Porch roof progress

Last time I promised photos of the progress on the office exterior.

This is an example of the trim that had to be taken down. There is some pretty bad cracking of the wood, and there were areas of rot on them as well.

Here we can see that I have removed some of the ceiling panels and installed a temporary brace.

This is looking underneath the roof at the exposed sheathing. I’m fairly confident that the OSB is practically brand new because the building had a new roofing job done last year. Obviously I’ve got some patchwork to do.

This is directly above the middle porch column. I had been banging on the back side of these pieces to loosen them from the joist and all the rotted wood fell to the ground. Yes, you can see the underside of the roof through the hole in the joist. Looks like plenty of bugs have called this place home over the years as well.

Wide shot of the roof after the front joists have been removed. As you can see on the left, one of them is currently serving as a temporary support column. That whole end of the roof sags down almost a foot without it there. As part of the rehab, after this photo was taken I sistered some 2x6 boards onto the ends of the joists to provide a stronger nailing surface for the front joists.

Alright, this particular view made me angry when I saw it. The old joist is barely above the center porch column. The new piece of lumber seen here is one I put in there, and I added another after this picture was taken. Basically, the column was holding up the roof by the 3/8” plywood. I certainly hope the original builder didn’t do other jobs like this!

The new front joists are now installed. I’d like to keep the temporary supports in until I have finished repairing the roof sheathing, but since the one on the far left is standing in one of our driveways, I may not have a choice in how soon I need it gone.

That about sums up the progress made on the porch roof so far. I’ll talk about the rest of the exterior work in a separate entry. And I’ll have a new video to debut. So keep checking in!

Has it really been that long?

My word, time flies when you are busy. I’ve had quite a bit of stuff going on, but haven’t felt inspired enough to relate any of it. I will now try to get you all caught up.

A while back I posted about the curiously conductive mortar I had used to encase my souped up crock pot. The video was pretty self explanatory. To solve the problem, I bought a tube of some stuff designed to repair holes in exhaust systems. I don’t know if it is technically an epoxy since it did not require mixing, but it seemed to act like an epoxy. After it dried, I ran my multi-meter test again and there was no stray voltage. I then did a bench test of the crock to see how hot I could get it. I was VERY pleased! With no top on, the wax inside the crock got to 220F and it did not take long to do it. My thinking is that I’m going to have to put a limiting thermostat in to keep it in that range.

The project taking up the majority of my time lately has been repair and repainting the exterior of my wife’s office building.

Be honest, if your building was this drab, wouldn’t you do something about it? You can tell I’d done some spot repair of the paint in the past. Utilitarian, but not pretty. And really, it just demonstrates just how faded the paint on the building really was. My available time has been, for the most part, devoted to surface prep. Quite a bit of powerwashing to remove loose paint and heat gun stripping some areas that had so many layers of paint that the details were lost. The heat gun, by the way, is a new store bought one. I gave up on my repair of the old one. I actually completed it, but on the first test run the heat inside melted one of the soldered wire connections. Too much trouble to go in and re-do things so I just put it aside and chalked it up as a learning experience. The surface prep phase revealed several issues that I felt I needed to take care of. Rotting trim pieces needed replacement. Taking down moldings to strip paint off of them revealed a gap that opened up into the wall interior. That gap needed a couple of cans of spray foam insulation to seal off properly, much to the dismay of the local yellow jacket population. (found an old nest in there, and I’m guessing there was one active somewhere as I got stung) The front of the office is proving a more difficult challenge.

I decided after the powerwashing that the trim on the porch roof needed replacement. A coat of paint was going to hide the rot for only so long. An afternoon of pulling that trim down revealed that the structure underneath had some significant rot as well. I’m currently prepping to take those rotted pieces out. I need to install some temporary supports to hold up the joists that will not be connected to the columns when I do that. I also need to remove all of the nails coming from the roofing above that were nailed into the old trim pieces. I started just popping them up, but some are in pretty good so I’m planning on cutting the rest off under the drip edge.

