In preparation for the upcoming Austin Funky Chicken Coop Tour, Evelyn has been working on Stencil Screening some T-Shirts. Here is one of the prototypes:

Stencil Screening is similar to Silk Screening, but easier. You cut out a stencil from a thick piece of flexible plastic, then use a roller to roll on the paint. It’s not as accurate as silk screening, and it’s harder to do multiple colors, but it requires little or no equipment — though a good dose of patience is required to cut the stencil.

Here is Evelyn modeling her new shirt:

There are a number of tool surfaces in our shop made of cast iron. Our Scroll Saw, the Band Saw, and the Drill Press tables are all made of iron. While it makes for very strong and stable tables, the downside is rusting.

In particular, our Dremel Scroll Saw table was turning into a mess. It has some water stains — when I used it as a coaster. And it had some normal stains from where your palms rest. (The sweat and the oils get to the metal.)

I looked around for ways to clean up the tool tables. As usual, there is a LOT of conflicting information. So, let’s cut to the quick: These are the four things you need to keep your cast iron tool surfaces in great shape.

You need:

1. A 3M  Scotchbrite pad (the green ones).
2. A can of WD40.
3. Some Formula 409 All Purpose cleaner.
4. A one pound can of Johnson Paste Wax.

The Paste Wax is probably going to be the only item you’ll have a hard time finding. We could not find it at Target or Lowe’s. It was eventually found in a little 1960’s style mini grocery store near our house. It will set up back about $6.

Also have a good supply of paper towels on hand.

The process:

• Spray down the iron surface with the WD40. Scrub it with the Scotchbrite pad. You’ll start seeing a dark gray/black slurry of muck and WD40.
• Wipe down with clean paper towels.
• Repeat the above two steps until the cast iron surface is gleaming. It takes a couple of times, but you should see a dramatic improvement.

Once the surface is cleaned, it’s time to degrease and seal it.

• Spray down the cast iron surface with some 409.
• Wipe down with clean paper towels.
• Repeat the above two steps until the paper towels are clean. (Not picking up more WD40 / dirt.)

At this point the table is clean, but is unprotected. It must be treated or it will rust.

• Using a clean paper towel, apply some Johnson Paste Wax to the cast iron surface.
• Work the wax into the iron, gradually building up a nice layer of wax. Make sure you work it into the surface well. Don’t miss any spots.

Keep in mind that Paste Wax stinks of naptha. You’ll probably gag yourself after a short time, between the WD40 and the wax. It’s a good idea to wear an organic (activated charcoal) mask while doing this work.

You’re done. Depending on how often you use the tools, you may have to repeat the process once a month.

Important points: We use wax because it provides a smooth protective surface. Perhaps more importantly, it won’t damage the pieces you are working on. If any wax gets into your workpieces you can easily sand it off. This can not be said for silicon based products. Don’t use silicon on surfaces which will touch wood! It’s very difficult to sand it out of wood.

Additional uses: I use the wax all over. I coat the sole / base plate of my portable circular saw. I seal my wooden router table. I apply it to the tops of shop stools. It’s a great “old fashioned” material that still works wonders. Just get over the smell and you’ll be fine.

Important: This should ONLY be done to shop tables / tools. Do NOT clean cast iron cooking equipment this way! In an ideal situation, cast iron pans should never touch water. They should be cleaned with salt and paper towels. Again, do NOT use WD40 or Paste Wax on cooking surfaces! You WILL get sick!

I tried getting Ubuntu on the Netbook, but it wasn’t working out. So here’s what I did to back things out:

* Use BootIt to create a bootable ISO, which you can burn onto a CD. You can either get the full software here or download the tiny ISO here.

* Boot off that CD, click “Cancel” to the “install on hard disk” prompt.

* If  you installed the GRUB bootloader you will need to reset the MBR. To do this select the Windows Partition and click “View MBR” on the left. When in there select the Windows partition again and click the STD MBR button. This will remove GRUB and set your MBR back to the way it was before. Click apply and the changes will be made. Then eject your media and use the file option at the top left to reboot. Your computer should restart normally into Windows.

(Thanks to this guy for the lead: Uninstall Ubuntu)

I tried the above in Windows 7 and it worked fine. Note that I DID NOT try to do any partition work, since I figured it would be easier to do that in Windows. Thanks to BootIt for getting my MBR back. There might have been other ways to do this, but this worked out fine.

Once in Windows:

* Open up Administrative Tools > Computer Management. Select Storage > Disk Management

* Right click on the Linux partitions and choose “Delete Partition”. I had two: one for the regular Linux, one for the Linux Swap. Windows warned me that the partition might be used by other operating systems — that’s okay, I was getting rid of Ubuntu.

* Reboot to be safe.

* I now have an Extended partition of free space. In my case, about 20 GB.

* Right click on that free space — it’s probably bright green (indicating extended partition) — and choose delete partition (yes, again). You’ll get a warning that it will become inaccessible. Don’t worry.

* Now you should see the space as Unallocated. This is what you want.

* Click on your primary Windows Partition (usually the big one) and choose Extend Volume. You are giving that free space back where you took it from originally. You don’t have to do this. You could create another drive letter with it, extend another partition you might have, or whatever. In my case, I took from the OS volume so I’m returning to the OS volume.

* Give it another reboot to be safe. You should now be back to where you started.

(I had done a Shrink Volume to get space for Linux — I LOVE the shrink capability in Windows 7).

Not too much shop or project work recently. I’ve been at the PC most of the time working on a couple of projects.

Speaking of PCs, I finally got us a Netbook computer. Since I’m late to the Netbook party, I decided to go with a vendor that was also late to arrive: Toshiba. The nice thing is that they looked at the stuff that sucked about Netbooks (like unusable keyboards, limited ports, crappy screens) and fixed the problems.

