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Power LED lights via USB

Christoph — Tue, 01 Jan 2019 23:51:28 +0000

Material:

Wall receptacle with high power USB - I used TopGreener TU2154A supplying 4A total, 2.4A max per connector
10ft USB cable
electrical tape
Sugru
electrical multimeter (optional)

I was really tired of the rat's nest of extension cord, wall warts and multiple cables feeding the three 30ft LED strings in our living room. Then a couple of weeks before Christmas it hit me: LEDs consume 5V DC, USB supplies 5V DC, newer wall receptacles with USB can supply enough current. Put them all together and this just might work.

Trade out this mess. You know you want to!

The ugly Sugru encasing of the new wire junction. Functional and very durable. If it were exposed I'd have worked much harder, shaping and smoothing it into a nice sleek lump.

USB powering my LED lights. I also got an AC outlet back in the bargain, and a second USB port to fast charge a phone.

Coffee Bag Seat Cushion

Christoph — Tue, 04 Jun 2013 00:58:25 +0000

Material:

Dense foam, available at upholstery or fabric store
Empty coffee bag from your favorite coffee roaster
33 gallon trash bag
Scissors

The secret here is how to achieve a snug fit of the coffee bad around the foam without rubbing your knuckles raw as you pull the bag over the foam. We have made mattresses and seat cushions before, and while the results were great, it took a week or longer for our fingers and knuckles to recover from the ordeal. As Pia was discussing our plans for the coffee bags with friends, they sagely nodded and said they'd been do this road before and had to pay with blood. We were not looking forward to that! Then Pia came up with the glorious idea of using a trash bag to reduce friction and tears.

A closer look how the corners turned out.

Note the tight fit, and cool texture and graphics.

Antique finds

Christoph — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 00:44:24 +0000

Material:

Casual browsing at Wynola Junction Antiques and Wynola Farms Marketplace turned into a very productive shopping trip. Here's what we found and where it is going in our home:

the butler chair - helps with dressing and holds clothes for the night, proudly stationed at the foot of the bed

llama wool - shorn from proud and impressive Dakota, nearly black, slightly heathered, it will be knit into a warm scarf

a cute little shelf - perfect for the master bath

iridescent teardrop garden lights - hung along the eaves below the jasmine branches

old fashioned metal garden seed ad sign - above the stove in our kitchen

The Butler Chair

Who doesn't have the perpetual disarray of clothes in the bedroom, not going into the closet for some reason, but not into the hamper for another? So these clothes are in temporary limbo, and there's never a good place for them. In our master bedroom, a perfectly good chair and a perfectly usable chandelier serve as holders for those clothing items. Not anymore for Pia, for the Butler Chair was built for the purpose. It has a clothes hanger back with a second piece above and can take care of those stray clothing items elegantly. The seat is a bit lower, so you can comfortably reach your feet while putting on socks and shoes, and when seated you can effortlessly slip into the jacket hanging from the clothes hanger back. Simply genius! And then there's the secret compartment under the seat. Pia is in love!

The Butler Chair has a little, secret compartment under the seat which swings out and is perfect for stashing away jewelry or other small items.	This is undyed pure llama wool. Dakota's fleece is going to be a very special scarf.	The cute little white shelf is a great addition to our bathroom, and looks perfect against the blue wall (which is one of those "I just had to do it" Pia ideas).
The iridescent teardrop garden lights strung out on our bench, before I mounted them in the backyard.	Teardrop Garden Lights mounted and lit.	This old fashioned metal sign advertising garden seeds is going to have a special place above the stove in our kitchen.

Art Shelf

Christoph — Sun, 24 Jul 2011 19:55:02 +0000

Material:

1" x 4" wood plank, buy a length which is close to your desired shelf length and presanded on all four sides
1/4" x 1" wood strip(s), enough to form a lip along your plank
Minwax Tung Oil finish
4 right angle brackets
wood screws
stud sensor, level, screw driver

This is an idea we had for a very long time, but never got around to actually build. Then we saw this version by Erin Loechner and everything came together. Her idea to mount the shelf up high, and installing the brackets on top of the shelf seal the deal. Genius!