Yesterday at the workshop I had some prep for the porch work and some for the upcoming winter. For the porch work, I had to do a bit of rehab on my framing nailer. I thought I was going to have to replace a gasket or two, but what it really needed was a thorough cleaning and oiling of the piston and trigger. For the winter, I have been working on rehabbing the snowblower attachment for my tractor. Mainly this involved stripping off loose paint and rust, then repainting. One problem I had noticed while doing this was that the drive chain had some frozen links. I soaked it in CLR and left it in there for the entire week. This, as I found out yesterday, was a fairly large mistake! I returned to find the entire chain frozen tight in this whitish, crusty gunk. After the obligatory curse-fest, I started the troubleshooting. Long story short, it took a couple of hours of soaking the chain in heated Simple Green and working each link loose by hand. By the end I had a chain as lithe as a ballet dancer’s spine. But now I had to keep it that way, and I knew that if I didn’t get the watery Simple Green out of the chain it would flash rust in no time. First, I applied a liberal dose of this stuff called PB Blaster, which is a product similar to WD-40 in that it displaces water. Then, I placed the chain in a pot of heated motor oil. This had the effect that one sees when french fries go into the fryer. The water boiled off and was replaced by the oil, leaving a completely lubricated drive chain. I’m almost psyched for winter now. :)

That’s about it for now. I hope to get some in-progress shots of the building to share with you all next time.

Kudos to an unknown putterholic pioneer

If you’ve never experienced the site Freecycle.org I highly recommend you give it a try. For one thing it got me some of my used motor oil for furnace fuel. Sometimes though some really interesting finds can be had even when you aren’t looking for them.  Case in point was yesterday. A lady a few blocks away was cleaning out the garage of what I gathered was a deceased relative. She had had a yard sale last week and was now looking to just get rid of what was still a sizeable inventory. I think she posted at least a couple dozen posts on the local freecycle board. I sent out a reply on a couple of them and went there just expecting to get a ladder and a couple of floodlights. Well, there was still quite a bit of unclaimed stuff at the place when I got there and the owner encouraged everyone there to take what they wanted. I took a look around and there was some neat old stuff that many would just consider junk. Most of it I left because I had zero use for them. One thing in particular though caught my eye and I knew I had to have it just for the parts alone! Let me show you what I’m talking about:

You are looking at a home made air compressor!  I just think it is so cool that someone was able to put this together to satisfy their need for compressed air. The drive motor is a 1/3 HP unit made by the Packard Electric Division of GM. So far I have yet to figure out its manufacture date. The compression unit is made from a small engine. There are no identifying marks for me to ID the make or model. The exhaust port has been sealed off with a plug and a small pipe inserted where the spark plug should be. The rubber hose, though in rough shape, still holds air.  Given the whole unit’s overall condition, I would say that it has got to be pretty old.

Does it work? See for yourself:

 

Now, what exactly am I going to do with this piece of ingenuity? When I first saw it, I thought it was going to be parted out for use in other things. But after I fired it up and saw how quiet the thing is compared to my store bought compressors, I may use this as the compressed air source for my Babington burner furnace. I’m going to have to replace that rubber hose and run some tests to determine if it can supply enough pressure and air volume. It will be great if this old find can make its way into my own creation.

The case of the conductive mortar

I’ll expand more on this later, I just wanted to get this linked here before I went to bed.

My (electrical) Connections

Back when TLC actually was a place where you could watch educational programming, they would occasionally run a BBC production entitled  Connections. In it, presenter James Burke explored the often unlikely connections linking the technological advances that make modern life possible.  I make no claim that my connections are as life changing, just that it is interesting how work on one thing can lead to another.

