One of these days

DIYGreenRoof

2011-09-13T13:21:37Z

Super cool, I want to do this with an outhouse I'm building for a property Heather and I bought a while ago.

bobbotron @ 2011-06-19T11:49:00

2011-06-19T15:49:23Z

We've been fostering dogs through the Ottawa Catahoula dog rescue. The first one was a nice guy named Mr. Wiggles, 2nd one (who we're still fostering) is Roxy, who's a Cattle dog/catahoula. Here's a photo of her.

Long time no post

2011-05-15T13:38:04Z

Got a new job at the hospital about a month ago, and life just seems to be a little too busy for blogging these days. Lets see..

Been fostering a silly dog, a friend of ours adopted him yesterday.
Made a pine sushi press, I want to remake it with maple.
Hospital job is going ok, it's kind of boring, but hopefully shows promise of getting better.
Am going to put board and batten on the shed.
Bought a table saw, haven't cut fingers off yet.
Am trying to set up a ruby on rails project for Heather, not a ton of time though to really see it through. :/

bobbotron @ 2011-01-31T08:32:00

2011-01-31T13:32:10Z

Last Friday I officially gave my notice for my current job. I got a job offer with the Ottawa Hospital, for a programmer position. Looking forward to it!

Stuff I made for Christmas

2011-01-05T15:46:50Z

It was a busy time before Christmas, lots of wood working!

Mancala boards

Candle boxes

A wooden spoon for my parent's sauna

A inner tube chair (for a contest with the recycles bike shop.)

Home made router table

2010-12-01T16:38:39Z

I made this cheap and chipper 18"x18" router table via the plans on the wood working tips website. I modified it a bit, making the fence slightly differently and creating a small base for it. The top is 3/4" MDF, with about 4 or 5 coats of "Tung Oil" from home depot (pretty sure it isn't but works just fine for this), followed by 2 or 3 coats of blue label paste wax from Lee Valley. The top turned out great, and is quite slippery.

There are no screws in the assembly, it's held together with titebond III glue (and in a few spots, the crap tacular JB Kwik weld epoxy I was testing out), and 3/8" dowels.

The fence is made from a piece of s4s maple I had kicking around. It's supports are held on with cold cure epoxy. I think I'm going to make a new one at some point, this one is pretty darn good, but suffers from a few annoyances. I don't think it's quite square. I need to really crank down the clamps to keep it from moving around on the table top (the slippery surface is a blessing and a curse!) Adjusting the distance to the bit is pretty fidgety. Despite that, I've already got some great use out of it, using it as a jointer using the lee valley jointer shims, and doing some long dados. I think the next one I make will extend beyond the end of the table, that would be useful for some operations. I think I'll use s4s maple again, or get my friend with a jointer to help me out... A higher fence would also be handy, I think.

Here's a photo of it in jointer mode.

My gripes of the table are that the table is quite thick, so it reduces the max cut of a lot of my bits. Thankfully, it isn't much of an issue, and I bought a nice 2" long freud straight cut bit to solve the problem I was having. I've already scratched it's surface once too, whoopes.

Overall I'm super happy with it, it's a great tool, I think I'll get a lot of use out of it. I think if I make another one of these, I will make it about 24" wide, and perhaps a little narrower. I would also probably add hardwood edges, and put some kind off hard plastic laminate finish on top.

bobbotron @ 2010-11-17T16:18:00

2010-11-17T21:22:30Z

While mountain biking is often thought of as a summer sport, I think I would like to declare fall to be the best season for biking in the forest. The temperature's wonderfully cooler, the air smells great, and everything is so crisp. You sweat less, you can wear more clothes (with the side benefit of extra crash protection!)

I like to take time off work in the fall to dedicate a week to enjoying this time of year. Sadly, we're in a crunch this year and I couldn't. Hopefully next year I'll be able to.

