Overly Distracted

56' Vicky Part 4 - Front end

2012-01-03T19:00:00.000-08:00

there is not much to talk about here, just photo references for later

Made a new "beak" for the tip of the hood where the emblem should of gone. There were several small stress cracks, but those were an easy fix.

Basically for this winter I'm only fixing the front end, sand blasting will happen in the spring followed up with just some black primer for now. I'm going to try to get the car back on the road by late March.

slowed down on the projects lately

2012-01-03T18:40:00.000-08:00

I haven't posted much lately. In last September a day before Jan and my 15th anniversary; I got diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. I had been feeling constantly tired, and finally went to the doctor to get checked out.

So for the last few months I've been spending almost all my time exercising, and learning what would spike my blood sugar.

Good news is that I've gotten things under control, and getting back to working on things. So I'll be back to post new content here soon.

Summer ride

2012-01-02T14:59:00.000-08:00

Took some shots before cruise this summer, with the new tires the car sits at a perfect height.

As you can see it's really not much bigger then the our 2002 Taurus

The Cruse was a lot of fun, A little too hot that day and could of used some regular toilet breaks.

56' Vicky Part 3 - road ready

2012-01-02T14:46:00.000-08:00

To make room to weld on the 56' the falcon had to be moved out back.

Lucky for me I had a couple helpers.

In some of the electrical issues, one of the easier ones was the horn relay, inside was all rusted out, so I replaced it with a newer Bosch style relay.

The wire was just brittle, but what do you expect for almost 60 years.

A few wasp nests behind the headlight, lucky for me all empty.

Just budging the wires make the plastic fall off. Shown below is the turn signal connections.

Another example of the wiring, this is the drivers side marker light removed. oddly enough the passenger side was not bad; and would work until winter, when I plan to go through the front end anyway.

The trick I've done in the past is to reuse what peaces I could, once I got the wire removed from the pieces I can string new wire.

Wire up station.

New plug made up.

The floor was my next safety issue, the cancer had to be cut out.

That was the extent of it on the drivers side.

Leaving this mess

I had to reuse the support bracket that was below the flooring, after I got it cut from the rusty floor chunk, I cleaned up the section as best as possible.

The end of the bracket end that attached to the body was bad and needed repaired.

This shows how much was actually missing.

I trimmed up the bad spots to be make up with new steel.

Once the bracket now fits correctly.

Using the same steel from an old transformer shell (16 gauge), I made new pieces to replace the floor.

I used the torch to sink the two bolts (Allen head) down into the floor.

The passenger side was worse off.

I used some undercoating to cover the floor.

The seats needed a little help, got some seat belts to add also.

The back seat had almost entirely exploded.

Spray on glue and some white cotton sheeting was good enough to seal the fluff.

I use some packing foam and spray glue to give the ceiling a quick new top.

The back splash was full of holes and fell apart, I used some real thin plywood cut to the exact original size.

And spray glued some cotton cloth tight to the board.

And a quick rattle can (flat) black.

How it looks in the back window.

The front bottom wasn't too bad after I removed the exterior coverings, although no padding left.

The front back rests were in great shape. and still had good pading

The Fuel level sensor that was in the tank was nothing I've ever seen before, nor could I find a replacement sensor that would match up to to the gauge on dash (odd Ohm spans).

For now I just went with a inexpensive unit and gauge setup from Sunpro, so I have some idea the fuel level. I mounted the gauge under the dash and had to adapt the 5 hole setup to the 6 hole setup on the tank, basically make a new plate with the old holes to line up.

Funny note, when removing the radio from dash to get at some of the wiring, I found the radio signed Long McArthur, apparently the car got it's accessories or a repair in Salina Kansis at one time. Of course the radio does not work anymore (tubes are all burnt out). At some point I'm going to remove the front of the radio to stick back in the dash so it looks correct and have an MP3 player hidden away somewhere.

That was the majority of the things needing to be done so the car would be road worthy. Had a lot of fun times driving the car over the summer, but I did end up chucking the Holly as far as I could, after two rebuilds and it letting me down. I stuck a standard 2 barrel Motorcraft and haven't had a problem since.

In part 4 I'll be doing the tear down of the front end sheet metal for the winter.

56' Vicky Part 2 - getting it running

2012-01-02T11:52:00.000-08:00

The picture below is the result of two weeks of pressure washing and de-greasing. I would let the engine soak and go back to cleaning out the mice nests in the rest of the car. I had already gone though the brakes and dropped and cleaned the gas tank. A little hint use Oxyclean and boiling hot water in an gas tanks to clean out the garbage, just dump the Oxyclean in first, then the hot water on top, this will make a lot of good foam in the tank! after letting the tank soak awhile I used a small pressure washer to clean out what was left. I let the tank dry for a few days out in the sun before adding a gas tank coating protector.

OK, the car had been sitting awhile, I first pulled the spark plugs and shot a little marvel mystery oil down the cylinders to let soak while I tore down the rest of the external parts of the engine to see the status. I needed to prove that the car could run, before I could start parting any cash into fixing up.

So the only thing I absolutely had to replace off the bat was heater and radiator hoses. The thermostat tested still good, and spark plugs were just cleaned for now.

The Holly carb was removed, everything still moved fine, but if gas was still in the carb when it was parked, then it needed cleaned. Notice the old Sears high performance coil; I didn't trust it, so I tossed it to the side, I had a standard coil that I would use later.

Dan donated a new air cleaner housing, while I had the valve covers off; I figured that I would shoot a little paint I had left over from repairing the inlaw's car. I mostly likely will not use this shade of red on the finished car, but it would dress it up for now. You can see in the background, the shop is filthy at the moment; but after shooting the clear coat, only had one little speck of junk in the paint (a stupid bug!)

Although I had reservations about using a Holly, it was the last known running carb. Looking up the numbers for the engine, this wasn't the original for the 56'; which was fine since I didn't see a rebuild kit listed for that model. The carb that was on there, wasn't marked. had to do some looking up on the net and found it was a 2300 model. Apparently there are about 300 different versions of the 2300. Once again I didn't know if I wanted to run a Holly as I've never had any luck with them. So without wanting to spend and $ on this potential brick; I made some new gaskets and gasketed over the accelerator pump as it was bad, and I just needed the car to start.

During the initial test of cranking over the engine there was no spark, now the system was setup with a funky electronic ignition box, like an older MSD, but had a odd setup of a card under the dash that would switch between the electronic ignition and the standard points. I ripped out that system and switched back over to standard points. unlike modern Ford V8's the distributor is in the rear of the engine, what a pain in the @$$ it is to get to the points.

With a little mini gas tank hanging from the hood (didn't want to put gas in the tank yet), with in a half second of turning the engine over the car fired right up and idled beautifully. We let the car run for a half hour to check out were any of the other problems my be. One of the items on the list was that the clutch would not disengage the transmission to put in gear, the car was on jack stands at this point, so no fear of the car taking off. eventually figured out to some adjustment was needed on the throw arm, but that still didn't fix it. so the car was started in gear, pushed in the clutch and gave gentle pressure on the brakes, that finally popped the clutch disk free.

One of the first issues in the engine compartment was the battery holder; acid had taken the toll over the years and of course, modern battery sizes and changed a bit.

With the try out there was some damage on the inner fender where the battery tray had been flexing over the years

Here's a better shot withe the bracket out of the way, until I can repair this proper it needed a few spot welds to hold together.

Not pretty, but it will hold for now.

I removed the older brackets and cleaned them up a bit.

Drew up a quick design on some old transformer paneling, heavy duty 16 gauge

Trimmed and cut.

I used my break in the shop to give the center a X fold for strength and to make the center be the lowest part of the tray. then used the break again to fold the sides as far as I could.

Below is the box with all the sides welded up and the rest of the parts ready for reassemble.

I drilled a hole dead center of the tray for a liquid drain (water, battery acid....) and reattached the brackets.

The rear bracket I moved a bit to take the pressure off of the bad spot of the inner fender and it does make it look nicer.

In part 3, I'll show what it took to get the car back on the road.

