I decided to make a sock monkey from them. A proper and classic sock monkey calls for some basic sewing and cloth working skills and either a lot of free time or a sewing machine. Being as I don't have a sewing machine, but I do have a hot glue gun I made use of the latter to fashion and attach his various body parts. He's stuffed with socks. Daniel's more or less claimed him now so I guess sock monkey's a success!

Pit Bike Bodgery and Robbery:
A couple months ago I'd done some horse-trading with someone for a 110cc Chinese dirt bike and a lot of extra parts. It ran fantastically, but was pretty wimpy in the slowing down department. The old owner had plenty of brake gear to be cobbled together, but hadn't gotten around to putting it all together, so I did. I ground the caliper mount off of the stock small swing arm and welded it an a piece of angle iron into place on the nicer swing arm. I also had to put the brake rotor on, requiring some fastener scavenging from the extra parts bin as well, which also required me to put a bottle jack in the swing arm to stretch it wide enough to fit the rear wheel back in after prying it out. Unfortunately, after a quick spray of paint and a few days of work, someone stole the bike right out of my back yard along with a Honda XR70 I was rebuilding the motor for from the extra two motors I was given for my brother and nephew, so I never got to properly bleed and test the lines. I had big plans for franken-bikng a scooter front end and the pit bike's back end together for a pretty funky little ride. Whoever stole it better hope I don't catch them.

RABBIT HOUSE!:
The old rabbit pen has seen better days, and was probably more a danger to the rabbits than their escaping it's confines, so I decided it was time to rebuild it with some nicer materials. I went to [home improvement gigantorium] and found that they'd left me some slightly warped porch railing for 51c per ~4ft piece. Add to that a bucket of oops isle grey and a couple boxes of nails and I was all set. The pen is almost the same dimensions as the old one, about 6'x6'.

The old cage material was reused, as were a few of the 2x2s and the chain link bottom of the cage. The frame went together pretty easily, and with some scabbed together pieces the ~4' rails spanned the 6' width of the cage nicely. for the roof beam I bolted tow pieces together with a red oak scab and shingled the whole thing with corrugated plastic signs that were in a neighbor's recycle bin. I accidently made the design capable of still watering the grass in the pen (as well as any rabbits that may be within it) by laying the shingles down from the top working my way down rather than from bottom to top. Ohh well, the rabbit's don't go out when it's rainy anyway.

The door is made of the frame of my homemade rabbit pen's bottom since the pen has been replaced lately, and a couple of small eye bolts, a 2" bolt, and a nut make a latch on the inside to let you go in without fear of the door swinging open. This would undoubtedly leave the neighborhood flooding in 3' of rabbits.

Music-upon-opening Ammo Can:
I've been wanting to plant a Geocache somewhere for some time, but not wanting to just plant any boring ammo can in an out of the way place, I decided to make it so when it's opened it'll play some music. I had just such a birthday card laying around from last year, so I gutted the card of it's speaker and circuit board, soldered the contact points for the card's switch to the points on an old telco relay which had a nice leaf switch to it. This was all then glued into the side of a normal ammo can with a large plastic nub to hold the relay switch open when the can't closed. The small speaker vibrating with the whole side of the can as it's speaker "cone" really lets it get loud.

Super Spotlight:
My new (and hopefully permanent for some time to come) job is working retail and tech work for Batteries Plus here in town. This has already afforded me a couple good opportunities to snag some still functional batteries which would otherwise have been discarded. One such set was 6 lead acid batteries around the size of D cells. I decided that together they would make a great flood light power source, so I put them together and shrink wrapped the whole thing for a nice 12v, 2.5AH battery. To give it something to power I got a $10 12v, 20W garden spot light from [the large construction supply house which shall remain nameless to protect the accused] and proceeded to cut the spiked bottom off of it. The two together will run for around an hour before the light is noticably more dim and the working voltage starts to get kinda puny. Cool thing is it's as bright as a car's headlight, so I might mount it to my bike some how or maybe I'll just come up with a nice casing for it all that won't melt from the lamp's heat.

Toga:
I did manage to find myself at a toga party for my roommate's friend, but finding ourselves short on ancient grec0-roman attire, we went to the store and each got 6 yards of cloth. I got a nice dark orange. It's pretty easy to do, just sling it around your waist, throw it over your shoulder, and tie off any extra like a belt to keep the whole thing in place. Feel free to play where's Waldo with me in that photo.



Hammock:
With all that's been going on I've been needing somewhere to relax. The evenings are getting just about bearable, and with a few days of nice cold snap I decided to repurpose my toga as a hammock. Two pieces of rope with loops on the end knots tied in the ends of the orange cloth and I was all set. I've since replaced the orange cloth with some nice flannel since it's stretchier, softer, and stronger. I just slip the knots out of the ends and carry the cloth inside when I'm done so I don't have to worry about a wet butt when I go out to read or chill out.

I made light (and a ladder)

Electric bills suck. So does wasting power using more light than you need to. I try to light the house by sunlight whenever possible, but when there's a mid-sized planet between the giver of free light and my windows this becomes more difficult. Since I had a few battery and some 12v lights around though I figured all I needed was a solar panel and I could harvest the power of that giant burning gravity well for my nocturnal illumination.

