Yeah, so I never update.. sue me!

There just aren't enough hours in the day sometimes to actually fill in everything that I need to do between getting home at 5:30ish pm and bed whenever it happens to occur. However, I'll take some time to do an update and quiet down the peanut gallery *coughIancough*. The other problem of course is building things that are supposed to be gifts, so I can't exactly post about them on this blog before I've given them.. Kinda spoils the surprise dontcha think?

But enough whining... my nephews have both reached the age where their respective toy piles are not only larger than themselves, but would also represent a significant challenge to a majority of attempts at storing them. So, what do you get them for their birthday/Christmas gifts, why more to.... wait.. no, that's going at it backwards... :P You get them a toybox. The only trouble is the ones you can buy are either worth more than a small car and made of mdf or particle board, or inexpensive and large enough to store precisely one Tonka truck. So, I decided to set out and actually build something for them. In the end, this actually spawned it's way into 4 separate toy boxes and a host of other projects that I'll blog about at a later day, but that's beside the point for now.

To start, I _HATE_ plywood, particle board and MDF. The stuff is a cop out. Easy to work with, cut and route, but it's like those little capsule dinosaurs you can buy for kids. Get it wet and it expands to 10x it's normal size! Amazing! Or not so much... mdf and particle board are the only materials I've ever worked with that will swell and distort when you try to stain it. One drop of water is enough to lift the surface as much as an eighth of an inch, and the moisture in glue can actually swell it so much it blows the bond apart. Plywood is a bit better, but requires a ridiculous amount of sanding to clean up the surface, and then what do you do about that multi-layer endgrain? Cutting veneer is doable, but for the amount of work you'd have to do, it's worth it to use real wood.

So, off we go to Home Depot. Why there? They don't charge 10% more to let you root through the wood pile and actually choose a board that doesn't resemble prime hockey stick blade material. Now, a disclaimer is in order I believe. "Premium Grade Spruce" should have a note below it, something to the effect of "Now with 10% less knots, warps, bows, shredded spots, blueish mold runs, splits, oozing sap pockets, and huge gouges from the steel bands holding the pile together!". Yeesh... here I am in Home Depot with the entire lumber pile torn apart sorting wood when an ever so helpful sales associate asks if I need a hand, to which I promptly reply "Sure! Show me where the straight wood is please!".. and he didn't find that funny.. kids these days... An hour later I've got 60 moderately straight 1x6's at the 10' length, some fir 2x2, and enough glue to satisfy the collective appetites of an entire room of kindergarten students.

To make life easier, after I finished the first box I purchased a second hand Ryobi planer from a work acquaintance. It's older, but the blades are still razor sharp, and an hour worth of work with it has everything milled just a hair thinner, but the majority of the imperfections are gone. Run the boards through the tablesaw and the worst of the edge damage is cleaned up and they're ready to use. One important thing to note at this time is I do not use nails or screws, except for attaching the hardware. There's no reason for them IMO. All they represent is a mechanical weak point in the joint, something that can work back and forth, attract moisture, and eventually fall out. As such, I use a biscuit jointer and some very good carpenters glue. The biscuits swell in the slot you place them in while the glue is setting, and the resulting bond is extremely hard to separate. In short, it's something that should last for years. With the planks cut and jointed together, 20ish hours of sanding is enough to smooth them all down completely, then a little more saw work and some more jointing, and you end up with a box and lid. More sanding at this point, then out comes the router to clean up the edges and remove the sharp corners.

For the lid, I ended up working backwards. What I wanted was to personalize each box, so that would require a name, but I didn't want something tacky. What I came up with was cutting a window in the middle of the lid, and with the help of some aluminum channel, affixing a slab of 3/8ths glass with the name of the person sandblasted into the middle. 3/8ths (or 10mm) is thick enough that with the edges protected, someone would be able to stand on it without fear of it ever breaking. More than strong enough for my purposes. A coat of hand rubbed stain later, and it's time to varathane the project to protect it. Across 4 boxes this was something of an experiment. There are precisely 4 high gloss protective clear coat types available in Lethbridge, so one box from each was enough to let me know what to use in the future.

Lacquer - leaves a nice coat, but it's very gummy and takes a long time to dry. Doing a knockdown sand with 800 grit between coats is annoying because the paper clogs very fast, and the finish also tends to whiten if water is left on it a long time. Needs 4 coats for a high gloss finish

Waterborne - yech.. it does smell better than the others, and the brushes are very easy to clean, but it has downsides. The finish is very, very soft.. to the point I can dent it with my thumbnail. Takes _6_ coats to get the same high gloss finish, and takes better than 10 hours for each coat to dry. _Not_ my favorite

Minwax Polyurethane - stinks, but does a very nice job. 3 coats for high gloss, sands well. However, the solvent in it eats poly paintbrushes (dollar store, here I come!) and the finish doesn't always come out consistently.