I said in the last entry that I was putting the burner project on hiatus. And at the time, I meant it. But things don’t always work out as planned.  Last week I was troubleshooting my little problem with the Harbor Freight heat gun. Still haven’t figured it out, but in taking apart the donor hair drier it occurred to me to test the resistance of its heating coils. This particular model had three separate strands of heating wire. Lo and behold, the resistance of the two smaller wires put them in the range I needed for ramping up the power of my crock pot heater. Just to review, the first crock pot heater drew about 40 watts. The upper limit for the new and improved model has to come in at under 400W since that is the rating on my car’s DC to AC inverter which will be keeping the unit hot during transport. Using the electrical equations P=VI and V=IR, we input our knowns. 400W=120V x I. Solving for I gives us. 3.33 amps. Then we put that into the second equation and solve for R to get 36 Ohms.  I set a target of 40 Ohms for a safety factor. The final product ended up in the 50-55 Ohm range. Here is a picture of the windings on the crock.

The grey electrical tape was there to hold the insulator strip as I did the winding. The strip allows you to have the connections to a cord be right next to one another. I really like this setup instead of my original idea of buying 28ga steel wire as it accomplishes more resistance in 12 windings than the steel could in 60 (which I was having trouble fitting onto a crock anyway). By the way, this operation was not without casualties. That wire is wavy because it was coiled up like a spring and needed straightening. Evidently, too much of this kind of activity is hard on the fingers:

Only that long one going from top right to bottom left cut deep enough to hurt. Think paper cut only more efficient.

After placing the windings, they needed better contact for heat transfer. That waviness of the wires not only went up and down, but also in and out so not all the wire was touching the crock. My initial plan was to just put a coat of thin set mortar over the wire and call it good. This would fully bury the wire to prevent shorts. But as I was nearly done with that, I found that I had a good deal of mixed up mortar left over. So I thought, aw, what the heck. I’ll fill the entire cavity between the crock and outer shell with mortar.

In this photo we are looking at the underside of the unit minus the bottom plate. I only filled in the space around the sides where the heating elements are. After that cures, I’ll likely stuff some fiberglass batting into the bottom to minimize heat loss there.

Well, that is the extent of my progress. I look forward to sharing more with you all later.

Oil furnace on hiatus

I haven’t posted in a couple of weeks partly due to lack of any real progress (had to start on a new centrifuge bowl), but partly due to other things coming up that need my attention. I’m planning to share one of them here in video format. I filmed a repair job I did on the front axle of my tractor. I’m very frustrated though with either the editing software or the computer not being able to keep up in playing the video while I try to make edits.  Anyway, summer is in full swing around here, and I need to catch up on some other things while I can. The boat and jet ski are out of the pole barn, which means that I now have the room to do some major reorganization. If you’ve studied the backgrounds of the photos and vids I’ve posted, you know I’ve been forsaking neatness quite a bit. Now is the time to regroup.

Though I won’t be working on the furnace project, it does not mean I won’t have stuff to talk about. I mentioned the tractor repair which I hope to bring to you soon, but I also had to do a little bit of transplant surgery on my gas weed trimmer.  A little while back, I made the mistake of buying a heat gun from Harbor Freight. The thermal protection died after the first test! I’m currently figuring out how to wire the heating element from that into the body of a regular blow drier. If I get the wiring right, I can’t see there being much of a problem. The gun was rated at 15oo watts and the hair drier pulls 1600 watts. All a matter of how the heat is distributed I guess. Big plans are brewing at my wife’s office building too. We may finally be getting up the resolve to repaint the exterior. Plus, I’ve begun acquisition of parts to install an underground sprinkler system. Lowe’s had a box of pop up sprinklers on clearance for 75cents each when they were usually $2.17. So I got all the sprinklers I will need for just $6. I’m looking into the possibility of retrofitting an old (30+year) timer/distribution box to use electric solenoids instead of water pressure to open zone valves. I don’t know how farking pleased with myself I’ll be if I can pull THAT one off!:) After that I might try water into wine or a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.:)

Enough dreaming big, I’ve got to get to bed. Night all!

A $350 jigsaw puzzle

This is going to be fairly short since I didn’t do any project work at the shop this week. I did start a small painting project. My wife bought a couple of metal toddler bed frames at a garage sale (where else?), and my job is to paint them pink. Right now I’m just working on sanding the old paint so the new paint will grip.

