The Do-it-Yourself Thread: A Home for Handymen and Artisans - General

[QUOTE=Big Dumb American;41762723]Anybody think of any cool projects to do with a whole shitload of wicker baskets? The antique furniture place downstairs has a massive bin of old wicker baskeys for a dollar apiece. It's a really swell deal, but I can't think of anything I could actually use them for![/QUOTE] Slap some Longaberger labels on them and sell them for millions.

I'm building my own computer desk and I need a stencil, but I have a hard time finding a motif I like. Been looking for something not too complex, in the theme of heavy metal. Most logos I find are lame generic skulls.

I think I actually will attempt to resell them. I bet I could toss on Craigslist or Ebay for four or five bucks a pop and move them without too much hassle. There are probably fifteen or twenty in that bin. If I make three bucks profit on each one, I'd have an extra sixty smackers to work with. And if I can't, well. It's only twenty bucks!

Think you could take a few pictures of the antique shop when you go on your basket buying spree? I'm a hobbyist antique broker myself, so I might be able to help you find some other stuff to sell.

I prolly could do that. There's not much else that was really interesting to me, but I don't have much of an eye for antiques. Too expensive for old wood in my opinion! :v: If I'm gonna be buying weathered old wood, I'm gonna want it free or cheap as heck, so I can tear it apart and make something junky-cool out of it. The store's owner has some old doors and window frames I'd be interested in, but she's asking a bit too much for 'em for me to want to bite. I live in the historic oldtown area of my city. Brick road along the river and lots of mom and pop shops. If you throw a brick on this street, chances are good it'll crash through the window of an antique store. Hell, even my apartment was built in the 1800's. The bricks are so old that some of them are crumbling. Big expensive market for old furniture out here, so I'm mostly interested in whatever neat scraps they don't feel like selling. Like old wicker baskets for a buck apiece.

I made a fence. It's somewhat not level because I'm lazy and didn't want to spend more than 6 hours on something I wasn't interested in and wasn't being paid for, so I dug all the holes to the same depth, slammed the posts in buried em, smashed the rails on and job done. It's good and robust though. [img]https://fbcdn-sphotos-c-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-prn2/q85/s720x720/1098192_10201064442566420_1493302008_n.jpg[/img]

That is a fence... Now you've got to talk your best friend into whitewashing it.

Set up a kitchen for my dads office and of course he had no time to help but I had a friend of his with me and since the sinks were round we couln't simply cut 2 squares in the working...er... plate(?) but had to do circles. Took us a while to figure how but then then we just hammered a nail in, tied string to it and the other side of the string to a pen and presto, 2 clean round circles. No pictures yet, maybe later.

So, here's an interesting little thing. I've got an office chair coming tomorrow. That's not the interesting bit, though. The interesting bit is that it's an almost EXACT replica of an Eames shell chair. Even down to the locations of the holes in the mounting bracket in the bottom (It's a narrow mount configuration.) Sits like one, too, but it's plastic instead of fiberglass. (It's shiny, and I slide out of the one I'm sitting in occasionally.) Chair's $50 on Walmart's website, it's called the Mainstays Contemporary Office Chair. I got the one I'm sitting in now, Lime Green, on clearance for $15. The white one coming tomorrow was, as I said, $50. Still beats the $200 you pay for an actual Eames shell. If you're interested, the link is here: [url]http://www.walmart.com/ip/Mainstays-Contemporary-Office-Chair-Multiple-Colors/20525941[/url]

Garage door opener remote broke (switch wore out) and the past few months I had to manually open and close it from a button in the garage. Not a big deal. Was cleaning out my parts bucket and found a switch for an old laser for a bbgun. Ripped it out and was just big enough to create a short on the back-end of the remote pcb, so I soldered it on. I cut a hole in the plastic to reach it and yeah worked perfectly. felt good saving 30 bucks.

Found a coax cable in the shed, used it to wire up my TV, thank god there are already 2 holes where LAN cables go through right now. These images were made while I was messing around trying to optimize the reception. [T]http://i.imgur.com/lNrzPgk.jpg[/T] Obviously, Discovery Channel has a poor reception in this image. [T]http://i.imgur.com/EI39kPb.jpg[/T] And this is the point downstairs where 2 individual coax cables are mangled together. (Didn't find out the outer metallic crap was required too to ensure a proper signal quality, signal is almost perfect now.)

bought a few fish for that tank i was talking about. found this guy that does a ton of tropical fish not far from where i live, much better selection than any petshop. 3 neon tetras, 3 corydoras for algae purposes and 3 platy. gonna get bigger fish over time, i just wanna make sure the water quality is fine, dropping money on more expensive fish and having them die quickly wouldn't be too fun. maybe half a dozen more tetras would be nice, seeing them swim in swarms around the rocks is awesome. might get some shrimp too.

