diy

The light came with an alternate mount that screws on to the handlebar but it makes taking the light off more annoying, and obviously removes the ability to freely put the light on different bikes

I was hoping this design was universal but none of the straps I'm seeing online have the screw hole. Well, there is one very similar strap but I'd have to pay 13€ postage on a 5€ item which offends me on a spiritual level

We miraculously managed to get a good deal that we could blow all our savings on to get this new HVAC unit installed about a year ago. In the last few days, it's suddenly started producing a sour smell, particularly in my room. Looking up the issue, all I see is people saying to call someone to get it cleaned because it's mold and/or bacteria build-up. I changed the filter, but the one that was there was barely dirty at all, so I don't think that was much of a fix.

I can't go into detail, but there's a lot going on right now and we can't afford much. We barely even have time to organize fixing something like this. But I don't want to take risks with our health.

Can I get some advice please? What would y'all do?

*also my god the youtube algorithm-fueled thumbnails that come up when searching for tutorials on what to do about this are truly horrendous, look at this shit, just straight up embarrassing

A woman reached out to my coop shop because she is getting rid of her late son’s tools, specifically a 40W glowforge laser. We already have a laser, so I’m passing it on. NYC area, I believe.

Edit: laser is claimed!

Got some time this week to get on with woodworking, and I've made something I've been planning for months at this time but couldn't get to doing:

So yeah, it's simply a pine wood structure composed of two 100x60cm^2^ boards, one of which is simply lying on the shotgun and rear seats when folded, and the rear board has a cutout for that weird grey shelf of the trunk, and I cut some mortises in it to fit the base I made for it.

Here you can see the mortises and tenons more in detail. I went with this instead of screws because it's cheap and doesn't require additional hardware, it's easy to assemble and disassemble, and I honestly have fun banging mortises with the chisel and mallet

Here you can see it with the foldable high density foam mattress I picked up on AliExpress for like 45€, which is honestly more comfy than expected if you don't mind a hard bed. I'm a super tall guy so the whole thing needed to be 2m long, and I made it 60cm wide, the same as the mattress.

The support structure for the bottom conveniently disassembles into three pieces and takes very little space in the trunk!

Finally, the whole thing disassembled and in the trunk. I'm quite stoked of how it turned out. The total cost hovers around the 80-90€, I spent essentially 45€ on the mattress (whose plastic cover will obviously be removed once I start using it) and around 40€ on the wood you're seeing (I locally bought for 85€ a 22mm thick pine board of 240x120cm^2^ and used about half of it). There's really not much more to it, since I used no hardware, and I banged it all using handtools on the roman workbench I featured in my previous DIY post.

Oh btw the car is a Renault Grand Scenic from 2006, an old diesel beater I bought for 2000€ with 200.000km some months ago with this idea of travelling around Spain with it. It's pretty long so it's nice for a tall guy like me to be able to lie down fully inside it, and also it's quite fuel efficient, running at around 4.6L/100km in my experience over the past months.

Thanks for taking a look :)

I'm considering a shed but that's a lot of space and money. I'm wondering if there are some cheaper alternatives like maybe fitting a bike rack (??) with powdered concrete. Any thoughts?

The wardrobe was massive and a god damn awful pain in the arse to unbuild (and too big to take to the tip in our tiny car) but it had to be done, leaving this gross wallpaper and possibly damage all the way to the original plaster from ca. 1907.

The shelving tracks on the right are ancient and the screws just wont budge at all. There's half a dozen layers of paint and wallpaper making it worse (you can see how deep it goes where the shelves have been in place even longer). Any ideas on decimating some old ass screws would be cool. We can afford to hire or borrow powertools if that's necessary.

EDIT oh we peeled some of it back and the plaster is fucked to the brick lmao

I've been wanting to get going with woodworking on my newly made low roman workbench for a while now but I couldn't due to thesis manuscript.

Here you can see some rough planing of the surface of another workbench I wanna make for a buddy of mine, I'm gonna make a wooden bow workshop over the summer with friends and they need work surfaces to be able to do so. Thankfully I found a very cheap supplier of lumber in the province of Cuenca and the entire workbench will set me back only some 10€, kinda crazy.

This picture is just mood tbh. I love the little corner I have for my woodworking, the low workbench working both as seating and as workbench simultaneously makes it super compact, and the light was beautiful, finally it's the sunny season in Spain after a few months of unusually rainy spring

Here is the try square I wanted to make, finished and coated in linseed oil. I made some paste wax following the recipe of Wood by Wright (2 parts beeswax, 2 parts linseed oil, 1 part mineral spirits). This try square will open up a lot of possibilities regarding stock dimensioning and precise planning and lineup drawing, I'm stoked about it and it turned very straight!

