Our little bit

April 25, 2008 at 5:24 pm · Filed under Just Stuff, Politics, Technology

For Earth Day, 24HRS (a local Vancouver newspaper) ran some articles on the environment. One piece showed 12 ways that a family can reduce their carbon footprint. I was feeling pretty good that of the 12 things mentioned, our family is doing 10 of them.
1. Use a reel mower (not electric or gas). I took that one step further and got rid of all our grass, now I just need to mow the boulevard
2. Scooter. I’ve had a scooter for almost 3 years. Still, I need to ride my bike more.
3. High Efficiency Furnace. We replaced our 45 year old furnace with a high 96% efficient model.
4. Cold Water Detergent. I don’t know if our detergent is “cold water”, but we do all are washing in cold tap water
5. Laundry Line. Nope, we don’t have one. I’m going to look into this…
6. Hot Water Timer. Nope, don’t have one. I’ll think about it, but this may not work so well with our tenants, since I don’t know or control their schedule and when they would like hot water
7. Composting. We have two composters and 1 rain barrel.
8. Farmers Market. We are 1 block from a farmers market from May through October, although I don’t think we buy much stuff from them.
9. Lighting. I replaced all of our incandescent lights with compact fluorescents.
10. Cloth Shopping Bag. We have several cloth/reusable bags, and I haven’t used a plastic bag since the beginning of February.
11. Thermostats. Our furnace and two gas fireplaces are on thermostats. The electric heaters are all connected onto one timer, but each heater has its own temperature setting. One of the fireplace’s thermostat is broken though and I’ve been reluctant to shell out $160 for a new one.
12. All purpose green cleaner. I just recently started mixing some of my own cleaners. Right now I have an all purpose cleaner that contains vinegar, washing soda, castile soap and borax. We’re still using commercial floor cleaners. I tried using baking soda + vinegar for the floors but it left a lot of residue. I also want to look into greener dishwashing soaps.

I’m not sure any of the above will actually make a difference in this world, but these are some of the only things I can do. I’d like to take some positives out of it because a lot of the news these days as it pertains to the environment, climate change and greenhouse gases really ain’t all that good…

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Time For Another Interlude

April 24, 2008 at 8:34 pm · Filed under Interlude SOF kayak

Over the past couple of weeks while waiting for the weather to warm up for fiberglassing the canoe, I had the chance to work on the SOF kayak. I’ve actually pretty much finished the frame and just need to set aside some time for sewing the nylon skin. There were several little things that I did to the frame to get it ready. In no particular order:

1. cut out the coaming base plate, riser and rim, and fiberglass the rim for extra support and longetivity

2. add extra supports for the coaming base and station behind the coaming where a lot of weight will be put on when getting in and out of the boat

3. putting small decks on the bow and stern, and filling the ends with some hardwood, then shaping to a smooth round nose

4. adding 1/4″ thick and 1″ wider station in front of the coaming because I thought my initial station was a bit weak

5. epoxied foot rests on to the chines

And voila! pretty much ready for the skin

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Touching Up the Strips

April 20, 2008 at 6:38 am · Filed under Freedom 15 Canoe

With the stems finished I had to touch up the strips prior to the final shaping of the hull. There were two things I wanted to do. First, I had a couple of spots where some strips were thinner and I wanted to make them a bit thicker. Secondly, I had to fill in numerous gaps between strips.

There were 7 spots (I think) where I had strips that were too thin. I opted to glue more wood on top of it, which would then be sanded down such that the fillers would add a few mm of thickness. The first spot worked okay:

An area next to the stem was a bit of mess, I managed to fill it up a bit to make it fair but it was a bit ugly:

The third area I tried to fix was a bust. After gluing I wasn’t able to fair it out very well. However, I learned something very important. Even though the strip was originally too thin, I was able to fair it into the adjacent strips. First I had to sand off the filler wood that I glued on (which was easy):

I added some fillers to some of my thin AYC accent strips as well. Most of them I later sanded off during the hull shaping.

The last prep step was to fill in a bunch of gaps I experimented with using Dunhams Wood Filler. I had a difficult time color matching the filler with the wrc. I had done several trials but when I finally came to use it on the boat I got the color wrong. I also filled gaps with epoxy thickened with wood flour. I found this to work better, albeit a bit more work. I could match the color better than with the filler. Mixing epoxy with wood flour typically gives a mix that is too dark, so I added some white glass fibers for a better color match.

