Workbench Creations

One of the hassles of buying a house is dealing with the old or ugly design choices the previous owner made. One of these design choices I had been living with for a while was a marble design paneling in the front stairway and foyer.

The paneling had a somewhat spooky effect when you saw it in person; with out too much imagination, the patterns looked like various horned animals – so finally it had to go. The easy part of the job was ripping it off the walls; it had been glued on and the glue had let go of the paneling, causing it to bubble out – yet another reason to get rid of it.

After removing the paneling, I was left with a wall covered with black, tar-looking construction glue that was still well-adhered to the walls. Reading up on how to get rid of the glue confirmed my fears that it would not be easy.

I have an older house so much of the walls are made of plaster and lath, while some have been replaced with drywall. Of the information I collected, I was told scraping the walls and heating the glue was the best method of removal. I found that goop remover did seem to dissolve the black glue, but was smelly and more mess than it was worth. So scrape I did, and it took quite a bit of it off. I was still left with a wall with lots of black stuff on it, but at least now the wall was smoother. On the sheetrock walls, the scraping also took off some of the paper although that turned out ok in the end.

The next step was to skim coat a layer of spackling mud over the wall and remaining black junk to try and cover it. I ended up putting three coats of mud on the wall and sanding in-between each of them. Once the last coat had dried, I gave it a really good sanding and it was time to paint. At this point, aside from the large amount of white dust and black stuff all over the floor, things were starting to look good. The last step was to paint everything with a paint, which is meant to cover mildew stains and other discolorations.

So now I have white walls, and once I am done redoing my kitchen and possibly scuffing the wall as I carry stuff up and down the stairs, I will put the final coat of paint on. This was a bigger project than I wanted, but in the end it was worth it to get rid of the paneling.

For the forge body, a well-used steel semi tire-rim was used with three gas pipe (thick-walled tubing) and braces. Here, I'm welding the foot pads on. I'm a gorilla welder: strong and ugly welds.

Some make this out of just the brake drum, but this is a deluxe model.

I cut a piece of 3/16-inch steel plate to seal the bottom.

A 3-inch pipe T was welded to the bottom plate.

A piece of 3-inch pipe and a plug were used to make an ash trap.

Then I took a piece of 1/4-inch plate and bent it around a piece of 6-inch well casing with a chain come-along winch to make a cage. Next, holes were cut for the shaker grates' rods and slots cut to lay it on.

Here's the grate.

Here's the cage with the grate in place.

A hole was cut in the side of the rim for the handle of the grate, and the cage was welded to the bottom plate.

Here's the grate with jaws opened. They are made to crush the clinkers.

Next, fire brick was cut to bridge from the rim to the cage. Use a dust mask or better because the silica dust can be hard on your lungs, and some people's skin is irritated by it.

I used a diamond blade on a 4.5-inch hand grinder. The fire brick cut very fast.

The blade didn't cut completely through, so a careful strike with a hammer was needed to finish.

The last stone (#15) was completely custom. My fudge factor was off. The refractory cement I used for mortar doubled the needed fudge factor. The cement also required the use of PPE (personal protective equipment). Good to 3200^o F.

Here's my larger of two anvils on a steel base, with my favorite 4-lb. cross peen hammer.

After mortaring the fire bricks in place and coating the fire bowl with refractory cement, my Grandfather's blower was connected with a piece of 3-inch aluminum flex duct.

I serviced the blower last fall - good for another 100 years. The forge fired right up and works well.

The rack on the right holds my tongs (made by my Grandfather), small hammers (4-lbs. and under), hardies, and fullers.

Now, where to put it? Once the shed is built, I have a piece of 5/8th steel plate to set the forge and blower on to connect them together. Then comes learning to forge weld steel.

I made this golf trolley about four years back as a winter project. I was beginning to find that carrying my golf bag for 18 holes was a bit tough on my back and knees.

I bought the motor/gearbox and 2 back wheels for about £90 from Standel Dawman, a company I found on the Internet.

The wheels have a built-in freewheel mechanism so the trolley coasts downhill and is easy to turn, too. The axle is 12-mm steel rod, drilled to take spring pins that hold the wheels. Later, I modified it to a tubular axle with solid stubs in each end to save weight (and just for the fun of it!). The gearbox provides the left side bearing. The right side has a ball race (steel balls in a plastic housing), wrapped in polythene to keep the dirt out.

