The new version of Sketchup (v 7.0) is available now. If you’re a maker, builder, tinkerer, or designer, SketchUp is THE free design tool. I couldn’t have done as good of a job on my studio or the entertainment center (not to mention many props) without this program. THANKS, GOOGLE!
Make does a great interview with the dynamic duo.
and just plain insane.
Can’t believe it’s been more than a decade since the ThrustSSC broke the sound barrier on land.
So, the universe (or maybe just planet Earth) is going to end on my birthday. This wednesday, Sept 10, the Large Hadron Collider is set to go online. It will fire up and, depending on who you believe, it will either usher in a new era of high energy physics and radically deepen our understanding of the universe, or blast us into a sticky, gluon-ey blob of recrimination-laced regret.
According to scientists (you know, the folks who are able to build this magnificent machine to such ridiculous tolerances), there is an astronomically small chance (.00000000000001 in, technically, Hell) that Something Bad might happen. Of course, luddite critics are screaming that they need to dismantle the thing because even That Is Too Big Of A Chance. They’ve even taken to making anonymous death threats to get the experiments stopped. Actual I-will-come-over-there-and-kill-you death threats. Against scientists. In white coats. With pocket protectors. Thus illustrating just how far down the path of lunacy our culture has tumbled. How moronically gullible the average Joe has become. How….geaaaargh (five minute paroxysm of teeth-grinding, hair-pulling frustration ensues. We apologize for the interruption).
Okay, knuckleheads. You neanderthalic thinkers in a modern age. You utter waste of educational resources, paper-thin roadblocks on the road of progress- here it is in tiny words, so pull your finger out of your nose and pay attention. The LHC is designed to smash particles together and create new ones. Then we study the new particles and see what we can learn. You say it’s dangerous, but- and here’s what’s called the “crux” of my position- particles with this same energy are constantly smacking into the atmosphere of earth billions- trillions- of times per second. The Universe is already doing the very same experiments just 100 miles above your flat stupid head. And in the Sun. And in every star in the universe. And much of the space in between all of that.
Part of the reason that we have to build the thing here is that it’s a lot easier to study the particles when you’re 40 meters underground than it is to hang out of a high altitude balloon with a spacesuit and a geiger counter. Of course, if we could build the thing on the far side of OZ these nattering nabobs of negativity would still claim it’s too close.
To say that doing it here on Earth puts us in jeopardy of instant annihilation makes you look like a bigger hayseed than the first guy to chuck a match down an outhouse hole and peek in to see the results. That a not-insignificant fraction of your listeners stops to give it more than two seconds of thought without collapsing into hysterical giggling says more about the state of education and general scientific intelligence than I can even begin to cope with. And I’m a flipping musician. WHO READS.
“But what if you’re wrong?” they wail. Well then, I’ll apologize to you on thursday.
Now step aside or I swear to you Zombie Isaac Newton will crawl out of his grave and hit you with a hammer.
That is all.
As part of my ongoing efforts to learn new things and develop unique ways to poison, damage, or otherwise permanently maim myself (see: flight training, woodworking, trebuchet building, potato gun construction, and a few other things I’m not going to post here!), I decided to add to my list of Maker Skills by learning about metal alloys and home forging.
When we were in Ireland I picked up a few Medieval soldier molds from Prince August. PA makes vulcanized rubber molds so the hobbyist can craft their own toy soldiers from heavy metals. They also sell the hobby metal for around $13 for a 1/2 lb ingot (which will make 6-10 figures in the 28mm line). I bought an ingot and made a few soldiers with my new molds and I was very pleased with the results, but at that cost it was prohibitive to make very many soldiers. You can buy lesser-quality metals that will make passable figures, but the less you spend the less detail your models have, the more problems you have casting and, most importantly, the expensive molds have a much shorter lifespan. This is due to the fact that the cheaper casting metals have a higher and higher percentage of just lead, and since lead by itself has such a high melting and casting point, repeated castings have the tendency to slowly soften and melt the mold, until eventually there’s very little detail left. The higher cost casting metals add elements like antimony, tin, and bismuth to lower the melting temperature, increase the flow rate, and improve the detail of the final model. Interestingly, bismuth (Bi) is one of the very few elements that actually expands slightly as it cools. When you put a bit of Bi in your metal and then pour it into a mold, the metal pushes out into the recesses of the form and picks up the details much better than lead alone. As you can imagine, Bi is more expensive than cheap lead, or even tin, and this is part of the reason that really good casting metal is so expensive when you buy it in pre-made ingots.
So, naturally, I decided to make my own.
First question: where to get lead? You can buy it online for a couple bucks per pound, but I thought of something better: tire weights. A little Googling revealed that tire weights are 98% lead and 2% antimony (to increase the final strength of the lead as well as to add better flow characteristics). I went to a local tire shop and asked nicely for some used tire weights, expecting to get a pound or two. They ended up giving me a medium sized box with about 30 lbs of used weights!