Anyway, I thought I’d get around to sharing about the mega deal my wife and I scored a few weeks ago. What would you pay for a 1997 SeaDoo GTS with trailer? $1000? $1500? Would you believe $350? You would be hard pressed to find just the trailer for that price! Of course, there is a catch, and you can see what that is in the photos below.

 

Yep, that’s right. Low low price of $350, but some assembly may be required! I’m not too concerned about this aspect. I had to take apart much of our other GTS last summer to replace the starter. What I don’t know is will I be able to find any parts that I will need during the re-assembly. I know that there is a bad bearing on the crankshaft, that’s why the seller tore it up. He just didn’t know how to keep going, ran out of patience, whatever. His loss will be my gain. Even if, for some reason, I am unable to make it run, it is the exact same model as our other GTS (same colors even) and will be great for providing spare parts. And I get a trailer out of the deal. I do not have one for the other GTS, and it is a pain transferring it from its stand onto my flatbed utility trailer in order to get it in the water.

Nothing else to report, except to say congratulations to my brother on his wedding this past weekend.

Wet test, supply runs, and bonus brazing

Big weekend at the shop. The drive motor of the centrifuge was wired up with a cord and a remote switch so it could be operated in its final position. I’ll tell ya, the switch really looks like overkill because I decided to employ an outlet box and switch from what I like to call my “Western Electric Surplus” supply. My grandfather worked there for 30 years as an installer, and he acquired quite a few items over the course of that run. (Let’s put it this way, it has been 26 years since he died, and I have never had to buy zip ties unless I’ve been in need and caught away from home without any on me. He had a LOT of stuff!) This box is the kind you would find on walls in older concrete wall basements. 1/8th to 3/16ths inch thick aluminum, and possibly just short of bulletproof. A little bit of armored conduit so I could mount the thing on the front of the stand and I was all set to go. Drains were also installed on the washer tub to drain the oil. So I guess it was finally time for a test run with some oil. Having learned my lesson from my Babington burner testing, this was NOT going to be videotaped.:) Turns out that was a wise move. Adding the oil into the spinning drum pointed out just how badly the metal ring at the top of the pot was held on. It leaked terribly. Not only that, but the plexiglass I glued into the round hole on the one end of the tub did not stay firmly attached. 

More research was needed to find a better binding agent. Time to head to the Mecca of home improvement junkies, the local home center. In my case it’s Home Depot, but I would go to Lowe’s too if they had one in Houghton Lake. Probably not gonna happen considering two other home centers in the area bit the dust in the last ten years. Anyway, the point I was trying to make before my train of thought was totally derailed is that I don’t particularly like having to go to that particular Home Depot. Why? Let me show you.

A 26 mile round trip is waiting for me every time I need to get anything at the local HD.  26 miles of moderately curvy roads with a max speed limit of 45mph.  That’s what happens when you have a 20k acre lake between you and the main retail establishments in the area. I do have a local hardware store about a 5 minute drive from the shop, but their selection and hours are limited.  I find it much more convenient to try and anticipate my needs while I am still in Midland during the week and go to the HD or Lowe’s there. That way I’m not eating into my limited shop time or driving all that way for one or two items like I did this weekend.

I settled on trying the quick setting version of JB Weld. All I can say is WOW! I had stayed away from JB because its advertising made me suspect that it was way overhyped. I’ll have to hold out final judgement until I can do another test run, but that stuff really seems to have formed a tight bond.

Normally, I would have had to wrap it up now. But my wife was downstate with our daughter and a change of plans meant that she wouldn’t be home until late the next day. So I was able to get in some bonus shop time! And I was determined to put it to good use.  Last week I told you about the cracked well pump I got at a garage sale. Sunday I decided to give repairing it a try. Here’s the results.

This is my first attempt at brazing since Jr High shop class, and considering that I think I did OK. Again, I’ll have to wait until I’m able to re-assemble the pump and test it before I call it a success. But the broken pieces seem to be on there really tight.

No shop time coming up this weekend. I’m going to my brother’s wedding (no one should have to face that kind of torture alone:) ). Next week it might be a good time to tell you all about my next mechanical project.  Till then, bye bye.

