Watt's Up Musings of an original geek

Katie and I have been building pantry shelves at Matthew’s house this week. A few weeks ago Matthew removed the old wire shelves leaving his kitchen pantry naked. About a week ago I filled in the hundreds of holes left by those old shelves. Last weekend we purchased the wood for the shelving at his nearby Home Depot. We purchased two 4×8 sheets of 3/4″ MDF for the shelves (very heavy), and about a dozen 1×2 for the supports. The people at Home Depot used their fancy linear saw to cut the sheets into six 16″ strips that are 8′ long. Five of them are to be the primary shelves and one of the strips we further cut into four 4″ strips for can shelves. This week Katie and I decided to work together while Matthew was at work and build him new shelves. We’ve had a good time working together on this project. On Monday we taped and painted the pantry white. We also carefully measured and layed-out where each shelf would go. On Wednesday we cut and mounted the 1×2 supports onto the walls. This consists of five primary shelves including a can shelf on the left-hand wall, and four separate intermediate can shelves also on the left-hand wall. We also cut and fitted the shelves for mounting. On Thursday we predrilled and counter-shunk the shelves in preparation for mounting (over one hundred holes). Then we mounted the shelves and caulked around them. For mounting we screwed the shelves into the 1×2 supports and we also screwed the shelves into each other. The caulking took hours because we had to caulk every edge top and bottom and every hole smoothing them all by hand. Our next job is to paint all the new shelving white and to touch up the walls.

Putting up 1×2 supports on Wednesday.We’ve been spending about five hours each day doing this work, and we probably have five more hours of painting. Somehow I don’t think Matthew knew how much work this was when he tore out the old wire shelves. Oh, and have I mentioned that he took out the shelving in the master bedroom closet too. But that’s another project. So right now we’re his sweat-equity home improvement “elves”. We appear after he leaves for work, make a mess, clean up and disappear before he gets home.

Update: See Katie’s “This is what I have been up to since I been home” blog entry about painting the pantry shelves.

I finished building the Power Crane (8854) today. I think this one was Matthew’s, but I could be wrong. This is the last kit I have inventoried so far. It is a very neat kit. It does so many things: rolling, steering, pads raise/lower, crane pneumatic lift up/down, crane extend in/out, crane swivel left/right, and hook up/down.

I also think the non-flash picture is cute too.Now I’ve got to go back and start inventorying the last few kits from the parts that I have, and I’ll be done with this “chore”. It not been my favorite thing to do. That is I wouldn’t go out and buy more kits to build and own. In other words, I wouldn’t be doing this unless I had this goal to organize our “family” Legos. But I have found that I’ve gotten a certain level of satisfaction that I now know that each kit is complete and buildable.

After having sorted out thirteen different kits I have been building them to check if I selected the parts correctly. It took me several hours to build each of the following kits. So here is the Black Knight’s Castle.

And the Auto ChassisIt reminds of the great times we, the children and I, had putting them together. Now to break them down and put them back into their separate bags.

The second day at the Maker Faire was much like the first. However, I had a 10K road race to run. So Mike, Annelle and Kathy went on ahead. I arrived at about 10 AM a bit stiff, but happy to have run a good race. Again we had our same “jobs”. The adults and kids loved riding the big car. While riding each would have a big smile on their faces and most would do the “beauty queen” wave – elbow, elbow, wrist, wrist, wrist. After their ride Kathy would give each one a “www.amazingrubberbandcars.com” rubberband wrist band. We did have three big car rubberband failures – sudden snap. But then we had more space and we were making longer and longer runs – tightening the bands more. In about 5 minutes each broken band was removed and a new band was installed. The Faire ended at 5 PM, and we packed up Annelle and Mike and they headed off on their trip home. Wow, what a weekend! We got home and crashed, double crashed – what we learned is that we’re no longer spring chickens. But we had so much fun. Now we need a weekend from our weekend.
Update: Me making small rubber band cars with my sweetheart

We’re Makers! We have Maker Faire badges – woohoo!. Mike made up gray T-shirts for both Kathy and I with the cover of his book on them. He and Annelle had blue knits shirt with the cover too. We left home at 8:30, got to the Faire at 9 AM, did some last minute setting up and the Faire started at 10 AM. We were in the children’s area. Lots of family oriented things were located there. Annelle and Kathy were a great team. Annelle would push the big car back, explain how it worked and Kathy was at the other end as the big car catcher. After the ride Annelle would gently direct them to Mike who would tell them about the book. Very smooth. I was a “maker” sitting on the edge of the booth cutting cardboard, gluing it and making small runner band cars to give out. We did that from 10 AM to 6 PM. Amazing how tiring doing this is. If that wasn’t enough… After the Faire closed for the night we quickly closed up and headed to town to see the Newsboys. We got the tickets through Annelle and Mike’s daughter. We were right down front. Great seats, and a great time. We got home and crashed – we were exhausted.
Update: Our display just before the crowds arrived

Update: Newsboy Concert showing the drummer on his vertical spinning stand – awesome!

We arrived at the Austin Maker Faire at the Travis County Exposition Center at about 9 AM for setup. Within about 1 1/2 hours we had put together three tables, and decorated them. We positioned the big car out front.

We came back home for lunch. On the way back home from Maker Faire I phoned SegCity and made a reservation for a tour of Austin on Segway HTs. At 2:30 we arrived at SegCity, met the 6 other people taking the tour, and our guide, Alexa. We saw a safety video, took a short course on the unit (balancing, turning in place, and negotiating a figure eight around two cones) then we were off on the tour – whee!. For the next 2 or more hours we toured downtown Austin including the City Hall, and the Texas Capital.By the end we were exhausted especially Kathy who had a small spill on the Segway. [Also maybe we should have remembered that for the next two days we’d be on our feet about 8 hours each day – oops] But tired legs didn’t stop us from enjoying BBQ at Rudy’s

Our friends, Annelle and Mike, arrived this evening. They drove in from Florida, and they are staying with us for the weekend. It is nice to see them again and we’ve got a busy weekend ahead – every minute is filled. The last time we were together was three years ago, and that time we visited them at their home. More to follow…

See the large Amazing Rubberband Car video now on YouTube.com.

The video has been linked to from boing boing!!? here, here, and here. That’s so cool!

and also my son’s weblog: here

Thanks Justin for the links.

October 7: WOOHOO! The band clamp and wheels work.

Play videoEngineering Change 3: I had a thought, but I’m not going to pursue it. It would be nice to add in a simple one-way ratchet clutch mechanism so that when the car is rolled in reverse it tightens the rubber bands, but when it goes forward it does not. This would stop the roll back as shown in the video. However that would mean we’d need brakes whereas now it’s got automatic rubber band breaking.
Next I completed the signage the car, chair and rear wheels. I used brown paper to match with the overall color scheme. I put it through my printer without incident. Also I added flat “bumpers” to the front and rear to finish the ends. On the bumpers I added paper license plate holder and license plate.OK, I think it’s ready to go. That is, it’s all done. Click on picture to see larger image.
Update: Engineering Change 4: (wraparound drum) To provide more thrust the rubberbands should wrap around a 3″ to 4″ diameter drum instead of around the 1″ axle. Then the drum should be attached to the axle [how to do this is left as an exercise for the “student”]. Using a drum might also make Engineering Change 3 (one-way ratchet mechanism) easier to do.
Engineering Change 5: (seat pins) Since the seat is removal sometimes when pushing the seat to move the car back to wind it up the seat begins to rock backwards. So the car sides should have a way to pin the seat into the sides – maybe just two nails or a 1/4″ dowel.