The next step was to melt it all down safely. I went to Wal-Mart and picked up a $10 electric hotplate and a small cast iron skillet and set up a workstation in the garage. I realize at this point that my parents are probably having conniptions imagining me breathing lead vapors and getting singed by liquid metal, but since lead has such a bad reputation I did some research before I started messing with it. It turns out that plain lead in solid form isn’t all that dangerous. Hobby stores sell lead figures, Prince Albert sells a 90/10 Lead/Tin mix for melting, and tire store guys handle lead weights all day long with their bare hands, so obviously just having it around isn’t going to kill you. There’s a whole bunch of gun enthusiasts who melt down pure lead and cast their own bullets and some of them have been doing it for 50 years and more. It turns out that it’s the lead dust and lead vapors that can cause health problems. So I was very careful setting up a workspace in the garage that would 1. minimize lead dust, 2. ventilate everything very well, and 3. avoid lead vapors by not over-heating the liquid lead. I also wore a respirator, apron, long sleeves and jeans, and even sacrificed a pair of leather gloves to be my “lead gloves” that will get used for nothing else (ditto the cast iron skillet!). And I’m very careful to not touch the contaminated parts of the gloves with my bare hands as I put them on. Overall I feel like I have a very good system that keeps my exposure to the stuff at a bare minimum. Oh, and I’m obsessive about washing my hands whenever I take the gloves off. I’m really careful about all this.
So I set up the cast iron skillet on the burner and cranked it over to high. I dumped a bunch of tire weights in and waited about 45 minutes for the burner to heat up. 1100 watts is just barely enough to get the skillet up to the required 621 degrees F that is required to turn the solid tire weights into a dirty silver pool. Tire weights have the little clip on them to hold them to the tire and since this clip is steel and melts at a much higher temperature I had to use a long pair of tongs to extract the clips from the molten pool (very carefully!). I kept placing new weights into the pool and extracting the clips until I got a very hot, very yucky looking pool of the lead/antimony mix. the next step was to “flux” the pool by putting something into it to attract the impurities. Candle wax is the suggested substance so I stripped off a few shavings of an old candle and dropped them in. I stirred it a bit with a long ladle and most of the crud gathered at the top and I was able to pull it out. Next I very carefully poured the liquid into some small stainless steel condiment cups that I had bought from Wal-Mart for a buck. Once the ingots cooled (about 20 minutes) I was able to pop them out of the cups and stack them up. I now have about 8 lbs of mostly pure lead/antimony in 1lb ingots. Neat!
But what to do now? Just remelting these ingots and pouring them into my mold will eventually damage the molds, so I have to make a lead/tin/bismuth/antimony alloy that most closely matches the formula of the expensive Prince Albert Model Metal (56% Lead / 9% Tin / 35% Bismuth). I got online and found a place that will sell me mostly pure Tin and Bismuth in one pound ingots. I’m ordering a pound of each today. From here it will be a simple matter to weigh my lead ingots, calculate the proper amount of tin and bismuth, and remelt everything into new ingots! Nifty. I’m probably going to mess with the ratios a bit to try and optimize my metal usage (read: I’m cheap and don’t want to have to buy too much bismuth). It’ll be okay with less Bi, but the melting temp of the final alloy will be higher the less Bi I add. I’m planning using this chart to come to some sort of compromise. I’ve already worked up a spreadsheet with the ratios and final price per pound of the resultant alloy. Suffice it to say, it’s much cheaper to make this stuff yourself than to buy it- that is, if you don’t include your time, but hey this is fun and I’m not worried about taking the time if I learn something.
So the end result of this will be 7 lbs or so of really good model casting metal for a fraction of the cost of buying it new, and I will have learned a bit about alloying metals.
One more word about safety: I got some weird looks from passers-by yesterday, and my neighbor James came down the street to say hi and said “whenever I see you wearing a respirator I know to stay a long way away,” which I thought was hilarious. I’m going to extremes to make sure I stay safe with this, especially since lead poisoning is cumulative, but I figure a few days spent carefully experimenting won’t cause any lasting harm especially since there are home hobbyists who have melted lead on their kitchen stoves for 50 years with no reported problems, and the black hands of the tire workers tell me that handling it repeatedly for years hasn’t killed them. So don’t worry, mom, I’ll be safe. I’m the paranoid type when it comes to personal safety. It’s also safe for the neighborhood kids as long as I keep an eye on the hotplate and warn them away if they get too curious.
So expect to see some pics of the new Medieval figures sometime. Who knows… they may even populate a castle.
A few days ago I picked up a copy of William Gurstelle’s The Art of the Catapult. I sat down a bit before dinner tonight just intending to read a few pages but ended up plowing through the entire book. It’s a fascinating and accessible short book (168 pages) written for a slightly younger market, but it still has a lot to inform an adult. Gurstelle’s nine chapters are each divided into two sections. The first part of each chapter has a historical overview of the time period of a specific type of catpult. He describes the development and use of basic catapults, ballistae, trebuchets, onagers, and other types of missile-tossers, complete with some rather harrowing descriptions of actual battles. One of the few books I’ve read that have made me want to learn more about history.
