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Making a Voltage Gauge for Your Car - A Retro Popular Mechanics Project
While cars today are technological marvels that seem to have so many smarts built into them that they seem to almost drive themselves - I can distinctly remember when I first got my 2017 Honda...
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Cup Holder Mount for a Car Voltmeter
Last week I tried out a project from an old issue of Popular Mechanics where you could make a voltmeter for your car. Wiring up the voltmeter was actually a pretty easy project to tackle and I was able...
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Building the Bargain Boat Horn
With the snow starting to recede in my part of the planet, the mind starts having visions of warmer weather activities. In my particular case, I love to spend a weekend afternoon out in my boat with a...
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A Different Take on an Old Whirligig
I've always been a bit fascinated by the weather. If you take a look at some of my past posts on this site, you will find the odd little project that either entails tracking the weather conditions or...
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Finishing Up the Whirligig
Last week I developed and built a prototype of a whirligig that I derived from plans that I had found in an 80-year-old copy of Popular Mechanics, I wasn't quite sure how it would all turn out, so I...
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Repairing a Lawn Tractor Muffler - A Tale of Baling Wire and Bubble Gum
When springtime comes a not so young man's thoughts turn to lawn care. And so this weekend I hauled my old lawn tractor out from its winter hibernation. After giving the battery a quick charge and...
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Time for an Upgrade - Moving from a 3018 to a 3018-PROVer CNC router
A couple of years ago I bought myself a pretty cheap CNC router off of Amazon, mainly just to experiment and learn how to use one in my woodworking projects. The router that I had bought was a very...
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Taking a Wee Break From the Shop
This weekend I took a bit of a break from the shop to say hello to some folks that I hadn't spoken to for a little while. In most cases, I have never met these people in person, and they live literally...
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DIY Mulcher for a Lawn Tractor
Since I was in a getting ready for spring frame of mind, I figured that I should tackle a bit of a pet peeve of mine when it comes to yard work. Anytime you see a picture of someone's lawn, whether it...
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An Enclosure for My 3018-PROVer CNC Router - Part 1
For the past month or so I have been getting a fair bit of use out of my new CNC router and I've been busily trying my hand at doing some simple projects like making some cut-out letters and Christmas...
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An Enclosure for My 3018-PROVer CNC Router - Part 2
Last week I started building an enclosure for my 3018-PROVer router and I finished the week with the bottom or "tub" of the enclosure built. This week I focussed on building a lid for the enclosure to...
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An Enclosure for My 3018-PROVer CNC Router - Part 3
After a couple of weeks of construction, I was finally at the point now where I can finally put everything together and give my CNC router a decent home. The first order of business was too pretty up...
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A Wee Break in the Programming
This week is a bit of an odd one, for I don't really have a project to share this week. Oh trust me, it not because the tank is dry in the ideas department, I have a long list of ideas and I have some...
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Building a Tweeting Weather Station
I seem to be a bit of a sucker for weather stations. A couple of months ago I mentioned that I started subscribing to a crate service called CreationCrate, which sent you a monthly box stuffed with...
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Building a Tweeting Weather Station - Hooking Things up to Twitter with Python
Last week I put together a fairly simple weather station that gathered the temperature, humidity, and barometric pressure and stored the data that the station was gathering into a text file.The...
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Wrapping up the Tweeting Weather Station - 3D Printing a Stevenson Screen
Now that I had all the pieces of the weather station now all put together and tweeting out the weather conditions inside of my home, it was pretty neat to see in action, but alas, not very useful. In...
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The Bane of My Existance
Well perhaps that's a bit too strong, but I do have a bit of a love-hate relationship with my planer. I love how quickly and easily it levels out wooden boards to make them nicely flat and perfect,...
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Making a Super Simple Planer Knife Sharpener
Last week, I talked about my neverending frustration in keeping the blades on my surface planer nice and sharp, which was creating a situation where my favorite tool was quickly becoming my most hated...
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Project Basket Case - Trying to Resurrect an Old Garden Tractor
Well, it started off as a desire to grow some pumpkins. With all of the pandemic issues that are swirling around, it has been taking its toll on the local community events that usually occur around...
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Project Basket Case - Engine Removal on the Garden Tractor
Last week I dragged home an old garden tractor that I had picked up at an auction for around 100 dollars. In some respects, this old tractor was a bit like Charlie Brown's Christmas tree. It certainly...
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Project Basket Case - Installing a New Engine in the Garden Tractor
In my last post, I just successfully removed the old engine from my basket case garden tractor, which left a fairly large empty space in my tractor's front. While that made the tractor a possible...
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Project Basket Case - Wiring It Up
In my last post on the garden tractor restoration, I had just finished installing the new engine and gotten the fuel and throttle connections all done. The only thing that I needed to do to get the...
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Project Basket Case - The Saga of the Stubborn Wheel
With the engine all squared away, I now could focus on the other parts of the tractor. One part that I had noticed when I was bidding on the tractor was that one of the rear tires was horribly...
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Project Basket Case - Giving Things a Nice Coat of Paint
Yes, it's been a little while since the last update. This fall I started a new job which has taken a fair bit of my time as of late, and just life, in general, has been making its presence known. In...
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Project Basket Case - Finishing up
Now that all the painting was done and everything was nice and shiny, the big day had arrived. I could finally put the tractor back together.Reassembly in of itself was pretty straightforward. It was...
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