Custom chair

2011-10-05T09:48:00.001-07:00

Saw this custom chair up at Custom Apple Wenachee, I wanted to take it home, but you can't have everything.

56' Vicky Part 1

2011-09-19T20:02:00.000-07:00

My latest project a 1956 Ford Victoria, I picked up from Dan. This car basically sat in Dan's back yard since 95 (in a barn for the last year). The tires still held air, so we pushed it up on the trailer and brought it home. now I don't have exactly all the details of it's past, but from 67' to 94 it spent a good chunk of it's life in Kirkland, pre-67 was back here in Yakima.

This car has done a lot of sitting in the last few decades, with a few runs in that 94 to 95 span. Dan did a good job getting rid of the wasps, but several generations of mice had made their home all over in the car. every nook and cranny for the first 3 weeks were pressure washed every day to knock out the burrows. More cleaning -- find a new set of nests -- more cleaning...... no I'm not surprised, you get into old cars, you have to expect this.

This model was the 292cid Thunderbird special with the 3 on the tree and automatic overdrive 4th gearing system. this was also the year Ford started its safety program, padded dashes (this one did, but was bubbled up and wasted so it was removed), seat belts (not present), double latch door latches, and some others I can't recall. The safety program basically backfired, as the public assumed that safety features meant the car was basically unsafe. I blame this view on what the big 3 did to tucker auto (look it up, or watch the movie).

From the moment this car pulled up to the shop my youngest was excited and actually wanted to help, what father could say no to that? let me show you son the pressure washer. 0_0

You gotta love that license plate. I guess the 'E' code stood for Yakima. Sigh, was not going to keep the plate, do to the laws in WA, I could, but the car could not be used as a daily driver.

Dan also offered up a couple of big boxes of stuff he had purchased for the car, before he put this project to the side. A good start on what would be needed to get the car road safe.

The carpet and seats were thoroughly gone, but I saved everything to be used as a template some day down the road.

I write most of this 4 weeks after first driving the car, 12 weeks after first getting the car. And let me tell you, that car is really fun. I'll cover the specs more later, like that I'm almost getting 16mpg; no worse then my jeep an there is a 50 year difference!

Sitka, AK

2011-09-14T21:11:00.000-07:00

Back in May got a chance to go up to Sitka again (work related). The weather up there was lovely, especially if you enjoy the weather in Seattle, the sun did come out on the third day there; same day as the first cruse ship was pulling in. the food was fantastic, the people enjoyable, and lots of bear stories to go around.

As a bonus, I only saw one mention of Palin while up there, and nothing positive spoken about her, though the opposite was overheard several times (brought a smile to my face).

So I like Sitka, it's a great town, I wish McDonalds wasn't there, but there is only one and is easily ignored. there is phenomenal Japanese restaurants there, with sushi I could live off of.

peacefull

The Rocks

2011-09-13T21:19:00.000-07:00

Went for a service call in July down to Dallsport, WA. I've noticed this spot other times, and felt it needed explored. and No I did not count this as working hours.

It's a good climb, if you want, or apparently a easy trail around the back way (like that would happen), up top saw lots of climbers testing with equipment. there are some excellent native American marks, and arrow head flint chips everywhere.

Car Swap meet at the fair grounds

2011-09-13T20:58:00.000-07:00

My greatest downfall is having a camera on my cellphone, that is on me at all times and still forgetting to snap some interesting things, until it's too late.

Dan, Boyd and I were at the fair grounds swap meet back in June, spent all morning walking around (got some good auto body hammers i didn't have) looking at cool stuff. when we're ready to leave, Dan's 47 Ford is boxed in, so while we wait, I took some pics of some of the cars that really caught my eye.

love the old jeeps

who could not love the clean looks of this chev

...or the back end of this one

Jed Clampet pulled in while we were waiting.

@ Zen with the code

2011-09-13T20:44:00.000-07:00

no seriously just doing a start up last year, and the customer did not have a desk yet.

needs a good home

2011-09-13T20:43:00.000-07:00

I saw this beauty out in the Quincy area, If i didn't have my latest project, I think it would have had to go home with me, [sigh]. If i could find the info I wrote down about it, I would post it, but a Savoy in this good of shape belongs back on the road.

it's big, it's metal, whats not to love?

2011-09-13T20:36:00.000-07:00

@wells damn on US97

M. o. o. n. that spells moon.

2011-09-13T20:31:00.000-07:00

snapped a pick with the cellphone in Jared Fair's excellent telescope, also got to see Saturn and it's rings. thanks Jared!

oh, the title is from "the stand" by Stephen King, good book to read when your under the weather!

New (for me) chair.

2011-03-29T20:20:00.000-07:00

Ok, my last chair at my drafting table, where I paint, wasn't that comfortable for long sits. But I couldn't force myself to buy a new one when it still did it's basic function; a place to park my kester.

Jan and I were down at the Restore; and they had some doctor's office style stools for $12, I pickout the best of the bunch, debated and finally brought it back home, I wasn't sure how I felt about a backless chair, but it was worth a shot.

I quickly found out I miss the backing, but I had already given my old chair to my oldest son. I decided to build a back, and as luck would have it, there was a place to add a spot. I dug around the shop and found some basic materals: car leaf spring, wire mesh and some light tubing.

It's not too bad, and a little springy when leaning back.

Fallout sketch

2011-03-29T20:01:00.000-07:00

Got new plans for a almost black and white painting, sorry the photo isn't that great, my scaner can't handle this size of paper.

It was inspired by the following photo; not a replication just one that got me thinking, I'm sorry I don't know where the picture came from, so I don't know who to give credit to, if anyone knows, let me know.

Emerald City Comicon

2011-03-29T19:45:00.000-07:00

For the first time Jan, the boys and myself got to go to a comicon in Seattle, and what an experience and slightly overwhelming. we walked away at the end of the day very tired, but I got some ideas buzzing in my head for some steampunk projects here in the near future.

If you've never been to one, it's a great place to geek out. I believe the comicon will be our family's yearly pilgrimage.

ah, spring

2011-03-29T19:35:00.000-07:00

Already got the onions planted, but kept safe under clear plastic to keep them warm. can't wait for 60 degree weather, and new projects out in the shop

Steampunk clockwork

2010-12-30T14:48:00.001-08:00

I wanted to create a piece for Jan, and something that can be displayed in the front of the house.

When it was finished, Jan asked me for the frame size….oops. my biggest downfall is I never even think about frame sizes, I just paint to have fun, and this one I’m not even sure it’s square.

concept drawing and clean pencil.

blue clock face, with a wrinkle texture.

Light cog shading and basic rust beginning. (note the cut up piece of plastic used for overlapping brown colors to achieve a rusty feel.)

wires/hoses and deeper shadowing.

this next part was handled using water colors /w paintbrush, Exacto blade and my airbrush to pull it all together.

brush in some browns for the rust streaks, where ever water would normally pool or rest.
use the razor blade to scrape, fleck or lightly gouge the paper, in the rusty areas; this gives some texture, albeit white.
using transparent black and hand templates will fill in the white flecks and give depth while blending the water colors in nicely. just don’t go too dark yet.
I add a little white to gives some edging or flair; but once again not too much as I want to hold off until the end to balance out the shadows and highlights equally across the whole piece.

the same steps are repeated in small sections, this helps keep me focused and not feel overwhelmed when I work on it for a few hours every night after work.

I did a quick Frisket of my work so far to add in the background. in this case I intentionally let the airbrush splatter, and kept the colors loose and fast.

I used the Exacto blade again to carve small little highlights below where ever a darker splatters occurred; this created some cool pock marks (texture)

a close up the pock marks.

I equalized all the shadows and highlights, signed it in the details and finished Christmas eve’ eve.

So your hard dive died..

2010-12-30T13:55:00.001-08:00

wait don’t toss that drive out, not only might it still contain information about you, there are fun bits and pieces inside that drive; that with a little creativity can be re-purposed, saving the landfill and your personal info at the same time.

recently work was going to toss out 150 or so older/dead hard drives; knowing what lurks in side, I asked to take them to rip apart.