The lord of the mayflies and garage sale wars

Greetings! And welcome to June. As I suspected last week, very little got done on the main project over the holiday weekend. But there are still things to talk about. The irrigation pump I was using to move oil up to my rafter barrel needed detoxifying as it was needed elsewhere. Keep in mind that this pump will never be used for drinking water, so my standard for clean here is 'can I see an oil sheen on the water coming out?' A couple of fills with Simple Green and water and some Lysol and water left in overnight seemed to do the trick. With the Simple Green, I also ran the pump with the inlet and outlets closed to get some good agitation going.

The night time work sessions in the pole barn turned out to be quite buggy, and I don’t mean equipment problems. I had the doors wide open because we actually had warm weather. I was under attack from two fronts. Behind the pole barn is state swamp land which seems to supply roughly half the mosquitoes on the planet. The front is roughly 400’ away from Houghton Lake, and this was the weekend that the mayflies chose to rise up from the lake to find mates. By the end of the night, there were swarms of them around every light in the shop and plenty of them covering the floor and other surfaces. In addition, there were plenty of large moths and other night time insects all flitting around and generally making it look like the set of some horror movie. So nobody can say that I don’t suffer for my craft!:)

As most people are aware, Memorial Day weekend is a huge time for garage sales, especially in my area. On Friday I wasn’t even looking to stop at any, but on my way back from town I saw one that had potential. I ended up scoring big time! For a grand total of $15 I got a new captain’s chair for my boat, a box of galvanized pipe fittings, a box of brass pipe fittings, a box of 3” PVC DWV fittings, and a box of miscellaneous electrical items that included outlets, floodlight fixtures, and a motion sensor for an outdoor floodlight. Any one of those boxes had items that would have totaled close to $100 if purchased retail, and I got three.  On Saturday, my wife, child and I all went out together to do the garage sale thing. It was also a very successful day. I scored a utility sink (with faucet) for the laundry room for $12, a well pump and galvanized fittings for $20, and an old style well pump tank for $20. (Old style does not have a pressurized air chamber inside) The pump is going to need some welding to repair a crack, but this was a great find because now my lawn watering pump will not have to do double duty anymore. The tank is not necessary for pumping oil, but I will be modifying it to increase air storage for my air compressor.

As I said earlier, I did not get a lot done on the current project. Partly due to time constraints, but also partly due to some indecisiveness on how to proceed. I could not keep myself focused on either getting the centrifuge set up just enough to see it work, or going forward with setting it up as it needs to be when completed. The two objectives have some overlap, but they are not the same. Eventually, time constraints made me choose work on the permanent setup.  Much of the temporary work would have had to have been replaced or altered so I might as well be patient and do the work once.

That’s about it. Next week I’ll either have some video of a working centrifuge, or the story of a bigger deal I snagged last week.

The giving washer

I’m sure most people have heard of the children’s book The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein. In it, a boy and a tree have a lifelong relationship where the tree gives of itself to help the boy. At the end (spoiler alert) the remaining stump of the tree gives the now old man a place to sit. I’m starting to view the old dishwasher I’ve dismantled as a little like the giving tree. Though I have no illusion that the dishwasher holds me in high regard as the tree did the boy, it has been useful in many ways. Naturally, it started out as my dishwasher, providing many years of satisfactory service. As of now, the tub is part of an almost finished centrifuge unit. (more on that later) I’ve cut a piece out of one of the sheet metal parts to be the top of the little stand that holds the crock pot oil heater. I’m sure the rest of the metal will find use somewhere. The water heating element may find its way into my oil storage system somehow. And now, a part that I thought even I was crazy for hanging on to has proven its worth:

One of the racks fits perfectly on top of one of my storage barrels, allowing me to completely drain oil from the bottles it came in.  Honestly, I doubt I could use the rack for much else. There are some seriously rusted parts of the rack, and it’s not worth my time to strip the plastic off to find the good stuff left.