The second part of each chapter has a section that describes how to build a tabletop version of that specific catapult. Excellent! His instructions won’t really let you build anything of massive destructive power, but they will give you the basics (and a *cough* skilled woodworker might consider it childs-play to scale some of the designs up to a “lethal” size).
Reading this book has made me think about using the Hirst blocks to construct a medieval diorama of a castle siege complete with little catapults. Heh.
All in all, a great little book, especially since Half-Price Books is currently featuring it for around five bucks.
Woah… how to blow stuff up. Uh… Sean? Call me. We have work to do.
I found a pair of convertible hiking pants at REI the other day. This pair:
They’re great, except that they had a small rip along the belt area in the back left. Retail price: $55. REI Garage Sale price: $3.83. Sold! I brought them home and ironed a patch onto the inside over the hole, then I got some matching thread and stitched the stuffing out of the rip. Problem solved, and since the hole was under where the belt goes, you’ll never see the rip. Sewing machines rule.
A round-up of Mythbusters results.
I think I might have mentioned that I was going to buy some sand bags for my upcoming Colorado gig. Sand bags are indispensable on the movie set. They’re used mainly for holding things- like tripods- down to keep them from being knocked over. When the tripod is connected to a thousand dollar microphone, it’s very important that they stay in one place. Consequently, you can find all kinds of bags on a set. They’re universal and hardworking. Unfortunately, they’re also unreasonably expensive for what they are-basically a thick-material bag full of sand. A decent one can cost you $40, and I need three.
So you won’t be surprised to know that I decided to make my own. They’ll look like this:
I started off by going to Jo-anne’s fabrics. I really like this place. It’s like a tool-world for the softer Maker skills. I picked up a yard of bright blue rip-stop nylon, a yard of black “duck cloth”, which is basically heavy cordura nylon like you find in backpacks and those cheap stadium chairs, and a couple yards of heavy duty nylon ribbon for the handle. I also got some Zip-loc freezer bags and a 50lb bag of sand from Lowes. All together I ended up spending less than $20 on all of the supplies, and I had enough to make three 30lb sandbags, which would have cost me over $170 with shipping (what, you think shipping a 30lb bag of sand across the country is cheap? Shipping alone is $28/bag!)
I came home and filled six ziplocs with approximately 7.5lbs of sand each, weighing them on our bathroom scale. Then I closed the bags and taped them shut… thoroughly. The last thing I want is for the sand to come out and get in all of my equipment. Next, I double bagged them all and taped them shut with gaffer tape, again, thoroughly. The I did it again. That may sound like overkill, but 7.5lbs of sand is a lot of sand, and if it ever got loose in the gear crate it would probably do several thousand dollars in damage. Laugh if you want, but I feel pretty good about it.
Next, I made a basic bag with the ripstop nylon. In addition to being ripstop, this stuff is also more or less sand-proof, so I don’t have to worry too much about any getting out if the worse happens (see above). I sewed the bags inside out so that I could turn them right-side out and not have any seams showing. Except, of course, the last one. Lydia, care to tell me how I can do a good job of hiding this seam? I know I can’t put it inside, but there must be some trick to it.
After the six bright blue bags were sewn together (which took about two hours), I put two side by side and measured for the large cordura outer bag. I cut the cordura and again sewed a three sided bag. Whoops. Forgot to sew the handle-strap on! I managed to get it sewn on but it took some finagling with the three-sided bag on the sewing machine. For bag #2 and 3 I sewed the strap on before sewing it into a three sided inside-out bag. Lesson learned.
From here it was an easy step to insert the blue inner sand-filled bags into the main case and sew it shut. Again, there’s a messy 4th edge to it, but it’s a functional bag- not beautiful. Still, I’d like to know how to make it look a little neater.
The end result? For $20 I have myself three very cool 30lb sandbags for the set! And I’m even more convinced that sewing machines rock. Lydia, feel free to chime in down in the comments if you have any suggestions (Lydia of patrickandlydia.com sews up a storm, so she could probably whip these up in half the time and they’d look twice as good).
How to make your own ballistics gel.
Is a TechShop coming to Austin? Could it be?
The RepRap is now self-creating! This small desktop replicator can now create all of the parts necessary (save one or two circuit boards) to make another copy of itself. Now all I need is a friend who has one so I can make my own.
Oh lordy, a 75mph pulsejet powered bicycle.
Friends, if I disappear over the horizon in a swirl of noisy dust, you’ll know where the idea came from. I’ll need a tandem bike, though. I’m sure Sean will want to come with me.
Saw these guys at Makerfaire last year. Awesome tesla Mario!
Sean and I might just have our next project.
A counterrevolution is afoot. The past few years have seen an uprising of DIY hobbyists, people who’ve realized that making stuff is not only cognitively empowering but also a lot of fun…Notably, all this is happening outside our broken educational system. America is healing itself at the grass roots — rediscovering the mental joy of making things and rearming itself with mechanical skills.
More on the brewing DIY revival.
An amazing personal helicopter. It’s 2 blades, a small motor, and a tiny tripod… and it lifts a person! I can’t imagine what it’d be like sitting under this thing at a thousand feet.