Above shows the boxes of various parts: one just for scrap metal, one for any circuit boards (these need to be sent to any place that does old computer/electronics recycling; you don’t want lead(Pb) in the trash),a general pile (for the moment) for the bearings, magnets, arms,screws, platters, and motors.

So lets dissemble a drive. not all drives are built the same so below I will show you what too look for.

Got stickers? they usually hide the torques screws (#10,#9), get rid of stickers or feel around for any indentions that could hid a screw.

I tend to take the cover off first and get an idea where all parts are mounted up. notice this 20G HD does not have any read/write heads on the top side the platter, a cheap way to half the drive size with out much engineering.

don’t have the right torques drive, or stripped it out, a Dremmel cutting disk can turn any screw in to a flat head screw

once the disk is removed the heads, magnets and motor are exposed. not every drive is like this, I’ve come across a few and the heads needed removed first to get the disk out.

remove the circuit board off the back, notice there is another sticker hiding more screws, one for the arm and one for the magnet.

this type of drive uses the case to hold the arm bearing in place, to remove it use a punch and small hammer.

notice this small plastic piece has tiny magnet, I’ll save this too.

so here is all the magnets freed from there old homes; some of these are strong enough to hold a small catalog to a fridge. a note of caution: don’t get your fingers stuck in between, the pinch can be back enough to give you a blood blister, or even split the skin.

a couple hours of play got me started on a robot hand, using only the parts and pieces at hand. I’m going to shove these pieces off to the side for now, and lets some ideas bubble up.

Give me some of that old time refrigeration, part 2

2010-12-30T12:24:00.001-08:00

Sam Glazner operates and maintains Cowiche Growers fruit warehouse in Cowiche WA, and still has some of the older equipment in operation in the older machine room.

The equipment is well maintained and clean. the flywheel above is around 5 foot tall, and I can’t even guess the weight.

compressor in action

more details

it was snowing out there on the day I was visiting, and made for some cool contrasts, looking out the windows

you can see the empty bin storage lots in the background

Frosty

2010-12-30T11:25:00.000-08:00

ah, winter, the dog has a hard life

2010-12-30T10:32:00.000-08:00

so helpful for the camera

Jan said; Make the bed. so…

2010-10-18T07:54:00.000-07:00

Ok, to level with you; our box spring, had seen better days, and had developed some week spots and a bad squeak over the last 14 years. This has lead to some bad sleep lately.

Now we don’t have the money right now to go out and buy a new set. One night flipping through some magazine, Jan and I saw some new beds are not even coming with the box spring, just a futon type mattress on a flat surface. I thought: I could do that! after all, our mattress is still fine.

About 8 years back the hollywood bedframe gave out (and got recycled into a new fireplace bezel in the family room). so i went down to the hardware store and picked up some 4x4’s and constructed a basic frame. This will also be the basis of the new frame (shown below).

First step is to make better legs then the crude wood ones. unfortunately the current legs were also the main connection to hold the sides together.

I found some wide angle iron and cut them to with 3 1/2 inch lengths.

For the feet I decided on ball bearings; with will allow the bed to not damage the floor,or our feet when we stub them, and to let it slide rather easy across the wood floor.

I got some help form Sam in cleaning up the steel pipe.

Pipes cut, bearings picked out and angle pieces are ready for the next step.

I wanted to make sure the angle pieces had enough grip to the wood, so 10 holes were drilled into each piece (5 on each side).

minor note: not 2 minutes after this picture was taken, by Sam and I was telling him how dangerous a drill press is. then the drill catches on the steel, spins (slamming into my palm) , breaking the bit and then flings the piece across the bench. left we with nice blood blister.

Ok, all the angle pieces are cleaned up and drilled time for some welding!

Each piece of pipe is 17 inches long; this makes up for the loss of the box spring; plus the old leg length; minus the ball bearings for the feet.

I made a three divots in some scrap metal to hold the bearings in place while being welded. this also kept all four feet the same.

Note: to weld on bearings or any other heavy steel, it needs to be hot first, other wise the weld will sputter and never hold. I break out the torch first and heat them up to an reddish tinge, I crank my Miller wire feed up to half heat, and the weld just flows in.

Ok, legs attached.

At the foot of the bed I was going to make a pull out drawer for Jan’s shoes (Note: ran out of time this week end to build the actual drawer, so it’s a shelf for now.)

I like rounded corners when ever possible; So I heated up some pipe cherry red, and just bent the ends up using a screw driver shoved down the pipe

I added some smaller extensions to the ends so I can get the 8 inch clearance below the wood.

Brace bars on and frame for future drawer in place.

only thing left was to screw the top wood down. but silly me, I forgot to snap a picture before putting it back in the bedroom.

How well did it work? I slept better with a firmer flat surface. Jan said: she did too, I offered to get one of those pads for her side if it end out being too stiff for her comfort level.

The whole design was rather simplistic, but it gets the job done and only $34 for the 2 sheets of plywood needed, every thing else I had.

Misc. sketch of the week

2010-10-06T07:43:00.001-07:00

coming out of the way-back machine (94 or 95), inspired from Soundgarden song.

Wax rose; for my girl

2010-10-06T07:42:00.001-07:00

This was a fun experiment back in 94’.

Using some art board and wax crayons on a hot element. the wax was melted on to the board with some red and green colors. before the wax cooled, I smeared the goo around a bit with my fingers.

I then took a sharp (sewing) pen and scratched out the basic image.

Pepsi From the Past

2010-10-06T07:41:00.001-07:00

Going though my tot of old art work, I came across some old but very ruff Airbrush paintings I did back in high school (around 15 years ago).

They still make me laugh after all these years, Especially the “Smash the Trash”.

I found a few other pieces, that I’ll post over the next few weeks.

This is a Velociraptor free workplace.

2010-09-24T07:42:00.001-07:00

This little quick piece is just for some office humor, meant to poke fun at some of the other postures you may find around the office.

While playing on line during a afternoon break, I cam across the image below on MthruF.com, It seamed like a great joke and something I would like to take my own spin at.

(Note: if you are the original creator of the picture above, drop me an email, I'll give you full credit)

of course all my paintings start with a extremely rough draft, like the drawing on the right, followed up by a cleaner drawing on the left. now in my defense, I could not find a Velociraptor picture in any of my kids books to refresh my memory of what the bugger looks like. All I had was some vague images in my head from watching Jurassic Park years ago. Yes I know I could have gone on line, But all I had was dial up and I was feeling lazy about research.

A little Frisket and about 2 hours cutting it out with a fresh Exacto blade, I got all the lettering cut out. This would be a little easier in Photoshop or Paint.NET to add the wording, but Airbrushing it is a little more raw, and If you screw up, there is no undo button. the way it should be.

quick shot of sky blue for the sticky note area. I let it dry completely before recovering the spot with the Frisket I had pulled off. The day this was done the Humidity was through the roof, and the temperature was holding in the low 60’s. I had to break out my handy yard sale ”travel” hair drier I bought almost 20 years ago for $1.50.

Black and more black in light layers allowing time to semi dry. I don’t want to water log the paper.

I pull the making off and erase all the excess pencil marks around the lettering, to make it look clean and crisp.

the read circle or the dino?, It was a toss up. I decided to do the red first as i would spend more time on the dino later.

I think I’ve said this before: red is funny. In the bottle, the color it looks good, even perfect. but when sprayed it looks pink for several layers. I usually end up tenting my red slightly darker then what I expect it to be on paper.

Pull off the mask and inspect my work. so far so good. I’m not going for beautiful just clean.

Cut out the dino with some fresh Frisket.

First layer is a yellow base. I normally tend to work with the lighter colors first when working on white paper. and then build up the depth with darker and darker colors.

Light green and using some pieces of a cut up cracker box to give me some of curves when painting, you can see once of the pieces at the bottom of the picture (green chunk in the middle).

I introduce some transparent grays. mostly for the talons.

Transparent forest green layer.

Transparent black for the shadow details. and some minor paint brush work

Pull the Frisket off to do my final touches with white (Airbrush and 00 paint brush). and a quick clean up of any pencil lines still remaining. Nice and clean right? Yes but too clean for any office experiencing Velociraptor problems.

