Projects posted at LumberJocks
I’ve posted three projects over at my LumberJocks project page.
Left to right they are Lollipop Tree, Shaker Wall Cabinet in Cherry, and Shaker Wall Clock in Cherry
Tuesday December 4, 2007 · Permalink
Woot-Off Helper Greasemonkey Script
I just realized there was another Woot-Off going on today and I’d never mentioned my Woot-Off Helper Greasemonkey script.
Woot-Off Helper does just two simple things to make it easier to follow a Woot-Off from your browser:
- Reads the size of the bar between the flashing orange lights and places the percentage at the beginning of the page title
- Reloads the page every 90 seconds
Now you can just keep a tab open with the Woot page and easily glance at what percentage is left. If you switch to the Woot tab before minimizing it, you should be able to catch the item changes too.
You can also find the Woot-Off Helper on userscripts.org
Thursday August 30, 2007 · Permalink
District Pinewood Derby
The District Pinewood Derby was held the last Saturday of March this year. Since #2 had finished in the top three at the pack races, he got to participate in districts for his third year in a row. Until two days before the districts, the car just sat in our carrying box. I took a little bit of the lead weight out of the car, since the districts use a scale that measures to 0.005 of an ounce and our pack just measures to 0.1 of an ounce. On Friday night, we added some more graphite to the wheels and #2 spent time spinning the wheels on our wheel polishing rig.
On race day, #2’s car “The Natural” was just one of 118 cars in the event. First race is typically against your pack mates and #2’s car won the heat and beat the first and second place cars from his pack. It looked like his car was pretty fast and when the standings went up, his car was in 13th place overall. The Natural won it’s second heat and moved up to 12th in the standings (running faster that the first heat). The Natural won the third heat too (running faster than the first two heats) and moved to 8th place overall and fourth fastest bear. The Natural won the fourth heat too, but we had to wait for the awards ceremony to tell where he might place. As the awards went on, we found out that he finished as the fastest bear in the derby (after the top three which included two bears) and got to take home a great trophy.
Sunday April 8, 2007 · Permalink
Pinewood Derby 2007
The pack’s 2007 Pinewood Derby was held the first Saturday in February this year. Only #2 was competing this year as #1 had moved onto Boy Scouts. At left is #2’s car “The Natural.” He wanted a thin wedge car again this year, so I cut the block to the shape he wanted. Once he was done sanding the saw marks off, he liked the grain pattern so just went with a clear coat. Much work was done on the axles and wheels to get them just so. At the practice day, the car was running straight, but a little slow, so we added more graphite and #2 spun the wheels on our wheel polishing setup.
The day of the race came and The Natural seemed to be running well. He won most of the heats he was in (though the scoring is on time alone) and ended up finishing third overall in the pack. This means another trip to the district pinewood derby (he’s qualified every year in scouts for the district race).
I built three cars for the open class races, two for the stock class and one for the unlimited class.
Black
This was my open stock car, it finished fifth overall. I probably should have spent more time on the axles instead of the design.
Pink Ribbon
The wife is a den leader this year, so I built this car for her to race.
Remote Control Car
For the open unlimited class I stuffed this old DVD remote with lead and slapped on the wheels. It finished second to a slightly heavier car.
Sunday April 8, 2007 · Permalink
Aunt Ruth's Graham Cracker Pie
My great aunt Ruth made the most wonderful pie she called Graham Cracker Pie. She used to sell this and other pies to local restaurants in West Virginia and guarded her recipes pretty closely. Thankfully, she taught my grandmother (her sister) how to make the pie, then my grandmother secretly taught my sister, who then secretly taught me (since I was the pie fiend).
I typically make some Graham Cracker pies around the holidays. So in addition to making the pies, I thought I should document the recipe so anyone can try a Graham Cracker pie. Since Aunt Ruth passed away last year, I figured its finally safe to admit I know how to make this pie.
Crust
- 3 cups graham cracker crumbs
- 3 tsp. cinnamon
- 3 tsp. cornstarch
- 3 tsp. sugar
- 1 cup melted butter
Combine the dry ingredients and mix well. Add the butter and mix so everything is coated. Reserve about 1 Tbsp of mixture for the toping and press the rest into two 9” pie plates to form the crusts.
Filling
- 1 qt. whole milk
- 1.5 cups sugar
- 6 Tbsp. cornstarch
- 4 egg yolks
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
Place the milk in the top of a double boiler and set the heat to medium high and let the milk set until it starts forming a skin on top as it heats. While the milk is heating mix the sugar and cornstarch and separate the egg yolks and whites. Set aside the egg whites for the meringue. Beat the egg yolks. Once the milk has started to form a skin, start mixing in the sugar/cornstarch mixture very slowly and continue mixing until mixture starts to thicken like a pudding. Dip out about a 1/2 cup of the mixture and add it slowly to the egg yolks and mix to heat up the yolks. Add another 1/2 cup mixture to the egg yolks and mix, then pour the egg yolk mixture slowly back into the double boiler while continuing to stir. Keep cooking until the mixture is very thick. Add the vanilla extract at this time, stir in and divide between the pie crusts.