All five dollar words and odd perspective aside though, I've come up with a pretty straightforward solar setup for my bathroom and reading lamp. I have a small 1.5 watt solar panel up on my roof held down with 3m tape with a wire run to my room on the other side of the house held down by duct tape (renting a house makes permanent mounting unideal) Then the wire runs to the charge controller that came with the solar cell into either a 12v car jump start pack or a pack of two 7.2AH lead gel cell batteries in series with a switched car accessory adapter on it. The batteries are manually swapped every other day to keep them well charged.

Then the batteries feed lights. I have a simple 10w 12v car work light in the bathroom and a desk lamp with another 10w 12v light. They're not going to blind anyone, but for reading a book or getting a shower or going to the loo at night they're plenty bright.

Also, I needed a ladder to get up to the roof, but I didn't have one. Having already blown my (nonexistent) budget on the solar panel itself and knowing I don't really need a ladder often I set out to make one. I did have some sisal rope, nails, and some decent sized oak saplings around the house in the woods, so I made a pretty rickety but serviceable ladder from them. I'm hoping once the wood dries and shrinks some I can rebuild it and have it more sturdy than with the current green wood. I'll probably reclaim my lag bolts from my dad at some point to hold it all together as well. I'm still sure OSHA would have a fit even then though.

In the future I'd like to mount a larger 5 watt solar cell on the roof as well since they're only twice the price of a 1.5 watt cell, run the charger to both packs at once, and make the wiring and power switch for the bathroom more cleanly run. It takes 6 2/3 hours to recharge for every hour of use with my current setup. Replacing the lamps with LED lamps or adding a larger solar panel would make that better, but for my current use it's enough.

I made a solar light for the dock

Since my dad had a big extension put on our dock, he's worried that someone might come around at night and hit the end of it. We didn't want anything too big or wired out there, just something to mark the end of the dock at night. As I was cleaning up around the dock after tropical storm Fay came through and flooded out the back yard, I noticed that it had broken and washed up some of the solar walkway lights near the waterline.

After a thorough cleaning and repair to a broken trace on the charging circuit, I managed to get one of these lights working again, but the housing for it was too cracked and dryrotted to be of any good, which is OK since those things always looked like butt anyway. I found a candle holder that had stained glass on it and it happened to fit the solar light just right, so I hot glued it in place after charging the batteries and went looking for parts for a base to hold the new light fixture up.

The storm also blew and washed in plenty of other good flotsam as well, including some barnacle covered but still sound 2x6 boards. I sent them through the saw and nailed them together, then used some salvaged drywall screws to hold down the light. After this I took it down to the dock and screwed it in place while hanging loosely onto the end pole of the dock. With the barnacle spots it looks pretty cool, the whole thing didn't cost one red cent, and we don't have to worry about errant boaters denting the dock with misdirected dinghies.

I made some small things (Part II)

There isn't a whole lot to this one folks, but a couple months ago I rode out to the beach, and while looking for things to build my shade out of, I also happened upon two coconuts that had washed onto the beach. I took off the husk and when I got home, cut it open, emptied it, and glued it to a slice of bamboo I also found on the beach and made a cup. It looks pretty neat, but the inside smells a little odd so I don't plan to use it to hold my margaritas any time soon. Ohh well, might have to make one from a fresh coconut some time.

I also was doing some cleaning over the past couple days, and decided to make something out of the junk I have around. The first thing I made was originally meant as a homemade leslie speaker, but I couldn't get it to turn at a usable speed, so Daniel and I turned it into a spinning, shaking, whirring, mesmerizing light ring of death. It's made of an aluminum plate with a fan motor (and mangled fan blade), controlled by a dimmer switch. The effect was very entertaining and turning the speed up made the whole thing shake like a Chihuahua on a vibrating motel bed.

The last thing I made is a spot light. It's pretty simple, just a large switch, 3 wires, a battery, a light, and a few blobs of hot glue. It works well and shines a ton of light, so I'll be keeping it around and keeping an eye out on a good enclosure to put it all in.

I made a light box (with help)

My buddy Daniel was wanting to make a light box for his girlfriend since she's quite the artist, but has until now lacked the ability to properly back light her drawings as she makes them. I'm not much of an artist in that regard so I'm not familiar with how back lighting helps one draw but apparently it does. So Daniel and I decided to make her a light box.

We roved the local Lowes for some materials: an oak 1x2, a sheet of thin plywood, a sheet of clear plexiglass, some hinges, and some small LED tap lights and small fluorescent lights from wally-world next door.

Though we were both very tired we managed to cut the wood and paint the clear plastic with a frosting spray to help diffuse the light, and assemble it all into a working (if dim) light box. He presented it to her the next day and she was very happy with it, but since we were tired while making it there were some rough edges and the spray on the top panel was somewhat splotchy. I picked up the light box about a week later and use an extra sheet of plexi we'd gotten and sprayed it on a flat concrete surface since the fact that the first sheet was sitting on top of a milk crate somehow left the impression of a milk crate as the spray dried, possibly due to heat differences in the sheet. I also sanded and stained the box, as well as putting some rubber feet on it.

I then went about making some more powerful lights. A while ago I used the driver board from a burnt out CFL bulb to power a normal fluorescent tube, and was quite pleased with how well it worked, so I'd been saving any CFLs that had burnt out around the house as well as a few tubes that I'd had for a while. I put two tubes together and hot glued them into the box; it was much better lit now, even though one tube was more purple than the othter X(.

In any event, the light box works well and looks good now, and though I'm not sure what the use of it is, I am sure there is one and it appears that Daniel's artistic girlfriend is getting use from this box with lights they call a light box.