A little splattered blood/red paint gave it the right look. just dip a heavy paint brush in red and fling until it looks right.

There, I fixed it.

2010-09-21T08:03:00.001-07:00

Just joking. the kids pulled off the soap holder in the bathtub some time ago. when Appling the Gorilla glue it takes about 2 hours for the stuff to set. Since I had no intention of holding the piece in place for that long, duct tape was needed. once it’s was holding it reminded me of one of my favorite sites: There, I fixed it.

A Door of a different color

2010-09-14T21:05:00.000-07:00

A Few weeks ago Jan and I went to the ReStore to look for a solid core door to replace the hollow core door that separates the kitchen from the garage. We found a beauty of a door, and new too, just a couple minor flaws that were easy to fix. We ended up reversing the hinges to the left side so when the door would open,so you could access the light switches. Because apparently someone was not thinking when they did the doors originally, no insulation was used around the frame and when the door was open you can’t get at the switches. Any way we were happy with the end result. But that’s not what this article is about….

But now I had this junky hollow door to do something with. There were holes and dents and gouges in the wood and some nasty varnish with bits of dirt and a few pieces of hair stuck under the coating (yes lovely to look at). My youngest son’s room did not have a door on his room, and material recycler that I am, thought I would take a whack at it.

Here’s the door in all it’s original glory. note i had already started sanding on it, when I remembered, I need some new articles for this blog.

Fully sanded, the flaws are not so apparent in this light.

Bondo to the rescue. why? It’s a cheap filler, and I still had some left on the shelf. And for the purpose of this project I was not looking for perfection.

A quick dab of primer (rattle can) just to break up the texture of the wood and Bondo a bit.

I did about 3 even coats of that $5 mix match paint that I love (sadly it’s almost gone) on each side of the door with my HVLP gun (you have to greatly reduce the paint with almost 35% water to make it spray evenly. Note use a filter!)

After some quick talk with Sam, he wanted a Superman Door, and I’m thinking some riveted iron behind the ‘S’ would look awesome. So taking some thin like tape (that I cut down from a wider roll, because I’m cheap and thin line tape is expensive) I approximated the Superman logo, at least close enough!

I mixed up a lighter blend of gray for my airbrush and did my initial highlights and rough texture. since I no longer needed the tape it was pulled off (see why I don’t spend money of the special tape, it was only on the door for a few minutes).

Using just a simple plastic triangle I block out the overlapping ‘steel’ plates, going at a pretty quick pace.

I used opaque black for starting up the darker shadows and to flesh out the Logo’s dept a little more.

A small circle plastic template and some transparent black are all I need so start the rivets.

A little dab of white paint with the airbrush to give it a quick 3D look to each rivet. and some basic soft light reflection on the logo and plates.

A couple more light touches (of rust) and some quick spray painting of the door handle and hinges (I can’t stand the cheap look of brushed brass) to a flat black gave it the right look. I turned out good and my boy was very happy with it (and also having a door). Since I didn’t buy anything for this small project I can’t really say it cost me anything more than a weekend, but well worth it.

Mini Hydrogen generator

2010-09-09T08:54:00.000-07:00

About 2 years ago, I played with generating Hydrogen with just plain water and electricity, made a few scummy bubbles that went BOOM! when lit, it was exciting, but the water would soon scum up and no longer generate gas.

A few weeks ago, the item on the right was a new test done in the coffee can in the background. I found surface space really effected the generation. I made some big bubbles this time (did not light them) and soon scummed up the water. I used the can as the positive and the disks and the Negative electrode on 12 volts, 2 amps. after dumping the water, i noticed all the nice shiny bits inside the can had been eaten away. Well that will not last long.
Cutting up some stainless plate (please don’t ask me the type of stainless used, as it was some throwaway at work). I used some bolts and washer setup (all stainless, thanks to Stein’s Ace Hardware) and a small amount of Plexiglas to separate the two electrodes, I overlapped the plats a close as i could get. setting this into a plastic nut container. this worked so much better, as best if on it’s side to allow the bubble’s to move up, pulling fresh water with it. I used the plastic cap that came with the container, sealed the top once the electrodes were through, filled the jar half way and set it on it’s side. I powered it up, and could not believe how much better this was, Plus I had a positive pressure coming out of the breather tube! Plus the water stayed clear! (for the most part, I’m weary of the “stainless” washers).
I used a double bubbler system to bubble out of a second container (this is what they do to hook up to a gas or diesel vehicle, using the vacuum system of the engine) I got some good secondary bubbles. but the question was: How Much am I generating? So I pulled the hose of the secondary bottle, that I could not get to flame off of a candle. And my mistake was to move it anywhere near that spark.
BOOM!
I never even got to see the flash, it was so quick. the cap exploded across the garage (never did find all the pieces, but i did find a small chunk in the front yard!) and the water shot out a good two feet out of the bottle. I’m not sure what the neighbors thought, as I’m positive a good radius herd it. after that, lets just say I was shaken enough to stop experiments for the day, and close up shop.
No, I’m not done playing. I’ve seen where people use additives to the water to help (electrolytes) generate Hydrogen. but I want to continue trying with pure water. I found a much thinner sheet of stainless to cut up. But just like the blog says: I’m overly distracted, and may find something else in the mean time.

So Sorry...

2010-09-07T15:13:00.000-07:00

I got sick for a while (about 4 weeks with some kind of gunge) durning that time I didn't want to do anything, and then got slamming busy at work, so I have not been able to post anything.

So I've got quite a few new things to post as soon as my schedule allows, for now here's a pick of the Airbush holder I built over Laber day weekend, with a washer and a small amount of thin wall tubing.

BBQ is finished!

2010-06-11T13:29:00.000-07:00

Finally got a urge to BBQ and decided to put a couple days into finishing the beast.

the handle below operate the air intake

the levers above operate the exhaust temperature to regulate the temperature across the inside of the unit.

the spinner in front actually levers the inside char coal grate up and down to a little over 2 inches of play.

How well does it work? well the first time out I used the same amount of briquettes as our smaller older BBQ, mind you this is 4x the size and we cooked some hot dogs, turkey burgers, mushrooms and corn on the cob at almost 200, not bad for a light load of briquettes. when I closed up for 15 after all the food was cooked and it slowly rose to 350. (Thanks to: Sam Glanzer for that temperature gauge!)

total expense: around $42. for a one of a kind BBQ

So a rose can change it's spots?

2010-06-11T13:09:00.000-07:00

just noticed this the other morning a small section on this wild rose bush has gone yellow, in the 7 years living at this house, it has never done this before.

Office Wall Art

2010-06-11T13:04:00.000-07:00

Since the company i work for moved to a new building, i felt the walls were a little stark, in comparison of the old building, with the drafts in the walls and leaks from the ceiling, I thought to my self: Self we need something to remember the old shop by. Hence the picture you see above you.

starting with some thick poster board (got free, thanks Dan) i did a light pencil sketch and masked with frisket as little as possible. (to save on frisket mostly)

Thanks to Harbor Freight Tools, I've got plenty of old catalogs to use as masking material. Using some cut down masking tape (right down the center of the roll with an Exacto knife) I worked out the brick lines and such. I kicked my self in the ass when i realized i forgot to fill in the mortar color first before laying down the tape (oh well, just more masking to do). I generally like to build in colors starting with the lighter under tones, like I did for the rocks on the family room wall project. since most of the colors are fairly transparent, bottom colors will modify what i put over them.

here the cracks are starting to come together. I used small piece of card stock held in place to get the nice sharp lines

More coloring with gray overtones

before removing the tape I did make the airbrush splatter darker dots all over the bricks to get a texture look for later.

Sorry about the gloss, I haven't strayed any flattener over this yet. when the acrylics get too heavy they tend to get a gloss. anyway I've pulled all the mask off to work on the big X now.

