Finished at Last!!!

It's been almost a year since my last update on my TV stand.

This was the original idea modeled up in Pro-Engineer (the software I use all the time at work to design stuff that goes into airplanes).




And here's the final result:


The doors are attached to the bottom three drawers, so those open when you pull on the door handles:

(I couldn't figure out how to undo the rotation that Blogger added when I uploaded the picture)

And then you can access the top three drawers:


After 17 months, my home-built TV stand is finally finished! Hallelujah!!!

Fixing Rock Band 2, Too

My regular blog readers may remember this from a few months back. The fix worked for a week or two, and then it broke again. I had looked at buying some new drum heads online, but a new set would cost as much as a new drumset, so I went out and bought the Rock Band 2 wireless drumset (with the help of a couple gift cards).

After about 90 days of use, a crack appeared in one of the drum heads on my new drumset. I looked into taking advantage of Rock Band's return policy, but I was out of warranty. So, it was time for another repair. After my fix on the last drumset failed, I decided to go a little overboard by adding a metal plate to the drum head.

The materials: 26 gauge sheet metal, 6-minute epoxy, tin-snips, drill, Dremel tool with an abrasive disc.


Because of some standoffs on the backside of the drum head, I had to drill holes and make some cut-outs so that it would fit snugly against the drum head:


In order to make sure that the epoxy sticks to the metal plate and the drum head, I roughed up the mating surfaces using the abrasive disc:


To spread the epoxy around quickly, I created a little tool out of popsicle sticks:


The final, reinforced product:


So far, the repair works great. I've noticed that the drumsticks rebound more off the new head, which is great for those really fast, repeated notes. Hopefully this repair is more permanent than the last one. While I was working on the repair for this drum head, I went ahead and traced the outline of the metal plate just in case they're needed for the other drum heads.

The Bucket Chair

It's becoming more and more apparent that I had a unique childhood. One of these unique aspects was our two bucket chairs. It's pretty simple; it's a kid's chair made from a 5-gallon paint bucket. We used these chairs all the time when we were kids. With my nephew Ethan turning 2 years old this past Friday, I thought I would try my hand at making one as a birthday gift for him.

Here is the chair that I made (left) with the chair I grew up with (right):


Here's the chair with a little decoration:

Gig 'em!

Here's the birthday boy enjoying his new chair:


It was tough pulling him away from all of his new toys to get a couple pictures with a "boring" chair. Fortunately, Grandpa (the arm in the two pictures) was there to direct Ethan and to prevent a dump truck accident.

New Livingroom

I spent the better part of December 30th and 31st painting my livingroom. You gotta love some of these paint color names. The main blue color is "Tempe Star", the tan stripe is "Latte" (the same color as the hallway, the kitchen, and the diningroom), and the white stripes are surprisingly "Bright White". Here are some pictures of the new livingroom.