Wee Walker Wagon V1 and 2

Posted on May 7, 2020 by Chase

Getting back to baby furniture, I have seen different kinds of little pusher wagons that kids learning to walk can use to help them build muscles and coordination. A co-worker mentioned that his daughter had a plastic store bought walker that she was learning to walk with, but that it was so light that it would shoot away from her. I had him measure her height to the shoulder to act as a rough starting point

I will probably build one for us and a few for friends having kids. That means making use of templates to repeat the work once I figure out what I want it to be like. I broke out the compass and thin bandsaw blade and got curvy.

I added holes to the templates and used a transfer punch to copy those holes over to each part. That way the wheels will connect in the same spot, and the handles will go on evenly. To add a little color and flare I painted green accents to the handle and wheels and a racing stripe for +2 speed. When the paint was all dry I coated everything with polyurethane.

I was worried the walker would go skidding across the floor if placed on anything other than carpet. I printed thin TPU bands to act as tries and glued them to the wooden wheels. The TPU isn’t as grippy as a rubber tire, but I was able to produce it in house and it will grip better than the bare wood.

I spent some time fiddling with the arms, and probably built them a little too short. I will give this to the co-worker and have him test it out on his daughter.

The finished product looks nice. It is heavy enough that a child just learning to climb up will not have it shoot away, but light enough they can still push it. Lock nuts set the tension at the wheels, so there can be more or less resistance as needed.

I gave this one to the co-worker that was complaining about the plastic one his daughter was using. The only catch was that he had to report back how it worked, and let me tweak it if need be. A few weeks later the reports were in. The bigger kids liked to play with it too! They treated it like a bumper car and crashed it into a lot of things. Also they wrenched on the handle hard enough that the arms were flexing where they screwed into the body. Lastly, it was a little on the wide side.

No problem, this is why I gave it to him! I didn’t like how the old arms turned out, so I went ahead and remade the template. Instead of freehanding some curves I got more systematic. I drew two circles that were the size I wanted each end of the arm to be, and drew them further apart than the original arm so I could move the base down lower on the cart. Then, to connect them, I set my drawing bow to a nice curve and connected the tangents of the two circles. The results look a lot better than my first arm template.

I assembled everything with pocket hole screws from underneath, and a few visible screws on the side. That let me take everything apart for alterations. I trimmed the center width down from 16 inches to 12. That should lighten the look and load of the thing and make it more maneuverable.

The bumper car comment had me wondering. I had left the bolt heads stick out beyond the wheel. If they caught a piece of furniture or baseboard, the bolt would probably fair better than the target. Also, there wasn’t much cushion to the tires. I mostly added them for grip, not as a bash protector. I counter-bored all the wheels, to recess the bolt heads, and upgraded to 5/16″ bolts as that was what I had available. The old tires were cut off and replaced with thicker ones that wrap around the outside face of the wheel. Now they shouldn’t be so offensive to fine features in one’s house.

With those upgrades complete I reassembled everything and gave it back to my co-worker. If there aren’t any more changes needed I can go into production and make a few for myself and other co-workers that are having kids.

Colored Stacking Blocks

Posted on April 5, 2020 by Chase

Some big changes are coming to the household. We have a tiny kilt coming soon! He will be born in September, so it is time to start making some toys and baby/toddler furniture. The nature of this blog will probably still mostly focus on my projects, but it might eventually include collaborations between me and the offspring. How old do you have to be to start learning to use power tools? 4 or 5 maybe?

Until then, I have a lot of time in the shop now, due to the pandemic. I won’t once the baby comes, so let’s get started on a bunch of stash busting projects and make some toys and furniture. My first project is something simple. A stacking block game. I found a board of poplar that would suffice. Each block is about 1/2″ smaller than the previous. They get a hole drilled in the center and all the edges rounded over.

I bought a variety of craft paints to make these and other projects more colorful and appealing to kids. Truth be told, this was the hardest part. Painting everything with multiple coats, cleaning the sponges, keeping the paints separated and whatnot.

I wrote a little note on the bottom of the block set base, but the spray coat of shellac I threw on there mostly blurred it away. As it turns out, even the industrial sharpies are susceptible to ethel alcohol. Next time I will have to spray lacquer over any ink-work to preserve it before using shellac. My wonderful wife’s grandfather would always write notes on the things he built, so I am going to take up the tradition. The wood, paint and shellac is all kid friendly and benign should someone start using these as teething devices.