As for the centrifuge that the oil is going to go through, I am so close to being able to run oil through it I can almost taste it. (eeewwww!) The bowl is about as balanced as I can get it. I mounted it via face plate on my lathe and sanded, filed, and ground down areas until it spun without too much wobble. But when I mounted it back in the tub, I still got too much vibration. Closer examination of the problem revealed that the shaft I fabricated was not as straight as I thought it was.  So I fabricated a new one and it seemed to work better. I’ve also installed an idler pulley system that works ok, but needs some tweeking. I’ve also ditched the blower housing. The current motor has a side mounting bracket so it is directly attached to the frame.

That’s about it for the update of the weekend’s activities. I’ve got some intriguing ideas for future updates but they may be a while. I’m not sure if much of anything will get done this coming weekend. The boat, dock, and hoist need to go in the water and apparently I’m the entire labor force. Then there is that whole “enjoying the holiday weekend” thing.:) Speaking of which, y’all have a good one yourself.

The weekend putter report

No, this is not deja vu, its just that I couldn’t think of a better title and it still fits anyway. :)

The weekend got started pretty well on Friday. Our family went out garage sale hopping.  There were a lot of them because it was advertised as a city wide garage sale. Normally, I’m just happy to find a few small items that will assist me in whatever I’m up to. But I hit the mother lode of tools at this one sale. I’ll tell ya, if I had the budget and actually needed everything the guy had I would have been sorely tempted to just buy him out. As it was, I limited myself to two items, one of which I’m not sure when I’ll get a chance to use.  The first item was a bench-top grinder with a wire wheel on one end and grindstone on the other.  I’ll probably be putting this to use almost immediately due to the nature of my recent projects. The other item was a full molding head set for my table saw. Here is what a similar item goes for retail.  I honestly don’t know when I might get to use it, but when you can pick up both of those items for a total of $60, you just have to take a leap of faith and invest in the future.:)

Fast forward to Sunday morning in the shop. My first order of business is to measure my centrifuge rig to purchase a drive belt. It was a bit difficult since I was not sure how tight I should make it. But I settled on a loose fit since I could install a tensioner pulley if need be. I had some time to kill before the store opened, so I decided to track down a reason for why one of my electrical circuits in the shop had stopped working a couple of weeks ago. The breaker did not appear tripped or damaged, so it was a bit of a mystery. I tried everything I knew to pin the source down. I was about to give up when I looked to one side of the breaker box. There was a GFCI outlet there. And it was tripped. I knew the outlet was there, I guess I just didn’t realize it was on that circuit. It was one of the few that were there before I put the workshop in so I didn’t give it much thought. The whole thing made me think back to my jr. high science teacher. I will never forget him always saying “A good scientist is a keen observer. Look around, look around look around.” Good advice no matter what field you are in if you ask me.

The rest of the day was spent working on the centrifuge drive.  Here is a picture of the result so I can discuss what I did.

The motor is resting on a furnace fan blower housing. This is the third motor I tried. My first attempt used the motor that actually came with the housing. But it proved to be too weak and slow. My second attempt was the motor off an old water pump. I had to do some serious modifications to that motor’s housing in order to get it to fit in the first motor’s cradle. Firing it up, I found it went fast enough, but it had overheating issues that kept shutting it off. The motor in the picture is 1/2 hp  and turns at just over 1700rpm. On the shaft is a 4” diameter pulley. The shaft under the centrifuge has a 2” diameter pulley. This doubles the RPM at the centrifuge to over 3400rpm. I can actually thank my Friday bench grinder purchase for allowing me to use this motor because it had been my stationary wire wheel. Right now, the motor is not attached to anything, merely sitting on the sheet metal. I’m using the 4x4 next to it to vary the tension on the drive belt, but this will eventually be replaced by some sort of pulley system. I need to vary the tension because I have found that the motor will not rev to speed if the belt is tight.

