Craiglist Score

I just scored me a pair of Vintage Radios on CL TO.

One is a 1940's GE AM/SW Tube Radio that works and the other is a 1930's Spartan Farm Radio.

And I got this for the most amazing price of ..................

Not Telling!!!!! Would rock the world economy!!!!

Not sure what I'm going to do with these..

1940 AM/SW Tube Radio Model G-71

1930 Spartan AM/SW Farm Radio Model 637-6

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!!!!

Harvest

Last Saturday, Lynda, the girls and I undertook the task of harvesting all the apples from the tree and then pruning it down. It took the entire afternoon and the better part of our effort went towards keeping the girls focused on the task at hand.

I'll let the pictures speak WRT the quantity of apples that we harvested. We got some really good ones and the ones that were touched get pickled or chutnied courtesy Mum & A. Ayn.

Apples!!

We ran out of places to hold them!!!

The tree, pruned!

Removed the grass from around the tree trunk

My lawn! Probably the only thing I'm doing a good job of!!!!

Final Shedonism

Well, the garden shed is more or less complete. I could go on and on tweaking it but I had to call it a day somewhere. I'm not personally happy with the way the doors turned out. They looked too featureless and slab-like. I will address that next year.

As far as functionality goes, I could not have asked for anything more. It holds everything garden and lawn related and that is exactly what I had wanted.

Dad and I had even levelled the ground in front of the shed, deposited topsoil, some grass seed and it has taken root well.

Shed done

Too Slab Like for my liking..

The doors hold all my gardening implements

More gardening implements

Trailer Trash - Part Three

I did not do this post in the right sequence as I just could not locate the photos that I knew that I had taken..

Anyhooo... I found them!!!

This was one of the last things that Dad and I did prior to his departure to Bombay.

We isolated what would become the chassis of the trailer and discarded the remainder of the frame. We used some of the rubber caps from other parts of the frame to seal off any openings that would allow the ingress of water.

I have to start building the box one of theses days.

Trailer Trash - Part Two

I sat down today and prepared some conceptual drawing of what I would like the trailer to look like. The drawings are more or less for me to decide construction details as well as proportions of the trailer. In my earlier post I mentioned that I wanted to base the unit on the iconic Radio Flyer Wagons. I think that I more or less got the unit to look like the Radio Flyers, and I even christened the as yet unborn trailer, "Brampton Flyer"

Have a look!!

I tried to match the look as closely as possible

The Ventilated floor is an attempt to keep the weight down

The "Brampton Flyer"

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????