Finally, a pic of the piece of log from which I split the wood to make the try square, it's from a tree they cut down locally and I hauled it home by hand, so yeah, free wood!! It's super hard, no idea what species it is, I'm used to pine and fir, so working with a hardwood like this is surprisingly different

A while back, my u-lock's plastic mount broke while I was riding my bike, sending the lock straight into the pavement. The impact broke off the hard plastic/rubber bit on the lock itself that slots into the mount so I can't even get a cheap replacement mount from China.

For over a year I've hooked the lock onto one of the shoulder straps on my backpack but I noticed the added weight and stress of a heavy piece of metal dangling off the strap has caused the stitching to start to rip.

I'm getting tired of lugging this thing around. Doea anyone have any ideas for mounting it back on the frame?

My Instagram, in case you're into this sort of thing (Lego).

Dear friends,

Last month, I posted this big project idea of mine to Hexbear's as well as Beehaw's DIY communities. Now I'd like to give you an update.

All figures I'm referring to are here: https://imgur.com/a/b8vGfQf

First, a big thank you to all who have replied, you've helped me a lot in making this project a reality. I have distilled your answers, tips and critiques into a text document, and I can happily tell you that they gave me a more realistic understanding of what I want to accomplish.

I formatted the post like this because it's quite long, and I like to yap, as the kids say.

151x39 cm: (length of desk + length of Kallax tower) x (width of Kallax)
A second 151x39 for the other side
280x39 cm: (length of Kallax-es on either side + distance between them)

Open questions at the end of all this:

I'd like to hear your general thoughts and concerns!
Which wood for the long 5m shelf? 
Lap joints as described above: yay or nay?
Lighting systems?
Back wall of desks?

THANK YOU <3

Not for any real purpose yet but I think it would be a fun project and could help us get used to using secure communications outside of our phones. Does anyone have experience setting one up? Also there was a guide posted somewhere on Lemmy recently that I am having trouble finding if anyone could share.

Not for any real purpose yet but I think it would be a fun project and could help us get used to using secure communications outside of our phones. Does anyone have experience setting one up? Also there was a guide posted somewhere on Lemmy recently that I am having trouble finding if anyone could share.

this is the handiest I have ever felt

someone had already posted the shape online so it was really simple

I think the title says it all but if needed - I'll edit this. Of course I googled but I got nowhere. Google results were total shit. Google won't help me if I don't know the exact name for that fucking thing. It's a very stupid design choice. Five regular old push buttons would be so much better.

About an hour ago I managed to stick it back on but I'm nearly 100% sure it's going to fall off again in week or two if not far sooner.

---

Edit

I don't mean part of the unit itself. I mean just the thin plastic cover over the buttons that's ~3mm thick.

This post is about milk paint. I am currently in the tail stages of constructing my first piece of furniture, an antique inspired tool chest to hold my small collection and keep it organized and free from dust. The layout is largely based off of the anarchist's tool chest by Christopher Schwartz at lost art press, and is available free to download, only I am doing the plywood version which is available as a YouTube series as well. You can catch it here:

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLOUEnRdBNW4PsmAENQb-Y9UzrHnXzUjqc

Anyway I have been moving forward with a mix of hand tools and power tools depending on my mood or needs at the time, and being a beginning woodworker have left my share of tool marks, plane tracks etc, and of course a very healthy amount of wood filler. Any gap in joinery caused from being slightly out of square, or tearout when drilling countersink holes etc, I patched with filler and moved on, knowing the chest would be painted and nobody would be any the wiser.

Here is where milk paint enters the picture, in particular casein paint. One of the things I wanted to try was to finish the chest using an undercoat of red milk paint covered with black milk paint then finished with wax. Unlike modern plastic paints, these paints are less durable and wear through with time, the rationale being that as the chest is used the most frequently touched areas show the black wearing away with the red revealed underneath. This is a popular finishing technique particularly for antique inspired chairs.

I ordered casein powder and picked up borax from the local hardware store and ordered oxide pigments online. They are not hard to find. I made the binder, mixing the 5 parts casein to 2 parts borax in 18 parts water and heating to 140 and holding overnight. This is added to 3-5 parts of pigment and diluted with water for use.

You can see the grain of the wood really clearly in the OP pic. It shows the paint on a test piece where half is covered with a heavier first coat as there was more pigment in the mix, then a lighter second coat where the paint was watered down to stretch it for a second coat. Using this material I can get a range of different colors, depending on the application. Now the interesting part. This paint shows EVERYTHING. It absorbs into the grain and reveals the underlying texture, and highlights every imperfection. The tool chest looks like absolute shit. And I love it.

