by bassybeats | Mar 28, 2020 | Wood Working
My parents had a bad habit of renovating houses when I was growing up and one thing that came from it was a lot of reclaimed rimu timber from old kitchens, old wall studs, benches and shelves. Lucky for me, my grandad was a bit of a hoarder of nice timber and as he started getting older he started letting me use some of it for projects. Basically, if it fit in my 350z then I could take it. I grabbed a few car loads over the years and as my $90 Warehouse particle board desks started falling apart I decided to replace it with a solid timber desk that would last forever and could be modified and tidied up in the future.
Building the desk top
I basically made the desk as wide as I could while still keeping enough timber for have 4 legs and the lower bracing, meaning I clamped it all together then cut to the shortest board and kept the rest as excess. The boards weren’t exactly straight or square so I stacked them as close as I could to get the flatest topside while avoiding knots on the top face if I could. After than it was just a matter of using Gorilla glue and some massive clamps to keep it all together while it dried. One note though, don’t clamp them too tight as they can bow outwards if the faces aren’t completed flat. If I had the option, I would have run these through a thicknesser first to make them straight and flat first, it would have saved me ALOT of sanding at the end.
Figuring out how to add legs
The legs for the desk weren’t the easiest to get sorted. I had to work around a few limitations, one was the timber I had left over ( I needed 4 legs the same length ), I needed a way to mount them to the desk top and I needed a way to level out the table so that at least when it was sitting on the ground it didn’t rock. From opposite corners the table top had a bit of a bow in it that I just had to work around.
The best way around it I could figure out was to build a small boxed section on the bottom of the table top, then pocket mount the legs in. This gave me a way to attach the legs from two faces, which stopped the wobble from side to side. To get the screws into the table top and legs, I actually had to recess wider holes into the timber then drill out pilot holes for the screws otherwise I would have been using 140mm screws.
Finished table and problems
The table turned out rather well to be honest. I had a lot of sanding and planing to do to get the top of it flat enough to be able to use it. I finished the table in some linseed oil just to seal it and stop too many stains showing up. One good thing about using reclaimed wood is there is already a lot of marks, dents, knots, nail holes in it so it doesn’t need to be 100%.
Something that did happen after a while, is that the heat from my laptop sitting on it for about a year made the wood crack along a obviously tense spot, it actually cracked along the timber not the glue, Gorilla glue does live up to its name.
I also added a block of wood under the desk to mount a power strip to get the cables off the floor. I also made a twin desk for this desk that was a bit slimmer and taller to be able to fit a bar stool under it with a keyboard style pull out for tools.
by bassybeats | Mar 28, 2020 | Others
Since forever I had carried one of those horrible plastic ticket and passport holders you get from the travel agencies when they give you your tickets. I have always destroyed them or them disintegrate by the end of my trip. I finally gave in and purchased some scrap leather from Trademe and did some digging online to find some templates I liked. I actually had a few projects in mind for this leather and actually ordered some proper tools for the job. You can see my other leather work project here.
Layout and templates
As I mentioned, I did some digging around and found some templates that worked for me. I actually decided to make two at the same time, one for a passport and one that can fit the typical field notes booklets. There are plenty of options online and I can’t find the specific ones I used anymore but ones like this or this work fine.
Figuring out how to sew leather
Till this point in my life, I had never sewed anything more than button on a shirt, so taking on full saddle stitching was something completely new to me. I ended up going with this tutorial from Black Owl Outdoors, it was easy to follow and suited my purposes. It was a relatively straight forward process other than I didn’t have a clamp for the leather so it was really hard on my hands the neddles. I never found a good way to stop the thread slipping out of the needle all the time though.
