Windmill

Several months ago i built a windmill out of a car alternator. My dream was to be able to collect so much electricity that the electric company would be sending ME a check every month.

My dreams were crushed.

A simple way of explaining it was that the wind would spin the alternator, charging up the car batteries, which would go to the DC to AC converter, which would plug into the house. Apparently plugging car batteries directly into an outlet in your house is not good... who knew?

So the windmill had been sitting in my basement in a pile labeled "crushed dreams" Other things were there like a hang-glider made out of a bed sheet and the human powered hydrofoil. I still haven't given up on the hydrofoil...it's too amazingly awesome:

human powered hydrofoil dream machine

Here's all the pieces before i put it up in the back yard.

Here it is all put together in the basement.

Bored at Home

A while ago i made a stand to hang bananas. As usual i looked at a whole bunch of different versions and didn't like them. So i made this. The base tube is PVC and the arm and hook is aluminum.


I also bought a crock pot a while back and i've used it a few times. This was corned beef brisket with 2 soups and lots of vegetables, oh and as much garlic as Emeril would use. So far i've done beef, chicken and pork. The beef brisket was the best. Next i'm going to try just adding ribs and barbecue sauce. I've heard it's great.

Kitchen Counter

I was thinking about building a counter between my kitchen and living room. To see how it would look and if i would like it i tried it out an old counter on some milk crates.

Then before i went camping i went with my sister to the Haworth outlet/reject store and got a counter top for $9. The store is really cool, the kind of place where you never know what you'll find. And everything's super cheap.

I traced the wall shape onto a piece of cardboard, copied it onto the counter and then cut it out.

I mounted the counter, which is really heavy, to the wall using some metal brackets. Then made the leg and foot rest from PVC pipe. I'm still debating whether i'll keep it. If i do i'll paint the PVC some kind of brown color.

Drain Pipe #2

A few months ago i routed my roof downspout to drain underground. It was a little difficult digging the trench but it turned out ok. It was fairly easy, just a lot of digging and trenching under the concrete walk.

Right after i finished that i started working on the other roof drain in my back yard. That was a long time ago.

This time i had to chop and saw my way through vines and tree roots, dig along side a fence, hammer and chisel and eventually move concrete slabs.
The problem was that my concrete patio was in the way. So i thought i'd just take a chisel and a big hammer and make a hole in the concrete and run the pipe under it. But first i had to move a big slab of concrete out of the way. I used 2x4's and rocks and levered it over a few feet.
Then i discovered that under the concrete slab is another slab of concrete. So instead of making a hole i just knocked out the corner. This all took a long time over many days and many smashed knuckles, to bash away enough concrete to fit the drain pipe.
Once again the clay soil doesn't drain well in the backyard either. But i was eventually able to place the PVC pipe on sand in the trench.

I still have to pour concrete to fill in around the pipe. It's a lot of work for something most people will walk by and never notice.

Actual Civil Engineering Work ... well kinda

I got tired of tripping over the 2 gutter downspouts on the side of the house so i decided to make underground drainage. Here's the first one on the side of the garage.
Step 1. Dig the trench. To go under the concrete i used an ice auger.

Step 2. Fit the pipes

Step 3: Backfill with sand

Materials:
10' PVC pipe ----------------------------- $8
10' PVC pipe with drainage holes ---- $8
cloth pipe cover ------------------------ $6
drain cap --------------------------------- $3
two 90 degree bends ------------------ $2 each

I did buy two of everything for the drain in the back yard which, i haven't finished yet because i had to chisel through the concrete and drill a lot farther with the ice auger.
The bad part is that my yard is all clay, which doesn't let water drain. So i had to use sand to backfill around the pipes.

Bored again

While trying to encourage Charlie to start scratching something other then the furniture i decided to make this scratching post. I probably should have just nailed a big log to a 2x10 and called it good. But i tried making something that looked cooler. Too bad he doesn't use it. Still prefers the underside of chairs and couches. And for the record his total number of knocked over plants is 5 and he's still drinking out of toilets.