Here's a photo of some plane marks left behind and accentuated by the milk paint:

The end result is something that has unequivocally been created by human hands with attention and care (if not skill lol). You simply won't get this finish from a factory.

And my absolute favorite part? It's completely nontoxic. I painted the relatively large tool chest in my enclosed garage, in the winter, no fumes to deal with. When I spilled a bit on my pants I scrubbed it out with soap and water. When I am finished, I can pour the whole lot down the sink without worrying about introducing VOCs into my water supply! It's milk and borax!

I am from this point forward no longer using commercial paints for any but the most durability critical applications. No more waiting for household hazardous waste day, no more painting with a respirator with the garage doors wide open in 30 degree weather. Paint doesn't have to be toxic waste!

Next I will build a step stool for my little one and plan on finishing with milk based oxide paint. I can rest easy knowing that if she chews on it she will be safe. For that project I will also be investigating the use of homemade hide glue as an alternative to modern, plastic glues. It can be made with gelatin and salt. I've even heard of people using gummy bears.

This is one of the cooler things I've done and I wanted to share it with y'all. It really makes me reflect on what we've sacrificed in the name of "convenience" and "durability"

My rental unit has a gas fireplace that's controlled by remote. The remote fell about 3 feet and the LCD shattered. The remote is still functional, the screen is just cracked and bleeding. Replacements cost $100 and I'm on the hook for it if my landlord finds out. Haven't been able to find any cheaper compatible remotes either.

Any thoughts about how I might be able to track down a replacement LCD? Is it even worth it? The LCD seems pretty specialized.

I looked up how to build a ladder and this how stuff works post was a top hit.

What the fuck is going on here. I have never seen anyone stand on a ladder like these 2 dudes. Is this an acceptable way to use a ladder????

so bored i wanna close my eyes and dream awake

hi comrades update poooost

it's been a bit. three months or so since the last post. this project is deeply near and dear to my heart and it's not abandoned but there was a bit there where i fell off the face of the earth and i wanna fill in that gap.

i've been off and on for the past three months, but for the past two weeks in particular i've been on. i made a commitment to myself to spend time on this before work - this is my most valuable and reliable time slot in a day - and i've been reliably making updates every single day i haven't had a prior obligation. it's a habit now. i've been deeply personally turbulent lately, much more for better than for worse but in ways that really take most of my awake time - except this before work slot. wouldn't want to spend it on anything else.

the posts dried up for two reasons - one, the development recently has been feeling like the last leg of a marathon. nothing new is really happening, there's no news besides that i'm closer than i was last time, and there's nothing notable to report until i actually dot the final i and cross the final t and then i buy one and i get it in my hand. two, writing the posts actually took a lot of time - i was finding a few hours per week for sphynx time, and post-writing became one or two of them, because i care a lot about documentation and presentation and communications. that's kinda not sustainable. my fix for this has been taking things to matrix. sphynx has a matrix room now. i find it FAR more sustainable to bang out a couple quick 30 second messages when i finish up a work session than writing a post aggregating all of those every week or two. if you want know if/when/how i'm still working on the project, you can either check the git logs, which is where most of the work will live, or join the matrix room for more interactive and human readable updates (and even a place to hang out??). DM me your matrix handle for a link ✨

as for technicals, here's a brief summary of what i've done since the last post:

• implement some additional safety features, including but not limited to top-level current limiting diode to prevent overcurrent, inline resistor to also prevent overcurrent, and a parallel bleeder resistor to prevent the probe being weird inbetween pulses
• replacing parts that i spec'd from the JLCPCB extended library with basic library parts - each time i do this the sphynx gets $3 cheaper.
• in general, getting all parts at least in the extended library so that you can order a sphynx, not even own a soldering iron, and get to using it. this has involved a lot of part swaps, some which are moving targets - spec a part, find it on JLCPCB, replace it, do other stuff, come back, it's out of stock and you have to replace it again. very frustrating.
• updating PCB graphics - better knob indicators, better labeling, paring down unnecessary test points and jumpers and other junk, etc.
• probably more but i'm forgetting

realistically, this is the last post until i have the sphynx lite RC2 in my hand. as it stands this is likely my whole work sesh for the morning but i dearly love you all and you deserve to know what i'm up to and this was a good use of my morning. thank you for everyone who's been following. let's talk soon.

What did I expect from a $50 chair, but now it works.

18th century joiner plane. All it needed was a little flattening, and sharpening of the iron and chip breaker. It takes a beautiful shaving now.

I am working towards building my own workbench. When I moved in there was one in the garage already but the top is MDF, and it's way too wide at like 5 feet. I hate that I can't walk around it or reach the other side, it gets mad dirty back there.

I am going to make a fore plane next, but before that I need to make floats. Then I will be all set.