Cardboard Aided Design (CAD)

The basic plan was sketched and pretty much done by guesswork, taking some dimensions from a friend's Powakaddy golf trolley. The folding mechanism was worked out by CAD (cardboard-aided design), and was the trickiest bit. The central arm folds, but broke a couple of times. So, I gradually increased the dimensions. I welded-up rods on plates for the main pivots, where the A-frame at the back joins onto the chassis tray and the sliding loop, which locks the two parts of the central spine when in use.

It is all made of plywood bent with the aid of a hot-air gun. Where the radius was too tight, it was laminated out of thinner sheets of ply. The pieces were cut, bent and then glued together with a bit of bracing added in an ad-hoc manner to hold the battery and support the bag. I had to modify it slightly when I bought a new golf bag, but that's easy when you've built it yourself.

Speed Controller Specs

The speed controller should have been easy since I'm an electronics designer; however, I learned a few new things. The basic control is pulse width modulated. The actual variation of pulse width between a gentle crawl (when loaded) and full speed is a relatively small. The controller is based on a hex inverter CMOS chip with a few Rs, Cs, and a pot. This drives a pair of decent power FETs in parallel. I have an 0.15R resistor in series with each one just to "calm things down a tad" as the stall current at switch-on can be rather high, and I wanted to ensure reliability.

The first version flattened batteries rather quickly. I then added a "flywheel diode" (4qdtech.com had some excellent stuff which taught/reminded me of stuff I should have known) that greatly enhanced the battery life.

The other electronic problem was the charger for the 20 Ah gel battery. Many trolleys use bigger batteries, but they are heavy (which is self defeating). My old car battery charger ruined the first gel cell, so I built a two-stage charger, 3 amps up to a certain voltage and then a constant voltage trickle. Voltages and currents were obtained from the battery manufacturer's website, which is the only really reliable source of information.

Reliability and Rubbish

The trolley works very well and has proved more reliable than some of the cheap ones which appeared on the market a couple of years ago. Oh yes ... the front wheel? It came from a child's ride on toy I found at the council rubbish tip!

Now it's time to go golfing!

This is the new pond / fountain I built in our the backyard. The basic concept arose from the three urns that we found at Garden Ridge. The copper balls float around in the water and strike the copper chimes - it's subtle, you can barely hear it on the video, but it's just loud enough in person.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qDoX-rskmLM

Construction details:

First I had to cut away the decking boards - that was easy enough, using a circular saw (I still have all my fingers!). To make it just a little extra special I chose dimensions based on the Golden Mean - i.e., the ratio between the short side and the long side is the same as the ratio between the long side and the sum of both the long and short sides - roughly 1.6. The Golden Mean was popular in Renaissance art.

The next, and hardest part in terms of labor, was the digging out of the dirt. The pond is about 8 inches deep. except where the urns are. That's about 6 inches deeper, and that hole is large enough to hold the urns, plus the pump and the plumbing. The two shorter urns are actually the same height, so the shorter one is sunk in a hole another four inches deep.

The base of the pond is just black vinyl pond sheeting loosely placed in the hole, starting at the deepest part. The rocks are reclaimed from the flower beds - the previous owners attempt at a grass free yard. I went with them because they also surround the swimming pool.

To make the fountain, I first cut holes on the side of each urn, near the bottom, large enough for the 1 inch plastic pump tubing to enter. I tried a variety of manifolds to connect the three urn tubes to the pump, but none of them worked the way I wanted - hydrodynamics not being my forte - then I hit on the idea of using a black plastic toilet bowl float. I drilled four 1 inch holes in it, spaced 90 degrees around it - one for the inlet from the pump, and three outlets for the urns. The pump tubing has spiral ribbing - for maximum pleasure - and that allowed it to be screwed into the holes with out needing any sealant.

At the top of each urn is a fountain spigot. I made these by soldering a small section of 1/2 copper pipe into a 3/4 to 1/2 inch reducing coupling, which I then glued into the end of the hose. I fixed the spigots in the top of the urns by wrapping some 3/4 inch heavy clear plastic tubing around the spigots and pressing them into the mouth of the urns. This I covered with rocks.

