Eat Your (Overpriced) Heart Out, Part 2

So, I wanted to build something for my extremely cute niece:


I talked to her daddy, and he suggested something like one of these:

This one is $79.99


This one's $250.


And this one's $725!

Being the engineer that I am, I modeled it up using some 3-D software (that I use everyday at work) and came up with the plans:


And this was the final result:

I shall call him... Mini-Pie

Two weeks ago, I got a 5-lb bag of grapefruit for free from HEB for buying 12 oz of salad (makes sense to me). Since I don't normally eat grapefruit, I had to find something to do with them. After some searching, I came across a recipe for Grapefruit Meringue Pie. I tried it out last weekend, and it tasted pretty good. I still had half of the grapefruits left to use after the first pie, so I thought I would make it again for my Super Bowl party tomorrow. Taking inspiration from a catered company dinner last year, I thought I would make miniature pies. Here's the result:


Here's what it looks like on the inside:


I made the pies by pressing the pie dough into my 12 muffin pan. To make extraction easier, I greased up the pan and then laid a strip of parchment paper into each of the cups. Here's what it looked like:


I was surprised at how well it worked. (Un)fortunately, one of the mini-pies didn't come out cleanly, so I had to destroy the evidence. The recipe for the filling was more than enough for the 12 pies that I made with the muffin tin, so I probably could have made more. I'll just use it as an excuse to buy another muffin time the next time I make the mini-pies.

Franken-mulcher!

I present to you, my latest creation...


I don't really have a good name for it, but it's essentially a stationary leaf vacuum/mulcher, as opposed to a mobile one.

After dealing with the leaves from my trees for 4 years, I got tired of hauling a heavy, noisy, vibrating leaf vacuum and having to constantly empty the messy cloth bag, I decided to make a stationary one that put the mulched leaves directly into a trash bag. Instead of taking the vacuum to the leaves and the carrying those leaves with you, now you bring the leaves to the vacuum and leave them in the can. No more sore shoulders for this lawn-boy.

Here how it works:
You put some leaves in from of the opening of the duct (a ready-made piece of sheet metal duct)...


...and it gets sucked up to the mulcher.

(Blogger was stupid and rotated my picture)
It just so happens that a 5" metal duct fits perfectly into the intake opening. I had to build a custom mount that would safely hold the mulcher in place while also depressing the safety button. The mulcher is held onto the mount with a clip that I bent up out of some spare sheet metal that I had laying around the shop from my last metalworking project.

The mulched leaves then exit through the outlet, thru a 90 elbow that is held onto the outlet with an adapter disc that I cut from some scrap 1/2" poplar, and into a 44 gallon trash can (I wanted a big trashcan so I wouldn't have to empty it as often).


To keep the trash can from blowing its top, I cut several holes in the top and covered the openings with some fiberglass window screen.

I was surprised to see that these openings let too much air come out, but the air being blown into the trashcan kicks up the mulched leave which then cover up the screens until a natural equilibrium is reached.

I tested out my new setup this past weekend, and it worked like a charm. The front yard didn't seem to take quite as long as it has in previous years, and I only had to stop 9 times to empty the trash can. With my old set up, I would have had to stop at least 4 times as many times since the standard bag on the vacuum is MUCH smaller than a normal yard trash bag. The other bonus is that my shoulders and back weren't fatigues from carrying around the vacuum and leaves all over my yard. I also didn't get covered in leaf dust since I didn't have that vacuum bag up against my body for several hours.

Does anyone know how to go about getting a patent?

He's faster than lightning, stronger than steel, smarter than a speeding bullet, he's...

SUP---ER GROVER!!!

This year for Halloween, I wanted to do something different for my costume. At the beginning of October, I got invited to a Superhero/Supervillain party, and being the silly guy I am, tried to think of an unconventional superhero that no one else would think of. That's when I was struck by a flash from my past.... I would be Super Grover!

I didn't want to have to make too much stuff for this costume, so I found some blue coveralls at Walmart to take care of the blue body, but I still needed to make the Super Grover logo, the cape, and the helmet. For the logo and cape, I contacted my personal seamstress who has helped me on past projects.


Sup-er Katie!

I designed and cut out the logo in felt, then she sewed the pieces together, made the cape, and sewed pieces of Velcro onto my coveralls so that the logo could be easily attached and removed.

After the fabric stuff was done, I made the helmet out of paper mache. Using a balloon as the form, I built up a couple layers of glue-soaked paper. To match a the look of Super Grover's helmet, I used some drawer pulls for the top and sides of the helmet (Super Grover's alter-ego is a doorknob salesman, and drawer pulls kinda look like doorknobs). A couple coats of aluminum-colored spray paint, and I had a pretty good match.



