I designed an insert for the metal box that my last Kaweco Lilliput fountain pen came in about two years ago. It was a rough design, the PLA was old, look bad, and the .stl resolution wasn’t done right. I have just lived with the insert being a little funky and just used it.
The original design and print
As I find myself with a lot of time on my hands healing form shoulder surgery, I did a quick redesign: smoothing the transitions, adding a few fillets, and putting a pocket in the bottom that will hold 3 US bills folded in quarters – in case you run out of ink or beer or coffee and need the cash out in the wilds of suburbia…
This version still fits Lilliput pens and Fisher Space Pens that would fit in one of the tin boxes that the Kawecos come in, as well as 2 ink cartridges. I spent about 20 minutes updating the drawing, the red PLA print took about 4 hours, spent maybe $4.00 in electricity and material – including the felt that I added for anti-rattling.
The new insert in red with better resolution.
The added pocket on the bottom for cash and my favorite fortune of all time.
While I have been nursing my shoulder, I have been working on a tool bit organization project (shown a little in last week’s video) for my collection of end mill bits that are scattered across my shop and underground lair with no rhyme or reason. This is a video of that whole process and links to everything/everyone mentioned in the video are listed below.
I really liked the original Tool Drawer Tray design by Ed Kramer (ekramer3), printed 4 of them, and made a few custom ones for my tool box organization needs. I specifically needed a tray that was a little wider to accommodate +3/4″ end mill bits (usually over 5″) and deep reach bits. There was some room left over in my tools drawers, so I added a couple of longer trays as well to close that gap.
I made the walls of my trays a little thicker to allow them to handle my thoughtless fumbling around. They line up really will with the original design and are exactly the same height. The 5″ width tray also is the exact same length as the original. While being thicker does make them a little stronger, they do take a while longer to print.
Now, all of my designs were done, printed, installed in my box before Ed Kramer and Rob Lockwood uploaded the bounding box driven parametric file version to the original Thing. If you have Fusion360, that updated file is really slick and will let you personalize to your specific needs. Take a look and prepare for wonder.
If you don’t have Fusion, then my remix will give you a couple of other options for organization of bits, tooling, pens, and whatever small bits&bobs you may need to tidy up in the shop, garage, office, or house.
My Thingiverse Models: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4552775
My Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mattofmanytrades/
The baking element in our GE stove decided to burn up after 12+ years of faithful service and a week after I had major shoulder surgery/reconstruction. Of course it did…. When else would a major appliance decide to fail?
I did a little Web research (5 minutes tops), found the part number for the element (also downloaded the stove manual and parts list) and looked around for the best deal. GE no longer manufactures our stove and the replacement part is not available from them or at any of the big box stores, but I found it readily available at the websites of Parts Select, Appliance Parts Pros, and Amazon. It was actually cheaper from Uncle Jeff at Amazon and the shipping was free. Total cost with sales tax was $26.39, which was about $180 less than an appliance repairman would have cost and $500 cheaper than the current model of our stove.
The part took 3 days to arrive and my wife (Mrs. Many Trades) was able to swap it out in a total of 30 minutes as I looked on and filmed. The stove is up and running again and hopefully will keep baking for years to come.
My wife has a thing for medieval art and costume. She swoons over illuminated manuscripts and 14th century furniture. Consequently our bedroom if full of period art. reproduction furniture, a tomb effigy, and now 5 different wall tapestries.
I installed a woven Belgium tapestry on a steel cable in our basement bedroom so that we could slide it in front of a couple ugly electrical panels and then be able to slide it out of the way when we need to flip a breaker or use the generator transfer switch.
I designed and made a couple of Cathar Cross wall escutcheon on the X-carve to serve as decoration at the anchor points of the cable and to tie it all in with our medieval bedroom theme. They turned out really slick and everything was great until I went to test fit and realized that I had mis-measured and that I couldn’t use them at all for their intended purpose.
Side Note: This was the last little video I shot before shoulder surgery.