Canarywood Coffee Table

Christoph — Sun, 20 Mar 2011 16:20:25 +0000

Material:

Canary wood - an exotic wood from Central America, you might want to check whether it was sustainably harvested
Hand planes
Wood dowels
Panel clamping system
Web clamp
Jig saw (or other saw)
Wood glue
Sand paper
Tung oil finish
Various other tools, such as clamps, mallet, etc.

Pia and I had spotted canary wood at Cut & Dried Hardwood (now sadly gone) a few years back, fell in love with its crazy colored stripes, and wanted to create a furniture piece with it. However, for lack of time and energy nothing ever happened. Then, two months ago, our need for another small table became urgent, and the plans finally coalesced.

My wood planks came smooth on the faces, but rough on the edges. You need to make the planks super straight and smooth on the edge for later gluing into a panel. Note the guiding fence against which the plane side glides. It keeps the plane at 90º relative to the wood face.	Now design the surface panel. Check the plank ends - you want the grain curvature to alternate between planks to minimize warping. Pay attention to how edges meet and fix mismatches with your plane. Your ultimate goal is to find an arrangement that looks as great as can be given the structural requirements. Make a mark across the panel so you can easily recreate it. My panel clamp is from Lee Valley Tools.	The glued panel needs to be smoothed to the surface flatness you want your table to have. I used a #4 bench plane first, and then my orbital sander. Between the final passes with 220 sandpaper I raised the grain twice with a wet rag. When wet the wood now really shows off its amazing colors. I used the #4 plane to "round over" the top edges and create a nice bevel on the bottom of the surface. Canary wood is so easy to plane that this was a snap, even across the grain.
The coffee table undercarriage. It is a very simple structure of lightly tapered legs and straight planks connecting them. I used the Beadlock dowel system, which gives the strength of mortise and tenon joints, but only requires a hand drill. A web clamp held it together while the glue dried, and a couple of heavy boxes on top made it stand squarely on all four legs.	Crazy wood streak detail in one of the legs. I just love the red, and the worm hole too.	The table is assembled, just felt pads needed on the feet. The blocks for the various screws are recycled from a 1960s chair inherited from our former neighbor John. The finish is a wipe-on tung oil finish from Minwax, which is my go-to finish for all woodworking projects.

Refurbishing a Brooks Leather Saddle

Thomas — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 03:24:05 +0000

Material:

old Brooks saddle with good/save-able leather
replacement rivets
rotary tool with grinding bits
needle nose pliers
hammer, punch, and anvil (for solid rivets)
rivet gun (for hollow rivets)
ball peen hammer

First off I have to say that the only reason one should want to restore a Brooks saddle is if the leather is in usable condition. If the leather is too worn to recondition there is no point in keeping the old rails and mounting new leather, just go buy a new saddle from Brooks (they are not that expensive). The only reason I say this is because in my quest to refurbishing my saddle I did lots of research and found many people were trying to restore old seats with new leather, which makes no sense because the worn in leather is the only part that makes the seat worth restoring.