The costume turned out so well, that I won the best male costume at the Baylor Swing Dance Society's Halloween Dance.

Eat Your (Overpriced) Heart Out, Pottery Barn

A few weeks ago, my older brother asked me to build a shelf similar to this one from Pottery Barn for my nephew's bedroom:


To make sure that I get the measurements right on the first try (and also to get an idea of how it would look), I used some 3D modeling software at work to model up a prototype:


Here is the dry-assembly before glue and paint set up against the wall mount:


Here's how it looked after some paint and assembly:


And here's how it looks installed:


With the shelf made out of 1/2" PVC tubing, the long span of the shelf was a little flimsy, so I reinforced it by inserting some 1/2" copper pipe inside the PVC, which makes it very rigid. The Pottery Barn version costs $99 on their website, and I was able to build this for $37 ($15 of which was paint and $11 for the copper).

Realization Due to Age

I joke around a bunch with my friends here in Waco that I'm getting old (especially around the "kids" I swing dance with at Baylor who are between 6 and 10 years younger than me). A couple days after I turned 28 (not necessarily old in and of itself), I was telling a friend about some of the gifts my family had given me for my birthday when it happened... I felt old (or just odd, they feel a lot alike).

One of the curses of having a full-time job and being single is that if I see something I want/need and it's reasonably priced, I'll buy it. This is bad because it makes the process of making a birthday and Christmas list for my family really hard because I tend to just buy things as I want them. Now, my birthday/Christmas list falls into three main categories: DVD's, tools, and stuff for my house.

My dad wasn't satisfied with the things I had on my list, so while we were talking on the phone shortly before my birthday, he asked me if there was anything else that I wanted to improve around my house. So I took a stroll around my bachelor pad thinking of things that I want to upgrade. A new chandelier (or some kind of light fixture) for my dining room, a new shower door for my master bathroom, redoing the inside of my workshop... all sorts of thrilling things like that. My parents ended up doing some research and giving me the money and contact information to replace the glass door on my shower stall. When I got excited about this and excited when telling others about it, I realized that I was getting old. I mean, what kid brags about getting a new shower door to his buddies?

Anyway, here are some pictures of the old door:


Here is my biggest pet peeve about the door (if you look closely, you can see segments of the hinge missing):


Here's how the new hinge/pivot looks (muuuuch cleaner):


Here's the door in its final state:


The change may be subtle to the untrained eye, but as someone who has looked at that door for the last 3.5 years, it's a world of difference. Thanks Mom and Dad!!!

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.

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.

Fixing Rock Band: Part 1

Let it be known: I have a tendency to break things. Maybe I don't know my own strength; maybe it's my own form of "survival of the fittest"; or maybe I'm just a klutz (I prefer the first). Whatever the reason, I noticed a couple months ago that a crack had developed on the kick pedal for my drum set for Rock Band.



The engineer in me immediately started to think about how to fix it. The first step was to diagnose what went wrong. After operating the pedal with my hand a few times, I noticed that the pedal flexed when it was pushed down all the way. The was a rubber stop at the end of the pedal to absorb some of the shock, but when I used the pedal, my foot applied the force in the middle, and that's where it cracked.



I thought about using a metal plate to reinforce this area, but I don't have sheets of metal sitting around, and I don't really have to tools to work with it. I do, however, have some extra wood and the proper tools to work with it. I found a piece of 3/8" thick poplar that was just the right size and went about making a repair piece. The plastic pedal had a lattice of plastic ribs on the backside, which was perfect for hiding some washers and nuts so that they wouldn't interfere with the operation of the pedal.

Here is the final repair piece:


And here it is installed:




At first, I thought about painting it black to blend in, but then I thought "why not stain it and make it look really nice?" I think it looks pretty slick, and it is MUCH stronger than the regular pedal. I'm going to be able to stomp on this thing without giving it a second thought. I can't say the same for the drum pads.

Right after I fixed the kick pedal, I noticed that the far left drum pad sounded a little funny. It turns out that it was severely cracked. Here's the damage:



I decided to try and reinforce the cracks by super-gluing a piece of plastic across the crack, but where to find some pieces of plastic...



Yup, that's the Rock Band case that I melted a couple months ago. I thought I would fix the drum pad with a little irony. Here is the result:



The repair worked pretty well for for a couple days, but the glue gave out tonight. I looked for some replacement drum pads online, but after shipping, a replacement pad costs about half as much as just buying a whole new drum set. I think I might just buy the new drum set, and salvage the good pads off of my existing set and save for future repairs.