Chuck Grimmett

Archives

Month: May 2024

  • Week of May 6, 2024

    Potty training update: We kept Charlie home for four days, then he went back to daycare on Tuesday. Overall he has the gist of it and we are very proud of him. The next thing we are working through is that he sometimes doesn’t want to stop playing, so he has accidents. We keep reminding ourselves that it has only been 10 days since we started and he has been 90% of the way there since day 4, and the remaining 10% will just take some time.

    One thing we didn’t expect is how grumpy Charlie would be this week. Regularly being reminded at home and at daycare to stop and try to potty after being able to go anywhere and any time you want must be very frustrating. Any time we’ve tried to direct him or make a suggestion on anything, we’re met with a lot of resistance. I get it little man, it is tough being told what to do.

    A Charlie highlight unrelated to potty from the week is that he is now comfortable going out and playing in the backyard while we are in the house (keeping a partial eye on him through the window). He is also climbing the rocks in the woods while we stand down on the path. He is getting a lot more independent!

    We needed to get out and burn some energy Saturday afternoon, so Charlie rode his bike around Depew Park and then played at the playground. He loved it, especially stopping at the STOP signs and asking what the other ones meant. We are big into signs right now.

    Lots of yard work on Saturday:

    • Mowed the grass
    • Trimmed the edges with the battery-powered weed eater. So nice to grab it and put a battery in vs messing around with gas and starter fluid.
    • Planted the seeds we started in the garden beds. Honestly mediocre to poor seedlings, so we’ll see how they do.
    • Direct sowed new seeds in certain spots.
    • Added more dirt to the potatoes.
    • Got out the hoses and hooked them up.
    • Moved half of the dirt pile from the sandbox.

    You can just get up and make garlic aioli whenever you want. It is delicious and no one will stop you.

    I’m liking LLAMA3. I run it locally using https://ollama.com/ and interface with it on the command line. Not quite good enough to cancel my OpenAI subscription, but it is nice to have a fast free alternative.

    I’d love to run this on my home server and put it behind a login so I can use it, but I don’t think the FreedomBox could handle it. I need to keep use cases like that in mind for future setups.

    Now that summer is around the corner, time to start thinking about making another batch of falernum, orgeat, and allspice dram.

    I have some recipes picked out, but need the time to make them. Perhaps one night this coming week.

    Our friends Colin and Hayden had us over for dinner on Friday. It was nice to catch up with them. It is always nice when friends without kids have no qualms about having us over, knowing full well that kids are unpredictable.

    Update to my first aid kits: I got these little containers on Amazon (stickers included!) and put together a set for my backpack, Amanda’s bag, the car, and the emergency box. Each includes:

    • Advil
    • Aspirin
    • Tylenol
    • Dayquil
    • Allegra
    • Pepto Bismol tablets
    • Pepcid
    • Gaviscon

    Here is a photo I took before I finished putting them together and labeling.

    Almost time to start making cold brew again. I still drink hot coffee in the mornings, but in the afternoons cold coffee is nice.

    Have you noticed that Twitter basically stopped showing external links in the “For you” feed? What bullshit. Not my social web.

    Speaking of, I’ve had all social apps off of my phone again for the last couple weeks. Only using them on my computer right now. Highly recommended.

  • Workshop dust collection

    This is part 3 of my workshop upgrade series. Previously:

    With my workshop upgrade, I decided it is time to get serious about dust collection.

    As I wrote about in the workbench build post, my main constraint is lack of floor space in the 10×14′ shed. So whatever I came up with must be mounted to the wall.

    After watching a bunch of videos, I decided to go with a Harbor Freight 2HP Dust Collector with a canister filter in place of the filter bag for finer filtration, with hoses running to my Shopsmith and bench, and one hose at the dust collector for vacuuming up the shop.

    What I bought:

    Installation and setup

    I took the dust collector motor & fan out of the box and went to work mounting it to the wall. Had I taken 2 more minutes and unpacked the rest of the box, I would have found the motor stand, which would have made mounting the motor to the wall a LOT easier. Instead I drilled holes on a 1″ thick board, bolted the motor to the board, then bolted the board to 2x4s spanning the studs. The 2x4s are attached to the studs with lag bolts.

    The motor is pretty heavy, so in order to get it up there I temporarily screwed a 6″ 2×4 to the main board to act as a cleat while I got the bolts in place.

    Next I hung the collector to the wall. It isn’t bearing much weight (the canister filter isn’t heavy and the dust bag rests on some drawers), so I just punched a couple holes in it and screwed it into the 2×4 studs. I covered the screw holes with aluminum tape, then set the canister filter on top and secured it with turnbuckles.

    Next I ran the 5″ hose from the fan to the collector. My collector was just a little too far away since the ports are pointing different directions, so I had to make an extension with some air conditioner exhaust hose I had in the basement and some aluminum tape. At this point I put the bag on and attached one of the 4″ hoses, and tested it out. It worked as expected!

    The next day I ran hoses in the rafters and put in the Y-splitter. I didn’t take into account that my blast gates and Y-splitter had the same diameter, so I needed adapters to connect them. While climbing down off the ladder, a plastic deli quart container caught my eye, and I thought, “that might work!”. The bottom fit inside the blast gate and the top fit over the Y-splitter. It is a bit on the redneck engineering side, but it works.

    Reddit liked it. A couple naysayers said they’d collapse when I left the blast gates closed, but they do not. The ends are supported and rigid, and they’d need to flatten out in order to collapse. I’ve had no issues so far in the past two months.

    I have a hose running through the rafters to the Y-splitter, which then drops a hose to the Shopsmith and continues on over to the bench. Blast gates for both.