Red is oddly hard to get to look "deep". some light shadowing was added and (not shown in this picture) I used some card stock to cut out a bio hazard template and laid it over the red "tape". Using transparent black in the Airbrush for the lettering and shadowing. clean out the brush again and using white to drop some light reflection.

not too bad, but not complete

remember those dark splatters I talked about earlier. using the smallest paint brush I have and white paint i add a small dot below every single splatter, this tricks the eye into thinking a divot exists. this gives the 'bricks' some more realistic texture.

after spraying over with a flattening paint the painting looks more solid and shows up on camera better.

there it is in my new office. my only complaint was that I wish I could have matched the paint in my office better.

The next Airbrush project will be a Steampunk clock, I'll post in a few weeks when finished.

opps! been busy.

2010-06-03T10:35:00.000-07:00

Sorry, I'll get some updates here soon, just hadn't realized a month had passed.

Shame on me.

Custom Knives

2010-04-26T13:30:00.000-07:00

So a few years back I took a 'stab' at making my first knife out of some mild steal plate, hardened and shaped it. I found a lot of people liked the output. So that year I made 18 different types of fixed blade knifes and gave them out to my friends and family for Christmas presents, and I didn't keep one. but they were a success and make me want to make more.

To keep the record strait, I like knives and sharp implements. Do I used them for hunting or other such gore?: Never. I'm not a violent man by nature. Heck, I don't even own a gun, I'm just fascinated by blades.

These were made out of Stainless plate and some black walnut for the handles. the riveting was done with brazing rod. the top one's handle cracked when riveting the pieces. sort of a shame, but a learning experience.

I always wanted a sword. I found an old leaf spring, which is basically the right shape, a tough spring steal. I flattened the leaf, cut polished, used a chunk of steal pipe for the handle and wrapped it in leather. it was a fun project, I wish I would of taken pics of the whole process.

after many, many hours of hand sanding with 60,100,150,220,320,400,600,1200,1500 grit and then lots of patience with a polisher on a die grinder. I finally got it to mirror perfection.
Is it sharp?: oh ya. other than drawing blood from my hands while polishing it, I trimmed the front hedges with it. I wonder what the neighbors thought?

Two weeks a go I decided to make another knife for myself (ah, who am I kidding, I'll just end up giving it away too) Starting with another piece of spring leaf here is the steps I took.

I first cut the length to the size i wanted.

a quick once over with a wheel brush on my angle grinder to remove the excess rust.

I clamped down and heated up the bar to a dim glow with my acetylene torch.

and hammered on it till flat

with a sharpie pen i doodled out my basic design.

using a cut off wheel on my die grinder i cut out the basic shape.

i re-heated the blade and starting hammering the edge to taper the blade side. to do this with ease: it had to be cherry red.

next step was to start to define the edge. i lightly notched out where i wanted my lines to be.

using my grinding wheel on my angle grinder i make even passes over the surface.

working slowly on each pass help for consistency on the angle.

the nature of old leaf springs is that there will be a shallow center line where it's more pitted with rust. if ground carefully with a small grinding stone can make a nice trough.

a quick clean up with a flapper sanding dish on the angle grinder, makes it look decent.

some minor block sanding to get the bigger scratches out.

this will be the blade separator.

quick cut with the die grinder and it slides over the handle core

a couple quick spot welds with the MIG welder.

a small chuck of back steel pipe sloped at one end. and welded internally to the handle at the open end.

a large Steele for counter balance.

gotta heat it up to a cherry red to make the MIG welder weld it correctly.

cool it off in cold water clean up the welds and it's good to go. but I think i will dip the handle in that rubberized tool grip material. with all the weight in the back end it balances the blade about where the blade guard is.

I don't know if I'll put this one to a mirror finish yet or add a sharper edge to it, but i tried it out on hatching some fire wood and it worked out well, with out dinging the edge at all.

Raised Garden

2010-04-26T11:03:00.000-07:00

Jan and I wanted to grow a small garden again this year. but we are also raising a new puppy too, and those don't usually mix well. Jan had talked about doing some raised beds, I and I thought If i brought it up to my hip height maybe it will be enough to keep the pup disinterested.
but once again, not much cash to buy lumber. So I looked around the house and found a stack of popular tree branches, we had hauled home for fire wood, and haven't gotten around to cutting up yet (yay!). I found some 4x4 shorties and some other rustic looking wood and got at it.

The biggest time consumer was leveling off the ground, but that's also where i got the fill for the planter. The only nails used were to hold the top boards to the posts. all the limbs are just pressed up against the posts using the weight of the dirt.
True that popular wood does rot fast, but if I can get a couple seasons out of it, that's good enough. This wood is well seasoned all ready.
this project cost me $0 and 5 hours, and it looks kinda cool. so i think i came out ahead. Oh, if you look closely in the back you can see my two robots hiding in the bushes. the short one is called Eddy and the tall one is the Grim-reaper.

Still got more wood left over for something else, possibly

$6 bike

2010-04-26T10:44:00.000-07:00

My youngest boy Sam has been asking for a new bicycle since he learned to ride a few weeks back with out training wheels. his starter bike was just too small, but we didn't have much money this last weekend to buy a new one, but Jan found one at the Goodwill a 20inch Huffy.
It was rough, but serviceable, the chain still flexed somewhat and the wheels and petals still grudgingly moved, the seat was still good. the paint was shot, but all in all not bad.
With $59, we got paint, new tubes and tires (good ones), a quick link for the chain (had to be cut). The bike was completely stripped down to the frame. all the parts were cleaned, degreased, bearings repacked, paint sanded off, spokes tightened, etc. in about 8 hours my boy had a basically new bike.

Not too bad of a bike.

Ford ThunderCougerFalconBird part 1

2010-04-05T12:32:00.000-07:00

...as a nice little nod to the writers of Futurama. This 62 Ford Falcon Ranchero was given to me for some work I did on some friends computer. The car was in bad shape, but there was potential and I love a good chalange.

So after the inital break down of the car, I started with some ideas that rapidly changed over time untill what will now be built as an open top roadster, incorperating varous designs of the time, like the Thunder bird. Now being a huge fan of Futurama, the name came naturally.

For the first part will be the basics of how bad the car was, and some of the early repairs. in part two i will have more detailed info on how the car is going back together.

I will fill in any information that I feel needs to talked about, but mostly just pictures for part 1

here's the beast, the pre-mustang eara, and yes i have the hood, it's in the back corner of the shop.

Now Let's tear the car down and see what it's really made of.

used to be blue at one point in it's life. I've basically taken everly thing out that i can easly to start a cleaning process and evaluate how much work will be involved.

yes thats right the floor at this point was made of plywood, roofing tin, fiberglass, sprayfom and fiber glass insulation. for the tools Joe had at the time he did Ok to keep the car on the road, but this is just compleatly unsafe.

multiple hits to the front, with some bad brazing left the core support a bit of a mess.

found it funny that after all these years and bad paint jobs that pressure washing revieled some of the origional markings.

Family Room Update

2010-03-29T07:59:00.000-07:00

Over the weekend, I let myself have a little fun for my b-day and work on the family room wall. So I kicked off early doing yard work and decided to design some industrial sized bolts for the Door. I mean how else would the trim stay on?

First Step figure out what I wanted the bolts to look like. You can see some early sketches on the right before deciding on something with a giant flat head screwdriver style.
Using some card stock I made a basic design template to use with the Airbrush. And cut the pieces out with my favorite X-Acto knife. Notice the soft pencil grips on the handle, if you got to cut out stencils for any amount of time, these are a hand savor.
The square piece was exactly the width of the door trim, so when I trace the circles on the trim they are always centered, and no extra measuring needed

Light pencil marks around the frame, about a foot apart from each other.

Using only the large square piece and small center piece with a hole cut out in it’s center that tape will fill to hold this piece down. Just the basic shadowing was added first to help define my working areas.

Now only using the large square template the highlight was added around the bolt head. Then the middle circle template was used to add the light reflection in a curve. The same middle piece was used to add the main highlight over the top of each bolt head. Used just a plane piece of paper for the clean edge of the ‘slot’ with more white, with more white towards the top of the bolt if possible.

A little more black was added to bring the bolt head back to the same tone as the sunken hole.