So, we’ve discussed the drive train. But what is it driving?  Well, this:

We are looking through the hole in the tub where the spray arm came up through the bottom.  The centrifuge vessel is an old aluminum pot. (Of course it’s old, when’s the last time you saw a harvest gold piece of cookware?) I have added a 2” lip made of aluminum sheet metal. I had wanted to solder it on but was not having any luck at that so I went with adhesive caulk.  My next challenge on this project will be getting this thing properly balanced. I knew going in that I was never going to get these materials together and achieve perfect balance right off the bat. It is going to take adding a little weight in some places, shaving some off in another. I just needed a way to get it spinning fast to see if my balancing efforts are working or not.

Well, I’m putting myself to sleep reading this, can’t imagine how it’s affecting you all.:) Goodnight.

The weekend putter report

I promised yesterday that I would have things to report from my Sunday at the workshop. First off, I have successfully pumped oil from the ground level up to the storage barrel in the rafters. It was a great display of teamwork. Not from me, but from my two pumps and the fry pan I bought last week.

As you can see, the fry pan gets the oil up to pumping temperature. Next, the utility sump pump  discharges into the inlet of the shallow well pump, which then pumps the oil up to the holding barrel. I’m kind of wondering now if both are necessary. Neither worked well on their own before, but I was using some of my old garden hose for the job. Since that try, I happened to find a good length of used 3/4” black irrigation pipe at the local Habitat for Humanity Re-store. I’m sure the much larger diameter pipe decreased how hard it was to push the oil.

The centrifuge project is coming along fairly well. I now have a stand to mount a motor and the tub. I’m going to have to do something to keep the centrifuge shaft vertical. The tub body flexes when a belt is put on the pulley. This binds the shaft in it’s bearing, keeping it from turning.

One last thing. Since I have the other six days a week to fill between shop sessions, I do a lot of research. Last week I was searching for other methods for removing the water from oil. I found a page that had an interesting, and cheap, method that would be easy to test. Here’s what happened when I did.

Sometimes its just not the equipment

My wife called from the office this evening asking if I could come over there because the aquarium was making loud noises. Not exactly what you want to hear, but ok. I get over there and the first thing I notice was there was definitely a clunky noise coming from the filter unit. But that's not all that catches my eye (or ear). Yes there is that clunky noise, but there is something I'm NOT hearing, that being the water flowing out of the filter AND the bubbles coming out of the undergravel filter risers. (I'm a belt/suspenders kind of guy:) ) Now I'm thinking "Oh this is so not going to be my day. Two units going out at the same time?" I check the air pump. Its running, but putting out very little air. I check it's intake filter and cleaning it does not help. I figure I'd better take the filter unit downstairs and clean it. That's when the mystery deepens. I turn on the light and it's dimmer than it should be. At first I thought my wife put in a dimmer bulb. But when I go to the utility room and turn the light on there, the same thing happens. The dim bulbs make a light bulb go off in my head. I grab my voltmeter and check an outlet to confirm. 58 Volts. Oh joy. A few more tests confirm that the whole building is this way. My stuff isn't broken, it's just not getting enough juice! Local power company was notified, and after a work crew stopped at a nearby transformer, voltage was back to normal. I'm just grateful that it was a cool day and the air conditioner was not running. A low voltage situation like that would not be a good thing for the compressor unit.
I've got another blog entry in me regarding my weekend workshop exploits, but I want to get a video edited first.
Bye for now.

The ever popular garage sale

My wife and I hit a couple of garage sales yesterday before heading off to see a movie. My wife and I definitely have different objectives at sales like this. She is searching for clothes and toys for our daughter, meanwhile I’m searching for toys for me. Yesterday was no exception. The first stop was a rummage sale at a local church that was to benefit the local animal shelter. Normally there’s a pretty good selection at events like these, but I was sort of underwhelmed. I did however manage to pick this up for a buck. An old electric fry pan? Yup. I have no intention of making breakfast with it. I have two uses for it in mind.  First, I’m going to cut off most of the sides because they are in my way. I can then use it as a hot plate for heating various things.  Also, from prior experience, I know that I can completely submerge it in oil and use it as a heating element to thin out my used motor oil to make it easier to transfer it via pump. I know it may sound dangerous, but motor oil is non-conductive. As long as the unit is completely submerged it will do what I want it to do without making smoke or shorting out.

