CaveOfSolitude

Coop

2009-07-15T14:30:00.001-07:00

This is the fourth coop I've either built for myself or had a hand in building in the last 12 months...yeah I know. Anway this was built for a cow-orker who saw a pic of the last one I built and wanted one for herself.

Here's a shot of the pop door and window end with the pop door opened up against the stop on the right.

Detail shot of the pop door "latch" when it's closed.

Pop door "hinge" is just a screw with a washer between the door and the wall. Simple and effective.

Roof is made up of cedar fence boards that are lapped to create shingles. The gaps are covered with a cedar 2x4 on the gable ends which also makes for a solid nailer for the gable end trim.

Detail shot of the roofing detail at the gables. There is a piece of self-adhesive roofing membrane that runs just slightly up onto the ripped 2x4 that you can just make out underneath the bottom course of roofing. This will take care of any water that gets between the ripped 2x4 and the roof at the ends.

Shot of the side venilation window. Note the prop pipe hanging on the screw to the far right side of the window.

Venilation window opened up. Prop stick cheap and easy way to keep the window open.

Here's the people door all closed up.

And last but not least the obligatory interior shot showing all the coop furniture etc.

Wasp Trap

2009-04-19T10:38:00.001-07:00

Sure you can buy a wasp trap from the store. But if you've noticed from reading any of my posts. Why buy what you can make. Besides the raw materials for this project were just headed for the dump anyway.

Ok so you start with one used water bottle...

Using a sharp knife, cut the top off. The thing to notice is that from where I made this cut towards the top of the bottle it's diameter increases just slightly.

Invert the top and insert it into the remaining bottom of the bottle.

Staple the inverted top four times to the bottom of the bottle.

Using a hole punch put two holes in the top rim, opposite of one another for a string or wire to hang the trap from.

Done. Now the real beauty of this system is that when the trap gets full you don't have to fool around with emptying it out. Just chuck it in the trash and make another one.

Carbon Fiber Arrow Saw

2009-03-30T10:33:00.001-07:00

I recently got back into bowhunting after a couple of years of relative inactivity. I got a new bow, and some fresh carbon arrows and new broadheads.

Now in the past I've always had the local pro shop cut my arrows, but they want money for that and I'm a chea...err frugal kind of guy. Besides I thought it would be fun to try and build a saw system of my own.

Most of the saws that you can buy, and all the ones that I've seen other people build use a sliding table arraingment with a fence that holds the arrow square. Way to complicated for something that I'm going to use a handful of times at best.

So here's what I came up with.

Hydration Bladder Drying System

2009-02-28T12:28:00.001-08:00

I love hydration bladders, but when you need to put them up for a while your options are kinda limited. If you leave it full of water you'll have green, swampy smelling, fish tasting water. Not. Good. I know people who throw a little bleach in the water before they put their bladder up, but that's a hassle too. Air drying them can be problematic because they tend to collapse onto themselves and that means that they take forever to dry. Now if I had a way to keep the bladder from collapsing, that would be the thing.

Two metal coat hangers
Two pieces of heat shrink
Pliers
Electrical tape
Heat Gun

Cut the hooks off the hangers. Save one of the hooks for later. Straighten out the coat hanger wire.
File off the ends of the coat hanger wires so they are nice and rounded over.

Slide the heat shrink onto the coat hanger wires, leave it just a touch longer than the wire. Hit it with the heat gun and get it all snugged up.

Wrap the jaws of the pliers with electrical tape so you won't mung up the heat shrink. Then bend the wires like so.

Notice the loops at the far end. The ends of the wire are rolled down so no matter what they can't make contact with the bladder. Also the hook we saved out earlier has been bent up

Slide the wires into the bladder

Looks like it's going to work.

Hook attaches to the drinking tube.

All hung up to dry.

Alcohol Stove

2009-02-27T12:11:00.001-08:00

I’ve been fooling around with alcohol camping stoves for the last couple of years. They work good are super cheap to make and handy to have around if only for a backup stove when camping etc.

To start with you will need.

