reinstalled. So much cleaner.
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Er...Glatt, did you find any dodo fossils under all that excavation?:D

Yesterday I restarted a yearly tradition....finally.....offshore fishing.

all in all it was a great day. Ronnie (the big guy in teh middle on the group pic) and I decided we needed to go offshore just after Bobby's funeral. So basically, it was all the managers from the go-kart track except for one. it was their first time going offshore and everyone had a blast. Shoot, it was Jac's first time to go fishing ever! he didn't do too bad either. Ronnie was the big fish winner with about a 30 pounder.

I had caught 3 keepers but gave one away to a couple that didn't have that much luck and didn't want them to go home empty handed.

Nice! Looks like fun, and that's an impressive catch to my eye.

Actually, now that I think about it a little, I went drift fishing off Florida with my buddies years ago, and it was a miseable time. Something about just bobbing there on the waves. I had never been seasick before, but the sun beating down and the bobbing around just pushed me a little too far. Everyone laughed and said my chumming was good for attracting fish. But it didn't help me so much. I went home empty handed. And empty stomached. :facepalm: good times. :blush:

oh yeah, i've done that plenty of times before! seas were cooperative yesterday. 3-5 ft. with an occasional 10 footer but the frequency of the waves were about 15 seconds so it was a comfortable trip. only about 2 of the 74 got ill.

apparently the person we asked to take the pic didn't know how to focus..... :neutral: guess a half-ass pic is better than no pic :rolleyes:

Very nice. Tell your buddy HE is in the lead for this year's Cellar Fishing Contest!
lol

Hey, snapper season open off Texas?? just asking

Yeah Buster but it's only 30 days long. originally it was to be 14 days. you have until the end of June.

I had to buy some house cleaners for the tank so i bought a Halloween Hermit crab, Blue Knuckle Hermit Crab and this guy errrr gal, a Dragon Gobi. Here she is making herself a home......

Okay, this may not be very impressive to you handy types, but I'm VERY proud of it so far, as this is my first time ever working with power tools.

Attachment 44495

It is the very beginnings of an interactive board for my baby daughter. It is an MDF board decoupaged with scrapbook paper. As I took my break, there are now six door holes and a light switch hole cut in to it. When it's done, the holes will have little doors on hinges, and there will all sorts of things to play with -- barrel bolts, latches, knobs, a touch light, and a door knocker to name a few. Woohoo!

Cool!

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Kitsune snapped this shot of me working. :)

Now that's real handiwork to build your own Fallout Shelter.
Just don't let the neighbors know about it.

P.S. both knees on the ground for stability to avoid industrial accidents.

End of day 1.
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I love that you're using regular hardware for a baby toy. But are you sure you want her learning how door latches work so young?

nice work Chocolatl! Zen's posted my first thought... heehee.. I doubt you're giving her anything she wouldn't get on her own. Abstinence only as strategy is a dismal failure. Better she should use her capacity to understand a door latch to also comprehend "No, no, no." than to live in fear of the day she inevitably figures it out.

what a cool toy!

Thanks guys! We don't have bolts or latches on anything in the house, so I don't need to worry about her applying her newfound knowledge in every day life. It should be good fine motor practice! It'll also take her some time to grow in to -- for now, we're leaving the little doors unlocked. As she gets older, smarter, and more nimble fingered, we'll start locking them. My hope is to get a lot of mileage out of this thing!

AARRRGGHH. Was just reading about all the wonderful carcinogenic chemicals MDF can release over time. Scrapping the board and starting over. It was looking cute, too. :(

Attachment 44517

MDF truly sucks. Solid wood is your best option. Alder, Birch, Maple would be my top choices for ease of machining, cost, and lowest toxicity. Some hardwoods and some softwood can cause skin reactions.

Very impressive!

We had a bunch of shelving installed at work in our old building years ago. Instead of metal shelves, they were MDF, supported by a metal frame. Walking into that room was a terrible assault on your senses. Even your eyes would burn after being in there for half an hour. The worst part was that you couldn't even open a window. It took about two years for the smell to go away. Horrible. There were several thousand board feet of fresh MDF in there though. Nothing like your single board.

Aw, dammit.

Still, good thing you spotted the potential problem before Beans got all hyper-allergic or whatever.

Glatt, that sounds awful!

I initially chose the MDF because it's wonderfully smooth. I knew it would be held together with some kinds of resins, but I didn't realize just how toxic that stuff would be. I imagine just the one board wouldn't be too bad, but the idea that my baby would be handling something that was leaching formaldehyde wasn't very appealing.

Thanks for the wood recommendations, foot. I ended up going with untreated poplar cuz the hardware store only had that and oak. Round two this weekend.

Poplar is excellent.

That's why it's so ... widely liked.


I'll see myself out.

:facepalm:

Seal it with a good lead based paint. ;)

Has anyone mentioned how we've missed you lately?

Bruce! xoxoxo

Tis I... and Juliet is still chaste. :o

waaaitaminit. If it's so "widely liked", why is it still available unlike the other species?

Widely liked = popular = poplar

It was a stretch, and I'm sure Zen feels appropriately ashamed.