I am in the middle of installing stair tread in our basement. They match the stairs to the attic in terms of style, and color – I am using the same reclaimed dark bamboo treads as our attic stairs. The trim is painted white, I am using sub-floor adhesive and screws to eliminate squeaks, and I have added cove molding to the underside of each stair lip because that is the right way to do it and they are mine – if I choose to overbuild them, then I will do so. There is no MDF or OSB being used – just like in the rest of our home.
The stairs are period appropriate for our house – maybe even a little upscale for a suburban house on what was the edge of Seattle in 1928. Except for the bamboo tread material, they would be recognizable by the first owner of our home as proper. The 5 feet of bottom banister and the wooden handrail will match the attic and rest of the house as well.
It has taken me two days to get this done, partially because of set-up and partially due to the time spent hunting for specific tools in the mess that is my shop currently. If all I did was stairs, I would have a kit and process ready to go and I could bang out a strait staircase trim in a single 8-hour day. Will be glad when this is 100% complete as it is the last major project left for the 3+ years of remodeling one room at a time in our house. I know my wife wants it done even more than I do though.
Before: 3/4″ Plywood sub-floor stair structure. Lots of adhesive and 3″ screws used in construction.
Mid-process
Side note: Because I am working on my own house, I am wearing OSHA-Approved safety Flip-Flops.
Continuing to use the X-Carve to help out with some tool organization projects around the shop. For this video, I have moved to the Machine Shop side of my work area and am slowly adding to the tool box/project table that I have dedicated to the metal lathe and mill.
Our side fence on the south side of our yard was redone about 18 months ago. It started out as a project that my neighbor (a residential and commercial builder) and I were going to tackle as a group/team build. I did the initial work power washing the old fence twice, tearing the old fence down, saving the lumber that was in good shape, and running the string lines for the new fence. My neighbor was on the hook for setting the new posts and reinstalling the good wood on the “new” fence and supplying any new material.
That agreement lasted until about a week before the new fence was about to go in. At that point, the neighbor decided to use the project as a “proof of concept” for a fence installation technique that he had seen recently. That also changed the design and he wanted to use ALL new material. I was out on the new and additional cost but agreed to pay for the materials and supply the labor for sealing the fence and also volunteered for adding a torii-like fence gate topper for the 4′ gate connecting our yards to make the total fence cost somewhat amicable.
The fence was sealed (Thompson’s Water Seal is my favorite!) the day after it was installed and 2 days before I had knee reconstruction. There was a somewhat pointed style and wood type discussion for the gate that put me off a little and I moved the project to the BACK of my to-do list priority. Fast-Forward to 18 months later and 6 weeks into the Covid-19 Crisis and my project list was getting tiny, so I spent a warm spring Sunday getting the gate topper cut and installed.
Coffee break during the initial beam fit and markingTight grained red cedar
I used a nice hunk of tight-grained tight-knot red cedar and inset the posts into the beam by 1.25″ and attached the beam to the posts with a 10″ lag screw that was inset from the top by +2″. The joints were pre-sealed with Thompson’s and the entire thing was double coated with Thompson’s to keep it looking nice for the foreseeable future. There will be an additional 1″ board on top of the beam with a 1″ reveal all the way around – waiting on the red cedar to be delivered to my local lumber supplier.
One of my shortcomings (there are so many) as a YouTube content maker is my camera work. It has never been steady and I have fallen over a tripod at least three time in the shop, so I decided to make a ceiling-mounted camera dolly to keep things out of the way and to give me both steady shots and the ability to pan/tilt/zoom with without much fuss at all.
I doodled in my sketch book for a while and used UniStrut and UniStrut trolleys as the core of the mechanism, then took 9 months off before getting the bulk of the work done.
The dolly body is made of 3/4 birch plywood. I designed it in the “rocket esthetic” in AutoCAD and then transferred the drawings to the free web-based version of Easel before cutting the main body pieces on the X-Carve. All the other parts were cut in the shop on conventional saws and all the hardware was sourced at Home Depot – except the UniStrut trolleys and hangers which came from McMaster-Carr. The trolleys were actually free for me as there were recycled at work after a building project was completed and I asked if I could have them. They sat in my basement for a year before I had the idea to use them for this project.