Three empty soda or beer cans.
One unopened soda or beer can.
One small can for the priming cup/wind screen, I prefer the cans that sliced olives come in
Some roof flashing
Juga Denatured Alcohol (not isopropyl)
An old soda bottle and two caps.
Razor blade
Some scrap wood
A sewing needle and an exacto knife handle
Drill and drill bit
Sheet metal screw
Some fiberglass insulation
Pocket knife or small scissors

First off we need to make a cutting jig. Two pieces of 3/4 “ plywood a razor blade and some screws. You can use two blades if you want, but it doesn’t really matter

Take one of the empty cans and gently turn it against the blade. You’re not trying to “cut” the can just gradually score it deeper and deeper. If you go to fast or push to hard you will just end up wrinkling the can and you’ll have to start over.

Here you can see the scoring

Take your pocket knife and cut into the can waaaaay up high gradually tear the can down towards the scored line. When you get to the line, start tearing it gently along the score line.

Tada

Repeat this process two more times

Take a drill bit (small is good here) and drill a hole through one of the cups. This is going to end up being the top of the stove when done.

Take one of the cups that doesn’t have a hole in it, and very gently work it onto the bottom of the full can. Go slow, you don’t want to tear it. You will realize that you are compressing air between the can and the cup, that will need to come out, just go slow. This will be your “dilation tool”

Using your newly created dilation tool, take the cup that has the hole in it and again very slowly work it on to the bottom of the tool. Because there is a hole for the air to come out of this will go pretty smoothly. Now you’ve got to get the cup off of the tool. The best way I’ve found so far is a little puff of shop air. Run the cup on and off the dilation tool at least three times.

Ok now you have two cups, one that’s been dilated and one that hasn’t. The one that hasn’t been dilated is going to be the bottom half of the stove. The bottom half should just fit inside the top half.

Cut out a small circle of fiberglass insulation and put it in the bottom cup.

And put it together.

Next up we have to make the burner holes. These need to be TINY. So I use a sewing needle in an exacto knife handle. Just gently push the needle through the top can as shown.

I’ve played with the number and spacing of the holes. 16 holes seems to be just about the perfect balance in terms of burn efficiency and heat output.

Carefully drive a sheet metal screw down through the hole in the middle of the stove. Don’t over tighten it, and make sure the screw isn’t so long as to go through and put a hole in the bottom of the stove.

Next up is the priming cup and windscreen/potholder. Take the olive can and fill it with a little water. Put it in the freezer. Over the course of a couple days add more and more water until it’s frozen solid. If you just fill it straight up you will blow out the bottom or distort it so relax and take your time. Once it’s frozen solid, drill some holes. The ice will keep the can from getting all smashed up. Once all the holes are drilled set it aside and let the ice melt.

The windscreen/potholder needs to be sized such that your biggest pot will just fit inside of it. I cut the flashing to about the right length and then fold all the edges back to both stiffen it up, and get rid of the sharp edges. Next drill four holes in the wind screen. These are for some stiff rods that your pot will actually sit on.

Now we are ready to test burn. Fill the soda bottle with denatured alcohol. Put a small hole in ONE of the soda bottle caps, this will be your “fill” cap. Put the fill cap on the bottle. Remove the screw from the stove, fill through the screw hole. Replace the screw don’t over tighten it. Dribble just a few drops of alcohol in the bottom of the priming cup. Drop your stove into the priming cup and light the alcohol that’s in the priming cup. What’s going to happen is that the alcohol in the priming cup is going to get the alcohol in the stove to evaporate and that will leave the stove through the burner holes, this in turn will heat the stove further, and will continue until the stove burns itself out.

Put the windscreen/potholder over the lit stove.

And cook

The stove, priming cup, and fill cap all fit neatly in my pot

Windscreen, and support rods wrap nice and neat around the fuel bottle.

SnowPlow Rebuild

2008-10-17T12:35:00.000-07:00

I've got a 5' snow plow that was built by CycleCountry. I've been using and abusing this thing for the last 5 seasons. Last winter was brutal and I flat tore this plow up. By the end of the season it was damn near unusable.

Now a new plow is 400 bucks and up. Nope, all hail the new and improved CycleCountry plow.

The first order of business was reinforcement to the plow itself. The ribs that attach the plow to the pivot plate were no where near straight anymore so I beat them out and then added a weld bead along the entire length of the ribs (the factory only welds in about four places). Next I welded a plate with a hole it in on the outside of the existing rib, This is where the pivot plate mounts to the ribs. From that plate back down to the base of the plow I added a diagonal plate to tie everything together.

Detail of plow rib rebuild.