Here's a photo of my friend Will, about to hop over a gap on the lime kiln trail in Kanata. We've been going riding before work. Hitting the trails as the sun comes up is a great way to start the day! Will came up with the phrase dawn patrol for the rides, love it.

bobbotron @ 2010-10-27T11:51:00

2010-10-27T15:55:52Z

Hurray, got the web site up for my Mom's craft show!

http://autumntreasures.ca

bobbotron @ 2010-10-13T16:53:00

2010-10-13T20:57:22Z

My bike touring friend TallDave is visiting from out of town. He and his girl friend have been on the road for 2 years! I might end up helping him do a repair on his frame, not sure on that one yet.

Bike update

2010-10-06T17:55:26Z

Got the fork for Heather's bike finished last weekend. It was quite the feeling of accomplishment when they were done, holding the frame and fork in my hands.

It has been quite the struggle with lugs, I can say with certainty that I wish I had gone lugless for this project. I know lugs are a great way to join tubes, but I think I personally am much better at fillet brazing than slip brazing, I just feel full of doubts every time I slip braze, whereas I generally know what kind of job I've done, fillet brazing. If I could find someone locally to help out with lugs, I think I'd feel way better.

I have another tube set, so I think it will be a winter project to build a 2nd frame, which will either be a xc 29er, or a long bike, like the surly big dummy. Fillet brazed this time.

Shoulder is still kinda f'd up, so's my knee. Truly, healing can be a long process.

Work is rather uninspiring these days.

I've been building a router table, almost done, just needs to be waxed and the arbour hole enlarged and then I will be able to test it out. I think the first project will be a candle box.

bobbotron @ 2010-09-10T12:54:00

2010-09-10T16:57:07Z

Doing Paul's Dirty Enduro next weekend, should be fun. Haven't trained as much as I'd like, but I think it will go well. If you want to donate money for it, you can here. :)

bobbotron @ 2010-08-30T16:33:00

2010-08-30T20:36:19Z

Bit of a head cold the last week. Getting over it now, kind of?

Started building some built in book cases for the house on Saturday, two simple pine shelves that fit into a wall in our basement. I cut the dados for 5 shelves per case with my router. Dusty work!

Went mtbing on Saturday, out on the trail off corkstown road, so fun, it's such a unique little area.

Sign box is finished!

2010-08-23T17:00:07Z

bobbotron @ 2010-08-09T16:47:00

2010-08-09T20:49:25Z

Things definitely continue to be, in this neck of the woods. The job is same old, same old. Have done a few wood working projects recently, and am getting frighteningly close to finishing Heathers bike frame (well, except for clean up and paint!) Garden is doing all right. My knee is kind of screwed up, but strangely, feels great mountain biking. I can't explain that.

Heather is trying to convince me to go on a big bike tour next spring. It sure would be a welcome change of pace, holy crap are things regular these days. Could use a shake up.

bobbotron @ 2010-07-22T10:00:00

2010-07-22T14:00:05Z

Slowly making it happen with the bike, next up is finishing off the rear triangle. :) It is starting to look like a bike. Trying to break the practice stay/dropout connection was reassuring, it was seriously on there, I ended up bending my test dropout.

bobbotron @ 2010-05-31T22:01:00

2010-06-01T02:01:10Z

Tonight I.. bought a $65 power cord, cooked some food, walked the dog, dug a hole, move a huge rock, planted a service berry tree, and am in the process of gluing up a 32" square cedar wooden panel for a outdoor bistro table. Sadly I didn't get around to tube mitring.. but I think I did ok!

Edit:
And I got the panel glued and clamped. Man, I wish my days had 30 hours, so many things to do! :P

Back in O-Town

2010-05-18T16:09:16Z

Originally uploaded by bobbotron1.

Got back to Ottawa on Sunday afternoon. Bittersweet to be done the trip, it would have been great to keep going. It was a great trip, and a great way to get back into the swing of things for biking.

H's in Chicoutimi for the next month, on a intensive french course. I'm bach'ing it up for the month, I'm hoping to get a bunch of projects underway and completed. I ordered about $100 worth of chromoly steel from aircraft spruce yesterday, I should be good for practice material for bikes for a while. And it will be enough material to build some stems and a segmented fork.