Rotted Back Door

Posted on July 5, 2019 by Chase

One of the lingering repair issues on our new house was a rotted back door jamb. It is on the porch well under the roof line. A thing I noticed though is that when it rains really hard the gutters over flow and water backs up to this door on the pool deck.

This showed up on the home inspection. I probably shouldn’t have let it go this long, but what can I say? I started chiseling away at the rot and found it was pretty heavy down low, but didn’t go too far up. The 2x4s in the walls ok. They must have some kind of treatment to help prevent rot.

Once I was done putting out the rotted stuff I squared everything up so I could start putting new material back in.

I went with a foundation of pressure treated wood with PVC wood on the outside. The thicknesses didn’t all match up in places. I don’t really care that much, this will definitely not rot.

I did some heavy calking to fill all gaps and painting to keep the wood that is left in good shape. A lot of the door seal is missing at the bottom, but I haven’t seen anything splash against this door, just the rising tide of rainwater backing up. The closet is not under AC, so the seal wouldn’t matter for that either.

I fixed the door rot, but really the root problem is water backing up on the porch. I fixed the door 2 months ago, and it took me working off and on all that time to fully address every aspect of the problem.

First off, the gutters often fill with leaf debris which causes them to backup and overflow on the porch. I have been keeping the gutters clear, but still get overflow sometimes. As it turns out, when it rains hard enough, the water has a lot of velocity coming off the roof, and it can skip out of the gutter.

Next up is the channel drains in my deck. In doing some reading, paint isn’t good for them. I noticed in places the deck paint had completely covered the drainage slits. I used a pressure washer with the narrowest stream to strip the paint off the channel drain.

That was an improvement, but they still didn’t drain well. I picked up a pressure washer drain jetter hose. It is a pressure washer hose with a bullet shaped fitting on the end that shoots water forward and backwards at an angle to help you break up clogs and flush out drains and gutters. It was messy work, but I managed to flush the years of sand and sludge from my deck channel drains.

More improvement, but still not all in the clear. It turns out a root had grown up inside the side of the drain near the rotted door. The channel would move water, but was half full of roots, and didn’t drain as quickly as it should. A lot of work later, I got the roots cleared out.

With gutters clear, paint off the drainage slits, sludge out of the channels, and roots cleared out, it seems like they drain well now. Even if it doesn’t work perfectly every time, this should flood my porch a lot less than it has in the past. I will keep an eye on the water level and check the bottom of that door for cracks. The joys of home ownership.

Smoker Rehab 2018

Posted on March 26, 2018 by Chase

Two years ago I pulled my old smoker out and gave it a complete overhaul. It needs a little help again. Nothing dramatic, but the paint is chipping up with rust blisters in places. Best to get to that before they become dramatic.

A heavy grit flap sander pad on my angle grinder did a good job of cleaning off the paint and exposing fresh metal. I think I used a wire brush last time, but this works a lot better. So much better in fact that it revealed a lot more bad paint than I had originally thought. I had sites all over the smoker that needed grinding and repainting.

Out came the high temp primer and paint. I basically ended up repainting 75% of the smoker. That was a lot more dramatic that I set out to do, but I figure it is a lot cheaper than having a rusted out smoker.

With it safe from the elements for a few more years I had one trick to install. I wanted to customize the front fold out table. I figured some kind of Florida BBQ sign was in order. I was going to make it look like a caution road sign, but then thought that would reflect poorly on my cooking. Watch out for this guy’s food!

I would historically use my mill to cut a stencil from thin plywood or hardboard. I haven’t used it in ages and need to spend a day on repairs and re-learning how to use it. Instead I tried to 3D print a stencil. It can make finer curves and lines anyways.

I sprayed the back with some light hold adhesive hoping that would keep spray paint from seeping under while letting me pick the stencil back up. I masked around it and sprayed away.

The edges weren’t as clear as I had hoped, so for the BBQ letters I sprayed more adhesive and make sure to rub it onto the grill table really hard. That probably would have gone ok, but I sprayed too much paint and it seeped under. Multiple lighter passes would have worked better. I used too much adhesive and it left residue on the table. I will wait a few days for the paint to really cure well before hitting it with a solvent. I also didn’t mask enough and got a little over spray on the grill.

