Camping Balls

It's always good to have an additional set of balls when camping. Not the ones that generate that oh so required testosterone, but these ones....

 

I took a used softball (courtesy +jb baptista) and drilled a 13 mm hole right through. I then inserted a length of rope with knots at both ends that hold the ball and rope together.

This will make slinging ropes through the trees an easier task.

Dhiraj

If you are looking for solutions for your home, contact us about our design, build & decorate services.

Habitat for Humainty - ReStore - Mississauga Grand Opening

Ever since I moved to Canada and discovered it, the ReStore has been my go to place for the odd stuff that I need to get my 'Hacks' up and running and even light fittings, tiles etc. Most of the stuff I've bought was BNIB (Brand New In the Box). Some, open stock. while I would get excited at the prospect of getting a great deal, imagine if you would, those that benefit from the sale of these products.

HfH chooses homeowners according to their need, their ability to re-pay the no-profit mortgage and their willingness to work in partnership with Habitat. HfH is a hand-up not hand-out program designed to break the poverty cycle by helping individuals and families help themselves. They build simple, decent and affordable houses for families that would otherwise not be able to purchase their own home.

This Saturday, the 5th of May, the ReStore in Mississauga will have it's Grand Opening Celebration. Located on 1705 Argentia Road, the store will be open for sale from 10.00AM to 4.30PM. I had popped in yesterday as I was in Mississauga and saw a lot of great stuff for sale. Please do go if you have the time and support their cause.

I do my bit by donating most of the leftover building material as well as light fixtures, vanities etc. that I have replaced in customers houses, to the ReStore. If you do have new or gently used building material, do drop it off to the ReStore. One man's trash will always be someone else's treasure!!!

 Habitat for Humanity's Mississauga ReStore. 1705 Argentia Road

 Cabinets, Light Fixtures, Chandeliers (from CAD 50.00)

One of the many vanity sinks

Dhiraj

If you are looking for solutions for your home, contact us about our design, build & decorate services.

How to Transfer Patterns to Wood

This evening my Aunt asked me to prepare a '25' sign for a cake that she is decorating for a weekend celebration. The last time I made a '50' for her from cardboard. Since I wanted this one to be more durable, I decided to cut the '25' from MDF.

You could say that I decided to up the ante for my aunty!!!!

Probably the most difficult part of the entire process lay in the transferring of the image onto the MDF sheet. I could've printed out the image onto self adhesive paper and stuck it onto the sheet. Unfortunately the scroll saw would rip up the paper as I made the cut. I could've used carbon paper to transfer the image onto the sheet, but my skills with tools far exceed those with a pen. In short - my handwriting is crap.

I decided to employ a little bit of science instead. Modern laser printers and copiers use powdered toner and heat to fuse the toner onto the paper. I assumed that if heat would then be applied to the toner it would remelt and transfer to the sheet.... Armed with this exhaustive research, I set about the task of applying pattern to MDF  .

I prepared a vector image of 2 & 5 overlapping as desired

Flipped the image.....

Soldering iron with a flat iron tip. In the background, Lynda and myself in Dubai, circa 1993 looking far cooler that the legally allowable limit at the time!!!!

The paper taped in place and ironed slowly over the pattern

The '25' transferred onto the MDF

Tomorrow I cut out the shape and paint it. The above process would not work with an Ink Jet printer as it uses a liquid which then dries. Besides why would you want to use a medium which uses the most expensive liquid in the world????

Think I'm kidding??? Check this out!!!!!

Second Harvest

No. No.

No fruit trees were involved this time.

My cuz Avi dropped off a carton of hard drives that were culled from servers at his place of work.

Now you may or may not know this - but all hard drives contain either one or a pair of rare-earth magnets which comprise part of the actuator arm that propels the read/write heads across the platter. The magnets can be either neodymium or samarium-cobalt magnets. What's the point of this info overload - you ask!!!

Rare earth magnets exhibit a magnetic field in excess of 1.5 Tesla v/s 0.5 to 1 for ferrite or ceramic magnets. What this means is that these magnets are strong - frickkin strong. Each one of these magnets can lift in excess of 25 lbs. And for the best part, they're free!!! Compare that to Lee Valley at CAD 8.00 - 12.00 for comparable magnets and you've got a great thing going.

And since these magnets are so strong, they make great holders for tools in my shed. They will hold the heaviest of my hand tools without a problem.

So after an afternoon with my trusty B&D AS600 and my torx bits from my Bosch set, I harvested 18 pairs of magnets and 36 platters along with assorted screws, mini bearings (from the actuator arms) and a few motors (that drive the platters)

If you're planning on going this route, watch your fingers. If those magnets snap together on your fingers - OUCH!!!!!!

Here, in pictures is the fruit of my labour (pun intended)

Box of Hard Drives to spice up my weekend - Pathetic

Gratuitous OCD shot

Garbage!!!

Pretty magnets all in a row!!

Platters!! Unsure what I'm going to do with these!!!!

Oh! Oh! Canada

Just heard this on the radio and had to give props to Luke Boyd AKA Classified from Nova Scotia. This is a damn good song and says it all.

Oh! Canada! We stand on guard for thee!!!!

errr.... What are we guarding????

How Tubes Work

Probably the best explanation to date (Satirical) of how Tubes work. This is courtesy of www.unplggd.com. Had a nice laugh at this.

"We won't go into much detail as to how it works here- you can wiki it for more info. But briefly; a magical fairy flits about in the lightbulb-like structure using her little wand to make music louder. The manufacturer simply puts a little thimble of honey inside the tube to lure her in there in the first place. The fight against this heartless practice was one of the first crusades which brought PETA to the world stage, though, to be fair; fairies aren't animals."

Yeah Sure - And Conrad-Johnson amplifiers are made by Bill Conrad and Lew Johnson who are PhD Economists and once worked in Washington DC at the Federal Reserve. Oh. Hang on - They are!!!!!

A Brief Introduction to Me

So I thought that I'd snap off something witty, but witticisms are hard to come by when you really want to be witty.

Who am I - 38 years of age, married for 11, 2 kids aged 5 & 7.

It's a wonder that I found the time to start up a blog between dropping the kids off to school and sometimes collecting them.

And oh yes - I manage a small company. But only because I need the money to indulge in my hobbies of which I have so many.

BTW the keyboard on my laptop has lost it's F key. So in case you find any Typos. UCK O!!