Here is what some of the epoxy/wood flour fill looks like:

I masked off all the gaps when using the epoxy and although this takes more time up front, it sure saves a lot of cleanup work. I didn’t mask with Dunhams and that was a bit of a mistake. I found that although the Dunhams sanded really well, the sanding left small bits of powder stuck into the wood.

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Add the Outside Stems

April 20, 2008 at 6:16 am · Filed under Freedom 15 Canoe

With the stripping done, the next task was to attach the outside stems. First I trimmed the strips flush with the stem along the leading edge. I’d do the rough work with a Japanese pull saw, and then final work with a spokeshave. Next I added a taper to the bottom part of the stems and placed the stem on the hull. Tracing the outline of the stem along the bottom of the hull, I hoped to cut a groove that would provide a good fit for the stem to sit. Basically what happens is that the bottom of the stem fits in a slot while the upper part sits flush with the ends of the strips (upper is actually down while building since the boat is upside down).

The fit wasn’t too bad. It took a while to get it correct. I alternated between using a chisel and a utility knife to cut the groove. Once again my woodworking skills weren’t all that perfect. I ended up with some gaps between the stem and strips from removing too much wood. It was good enough for me though. Next I drilled clearance holes in the stems and predilled into the inside stems. Screws will be used to clamp the stems together while the outside stem is glued with epoxy.

Here’s a spot where I filled in a gap by the stem:

I then did some shaping of the stems, and once the bottom of the stem was trimmed down, I added walnut plugs to fill in the now vacant screw holes. I made the plugs myself by spinning small blocks of wood in the drill while shaping the wood with 60grit sandpaper.

After the final shaping the stems basically look like this:

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New Haircuts

April 15, 2008 at 9:07 pm · Filed under Sports

The kids just a few days before….

Emma May’s haircut:

Grady’s haircut:

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So Long Thomas, Thanks For Everything!

April 8, 2008 at 10:42 pm · Filed under Just Stuff

Our son Grady used to be a complete Thomas the Tank Engine fan. We watched the animated show, the dvds, and we have trains coming out the wazoo. When we went to the park or playground, Grady always wanted to play trains (which was really just the name for a game where Grady and I chased each other making train noises). We also played a lot of trains at home, either with the track set or chasing each other around the house. However, the Thomas effect has steadily declined for about a year now and the other night Grady and I packed his trains, cards and few other things into his Thomas suitcase. It was a pretty sad thing for me but Grady didn’t seem to care too much. Man, I must be one of the most sentimental guys around.

Thomas took his first hit about a year ago when Grady caught onto the Pixar movie “Cars”. There was a period where it was all Cars, and very little Thomas. Playing trains at the playground was replaced with playing cars. In actual fact the game was exactly the same only we made different noises. We would watch the Cars movie over and over, and the Thomas videos didn’t get too many appearances. Then last fall came the arrival of Transformers.

Transformers changed everything. Almost overnight there was nothing else. As a testament to his interest, Grady quickly and accurately memorized a complete book called “Meet The Depecticons.” This was a 20 page book with perhaps 2 sentances on each page. Within a week or so he taught himself to “read” the book word for word. From that point on, Transformers were 24/7 and they are still going strong. We now play Transformers at the playground. Yeah, you guessed it. It’s the same game only now we make shooting and transforming sounds…

I get pretty choked up when I see the kids grow so fast. I spend 1/2 of my time wanting them to be mature and the other 1/2 of the time I want to freeze time and just have them the way they are. I really miss Grady’s excited voice yelling “Thomas!” on a Sunday morning as he heard the whistle blow from the tv, jumping out of bed to see the latest show. I miss reading his Thomas books with him. The two I remember the most are the Thomas catalog (which we would “read”, but more talk about which trains we wanted) and the Thomas flip-up book. Grady had this cute way of leaning forwards and then with both hands he would open the flip-up and proudly recite what was hidden beneath. I’m also kind of sad to see the Cars phase pass as well. I’m a bit less sentimental about that one, but the movie itself is really cool and I still hope to watch it a few more times with my little buddy.

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