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Introduction This post describes a project I did in the past. It was the first project that I did more-or-less independently of parental encouragement, and I learned a lot of skills in the process. I’d say that this project is the precursor to all my other projects. At some point, my mom bought a wooden go-kart. The frame was built in an “𐌆” shape with a string wrapped around the steering column (a dowel) moving the swivel-mounted front wheels, kind of like a bow drill but in reverse. A brake lever pulled a cable that pulled a wooden board …
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This Fixit Clinic was held in the Hayward Library. It was a slow day, possibly because of the July 4th weekend travel rush. First, I watched other people fix a 50-year-old blender running loudly and slowly, even at the highest setting. It was a joy to take apart: a few hex-head self-tapping screws held the bottom plate in place, which could be removed to access all the electronics. The bearings on the universal motor were dry and needed oil, though amazingly, the carbon brushes were still in fine shape after so many years of heavy use. An older fixer also…
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I attended this event after taking a bit of a break from Repair Café/Fixit Clinic, which I enjoy and benefit from, in order to self-study two AP courses, which I dislike and… maybe benefit from. Anyhow, this event was at the Saratoga Library and there were a few high schoolers attending! First up was an adjustable-height overbed table that the client had bought disassembled and couldn’t figure out how to assemble. The upper part of the table was supported at one end by a square tube that telescoped into a slightly larger tube extending out of the table’s legs. A…
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The other day, as a result of playing with gasoline, I got some second-degree burns. Eight years ago, in preparation for a backpacking trip to Sword Lake, my dad bought a 1-gallon can of Coleman Fuel (a petroleum distillate similar to gasoline but without the engine-performance-enhancing additives), to fuel his Coleman 442 pressure stove. After using it for a few camping trips and to melt zinc, the fuel was finally finished as I continued my metal-casting project over this summer break. Of course, the fuel can wasn’t exactly empty. I did my best to pour out the …
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Introduction For no reason at all, I decided one day to make one of those top-lit updraft (TLUD) wood gasifier stoves that are a common design for DIY small biomass-fueled stove projects. The design has been researched pretty extensively and is viewed as a promising stove design to replace dirty and smoky biomass stoves commonly used in developing countries. It has the advantage of simplicity, versatility, efficiency, and being very clean-burning. The TLUD operates by creating and burning wood gas efficiently. This is accomplished by limiting the amount of air a lit batch of biomass (usually small sticks) receives, producing…
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The concept of an oil lamp made out of a sardine tin is nothing new. The idea has been explored by others as a sort of survival lamp, which can be made with very simple materials. However, my design is different in that it’s meant to be used regularly and provide a brighter flame than most DIY oil lamps. Why use a sardine tin for an oil lamp? Firstly, its shape: vegetable/animal oils are rather thick, which means that they can’t wick up very far and that the oil level must be kept within a narrow range for the lamp…
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Finding no other similar resources online, I created this printable list of the keyboard shortcuts in Ubuntu. There’s only one change from the default shortcuts: I’ve set Ctrl+Space to be the shortcut for playing/pausing media playback. If you like you can edit the provided .odt file. Here’s the infinitely low-tech way I got all these shortcuts as text:After looking for a list of the shortcuts online and failing to find one, I took screenshots of them and sent them to a text identifier. Then I manually copy-pasted the output into a table. shortcuts.pdfDownload shortcuts.odtDownload…
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Introduction Where I live, the soil has a very high clay content, so I’ve tried a few times in the past to turn it into some usable clay-like material. Clay is easier to work with than metal and wood, can endure high temperatures unlike plastic, and is more durable. In my attempt to cast zinc, I simply mixed dirt with enough sand to prevent cracking and formed it into very simple molds that by virtue of their porosity were really temperature-resistant. (Seriously. I used this sand-dirt to make a tiny blowtorch-powered furnace and used it to melt copper. You …
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I created a tree map of Jane Lathrop Stanford Middle School for my Broadcast Media class in 8th grade, but it was never published. As I was doing research for that project, I stumbled upon the Canopy Tree Plotter, a tree map of Palo Alto, though since it didn’t list the trees at JLS, I didn’t use it. Going back yesterday, I saw that the map was partially crowdsourced, so anybody could contribute, and I decided to add the tree map there. You can see it here. Going back to the original map I created, I noticed many …
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Introduction I’ve been trying to refine my backyard soil into some workable clay in order to further my metal casting project. As you can imagine, this comes with some challenges as not all clay, even when purified, is suitable for making stuff. In the case of the clay in my area, it’s very sticky and plastic, cracks when drying, and has low wet strength. Because of this, I’ve tried a few things to improve its working properties, with some success and some failure. I started by creating a light slurry of dirt and water to separate the clay, which …