That’s all for now. Over all I think it works well with the rest of the wall, and will have to add more of these bolt head else ware, so I’ll keep the templates for now. I’m still going to need some water staining and darken the overall look of the door/frame, but it’s definitely getting there.
The only two paints I used was transparent black and solid white, and took roughly 3 hours including template making. Next I think I will attack that lower right hand corner and gussy it up a bit.

Read the first part of the story here.

Mini bike recycling

2010-03-11T10:20:00.000-08:00

Back in 2007 my dad decided to make a mini bike for his grandsons to learn on. Now most people would go down and get one of those cheap no name bike from China that they sell in the auto parts stores. Not my family.

The bike is actually recycled from several common items:
• Weed eater two stroke engine
• Steel chop saw gear box
• Framing from a old kitchen table
• Baby stroller wheels
• Bicycle rear cog and handle bar setup
• Trunk lid shocks

Yes there was a lot of fabricating like the exhaust expansion chamber was form using two pieces of metal welded together and then pressurized with a Landa pressure washer: this caused the chamber to ‘inflate’.
To give the back wheel full travel and reverse the direction of the motor, the pivot was double bearing’ed and an intermediate cog was added at the pivot point.
How well does it run: at the time I weighted around 255 and that little bike could zip me around pretty good. For my dad at somewhere around 125 he could pop a wheelie. The secrete was the chop saw gear box, giving the weed eater engine quite a bit of torque.

As for the boys learning a little track was built so they could learn the control and speed that the bike could putout.

Theres my dad in the left corner

Gave the boys a little woop-de-do.

update for the Late 30's Pickup ratrod

2010-03-03T12:33:00.000-08:00

Late 30's Pickup ratrod artical has been updated with the latest pics :)

Sparks: Travels to Earth

2010-02-24T12:49:00.000-08:00

A year or two back I decided to make a childrens book, useing nothing more then my airbrush, and a lot of time. I finally finished it last spring, and went about tying to sell it to a publishing company or to get an agent who could do the selling for me.

So far my luck has been abysmal. publishing houses don't want to work with you unless you have an agent and getting an agents attention is tough. At this point I would feel lucky to get a rejection letter/email to know someone has actually ever looked at it. But I know the agents and publishing houses are litterly flooded with requests all the time, and it does take time to weed through it. Uggg.

Now the plot was not hard to come up with and the characters i've been doodleing for as long as I could remember. But the main reasion to do this was my boys. They watched me almost every night for a year, patiently working on the paintings. The story was still good enought to keep my 11 year old interested but not too hard for much younger kids. Note; I put in tons of private jokes for adults, like training weels on kid robots, and the TV remote says "Waster TV"
I've looked into self publishing the book, but at this time don't have the finacal means to do so.

The main plot is about a bunch of robots who go out in space to take over Earth. they know all about us do to the TV signals they have been watching.
When they hit some garbage in the atmosphere, the ship crash lands. this is where they discover that compaired to humans they are only a few inches tall. and then go off to discover robots like themselves stripped of there wires and gears (a kids toy) and now fearing for their safety they go on a scavenger hunt for items to use in fixing their ship.
I'm not going to write the full plot here, but the story does end well and could be the basis of further adventures.

If anyone in out there in web land knows of any agents or houses that take this kind of work, it would be much appreciated. I'm going to keep trying but it gets darn near depressing sometimes.

-Thanks

Give me some of that old time refrigeration

2010-02-22T15:33:00.000-08:00

The is a great old building in downtown Yakima, referred usually to the Perry building, now currently owned by Hollingberry. From what I’ve come to understand is the building was originally built in the 1930s for storage of some fruit storage, but mostly as a ice producer.

There used to be a underground tunnel to move the ice from the freezing tanks to the railroad tracks that are all around the place. From there the ice would be loaded on to railroad cars going back and forth from the coast, such as Seattle. The Ice would keep the produce, meats, or other items needing refrigeration, like giant ice chests on tracks.
Although the older sections of the building are not in use any more they were extremely fun to walk around in. You could almost feel history radiating of the walls, and the ghosts of the past still walk the halls.

If any one has more information about this building, or equipment that I’ll be showing shortly, let me know, and I’ll fix the entries.
First off this is an original Ammonia refrigeration system, not a Freon system that most people would find familiar (your refrigerator, or freezer in your house uses compressed Freon). Ammonia (NH3) has an extremely low boiling point, making it an ideal heat absorption element.

The ammonia used in industrial refrigeration is nothing like the ammonia you may use in you house hold cleaners, that may be as high as 4% and just smell obnoxious. When the ammonia is pure, it’s deadly; never mess around with it. NH3 is attracted to water and is easily absorbed, people are mostly water, do the math. When there is just vapor it becomes very difficult to breath as your lungs (being normally moist) will try to reject the vapor. Long term exposure (more then a few minutes) can cause modest to long term damage to you lungs. Ammonia will attack any areas of your body that tends to sweat, such as pits and groin, this is the reason most refrigeration plants have emergency wash down showers, incase of an accident.
The good news: In the ten years I’ve been in the industrial refrigeration business there has only been a small hand full of accidents (no one hurt) I’ve heard of, mostly do to equipment failing. And only one fatal, do to a group of people not used to working around this type of equipment, and pierced a charged pipe with a scissor lift and pinning that individual to that spot. The majority of the people working in this industry are very cautious and intelligent and know what to do when a problem occurs. Firemen and Hazmat people tend to quickly get involved when a larger emergency occurred, and this has only happened twice that I know of.

The other good news is; ammonia evaporates very quickly, in a matter of minutes a spill would be latterly gone (the place would still stink to high heaven for a while). At one plant I was at once, a transfer pump failed. And through one way or another the floor was flooded with maybe a ½ inch of liquid ammonia. Though I couldn’t stay in the building; watching through the open roll up door the floor was sizzling and popping like butter in a hot pan. And within minutes the serviceman had the problem fixed and the building was safe to enter again.
Why not use Freon if ammonia is so dangerous? Well from what I’ve been told: first ammonia is not as dangerous for the environment and Freon (ozone layer, remember). Ammonia is a natural product (urine, bird crap, you get the idea). Ammonia is far cheaper then Freon, and therefore cheaper to store the end product, and that translates to less overhead to get product to market. And the last reason not to use Freon; when Freon is used ignited it turns into a deadly phosgene gas that was used in WWI trenches.
Lets stop this and get back to the fun stuff: pictures.

The older part the building is actually in 4 layers: the basement where the refrigeration compressors are housed. The Ground floor there the old offices and loading docks were. The top two floors were for longer cold storage.
Although it is difficult to see the walls clearly in the above pictures, the wall are actually coated in 3/4 inch of cork over wood slats, covering saw dust for insulation.

You can see one of the old apple carts here on the 3rd floor and a small elevator in the background for moving product up and down from the lower floors.

This is what happens to a lot of old buildings, this is old growth wood, and in this case someone removed some of the ceiling form the second floor. Don’t walk around in the dark on the third floor!

The valves were the temperature regulation for the floor. The valves would tie into long lengths of iron pipe running the length of the room, back and forth. The ammonia in the pipes would expand as it absorbed heat and transform into a gas, pushing past the restrictors back to the compressor room, pulling the heat with it. This is very much like your refrigerator in your house works but with out all the fun valving. (I would very much like to see a refrigerator look like that.)

The darkness looms.

This is cool. What you are looking at is a cast iron condenser. Back when this was in use the hot gas would be pumped through these coils with possibly a water drencher and fan to cool the pipes making the ammonia shrink back to a liquid.

The condenser is in the old electrical room. Imagine finding a fuse above the door!

This building can serve as a fall out shelter in the basement, a nice little blast from the past.

Here’s the small elevators on the ground floor, you can get a better feel for the size with the wine barrels sitting in front of them.

A nice view down the basement/shipping room. Would you looks at the size of those timbers supporting the columns!

If you look close the storage tanks for the ice are right behind the columns. From here the ice would be pushed (?) down a shoot to the railroad loading tracks.

The computer room. Don’t blame me for the wire mess. I was just supposed to write a control program to replace the old DOS control system that was already there. Replace the computer and nothing else.