My other find of the day wasn’t quite as exciting (yeah, like the readers out there would think the pan was exciting).  I found an outdoor, light up, wire frame snowman. It looks like its missing a light bulb or two, but that’s an easy fix. Should make a good addition to the office Christmas display.

Lucked into a scrounge today

Driving to the store today I spied a large household appliance near the curb. Normally I wouldn’t give it too much thought, but lately it seems that I’m in need of sheet metal stock for my projects. After taking care of my errands I went past it again to size it up and see if it was still there. Yep, it was. A dryer with no “for sale” sign on  it or anything. Far as I know, that qualifies as being put out for trash. I rush home and get my small flatbed trailer to bring the dryer home. As of now, I have no idea if it even powers up. I don’t care too much. It would definitely be a bonus to score a working dryer motor, but I’ll just be happy with the metal stock.

Quick fix for a primer bulb

Today I planned on mowing the lawn. I had also planned on bringing gasket material down from my workshop to fix a gasket that was part of the primer bulb assembly on the mower. I thought, "Aw cr@p! I don't wanna drive across town just to get a proper gasket." Well, what can I do? I looked in the back of the truck and saw that I had a tube of aquarium sealant. (Yes, I have fish) Hmm, this might work for now. I carefully applied the sealant to the missing area of the gasket and put the assembly back together. I pushed the bulb a few times, pulled the cord, and the mower started right up! Is this a long term fix? I kind of doubt it, but it will probably hold up until the next time I do routine maintenance. I would say that one could pull this trick off with any silicone based sealant and achieve the same results.

Hi, my name is Bob and I'm a putterholic. (Hi Bob) What am I talking about? Well, I use the term putterholic to describe the extreme do it yourself attitude that I seem to exhibit on a regular basis. This isn't just the usual change out light bulb, change car oil and filter kind of DIY. I'm talking about hardcore, like learn how to use a welding torch to fix a boat hoist variety of DIY. I kid you not, I've done that! And really, I'm not ashamed that I did. The general purpose of this blog will be to relate the trials and tribulations of my current and former projects, and maybe give some insight into the mindset that drives them.

Lately my projects have shifted more toward the experimental. It's probably not quite the right word because the things I'm doing have been accomplished by others before me. The experimental part is can I replicate the results with what I have on hand or can acquire cheaply. The following video is something I am working on right now.
Bob's Babington Burner
Do a search on Youtube on Babington burner and you will find plenty of successful examples. I'm not exactly breaking new ground. I am however figuring out uses for a lot of materials that have been gathering dust in my workshop.

What is interesting, is that this project has spawned other projects. I put out a call for used oil to run this thing. The one person that came through so far gave me six 5-gallon jugs worth. That's the cool part. The not cool part is I poured one of them in the holding tank and discovered there was a large quantity of water in it. That's no good. Water is not typically flammable unless you live in Cleveland.:) So now I need to set up a separator. I was thinking of doing it to get some of the crud out of the oil anyway to cut down ash buildup in the burner, but now it is necessary. The body of the separator is the tub out of a broken dishwasher. The centrifuge inside is an old stock pot with a lip attached. It is going to be powered by a motor from a squirrel cage furnace fan. I am seriously channeling the MacGyver spirit on this one! Another problem I am trying to overcome with the project is getting the oil into the main holding tank. The furnace will be gravity fed, so I have mounted a plastic 55 gallon barrel in the rafters of the shop. Carrying gallon jugs up the ladder is no fun after the first 10 trips. Right now the pumps that I have are having difficulty moving the oil up about 15' to the top of the barrel, even after heating it to thin it out. I have some options lined up so I'll see how that goes. The other problem with the project you may have noticed in the video, the pre-heating of the oil via the mini crock pot is not good enough. Well, I've gone all Tim Taylor on the thing and have re-wired it to up the power by a factor of about ten. I'll show it off on future posts.

That's good enough for a start. Thanks for reading and good luck to all the other putterholics out there. :)