Tools Needed: rotary tool with grinding bits saddle needing refurbishing needle nose pliers	Remove the old rivets by using a rotary tool of some kind with a grinding tip (I found a source who used a drill to drill the old rivets out. The end result was a damaged/enlarged hole in the leather, I would strongly recommend not using a drill). I used two different tips so that I could reach all the rivets while damaging the rails as little as possible.	The point is to grind off the material of the rivet which is flared outwards on the underside of the rail.
Starting at the back end of the saddle I ground all the flared rivet ends off. (Note: I shot the pictures for this step after I had already finished it, so I am using the pictures of the nose of the saddle, the rear end of the saddle rail has 6 rivets.) When a rivet is ground off it will look like this. Grind all six rivets on the back of the saddle.	With that done the rear of the leather can be separated from the rail by pulling the two apart, you might have to pull hard, or grind or crush the rivet ends until they fit through the holes in the saddle rails. The nose of the saddle will come undone easily, as the tension adjustment is not securely fixed. Make sure to remember how the three pieces fit together for reassembling later.	Now you should have the leather attached just to the chrome nose piece by three rivets, follow the same steps to remove those as well, resulting in this.
Use needle nose pliers to pull the ground rivets out of the leather. If needle nose pliers cant grip the head of the rivet, push from the bottom. I would not recommend using a knife or screwdriver to pry between the head of the rivet and leather because it causes damage to the leather (my leather is cosmetically not pristine, I am not striving for looks, only comfort, but I want to keep it as strong as possible for long-term use).	The end result should be the leather (still in saddle shape) with no rivets or rails.	If leather conditioning is needed, this is the time to do it. My saddle did not need any work here because it is broken in nicely and I am merely replacing broken rivets. I did however notice that the front three rivet holes in the leather are elongated instead of being round. This is slightly worry-some since further elongation is bound to happen and at some point the rivet will pull through.
My chrome parts and the rail are slightly rusted because my bike lives outside and so I used a wire wheel to polish them up before reassembling the saddle.	I ended up with this, which I am fine with. If you want to be really thorough, sandblast the whole rail assembly and repaint with black.	Tools Needed To Set Rivets hammer, punch, anvil (for solid rivets) rivet gun (for hollow rivets) saddle rivets of your choice (my rivets are pushed through the leather already for mock up)
This is the homemade anvil that I used. It is a large chunck of cast iron that I placed onto the concrete foundation at my house. I recommend a real anvil, but I am poor and have access to scrap metal.	I already set the front three rivets, so I am mocking up this step on the rear of the saddle rail. On the far left you can see the rivet protruding from the rail, its a little more than an 1/8th inch. Read above under step 3 Setting a rivet on how to set a rivet properly.	First assemble the chrome nose piece and the leather with all three new rivets sticking through, holding the two materials together for ease of setting. Set these three rivets first so you can assemble the tension adjustment correctly before setting the back six rivets. This is the result.
Because I used the largest copper rivets Brooks sells I had a gap between the leather and the edge of the rivet. This is normal because of how the rivet is formed, however if the gap is too big, the rivet might not be set tight enough or the rivet head on the top of the saddle might become a large bump after finishing that will be a nuisance while riding. When using rivets that already have a finished head, there should be no gap.	After attaching the chrome nose piece, assemble the tension adjustment (refer to picture in step 5) and mount the leather on the rails, pushing all six rivets through on the back end, this will help keep the leather in place while setting the first few rivets. Set the rivets in the same fashion as before starting with the two in the middle and working to the sides.	Check to make sure that all rivets are set tight enough to leave no play between the leather and the rails, ensuring a strong connection.
Unless you have unfinished rivets (like the medium and large copper rivets from Brooks) the seat is done, ready to adjust the tension, mount to your bike, and go for a ride. I still need to finish and form the heads on mine.	Tools Needed for Finishing Rivets ball peen hammer saddle with unfinished rivets anvil punch (to use as an anvil for hard to reach rivet ends)	In order to finish a rivet, set the bottom head (underside of the saddle) onto an anvil and use the rounded end of the ball peen hammer to form the head of the rivet to fit the contour of the saddle. This is done by hitting the rivet head dozens and dozens of times, every time striking in a different spot. Start hitting the rivet from the center moving towards the outside. The impact hardens and burnishes the copper while forming it.
This is where the punch comes in: the rivet might not actually have a solid backing, which makes forming the rivet head hard and deforming the seat rails easy. It might be easier to set the saddle on top of the punch standing upright on the actual anvil in order to create a nice solid backing that will reach into the tight curve of the seat rail. I did not do this, so I ended up bending the pouch loops on the back of the Brooks B17.	The end result - a restored Brooks saddle - should be as shown, a seat with nine multifaceted rivets shaped to the contour of the seat. The forming also ends up being a finishing quality and after some riding they will take on a nice antique quality.

Gingerbread House 2010

Christoph — Thu, 23 Dec 2010 23:21:27 +0000

Material:

Gingerbread dough
Candy, lots of it, in a range of colors and varieties
Nuts and seeds
1 cup of powdered sugar
Lemon juice

Roll the gingerbread dough into thin sheets and bake it well. Let cool.
Add lemon juice slowly to the powdered sugar and mix until you have a thick paste - this will be your "glue".
Cut gingerbread into shapes to make walls, roof halves and other parts of your house. Be creative here, but remember that intricate designs will be really hard to put together, and much harder to keep together.