Basement level. There are some room that look as though they could have been crew rooms for lockers and sleeping and eating. But those are just guesses. Bomb shelter, yes defiantly.

This is the drive system for the big elevator. The belt drives are total cool, but some how I’m just not sure I would trust them. One person I talked to remembered bringing driving a forklift on and off this platform all the time.

Part of the basement has always been a machine shop in one way or another. You can still see part of the belting system hanging from the ceiling. At one time a full size lathe sat in one corner, also ran of the belting system

Not a ban saw, but a moving hack saw, power off the belts.

How’s this for a drill press. When the belting system was no longer in use someone made a little stand and hooked up a 110 AC motor to power the belts for the drill.

This is an cool one, some of these fly wheels measure up to 10 feet tall and were obviously installed when there was no building yet, at least above. I would love to know the weight of the behemoth.

Some of the old tools still hang on the wall

Look at the little prop fan blade, it’s pointing at a solid wall. Makes me wonder if this section was above street level at one time.

Everything could be run off of belts, like this little pump in the back.

Storage for some removed compressors

This beasty was a functioning Frick up until around 20 years ago. The fly wheel is so big it extends several feet into the ground. The oiler must have been constantly feed as I could not find any return lines back to the canister. The whole compressor was powered off of 2200v AC and ran about 100rpm. All around the motor, rubber mats line the floor. One electrician once told me that at 2200 volts sparks could jump a good gap if there was a better ground.

No simple switch to turn these compressors on, they had to staged on slowly or you could brown out a city.

My boot for comparison on a small motors coil.

If this place ever gets scrapped, I wan these gauges!

That’s it.
Personally I think this place should be cleaned up and opened to the public as a museum and or a wine tasting area, there are possibly lots of uses that I think people would be willing to visit.

I’m glad I was allowed to take the pictures and show them for the rest of the world. People talk about history like it happened centuries ago, but I feel even our recent past is probably not as well documented as it should have been. If I come across any more info on this place, or items I will post it.

Family Room work-over

2010-02-08T10:10:00.000-08:00

A couple years ago the want for doing some home renovation on our ranch style house was just too over powering, I was craving the smell of fresh plaster and paint. Sitting in my comfy chair in the family room, reading a book I looked up and realized how much I absolutely hate fake wood paneling (all of the walls in the back half of our house are covered in it).

So I did the next logical thing; wait until the wife was out of the house and suckered my boys in to helping me rip (literal) the paneling off the walls. They were nailed, glued, stapled, screwed, and in one spot chewing-gummed in place. Needless to say the wall did not look not so pretty.

Note: the black lines were where the panels touched, leaving a small gap, so apparently the people responsible for the abomination spray painted vertical lines. The door visible in the far right is actually a pocket door that didn’t work right leading in to the master bedrooms’ bathroom. Why a door to the family room, I’ll never know. But it was definitely no longer in use.

When Jan go home, her reaction was less then thrilled, apparently we had just received some hefty medical bills and were in no position to do any home repairs. Ugg! With the paneling in pieces out back, it was defiantly not going back on. In time the wall got covered up with drawings from the two boys.

Skip forward. In September of 07’ my oldest wanted to have some of his friends over for his upcoming birthday and to spend the night. We did our best to spiffy up the house with no money, so the parents wouldn’t think we’re trash, but the family room was bugging me.

A dig thought the garage I found a box of still mostly wet Bedex (plaster) leftover from the bathroom overhaul from a few years back. I took the drawings off the wall (carefully) and plastered up. And drove down to the local Lowes hardware store to see if I could find some cheap paint.

At first I was just going to go white, but I would need primer (to seal the plaster) and a couple gallons of white, and even the cheapest stuff I could find would still be a total of $60 for the primer and paint.

I didn’t have $60. So semi depressed, I started wandering out of the paint section and almost bumped into the table of mismatch paint. Most of the cans were horrible reds, and purples and oranges (orange?). but there was one gallon of light gray for $5. Hey wait a minute I do have $5!

I got home and in a furry of sanding until 1:00 am I got the first coat of plaster sanded and laid a fresh coat on for sanding in the morning. Granted the party was still a few weeks off, but I could only work on it during the weekends.

Now around this time my two boys (and every kid in the world) had rediscovered Star Wars, and everything was Star Wars this, Star Wars that. So an idea struck me. I could use the gray paint and some of my airbrush paint and do a quick Star Wars theme for the party. I got the whole family helping me paint the wall, I even added some wood trim to break up the wall a little. (the wood came from some pallet packaging at work, it was getting tossed out.)

Once the walls were gray I added metal seams, rust, rivets a view window with the battle star visible in the distance. An R2 port was added and the pocket door became a laser blasted sliding doors. I believe the total for this quick job came up to $18 in materials when done. And my boys had the coolest Star Wars marathon/ birthday/ sleepover.

I cut this out of construction paper the basic design

Time went on, just like it always does. And tastes change, and I found my self not really enjoying the family room wall any more, just too bleak. I had just finished watching the last of the SG1 movies and was noticing that some of the ‘rock walls’ in the background of the show were just painted on over plaster. I thought, hey I can do that.

I masked off a small spot to make it look like the plaster had fallen off of a rock wall, but first I laid down a fresh coat of that lovely cheap gray paint before masking in the rock shapes. I used three different back tones of color for the rocks, yellow, green, and blue. Mind this is back tones, just a hint will end up showing through when finished.

Various shades of gray were applied, followed up with a transparent black for shadowing and white for highlights.

Once happy with the rocks the tape was bulled off and coloring and texture was added for the mortar between the rocks.

I was quite happy with the stone, but the strip of wood bothered me. So I figured I could make it look like wood again. I mixed up some colors and did a quick go at a maple ‘like’ grain and color.

Jan had found this print of Mucha that she really adored and wanted to hang somewhere. I offered over the “death star” as I never really liked how that turned out. But putting it on the wall it just didn’t look right.

We need gears and gauges! Yes more excuse to use the new my new airbrush (airbrush city) I spent a few weeks, designing the new look; incorporating the Mucha print into the center.

I still mean to get back and finish the gears up top and add some screening over the gears, and then there will be some boarder trim with LOTS of screws, but for now it’s good how it sits.

Note: I was not happy with the left panel, layout after I finished. Had to change that later.

Left over from the old wall, kinda hate to cover over the old R2 port, but it will happen soon.

Ah, that’s better, rivets and rusty plate.

The sliding door had to go, It no longer fit with the rest of the wall, so a quick sand.

Some fresh cheap gray paint. And let it sit over night. Before moving on.

Now the new theme was Steampunk, and what better to have a airship specialties office door, with the whole frosted glass and post box build right in.

First I laid out the size of the window, with masking tape and painted in a light gray line around the interior. This will be the window framing later. Once this paint was dry I used more tape to cover it. Once the window is done I’ll pull of the tape and add in the shadowing and details later.

I needed to show a light source from inside the room, so at center some white was added, swirling into a power blue and reaching into almost a black. This will be my basis for the light.

Next I took a small piece of construction paper and cut a wavy line. This was my template for quickly moving across the pain at 45 degree angles. I used more white closer to the center and transparent black colors nearer the edges. Some free handing was done to give some spots more emphasis, and to deepen the shadows around the edges.

The tape covering the window frame was removed and separation lines and riveting added with some basic shadowing effects.

I like to use tape for my layouts, If I don’t like the size when I step back, just pull the tape off and try again. Here I’m laying out the wording on the glass.

Moving on. Don’t you just love the catalogs that come in the mail, all that free masking material. So now for the mail/post box in the door. I started with a copper base paint. It’s a funny paint to shoot, as it’s directional. Meaning: if you shoot it at an angle, it will change color hue by looking at it in another angle. So carful on the intentions of viewing vs. airbrush angle.

I added back over the copper to give it that false brass look. Even with the black over top the copper paint still shines through.

A quick stencil of “post” was cut out and taped on. If this had been done for someone else or a paid job, I would of used Frisket and nicer lettering.

Some white highlights and some minor work with an actual paint brush, to make it ‘pop’ a little better, and then the masking tape comes off.

I added some weather staining around the window and post box and then stepped back. The door was missing something, just too plain.