Wine Rack

After looking at hundreds of versions online of different counter-top wine racks i decided on this design. It's made out of PVC with a wood base. Pretty simple but it's balanced well enough to actually not need the base at all, it's just there for added support.

Ice Fishing

Also back in December i went up to Onaway to go ice fishing. After getting really excited i started working on my own tip-ups and poles. I had made a few before so i tried getting a little creative this time.

Here's the basic shape, cut out of a piece of 4" PVC

The spool i made by splitting one of the ball pit balls in half and taped to a piece of 1" PVC. Don't worry i still have a few left.

Here's the technical bits. The cantilever spring is attached to the pole (an old wire hanger) which is held in place by the magnet, which is set into foam in the spool.

Final product. The flag is old survey ribbon. And the round flaps on the side are to help prevent the hole from freezing up.

The poles are just aluminum tube connected to a PVC handle. The fishing line runs inside the tube so no need for eyelits. But there's no flex in the pole. Also i did end up painting these black as well.

The reels were made out of the bottom of beer cans and some PVC. They didn't work very well either. I spent most of my time on the tip-ups and these were sort of an after thought.

Now i'd like to tell you that i took these up north and caught some monster 36" pike or something. Unfortunately the gas powered auger we used had something wrong with the motor. There was no torque and it only cut one hole before running out of gas. The view was great though.

Welders Glass ND Filter

I was reading online about a cheap alternative to a Neutral Density (ND) filter to use for photography. An ND filter is basically sunglasses for your camera. It decreases the amount of light that gets through, thus allowing you to keep the lens open longer. Neutral density filters can cost as much as $400 for a really nice one.

The cheap alternative is to use a welders glass. They type of glass that welders for eye protection against the bright light created during welding. So i went to Lowe's and bought one.

Then because my new camera only has a small lens i decided to cut the glass down to about 2" x 2".

And make a type of "dark housing" to fit over the camera lens. I used a piece of PVC pipe and a permanent marker to color it black.

Then glued it together.

I used a rubber band to hold it onto the camera and some cloth on the edge so it wouldn't scratch anything.

The two main problems with using the welders glass is that it is not as high a quality as an ND filter and that it has a green tint. This is what the image looks like right out of the camera. This was a 64 second exposure during the day.

But in Photoshop this can be corrected, mainly by adjusting White Balance and Tint.

That design was not the best, it was too big and heavy. So i tried to simplify it.

I started with the same 2" square piece of glass that i cut from the larger glass. But then i used pliers as a kind of glass nippers and slowly broke off corners until it was round.

I sanded and filed the sharp edge. Then just as before i glued it to a PVC pipe i colored black, inside and out. But the key difference is this time is that i glued a foam ring to the inside of the PVC.


I sanded the foam down until i could slide it onto the outer lens, but with just enough pressure that it wouldn't fall off.

I plan to use it when i'm in Tennessee to take pictures of some waterfalls.

More Drain Pipe

In mid September i installed yet another drainage pipe in my yard. This time however i used black corrugated plastic pipe instead of PVC. I should have used this stuff from the beginning. It's much easier to use, cheaper, can bend around corners and doesn't need additional fittings.
The new pipe is at the back of my house.
I first dug a small trench. This went a lot faster since i didn't hit tree roots like last time.
Although i did have to dig up some potatoes in the process.
I also unearthed my bamboo roots.
But i laid the pipe and backfilled the trench with grass clippings. Then dumped dirt on top. Like before, i used grass clippings to try and allow the water to seep into the ground. If i just backfilled with the clay soil it would never drain.
Although i did make sure to pack the pipe near the house with clay. That's the one area that i don't want the water to drain into the soil, because it would then leak into the basement.

This was easy compared to the other times. No 300 pound slabs of concrete to move and no tree roots to chop. It took a couple hours to dig.