Up close it has a lot of issues, but from afar it isn’t bad. All lessons learned for next time. Maybe in 2 more years when it needs another paint touch up I will have a better plan for branding it. The smoker will be 11 years old at that point!

Zip Tie Caddy

Posted on July 21, 2017 by Chase

Zip ties are one of those magical inventions that are simple genius, and I can’t live without them. I have a fancy zip tie gun at work that does a really good job of tensioning the tie, automatically cutting at a set point, and keeping the tail captured. They are expensive, so I found a different design that works pretty well and is affordable by mere mortals. This calls for a custom caddy to keep all my zip ties organized and ready to go.

I cut up some spare plywood and played around with layouts a bit. I think this is a good size.

I cut out a window to make tool access easier.

I cut some more wood for a small base. Narrow enough to make storage easier, but wide enough to keep it from tipping. I really like how the rounded corners turned out from my router jig.

I gave the two pieces a good painting and assembled. I picked the color scheme of the zip tie tool. The black zip ties contrast nicely against the orange background.

To attach each zip tie bundle I used a zip tie that can be screwed down. That looped into a zip tie around the bundle. As you pull ties out you just tighten the bundle to keep things tight.

It holds a variety of lengths and sizes along with my colorful re-useable ties and the screw down ones. Plenty of room to grow too.

The handle was printed to match my hand size and keep with the color scheme. Same deal with the zip tie tool holder.

Living Room Renovation

Posted on December 31, 2015 by Chase

Another holiday break has rolled around which means it is time for me to get off of work and kick my own butt with some serious house renovations! This year, the living room. The before pictures make it look a little more like a dark dungeon than it really was, but not much more. Dark paint, dark flooring and light bulbs that were a little under powered.

The remainder of the vinyl flooring came up, and the paint came down. Originally in the house a roll on orange peel texture was added. I don’t know if it reached the end of its life, or wasn’t mixed well or what. It was turning to powder, and the paint would peel off in sheets if you looked at it wrong. I peeled it all off and sanded the texture right back down to the drywall.

Lots of hole patching, and a coat of primer later and the walls are starting to look a lot nicer. The previous owner had used a considerable number of drywall anchors for me to fill! I was able to finish a majority of the tile in a day which meant I couldn’t do anything else… Time to go see Star Wars!

With the tile able to be walked on I finished the painting, worked on trim, and eventually did the grout. Grout and baseboards really make the room feel like something.

There always ends up being a day of painting trim, touching up this, reinstalling covers on that and such. Worth all the little efforts.

Finally after a little over a week of solid work we were able to push the big soft couches back into our little space. I missed our comfortable evening hangout spot more than I thought I would.

This room feels a thousand times brighter. The light tile, bright walls and new phillips daylight LED bulbs make it feel like a million bucks. Not bad considering the material cost was only about 700 bucks. Now, by contrast, our kitchen looks even worse. Oh well, next year’s project!

Foyer/Dining/Front Room Renovation

Posted on September 17, 2014 by Chase

Labor day week was a week of serious labor. I renovated half of the great room in my house. It is composed of the foyer, the front room, and a dining room. The only surviving picture of the previous room shows the green walls. There were small grey boring tiles in the foyer, and poor quality faux wood vinyl flooring in the rest of the areas. The vinyl had been scratched by typical wear and the previous owner’s dogs. About half the walls had some kind of splotchy skip troweling done to them. It didn’t look good.

That is a lot of tile

Old picture of the walls before

Tiling in progress

Whole tile right up to the back door!

Better with grout

Transitions help break up the rooms and make tiling easier

New blinds and finished molding

Painted the dark wood a nice white

I re-mudded the walls with the texture issue and was able to get them flat enough for most people not to notice. Various other holes were patched in the process. Peeling up vinyl flooring is much easier when you rent a machine built for that purpose. The remaining glue was a mostly hands and knees kind of job. It took nearly a whole day to scrape it all clean. Tile and paint went down with out too many issues, just a lot of backbreaking labor. Last but not least I replaced the dog chewed blinds, all the baseboard, and repainted some of the existing dark wood trim to match the rest of the molding.

All in all it felt like an insane amount of work at the time, but in retrospect always seems worth the effort. Now I just need to muster the time and energy to tackle the living room and kitchen. The joys of home ownership!

-Chase

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