The pump filter is outside the pond, on the left behind the grill in the wide angle shots. I covered the hoses and power cords under the rocks along the house.

I loaded each urn with several inches of gravel to give them some weight to hold up to the water and the force of the fountains.

For the chimes, I used 1" copper plumbing pipe - which is only slightly less expensive than gold these days. The 5 chimes are tuned to a D major scale - which, as you all know, is the natural scale for violins. I thought that would be a suitable choice. When I say the chimes are tuned, I mean they are mathematically correct - the resonant dynamics of bells and chimes is beyond the scope of my pond making ambitions, but I did find many interesting articles about it online. Essentially, once you have the length of the first one - which was really just dumb luck in my case - the lengths of the others can be found from the formula L2 = L1*(sqrt(F1/F2)), where F is frequency and L is length.

To mount the chimes I built "chicken feet" out of 1/2 inch copper pipe - basically a T shaped part that sits on the bottom of the pond, with a riser coming up to hold the pipe. I drilled holes in the chimes at their nodal spots - points 22.4% from either end, where the vibration of the pipe is at a theoretical minimum - thus allowing the chimes to ring, even while though they aren't free hanging. The chimes are mounted just above the surface of the water so that the strikers can hit them.

For the strikers I found 2 inch copper floats. Apparently there is a whole copper float industry out there, and I located a company that would sell me 10 of them. When I originally put them in the pond the waves pushed them all out to the edge, so I got some fishing line and weights and tied each ball to a tether that keeps it anchored in the location that I wanted it to be. The copper floats come threaded with 8-32 screw threads, so that made it easy.

The lights are just 12V pond lights that I found at Home Depot. That's also where I got the rest of the pond equipment.

I bought 4 water lily plants. They are in the water and growing, but you probably can't see them in the video. Eventually they will fill the empty spots and cover the little bit of tubing that's still visible.

The metal goldfish and water lily in the background are from Pier 1.

I emptied my piggy bank and threw all the pennies into the pond to add to the copper effect, and to make it look like it's been there a while.

I you haven't read part 1 of this check it out here

In addition to making the camera work for long exposure, the other important part is to cool the CCD. When you take a long exposure picture with a CCD, you get bright pixels that show up even when no light is present. These spots appear as white spots on the picture, and get more numerous the longer the exposure. You can probably guess how these would be a problem when you are photographing stars. To combat this we need to cool down the CCD. There are a few ways of doing this, but I chose to use a thermoelectric cooling unit. The CCD in the Vesta is housed by a metal box, so to cool it I cooled the metal box. The reason I decided to cool the box rather than the CCD directly is condensation. If you cool the CCD directly then humidity will condense on it, and I would need to keep it sealed so that this didn't happen. Instead, I cooled the metal box around to keep it cool and the humidity condenses on the metal box instead. This idea of cooling the metal box came from this website I had found, where they did just this.

Now that I had long exposure and cooling taken care of, you would think I would be happy – of course I wasn't. Why is simple, this long exposure camera was designed to work with a parallel port. My new laptop didn't have a parallel port, USB parallel port adaptors don't work, and PCMCIA adapters are expensive. I wanted the whole thing to plug into one USB port. The good thing is someone developed an additional circuit to make the thing work with a serial port, and USB serial port adapters do work.

I set out to put a USB hub and a USB serial port and the associated circuitry into a box. I ended up taking the USB hub and serial adapter apart to just use the circuit board, but once this was done I could compress this quite a lot. I made the box so that it plugs into the computer with one USB cable, and then a cable with DIN connectors plugs into the box and camera. When I had my ideal camera, I just wanted a slightly longer cable. I found a cable at a local store and plugged it in, and that's where I went wrong. I didn't realize the cable didn't have straight-through connections, and it blew out my camera. I was able to buy an identical camera off eBay, but I have yet to modify it. I took a few photos of an aurora from the roof of my house before I broke the camera, but unfortunately that is all I got to use it for. With the new advancements in digital photography, I hope to one day get or make a higher resolution astrophotography camera – but I have yet to do so.

Got a project you've done that you want to share in workbench creations? Add a comment to this entry or contact me frankd20.