Then the idea came to me: Lets add some wood ‘kick’ paneling below. So some quick measuring, tape and more catalogs cut up.

I mixed up a honey color and added some yellow highlights to the ‘wood’.

Some directional tones were added with a bright yellow.

It’s a little hard to see, but the piece of cardboard was used a my board size in laying out the lines with pencil.

Back to mixing up some colors. I use a variety of paints, mostly Createx colors, but I occasionally get into the cheaper .99c tube craft paint and thin it down with Golden’s airbrush medium thinner.

Using a piece of card stock and transparent black I work in the wood lines. Now I can’t be too clean on my edges, I need a worn weathered type look; like maybe some weather staining is creeping in between the boards.

Some of my plastic templates came in handy for making some of the wilder graining for the edging, much more knotted then the interior boards will be.

I had Jan snap some pictures of me while I worked. Yes I am left handed.

That black piece of card stock is all I needed for making the wave of lines that make up grain of wood. The movement with the airbrush is very quick and uneven to make the grain more natural.

Coloring is done, now for the shadows and highlights.

Using black over the knots will bring them into focus better. Now here is a little trick I figured out. Look a the knot placement across the inner boards, notice how they line up and no two are the same size. This gives the appearance (at least subconscious) that the boards were all planed from the same piece of wood and you are looking at the layers, albeit not in the correct order.

Well here is how the family room sits now, still not complete. Still too much deed space and leftovers the last wall, maybe summer before I get back to this, as I’ve got some car customizing fever currently, and this is a good stopping point.

Though I still don’t have a budget to renovate the family room yet. This is a fun project and I figure with the original $18 I spent I’m now up to $23 total in used materials. The tighter the restraints on cash, the more fun it can be for figuring out how do it anyway.

I’ve got a long article on the 62 falcon coming up, which is all about a low budget build and reusing as many recycled materials as possible and still come up with something hopefully cool.

Jan’s currently working on a new quilt in this corner. Beautiful isn’t it. I hope I get one someday. I’m thinking of build in book shelves with books above the trim line; all painted in of course!

Let there be BBQ!

2010-02-05T15:16:00.000-08:00

Right before winter happened I almost finished building my new BBQ out of an Colman Air compressor tank and roto-tiller parts.

It's a bute. I'm thinking of adding a fake carb on top with long stacks for the exaust and a gas peddel on the bottom for opening/closing the air intake at the bottom regulating the fire temp.

The wheels and front stand are from the origional air compressor and the handles and some interior bracing are from a old rototiller that didn't have all of it's parts any more. Just helping to recycle.

I've only run one fire through this to cook off some the non- high temp pain before finishing up the rack system on the inside. now that the weather is getting better out, I've been thinking I need to finish this.

Late 30's Pickup ratrod

2010-02-05T12:47:00.000-08:00

Dan Hallauer and I been working on a rat-rod style of late 30's Ford pickup. We hope to have it done by April to early May for the first rod cruse around here. The truck will be for sale once it's finshed (already have one offer, and it's not compleate.) This is basicly Dan's project I just help when I can.

I do the majority of the sheet metal repair/ fabrication and painting, Dan perfers the mechanical side but helps on the sheet metal too. I can do the mechanical but would rather not if possible.

Fire wall went shiny red for the 1950's rod style, and John Deere flat eggshell black. We are trying to go for period correct on the look.

You should of see the cab before, it looked like someone got a pick-axe for christmas and went to town, took some time to fix correctly.

There is just a hint of the Pointiac grill can be seen

I didn't have much to start with on the bed, just 4 parts: sides, front piece (near the cab) and a partial frame in a pile. The side panels were missing there back posts and some of the sheet metal.

We didn't have a tailgate at the time so I made a reverse of the front piece and weilded it up (after getting everything else to line up first. This was done at my house, then the bed was brought back to Dan's shop, and thankfully I got all my angles right.

Currenly we are a little further then this now, I just need to take some more pics. I'll update this as soon as I can.

Update 3-3-10

just some quick shots of the latest changes

the weels were origionaly going to go red to match the firewall, but some caps were found for the weels and black seamed like a better fit.

some of the wiring is in place and the front half is now on the ground. a small problem occured with back axel adaption plate that mounts to the transmission was the wrong one. Dan got the correct one and expects to see the truck on the ground soon.

the truck bed is still in the air on what to do with it, but no rush on needed for it.

Planetary Destroyer Ray Gun (PDRG)

2010-02-05T11:59:00.000-08:00

No just kidding, it's nothing but a couple of soup cans and some old harddrives with an old shower curtan handel for it's trigger.
It was last years Valentine's gift to Jan. painted her faviorite color. now it just needs a holster.

Once again, it was a fun build with stuff I had on hand and looks kinda 1950's future tech.

Last Halloween Airbrush fun

2010-02-05T11:40:00.000-08:00

Pictures of me (normally only half a scarry) and my two boys (bac- Max, forward-Sam). I had Jan help me shave my head bald and airbrush my face white. The boys went through 3 different paint jobs by me, one just to test, one for Halloween at school and one for a day fun of trick or treating.

Funny, I got some of the oddest looks when I walked into stores. As if I were actually carring an axe or something.

This is the most I could get Jan to do, we made quite the team out in public

Below are just a few of the images of working with the boys on there different face designs. I just used acrillic airbrush paint, totally safe and washes off with a damp cloth. The airbrush does tickle like crazy though. It's alot to ask a kid to sit still for 45mins~1hour and not move much. but they really wanted it.

All in all they were very popular at school, and it was fun to do.

Steampunk goggles

2010-02-05T10:33:00.000-08:00

Last year Jan and I discovered the Steampunk world. We've always liked the Jules Verne and Wild Wild West stuff, but had not realized there was a classification, nor a whole movement of people actually building this fantasy Victorian era.

So Last fall, a month before Halloween I took a whack a building some goggles. I did finish them before Halloween, but sadly they were not used. We ended up doing going another direction for the holiday. (I'll post that later).

Here's the beginning of the goggles. I should of taken more pics of the build process, but wasn't thinking of it at the time.

This started when I was digging through my junk box in the shop and came across a small chunk of copper pipe that fit my eye sockets well. I started digging for more oddities and found some stainless tubing and old pair of safety glasses.

Time for a trip to the hardware store. $14.87 in some basic brass sheets, brass wire, and misc brass bars. Note: hardly any of the new material was used, maybe $3 worth. So I have plenty to work with for future projects.

When cutting the copper pipe I noticed a small beaded ring form on the inside edge. It occurred to me that the edge would be perfect to hold the lenses in place, up against the outside.

The mid-section lower piece was shaped to roughly fit the bridge of my nose. while the top piece was just bent until I liked the shape.

The copper rings were drilled and tapped with the smallest tap I could find at the local hardware store. the upper and lower pieces were screwed in place and three little 'bridge' pieces were brazed in place to make the upper and lower into one solid piece.

the side fins were cut from a solid sheet of brass and formed for the same contour of the copper rings. short stainless offsets were cut at a length that put the 'fin' at the side of my template while still centering the ring over my eye.

the lenses were cut out of some old clunky safety glasses, and pressed into place, just tight enough to keep them from easily moving.

Last steps were to trim the screws flush with the copper rings and give the whole thing a good buffing with the Dremel. and pop the lenses back in.

The only thing left would be to make some leather straps (with a little elastic) to hold them on your head.

New Start

2010-02-04T15:17:00.000-08:00

This is a new start at posting to the Internet. Up until now I've done the Facebook thing and just plain got feed up it, I don't think it was the right form of displaying what project I'm currently working on.

over the next few days I'll be uploading a few items including:

Steampunk goggles (built them for my lovely wife Jan)
Steampunk wall - work with some airbrushing
Late 30's ratrod pickup (not mine, just doing the body work and painting)
My 62 Falcon Ranchero (soon to be a roadster)
some excerpts from the children's book, I've been trying to sell.
Last Halloween (more airbrush fun, with my two sons.)

I hope in the future to be showing some step by step demonstrations on airbrushing and some of my metal fabrication work.