    At the Shopsmith I have a port on the bandsaw and a dust hood on the carriage under the lathe.

    The bench hose is stored up out of the way, ready to be pulled down and used with a dust hood for the router and belt sander, or a port on the miter saw or benchtop table saw (though I prefer to use the saws when if I can).

    The last hose I added a couple weeks later is one with a nozzle and handle for general vacuuming around the shop. I use it the most.

    I turn the dust collector on and off with a remote control that I keep in my pocket.

    Considerations

    I considered making it a two-step system by adding a cyclone separator or baffle before the fan, but decided it wasn’t worth the decrease in suction power. This video is the one that put me over the edge. I’ve only sucked up big chunks that got caught and blocked the fan intake twice in the past two months, and it only takes 30 seconds to clear. Not a big deal.

    I went with a canister filter over the bag filter for both increased airflow and better filtration (0.5 microns with the filter vs 5 microns with the bag).

    If I do a lot of sanding, I may need to do some additional air filtration, not because of the filter, but because catching it off of a sander in the first place is difficult. In that case I may mount another canister filter up in the rafters along with a high powered fan, as described in this video. So far the dust hood worked well with sanding a few things on the lathe, but my door has also been open. We’ll see.

    Overall this has been a huge improvement, keeping my shop a lot cleaner and cutting way down on the dust. I’m glad I put it in.

  • Turning a T-ball Bat

    ,

    Charlie started showing some interest in baseball, so I decided to turn a small bat for him on the Shopsmith. Starter t-ball bats are roughly 24″ long and ~ 1.9″ in diameter, so that was my guide.

    I made this one out of a pine 4×4 I had in the rafters. I know bats are usually made from ash, but I wanted to make one as light as possible, and he’ll start using softer baseballs anyway. I’ll make a bigger one out of ash in a few years.

    Steps:

    Roughing with a large gouge.

    Turning down to ~2″ in diameter with a bedan and a skew.

    Marking out the transitions and depths with a parting tool.

    Final shaping and sanding.

    Cutting down the ends with the bedan to make them easier to cut off with a saw.

    Wiping on polyurethane to finish and protect.

    Charlie likes it! He had some good hits for his first time using a bat and a tee.

    For the future, I should the transition from handle to main striking part of the bat a little longer to reduce the weight. I’ll do that with the next one out of hardwood.

  • Week of April 29, 2024

    The big thing this week is potty training round two. Charlie is a champ and making good progress, but we are all worn out and a bit stressed. I took naps twice this weekend, which is big because I almost never nap unless I am sick.

    Despite the protests, each day is better than the last. We just finished day three, and decided to keep him home from daycare tomorrow to get some more wins and make this our new normal before introducing another transition.

    We are proud of Charlie, though we are frazzled and ready to get back to normal. Human emotions are complex, so it can be both.

    We finished the sandbox this week! Separate post coming soon, but Charlie loves it.

    I also finished Charlie’s baseball bat this week. Separate post coming for that as well. Trying to put out smaller project posts more frequently, too.

    I made a new-to-us blended tiki drink this week, the Coconaut. Dark Jamaican rum, Coco Lopez, and lime juice, blended with ice. It was good, but I prefer the Angostura Colada (I just didn’t have pineapple juice on-hand.)

    Played with a Flipper Zero a little this week, and looking forward to doing more with it. Flashed it with the Momentum firmware and added a bunch of assets from UberGuido.

    Mowing season is upon us. I really like having a battery powered mower. Not having to deal with gas, oil, and pulling a cord to start mowing makes a big difference. Much quieter, too. I hate getting the gas-powered weedeater out, so I decided to get a battery powered one as well. I put it together just before a rainstorm hit, so I’ll probably get it out when I mow this week.

    We have firm dates set for the fence replacement and sump installation 🙌

    Next: Radon abatement.

    I did a bit of clean up and maintenance in the workshop while Charlie napped today:

    • Paste wax on the Shopsmith carriage
    • Paste wax on saw tables (didn’t get to the planer tables, but that is next)
    • Cleaned off the green cabinet and put the bolt drawers up there
    • Fixed the lock on the green cabinet (used more as a latch than a lock)
    • Put a couple things in the rafters
    • Made a french cleat for the saw blades
    • Vacuumed

    It is a lot easier to go out and start a new project when things are clean, organized, and maintained.

    I used to think it was incredible that my Dad could look at some threads for a missing bolt then go rummage around in some drawers full of bolts for a couple minutes and come back with one that fits. Now I’m getting there, too. It is a function of having the bolts and working on enough stuff to recognize what you need. The lock I fixed was missing a bolt, but I rummaged around and found one that fit, and when it was a bit too long I added a couple washers. Works just fine.

    Amanda likes to say that my Dad, Charlie, and I all have the same natural curiosity about how things work and interest in tinkering. Charlie surprised me by grabbing parts of the weedeater and figuring out pretty quickly (and with no input from me) where they go. He doesn’t have the dexterity or strength to put them together, but he has the right idea.

    New ice cream place opened in Peekskill this week. We had to check it out.

    My allergies are surprisingly mild this year, despite it being a pretty rough pollen season. I haven’t had to take allergy medicine yet. Only two things I know of have changed: I started taking probiotics and spirulina daily. There haven’t been wide enough trials to show a positive link with spirulina, but there is a positive link with probiotics, in particular ones that contain Bifidobacterium longum and Lactobacillus gasseri strains (the probiotics I take include those.)

    I’ll take it! I’ve suffered from seasonal allergies a lot in the last 20 years and it is a literal breath of fresh air to not suffer this year.

    Until next week ☕