I’m posting this from the train to Chicago, from Milwaukee. I’m also posting it from my phone, so we’ll see how this goes. First, a disclaimer: if you don’t have a desire to make a ring clamp, but need one, just buy one. It took me three hours of messing around to get this one …
Category Archives: Made
30 Days of Creativity, Day 3: Annealing pan
Some of you know that I am slowly adding some metalworking capability to my little home workspace (Mike’s lent me his Sherline mill, Frankie dug up an old welding outfit, my dad supplied the bench grinder, etc.). As I save up for the items and services I’ll need to pay for, I’ve started to build …
30 Days of Creativity, Day 2: Sweet Moleskine Cover
So, yesterday’s plan to etch some stuff didn’t really work out. The toner didn’t stick well, and so I never even got anything into the etchant. Today, however, I have. The original plan was/is to use a special paper that allows me to print my design, transfer it to the material to be etched, and …
30 Days of Creativity, Day 1: Brass Bookmark
I don’t remember how I ended up at http://30daysofcreativity.com, but I remember thinking “Wow. What a neat idea. I’m going to do that.” Well, here I go… I’m working on a project that involves etching thin sheets of brass, and I’m having a bit of trouble with the process. The result is that I have a …
Nerf escalation
Draft created: 2/6/2011 Just after Christmas, when everyone at my office was getting back into the swing of regular work, someone (Ben) introduced a collection of small, single shot nerf guns, one for each designer/developer/Laslo. He also brought in his notably more effective [weapon]. This, naturally, led to something of an arms race, resulting is a fairly …
Plastic Injection Molder – Part 2
I want to be able to use recycled materials as much as is reasonable in my sweet new molder, so I decided to start with what I had around the house. My family goes through a lot of milk, and we’ve recently switched to an organic product with an almost waxy, opaque plastic bottle. I …
Plastic Injection Molder – Part 1
When the weather started to change, I had a long list of projects I wanted to get done. So far, I’m not done with any of them, but I have gotten a reasonable start on some. The shop is looking a lot better, but is not where I want it to be. I got some …
Shave brush stand
The problem: How do you store your shaving brush between uses? The Solution: A brush stand. There are some lovely commercial stands that I’m sure do a great job, and eventually I may buy or make a more beautiful solution, but for now, I work with what I have… Plastic covered steel wire. Of course, …
New old bench grinder
Over the holidays my father gave me an old bench grinder he had in the basement. The thing was not in great shape, but it’s a tool I certainly needed. My dad is one of those guys that always seems to have an extra [whatever you are looking for]. I’ve got a battery charger that …
Vibrabots are vibrating
In the few days between the beginning of winter break and the actual holiday a very exciting thing happened: One of Dillon’s friends slept over. Ok… not that exciting to me, but Dillon was over the moon. His buddy came over, and I have to say that I was pretty impressed with the “normal-ness” of the …