Next we come to the pivot plate. This was the part of my plow that got the dog crap beat outta of it last year. You can see from this picture it's no longer straight and the holes that mount the plow to the pivot plate are all "wollered" out. In addition the notches that accept pivot plate lock (the bit that determines angle) was totally JACKED.

So I had a local fab shop bend me up a new piece that had the same outside dimensions, but it's a WHOLE lot thicker. Little work with the Portaband, and my drill press and badda bing badda boom. By the way as a side note, a Portaband is just about the coolest power tool EVER.

Both side by side for comparison. Not bad I says.

Back to the plow. The one part that CAUSED the most damage was the "stop". This piece is responsible for locating the plow on the pivot plate and keeps the springs from pulling it too far back. On the original set up the stop was just bolted in, and it wasn't thick enough and manged to get wedged in underneath the plow's ribs, that's what caused most of the bending and deformation of the ribs themselves. So to make sure that didn't happen any more, I welded the old stop onto the rib.

Then I cut a couple pieces of nice thick angle iron for the new stops. These got welded to the sides of the pivot plate

All put together.

Seems to work pretty well and instead of 400-500 bucks it cost me less than a hundy. As a side note, if anyone from CycleCountry wants some advice...bigger+ badder+thicker+stronger=MoBetta.

UPDATE<<<12/20/2008>>>

We got HAMMERED by a storm. I'm going to take a conservative guess at 36" of snow in as many hours. Plow rebuild is working AWESOME! It's nice to be able to change the angle of my blade without the use of a big ass hammer. Everything is holding up to my usual plowing abuse nicely.

DIY Fount Heater

2008-10-03T08:41:00.000-07:00

Since winter is fast approaching I needed a way to keep my chicken's water from going from a liquid to a solid. I've got metal vaccum style founts so I can't just drill a hole and drop a heater in because sealing it up would be a real challenge. So I did some good internet research and found this...

Alas it's a little rich for my cheap ass chicken rasing ways. Hell this thing cost like twice what I've got in the coop. Nope. Buuuuuut I can copy it.

I bought a 10' roll of 14" galvy flashing at HomeDespot. I wanted the outer tube to be right around 9-10 inches in diameter with the inner tube around 6 inches. 'Member geometry? That whole figuring out the circumference from the diameter stuff. Comes in handy here. Fortunately I keep geometry and algrebra text books in the shop for just such occasions.

Roll 'em up and tape 'em down. With a little overlap for the forthcoming rivets.

Six rivets per tube and we're coming together.

I measured in from the end on both tubes 1" and cut the tabs. For now I only bent the tabs that will form the bottom. Note the saw tooth tabs on the outer tube, that's cause they're getting bent in versus out.

Inner tube nested inside the outer tube for a fitment check.

I cut a couple rings out of MDF for support. Here the bottom of the outer ring is secured just using some screws. The inner ring got the same treatment.

I needed a base mostly as a way to get the wire for the fixture out of the heater. Nice joinery and materials huh? Yeah nothing but the best for my birds. I'm thinking a nice honey oak stain with three coats of spar varnish.

Next I jammed some of the ol' pink panther between the two tubes. This should insure that the heat goes UP not out.

Second ring installed at the top. Tabs bent over and secured with screws.

Built a base for the um base. Again, nothing but the best materials and just look at that quality workmanship...

Base wired and dropped into heater.

Done. 2 hours of work and less than 15 bucks for materials.

Cummins Starter Rebuild

2008-09-28T15:25:00.000-07:00

I started blowing fuses for my starter a few months back.

I knew that I had two choices:

1. A new starter (500 bucks)
2. I could rebuild the starter (35 bucks)

Yeah, I'm a quarter scottish, so you know which way I went.
I won't bore you with the details because the details ARE boring. Lemme give you a quick rundown of the process.

1. Remove Starter (thank you to the gorilla who tightened the top bolt on my starter)
2. Open starter
3. Replace contacts, and plunger
4. Button up starter
5. Install Starter.
6. Done
Now for the pic.

The contact on the left is from the positive side of the starter, LOOK AT THAT WEAR! 200,000 miles of hard use and I suppose I shouldn't be suprised. That thing is RAZOR thin. I'll bet I had just a couple months left and it woulda just quit starting on me all together.

All total counting pre and post operation consultation beers this is an easy 4 beer project.

Needed One More

2008-09-25T10:21:00.001-07:00

I needed one more place to document ALL the other stuff I build/break/modify in my shop.

Got some stuff planned for the next couple weekends so stay tuned.