They have two generations out now, their 300 and 200 series. If you need a knock-around Netbook, take a look at their 1st gen NB 205 models.

Here’s a great money saver: Get the white one from Buy.com. The black/brown/etc models are running about $329. If you buy the white one (which is no longer listed on the Toshiba site) you can get it for $289. That’s $40 off just because of the color! The killer joke (as Evelyn would say) is that only the cover and bezel is white — everything else is silver! So save your money and get the white one. It actually looks quite nice. (The photo above is the brown one. The white is exactly the same except for a white bezel around the screen and a silver rounded area.)

Toshiba NB205-N325WH at Buy.com

Update: As of March 2nd they don’t appear to have this killer deal anymore. Sorry about that. I guess I lucked out.

Now keep in mind that it’s not the latest Netbook, but it will run you three bills instead of four or five. You can read a good review of it on the Maximum PC site: Review

I’ll let you know how it works out. I’ve been spending the afternoon removing all the crapware, in-place upgrading to Windows 7 Pro (it comes with Windows 7 Starter), and getting full versions of Office, etc, on it. We’ll see how the power situation is.

A pretty neat site. This is what it thought of my recent posts:

Check them out here: Wordle – Word Clouds

I recently picked up a set of Incra rulers along with one of their protractors. These are very accurate measuring devices for woodworking. The protractor is in 1/2 degrees!

The problem is that they are thin and flexible, and need to be safely stowed away. My solution? A scrap wood Incra Ruler Holder:

I used a scrap piece of 3/8″ thick plywood, about 8 inches across and 20 inches tall. I put two scraps along the top part (held with screws) for the Protractor and T-Ruler. There is also a lip at the bottom to hold the other rulers.

When I was testing it I found that the Protractor and T-Ruler (which both have big aluminium stops) held fine, but the straight ruler wanted to fall. So I did two things. First, I put a scrap toward the bottom back of the unit, so it is angled from the wall. The incline keeps things from falling off. Second, I cut up an old credit card sized magnet and glued it to where the rulers would be placed. Those are the black strips you see.

Here is the end result:

At the top you have the protractor, below it the T Rule. On the left is the standard marking rule and on the right is the bend rule (90 degree ruler). The rulers are 12″ long.

Now I have a nice, safe, easy to access place for my Incra Rulers. I think it’s a wise investment for $100 worth of American made measuring tools.

I’m working on V2 of a “magic box”. Its a little box that you open by pivoting and sliding different parts.

I think I have about seven 6″ clamps and three mini clamps on there. Plus another three for the top part. Thirteen clamps for a 5″ x 3.5″ box.

I just ran across a cool program called Microsoft Image Composite Editor (ICE). It’s available for free from Microsoft Research.

The purpose of the program is to take a series of photographs and “stitch” them together into a final panoramic shot. This has been possible in the past, often manually in image editors, but this program has an automatic mode that makes the process near painless.

We tried it using some shots we took in California (without using a tripod) and it worked pretty darn well. If you like panoramic photos, it’s worth a look.

Microsoft Research Image Composite Editor (ICE)

Here is a lo-res sample. We used 9 source photos and it covers 360 degrees.

Today we went out and got the parts needed to fasten the wheels to the axles. The setup is pretty straightforward: Evelyn drilled holes into the end of each axle. This hole is where the cotter pin will go (the pin prevents the wheel from coming off the axle). A number of large (5/8″) washers are added between the frame and the wheel and between the wheel and the pin. Here is what the final result looks like:

The wheels themselves have integrated bearings, so the axle doesn’t need to rotate.

Here is a closer view of the front axle assembly. It gives you a complete picture of how it works:

You can see the “sandwich” of material. On the top is a 30″ piece of 2×4. Below are two 13″ pieces of 2×4 which have the dados / grooves cut into them. The 5/8″ steel rod which makes up the axle sits in that groove. To keep the axle in place, a 1×4 is screwed into place. This “traps” the axle — it can only get out from the ends, where the wheels are attached.

The front end is broken up into two 13″ pieces because we need to leave space for the big bolt which connects the front wheel assembly to the frame. We used a 5″ long 5/8″ bolt for this.

There are a number of washers to keep things smoothly moving (two at bottom, two at middle, two at top). Then two big 5/8″ #11 nuts are used to tighten everything together. Two nuts are used because I wanted to “jam” them together (making it more difficult to come loose). Once we have the frame done, I’ll probably come back and add some Loctite or similar to the threads.

For the frame we went with a triangular shape. A center 2×4 is the primary support, as the front axle assembly gets fixed to it (using the bolt shown above). The two side 2×4s were notched toward the front. You can see that they are held together with a short piece of 2×4 in the front (see above photo).

At the back the three 2×4 span is fastened directly to the rear axle assembly (which is also a “sandwich” of 2×4, slotted 2×4, and 1×4). that piece of gray 1×12 you see in the photo is our test seat.

Here is a view of the Kart from the side. We have about 4″ of ground clearance at the axles; about 8 at the center frame.

That’s a five foot ruler sitting on the cart. The wheels are about 38″ edge to edge (using 36″ axles, plus the overhand of the tires themselves).

Next up, putting stop blocks on the front axle assembly (to prevent jack-knifing) and probably some eyes and rope for steering. And, with the frame pretty much complete, we’re now able to brainstorm a seat and body for the kart.

I’m not usually one to post links, but this one is worth it for the IT people out there:

AddedBytes Cheat Sheets

He has single page cheat sheets for a ton of useful stuff. HTML, Subversion, Python, Regular Expressions, CSS, HTML, ASP, even WoW!

Worth a look if you are an IT person who needs a handy one-page document of common commands.