Change of Plans – November 2012 Update

After several months of not doing anything, due to summer vacation, moving, school, travel, etc… We have decided that we are no longer (at this point) going to go the non-profit open work shop route. I know some of you may be following our progress (and we thank you for that), and you may have been wanting to get involved. While we still like the idea of collaboration, a community workshop just isn’t in the works.

Daniel bought an Epilog 60w Mini laser cutter, and we have been playing around on that. Currently coming up with projects and products that can be produced with the laser cutter, and the other tools we have gathered.

We will be coming up with a Kickstarter in the next month or so. Products will be gradually showing up on our Etsy page.

White Board Marker Hacking

Looking at a design blog I stumbled across this. Two professors to angle the magnet on a white board pen. I could have thought of that. But I didn’t, so props.

The problem is my pens aren’t like that. My pens have a terrible magnetic holder that forces me to fight it for the pens. Its terribly sub-optimal. Duct tape and magnets to the rescue.

Materials:

• Pens
• Duct Tape
• Magnets

Hopefully ducttaping magnets at an angle on your pens doesn’t need much explanation. Here are some pictures about it. 

 

Help Stop SOPA!

Mike Mozart exposes the media as having perpetrated online piracy as a way to pass the Stop Online Piracy Act. Hard to believe? Watch the video. Then post it on the internet everywhere you can. This must be heard.

Talking about Scavenging

Falcon Bic

Someone stole my lighter today. I got a new one, took my exacto knife and went to town. The head kinda stated out as a scorpion’s tail but ended up a falcon head. Turns out foreshortening is harder than you’d think carving on a lighter with an exacto knife. So anyway, it turned out to be a falcon. I fleshed out the lines by applying some Mars Black (Fe₃O₄₎  pigment I had lying around. Worked really purdy.

It doesn’t matter what the carving is because its all about changing the texture to prevent theft. The moral of the story is don’t steal my lighter.

Guess What We Just Got!!!

Okay… That might be hard for one to guess… We got a 6″ wood jointer/planer for, you know, jointing and planing wood. How we got it goes a little bit like this…

Tony: *phone vibrates* *pick up* What up?

Daniel: At South Salem Goodwill.

Tony: Anything good?

Daniel: Well there is an xbox for $12. But there is this wood planer thing…

Tony: Be right there…

Photo Courtesy [Amazon]

This is what I see when I get there, a great looking jointer clean, with the manual and maintenance tools taped to it. I looked it up online, and it was sold for $99ish back in the day (2006) and ranked pretty well for it’s size. It was $99.99, but I figured no shipping and a practically new planer/jointer was a good deal (compared to cheaply made newer ones). We got back to the apartment and planed some wood that we got from some pallets, and the wood quickly improved.

So basically now we can smooth out all the pallet wood we want in order to make fancy upcycled tables and chairs out of (free!) pallets. Look forward to future updates of furniture and space details!

PS. We are lookingat getting a house with a garage and basement workshop area. This would allow us to keep all of our tools out and all in one space! Lots more work can get done with this combination. 

Look at What I Just Found (AKA How-To Guide for Solid State iPod Classic)

I remembered that I posted a video on YouTube a few years back, I saw it the other day, and it had over 10,000 views!

This video will walk you through the replacement of the hard drive in your iPod Classic (5th, 5.5th, and 6th generations only). This modification would make it SOLID STATE! Drop it without the fear of breaking the hard drive. Prices for Compact Flash have probably dropped since the video was made.