Ha! Bet he doesn't. :haha:

I got that. I challenge that. If it *was* WIDELY LIKED, why is there still some of it on the shelves for sale, when the other wood, presumably "not poplar", is sold out?

Zen's puns are unmatched, but this one while both obvious and euphonious was logically backwards. Or is that upside down? Perhaps that's his logic.... :3eye:

I actually didn't like the poplar, popular or not.

Back to MDF, with a non-toxic wood sealant on the way.

Also going to attempt to make a few to sell.

Well, if you want, you could look at it from the other direction: what if other woods were so unpopular that they were never stocked in the first place? My grocery store has no starfruit, but lots of apples, not because people hate apples, but because the grocery store is appropriately anticipating consumer demand.

(Please don't mind me though, I'm just entertaining myself...) :)

Oak a.

Poplar grows exceptionally fast and big. And pretty much all over. Maple is chopped up and burned out here, along with Cherry, Ash, Oak, Birch. There's plenty left over for sawyers. Price and availability fluctuate by what's being cut. There are many many wood puns that I will not repeat. The poplar one is perennial.

Woodworkers have a lot of time, alone with nothing but their own minds to keep them company. If it's a wood pun, it's been said.


Now, Choco, what's not to like about the poplar? Were you using 1/2" MDF and the Poplar is 3/4"?

Poplar only comes up to a foot wide, so you have to join it to make it bigger. Is my guess.

Nah, both were 3/4", just the poplar was a lot rougher. It splintered so easily.

[slightly embarrassed giggling]




:right: u-huh. :D

My neighbor across the street is demolishing his house and I asked him if I could have the bricks from his chimney. He said yes, and his demolition crew piled the whole bricks on a couple pallets on my driveway. They were not cleaned, only separated. I'm cleaning them.

What labor intensive work.

The left pallet represents about six hours of intermittent work as I figured out the best combination of tools to remove the mortar. I've settled on a hatchet. I went through hammer, chisel, power chisel and my favorite pair of gardening gloves in the course of cleaning 54 bricks. I have got to find a way to increase my output.

Note to self: don't forget the ibuprofen with breakfast.

Attachment 44684

V invest in a brick hammer , trust me on this , they are the AMAZING !!!!!!!!

Oh and a wide brick chisel

saw those on some video... I guess I'll get them before breakfast. thanks man!

On your way to the hammer store and back, drag some bricks on the pavement. :haha:

thought about a belt sander...

the mortar is widely variable, some is soft, and some of it is permanent. I won't be using that face on the outside, nope. It destroyed my glove. tomorrow will be leather glove time. dragging/rubbing, etc. I've considered it. even grinding them on the sidewalk. wax on, wax off,

eta:

I heard about a guy that got a diamond encrusted blade on his chop saw and sawed that shit off. I'm thinking about that too.

I think you'll find zippy's hammer quite amazing, but leather gloves for sure.

If you're okay with the occasional gouge on the sides, you could get some serious work done with an angle grinder that has a masonry wheel in it.

Having a vise or something to hold the bricks would be ergonomically smart.

But I think zip has it right; never pass up an opportunity to collect another Estwing.

If you go this route, try to be considerate of your neighbors and don't do your loud obnoxious grinding for hours on end during their prime weekend BBQ time. Grinders make some of the worse noise for power tools. Not to mention the clouds of dust wafting all over the place.

The *chink* *chink* of a brick hammer is much better, imho.

Another idea is to clean them as you are installing them. You are handling them an extra time or two with your method.

Move them to the project, chip at them with the new hammer, install them.

"Laziness is the cool aunt who lets you smoke pot in her house of invention."

Smart grabbing those bricks. $$$$$$$$

Pshaw! All in all it's just another brick in the wall...

You're thinking of Dark Side of the Moon.

Don't give me that do goody good bullshit.

Let's not make this an us and them thing.

You guys were right, A-mazing.
Attachment 44854

V they have been working on that design for a few thousnd years , just the right heft , ju as t the right angle on the pick/chisel side , worth the duckets for cleaning or forming and laying bricks , good job

been a while but here's an ongoing project (aquariums always are).

for the last month or so i have been dealing with sick fish of which 3 of them died. they were a yellow tang, blue damsel and finally my black and white clown fish aka saddle back clown fish i think.

as if it couldn't get any worse, the tank lighting went south. the upper lighting spectrum circuit let the smoke out so i ordered one wednesday and it arrived today. i got that together and installed but not before a very slight piping water leak soaked the power strip causing a circulation pump and my semi-new uv filter to fry. i had a spare circulation pump (in the right top corner there) but the uv filter will have to wait.

i suppose i could splice on a new plug but would rather not do that. come to think of it i might to it for a temporary fix until the new one arrives.

anyway, here is a pic of the tank now all cleaned up and ready (i think) for more inhabitants. on the side of caution i'm going to wait another week and keep a close eye on the 3 fish that are in there. and yeah, i quarantined the sick fish and treated them but to no avail.

It's a full time job taking care of that tank.

sure is, but worth it imo! :)