Meringue
- 4 egg whites
- 4 Tbsp. sugar
Start beating the eggs whites and slowly add the sugar and beat until soft peaks form. Spread the meringue over the pies and sprinkle on the reserved pie crust material to decorate.
Brown the meringue slightly in a 375 degree oven for around 6 to 7 minutes.
Cool and refrigerate for a couple of hours before serving.
Sunday December 10, 2006 · Permalink
Cub Scout Bird House
Here is a SketchUp plan for small bird house that will help a Cub Scout meet one of their Bear requirements (5b in Sharing your World with Wildlife).
The bird house is made from standard 1×6 lumber, using less than 7 feet per bird house. The front, back and top are all full width 1×6, but the sides and bottom are ripped to 4 inches in width. The SketchUp file includes a dimensions layer you can turn on to see the major dimensions.
You can either nail on the top or add a small hinge to make it easier to clean out (like our Bears did). When I made the kits up for our Bears, I took the time to pre-drill holes on the front, back, and sides to make it easier for them to get the houses together. Each was assembled with 1-1/2” brads.
Tuesday November 28, 2006 · Permalink
LED Flashlight From Garage Door Remote
After seeing the neat little flashlights you could build with just a bright white LED, a resistor, some batteries and a switch, like the TicTac flashlight, the mouse flashlight and the PVC flashlight I decided to try my hand at an LED flashlight.
After building a couple of TicTac flashlights that were happily received by the boys, I ran across a couple of old key chain garage door remotes that were left over after replacing an old garage door opener. I opened one of the remotes up and found that it used a 12V battery and that 7.5V was easy to get between the main opener switch and the battery, I hit upon using 2 13,000mcd bright white LEDs from Alan Parekh in series with a small resistor since I had the power.
Everything was very simply done. After marking the locations in the case where I wanted the LEDs to mount, I took the circuit board from the case, snapped the case back together and used a drill press to make the two holes. I then soldered the LEDs in series to fit the mouting holes, added the resistor and a little electrical tape to prevent shorts and there you have it.
We used one on a very dark walk through a boy scout camp and it threw a very usable circle of light for our little trip. It seemed much brighter than some of the other flashlights, but that could just be an artifact of the bright white LEDs.
Friday September 1, 2006 · Permalink
Making a hot wire foam cutter
When presented with the unique opportunity to slice 24 4-inch styrofoam balls in half, what would you do?
After looking at one of them, I decided that there wasn’t any way in the world that I was going to cut them on the bandsaw. There’s enough sawdust in the shop as it is, without adding styrofoam dust to it.
I’d remembered seeing a hot wire foam cutter on the MAKE: blog so I went looking for how to make my own hot wire cutter. The MAKE: blog pointed to flywoodkb’s hot wire foam cutter on instructables so I started with that as my basis.
Here’s what I came up with. Visit my hot wire foam cutter set on Flickr for more pictures.
Instead of the CD case project box, I just used a three wide plastic outlet box from HD to hold the dimmer and transformer. I cut the tabs off the sides since they were just in the way. Since I had some 1-by material around, I used that to make a small bow for holding the cutting wire. Twine around the top is used to tension the wire and can be adjusted as the wire heats and lengthens.
Since I was tasked with cutting foam balls in half, I made up a jig to help hold them in place and guide the wire at the right height. It’s nothing more than two pieces of 1-by two inches in height placed at a small angle on a board. This allowed me to hold the ball in place with one hand and while the other hand held the bow so the wire would ride the 1-by material and cut a nice clean line.
Monday June 26, 2006 · Permalink
Are you a LumberJock?
If you are a LumberJock (or just aspire to be one like I do) then you should visit LumberJocks. LumberJocks is a growing website that gives the registered “Jocks” a place to post descriptions of their projects along with few photos. Other “Jocks” can rate the projects and leave weblog style comments and questions on the projects they visit.
LumberJocks is still under active development and has recently added forums for discussions amongst the members. There’s also a LumberJocks Blog that you can watch for announcements concerning the site.
The whole LumberJocks site is very cleanly styled and well crafted. I’d guessed it was a Rails app even before scrolling to the bottom and seeing the Rails logo. LumberJocks makes very nice use of Ajax and Rails features to make the site a joy to use. I particularly like the float-over picture viewer used on the project pages; no extra windows popping up or back-buttons to contend with when reviewing the project photos.
Sunday May 21, 2006 · Permalink
Window Bench in Google SketchUp
The window bench was built out of jatoba (Brazilian cherry) to fit below the picture window in our living room. It might be just a little too tall as a bench, but works great as a small table. The stretchers are screwed to the sides and the holes plugged. The top is secured by table top fasteners (z clips) in grooves cut with a biscuit joiner.
Tuesday May 2, 2006 · Permalink