[QUOTE=Craptasket;41862382]Garage door opener remote broke (switch wore out) and the past few months I had to manually open and close it from a button in the garage. Not a big deal. Was cleaning out my parts bucket and found a switch for an old laser for a bbgun. Ripped it out and was just big enough to create a short on the back-end of the remote pcb, so I soldered it on. I cut a hole in the plastic to reach it and yeah worked perfectly. felt good saving 30 bucks.[/QUOTE] should have just attached the door opener to the gun, shoot the garage door to open it

4'x4' pallet table (if you're going to do anything with pallets, make sure they're heat treated ((there should be HT near the other identifying stamps)), some pallets are treated with chemicals that are dangerous to breath in over long periods of time). [thumb]http://i.imgur.com/dRphOSx.jpg[/thumb] [thumb]http://i.imgur.com/N2RVZ2q.jpg[/thumb]

aren't pallets that are chemical coated usually painted blue? maybe it's different in america, idk. but when we used to go collecting for bonfires we always avoided them

I've seen a few pallets chemically treated that aren't blue, so I always check. Around my state, if they're blue they are owned by Wal-Mart and made to be reused.

It's not painted blue, but chemical treated(pressure treated) wood usually has a slightly bluer hue. It's got arsenic and nice stuff in it. It's not really toxic to be around Undisturbed. Don't burn it, eat off it or breath in sawdust

well that's weird, coated pallets are literally painted bright blue here. probably to stop people collecting for bonfires on july 12th and haloween

Both of a friend of mine and I are Whovians, her more than I. So I decided to cut/build/paint a scale TARDIS with working fading light as a birthday gift for her: [video=youtube;Q_WSZS8MKX8]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_WSZS8MKX8[/video] (Ignore the audio and poor video quality, my phone likes to make most recorded audio tinny, including my voice)

Speaking of Dr. Who, I saw a Dalek in the town square the other day. It wasn't all exterminate-y, so I ignored it.

Probably the dumbest DIY thing I've done yet, but: I was trying to find a wireless box to stream from my computer to a TV in the other room via HDMI, but all of the ones I found ended up being over ~$200, so I decided to link up all the HDMI cables I had (3) and got a huge 3.5mm audio cable for sound, meaning I'm running about 100 ft of cable total from my room to the TV. Now that I've done it, any obviously easier/not frankenstein solutions?

Raspberry pi?

[QUOTE=Trooper0315;41900584]Probably the dumbest DIY thing I've done yet, but: I was trying to find a wireless box to stream from my computer to a TV in the other room via HDMI, but all of the ones I found ended up being over ~$200, so I decided to link up all the HDMI cables I had (3) and got a huge 3.5mm audio cable for sound, meaning I'm running about 100 ft of cable total from my room to the TV. Now that I've done it, any obviously easier/not frankenstein solutions?[/QUOTE] You can pick up a Roku for $50. Great little box, just lacks YouTube support sadly. [editline]August 20th 2013[/editline] Has a great Netflix app too, amongst others.

Made this new forge so I can work sheet metal more easily: [img_thumb]http://i.imgur.com/q4iWHzU.jpg[/img_thumb][img_thumb]http://i.imgur.com/q0koH4n.jpg[/img_thumb] [img_thumb]http://i.imgur.com/s5yo5c0.jpg[/img_thumb][img_thumb]http://i.imgur.com/UHZvLcA.jpg[/img_thumb]

[QUOTE=RR_Raptor65;41905710]Made this new forge so I can work sheet metal more easily: [img_thumb]http://i.imgur.com/q4iWHzU.jpg[/img_thumb][img_thumb]http://i.imgur.com/q0koH4n.jpg[/img_thumb] [img_thumb]http://i.imgur.com/s5yo5c0.jpg[/img_thumb][img_thumb]http://i.imgur.com/UHZvLcA.jpg[/img_thumb][/QUOTE] At first glance (and second tbh) it looked like a model of a piece of half-dried lava.

[QUOTE=Trooper0315;41900584]Probably the dumbest DIY thing I've done yet, but: I was trying to find a wireless box to stream from my computer to a TV in the other room via HDMI, but all of the ones I found ended up being over ~$200, so I decided to link up all the HDMI cables I had (3) and got a huge 3.5mm audio cable for sound, meaning I'm running about 100 ft of cable total from my room to the TV. Now that I've done it, any obviously easier/not frankenstein solutions?[/QUOTE] at that length of cable, the signal is going to deteriorate seriously. invest in a cheap HTPC. RPi isn't really much of a reliable solution, it's a tad too weak.

I might try some of your solutions later, but for now it's working perfectly. I'm using it less for streaming netflix and stuff and more for a huge monitor for games. They look pretty good, not that much of a noticeable quality loss from my regular monitor.

Been trying for a few days to design something in sketchup that actually vaguely resembles a horse. The aim being I will 3d print it, use the plastic model to make a mould to cast an aluminium horse pendant and if I successfully get that far perhaps coat it with a more attractive/more precious metal to give as a gift to my girlfriend. [t]https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/3798635/horse.png[/t] [t]https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/3798635/horse2.png[/t] It's a bit of a sod! Not sure how well it will print either. This is definitely a long term project since the furnace is still short of a bracket before it's usable, so plenty of time to refine it. I've heard interesting reports about lost PLA casting with aluminium too, I may give that a shot. [editline]21st August 2013[/editline] Also I'm aware the lower legs aren't the greatest... I'm working on it but I'm not really an artist.

I made a new stand for my teletype machine using scrap wood. [IMG]http://i11.photobucket.com/albums/a166/ballsandy/Computer%20related/CGS_0214.jpg[/IMG] [IMG]http://i11.photobucket.com/albums/a166/ballsandy/Computer%20related/CGS_0215.jpg[/IMG] It needs paint. Black, gray or beige?

I think it would look good in grey