This photo was from our last day of camping, we camped for free on a closed municipal camp site.

Bike camping

2010-05-13T03:37:03Z

Bike camping
Originally uploaded by bobbotron1.

Woo, this is us along lac st jean! Few days left to go!

Measure twice, cut once

2010-04-15T15:55:35Z

Or cut twice, swear and throw it out the window!

It appears I've made some kind of measurement or calculation error with the frame's front triangle. Putting the tubes together, it appears that I made a measurement error with the TT, putting it all together it just didn't line up. Doh.

Anyway, here's a photo of my work so far, this is the seat tube mitre for the bottom bracket.

bobbotron @ 2010-04-13T11:03:00

2010-04-13T15:14:50Z

Finally, I'm making progress on Heather's bike frame. I've done the mitre's for her top tube and seat tube. Next on the list is the down tube mitre's. The lugs need to be cleaned out some, the fit is too tight right now. Filing the cast steel of the lugs is SLOW, that steel is really hard!

This is really fun - once I get the DT/HT junction mitred, I can do a loose fit of the tubes and see what the front triangle will look like....

bobbotron @ 2010-04-09T16:31:00

2010-04-09T20:31:20Z

Geez, I'm getting old or something. Dealt with some arch problems on one foot over the winter, right knee's been acting weird, and now I think I'm getting an RSI in my right hand from my desk job. Blerg.

bobbotron @ 2010-04-07T08:14:00

2010-04-07T12:25:27Z

Went to my parents house for Easter last weekend, and went to Toronto and saw my aunt's and unc's. It was great, it's been way too long since I've seen all of them, they're all so great.

I recently finished the two work benches I was building for the local bike shop re-cycles. I'm really happy how they turned out, it was a fun project. They're in the back room of recycles, go check them out if you're there! I'm glad to be done it though, they took a ton of time.

I'm happy to have them done because now, with that done and my welding class out of the way, I can get back to this! I have a bunch of tube templates printed, time to start cutting tubes!

H & I might be doing a big bike tour in May.

bobbotron @ 2010-03-12T09:43:00

2010-03-12T14:43:28Z

So far in the welding class I've been taking I've been working with a small torch tip, that produces a small flame that will weld steel up to about 2 mm thick. It's quite manageable to work with. Last night I brought in two sections of an old steel fence I've chopped up - I wanted to weld them end to end to make a bean pole for our garden. The torch tip I have wasn't cutting it, the steel was too thick, it just didn't put out enough heat to get the steel up to melting temperature. So my teacher lent me another torch tip, that was about twice the size of the tip I've been using. Starting up the torch, the differences between tips was apparent immediately. The size of the acetylene flame was a huge, rolling, boiling fireball compared to the small jet of the smaller tip. Just unbelievable. It was easily the most frightening, awesome thing I've worked with in recent memory, what it did to the steel was amazing.

Edit: I should say, there's no point to this post beyond that large O/A torch tips are ludicrous, and I'm happy to have got to use one.

bobbotron @ 2010-03-05T10:33:00

2010-03-05T15:33:53Z

Things keep on trucking. The welding course I've been taking has been really fun, I'll be sad to see it end. I reeeeally want to get a oxy-fuel setup for the house so I can keep practising, though I'm not sure I can get away with it at my place.

Been going to the gym, wood working, and making silly metal sculptures.

Alas, the bike building is going really slowly.

bobbotron @ 2010-01-18T14:42:00

2010-01-18T19:51:05Z

I made two jigs for my router this weekend - one for mortising and one for tenons. Hopefully I'll get to put them to use soon, I'm looking to make a shoe rack, and then a wooden border for a big piece of stained glass we have. The router is an extremely fun tool! It creates a disturbing amount of wood dust though, I think I'll make an outdoors wood bench for it, no need to box myself in the shed with that crap. That and I'm lazy, and cleaning up super fine wood dust is practically impossible in there! :P