Archive for September, 2011

Salvaged and Surplus

Saturday, September 24th, 2011

Salvaged and Surplus

I’ve lately realized how many boxes and boxes I have of this stuff.  Probably a hundred or two hundred pounds, not sure.  Old PC motherboards, printed circuit boards, video cards, sockets, wires, capacitors, components galore.  It seems like over the years people have gotten the idea that I collect this stuff, so then they contribute more to it.  Or maybe I shouldn’t blame others.  It’s probably just me… (more…)

Solar Panel Hot Water Heater

Thursday, September 22nd, 2011

Solar Water Heater

This is a solar panel I made with some big glass panels I scrounged.  It measures about 10 feet long by 3 feet wide.  It saves on the propane bill big time, during the summer months.  Sorry for the blurry photo, I used my aging Palm treo 650 camera.  So this is certainly renewable energy, the sun comes up pretty much every morning like clockwork.

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Burn Barrel Grate

Wednesday, September 14th, 2011

Since building my own welder, I’ve had many opportunities to save money and be resourceful by using it.  Today is no exception.  I went to my local D.I.Y. supplier, and purchased for $10 a twenty foot piece of 5/8 rebar.  It was difficult to bend, so I enlisted the help of my log splitter to bend the curved sections.  Many blacksmiths would pooh-pooh the use of this metal. (more…)

Peace Canoe

Wednesday, September 14th, 2011

A peace canoe that I built this summer.  It’s not tippy.  We christened it “banana split.”

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Breadboarding modules

Sunday, September 4th, 2011

 

This is a followup to the article Breadboarding adapters .  Recently I noticed a post on makezine about somebody that was making plug-in modules for solderless breadboarding, and thought I would share my creations as well.  I also made a battery “juice bridge” a while before I noticed this.  Great ideas. (more…)