Both of the covers turned out really well with the only issue was that I smashed through the edge of one of them making the stitching wonky, but not too bad for my first attempt at making them. I have a whole lot more leather left if I want to make more. The only things I would change is that I would buy a clamp to hold the work piece and I would get some wax or stain for the leather to make it a bit more weather proof.
by bassybeats | Mar 28, 2020 | Others
After constantly dropping chains and having gear shifting issues I decided to move up with the times and convert my 2016 Giant Reign 2 to a 1x system. But since those were hundreds of dollars I scoured Trademe to find a good condition second hand setup that would get me most of the way there. What I ended up with was a compatible Shimano Deore XT rear groupset with long cage derailleur and shifter. To get the the best setup I had to change the front chain ring to a single narrow-wide ring as I was also going to drop the crappy MRP chain guard at the same time. I ended up swapping out new pedals, a rear rotor and the dropper post at the same time as they were all pretty worn out.
The old parts i took off were so worn out I wasn’t even worth keeping them, but i did do a $1 reserve on trademe incase they were of use for parts to someone else in the community.
Unfortunately, I didn’t get many progress photos as it was incredibly dirty and frustrating to get all the parts off. The rear groupset would not budge, it seems that the steel groupset slots had bound up and galled onto the alloy hub leaving me no choice but to attack it with fire and a hammer, The only way to get it off was to dismantle the hub itself, heat it up and bash it with a dead blow hammer and a socket to push out the carrier. It was pretty wasted after that but I ended up cleaning it up with a file and the new groupset fit onto it fine. As for the front, The chainrings were absolutely seized onto the cranks that I had to drill out the bolts just to get them off.
All said and done, I ended up with a new-to-me 1x conversion, new disc rotors, new dropper post and new pedals. It turned out pretty well and all my issues riding went away immediately, not to mention the bike was so much quieter now the front chain mech was missing.
by bassybeats | Mar 27, 2020 | Computing
After working with an 8 bay Drobo NAS at my old work and being impressed at how reliable it was, I picked up one on eBay cheap and got it shipped over. Loaded it with 4 Seagate 1TB drives and….it was noisy as shit.
Pulling it apart
I instantly ripped it apart and found that the fan was rubbish and the case was just a big metal tube. The fan was easy to rip out and put in a silent fan from a PC in it.
DynaMat to the rescue!
Digging through my box of random crap I found the leftover sound deadening from fitting out the Toyota’s sound system. Lined all the casing and even lifted up the front panel sticker and lined the front. The thing is almost dead silent other than when the hard drives first start up, no fan noise, no hum and no vibration.
Materials:
by bassybeats | Mar 27, 2020 | Others
For a while I frequented the local tip shop/refuse centre where I often picked up broken tech that I could repair or give a new lease on life. On this trip I managed to find an old Ryobi belt sander sitting in the corner at a $10 price tag. It looked in pretty good condition other than the switch was completely missing and the wires were hard wired together.
I attempted to get the sander running with the wiring as it was but it was really dodgy, so I cut the connections and re-twisted them together so I could at least verify that it worked before I bothered getting new parts. To my delight it fired into life, but this is when I noticed the next issue, any pressure on the top belt drive caused it to stop moving while the disc sander part kept moving. The belt drive in the back was completely destroyed. After a bit of Googling, ringing Bunnings and trying to find replacement parts, AliExpress and eBay came to the rescue as usual, I honestly don’t know why I bother looking locally sometimes. I opted for a safety switch from AliExpress and found the replacement belts on eBay, which are apparently used for 3D printers as well.
After a few months when the parts eventually arrived, it was a rather quick process of actually getting the belt sander fixed. To fix the belt, you should be taking off the cogs and fitting the belt then putting it back together, but as you can see someone already tried that. I ended up just gently stretching the belt over the lower cog to get it to fit. The switch was a bit harder, it didn’t actually fit the hole where the last one was so I had to file it out a bit to get it to slot in. Once it was physically mounted it was just a matter of wiring it up to the correct terminals. Ideally, I would have used terminal connectors but I didn’t have any in stock and just soldered it together.
Parts/Materials
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