Varathane - This is the cream of the crop, and the most expensive too. It also eats paintbrushes, but after three coats you have a finish that is very nearly a perfect mirror. Sands very well, and dries rock hard. Definitely the one I recommend to anyone doing their own projects.

Once the stain and finish are complete, I attach the hinges, chains inside to prevent the lid from thumping back, feet so it can sit level, and handles for easy lifting and voila!



Not to shabby for a white guy eh? Next update (whenever it occurs) we'll get into some of the side projects and a box that was built a bit differently :)

Success! And the end of another project to boot.. The lumber is stock grade 2x6's bolted down with grade 5 carriage bolts drilled through the frame. The sides are secured with four corner stake pockets hosting pressure treated 4x4's. Everything is tied together with three inch coated deck screws and coated with a layer of exterior varathane to help the wood keep it's appearance and strength for as long as possible. I thought about making the entire thing out of pressure treated wood, but there were two issues there. First is the weight. Pressure treated, for the uninitiated is a greenish coloured lumber that gains that shade when a preservative chemical (usually copper azole) is forced into the wood under several atmospheres of pressure and an elevated temperature. The resultant product is very (but not entirely) resistant to rot and weathering. Unfortunately, the treated product is extremely HEAVY. Not exactly the sort of thing you want to be putting onto a small-ish trailer that has some weight limitations to begin with. Pound for pound pressure treated is probably 60% heavier than a non treated length of the same thickness, and when your trailer frame is already somewhere around the 400lb mark with just the frame and the normal wood, more weight is not an attractive option. Secondly, Carrie is contact sensitive to pressure treated wood, so that made the choice a very simple one. After dealing with the wood, I cut a fair sized flip down tailgate into the trailer and secured it with some heavy duty galvanized strap hinges and barrel bolts. The lighting package is actually for a boat trailer, and came from Princess Auto for $19.99. To top it off, the safety chains in the front have been shortened up (why the person who owned it before me had over 4 feet of chain on each side I will never know) and the bolts he had for securing it to the hitch were replaced with a set of grade 31 hooks with a sping loaded locking lip on them. Safer, and easier to remove as well. Last but not least were 4 heavy duty tie down rings, and a small lockbox to store my tiedown straps in, all bolted to the bed of the trailer.

The final test came on Sunday when I towed the trailer up to Vulcan with my lawnmower strapped to the bed. Honestly, I don't think it could tow better than it did. Minimal movement in crosswinds, very little bouncing, no evidence of the wheels ever touching the underside of the deck, and my car towed it without the slightest bit of trouble. A 200km round trip on less than a quarter tank of gas shows me my fuel economy was not suffering either. I've always suspected the motor on my Buick had a bit of power to spare, and now I have some confirmation of that. The excellent thing is I don't have to kidnap people anymore to go to the lumber yard or pick up bulky furniture :)

One thought though, I think I'll be looking into a transmission cooler for my car if I want to use the trailer excessively. I checked the fluid when I got to Vulcan and when I got back to Lethbridge and it's fine (no discolouration, no burnt smell, no smoking) but the dipstick itself was too hot to touch (well duh.. you're pulling it out of an engine that's just run for the last hour on a 24 degree day.. what do you expect it to be you dummy) and even though this might be normal, I think a cooler would be a good preventative measure.

As a break from the trailer (I'm still working on tearing the sides and deck off of it, I've got a few pictures of a recently completed project. I spent most of last summer renovating and retrofitting a small tent trailer for my wife and myself to use, but when I started to look around for a way to get power into it, I wasn't terribly happy with what I found. I did _not_ want a massive bank of batteries and wiring to let us have a few basics like a fan and some lights, and the portable power stations you can purchase for about $300 have a very limited capacity, so I set out to build a portable battery box that would supply the power we wanted, but still be something that was aesthetically pleasing and reasonably efficient. First step was a 3/4" plywood cabinet. The feet are nailed in through a piece of neoprene rubber that acts as a vibration isolator and keeps the battery from jiggling around too much. A coat of mahogany stain and 4 coats of varathane and you have an attractive box that doubles quite nicely as a small table.

Inside however is where the real heart of the matter is. I'm sure you noticed the three holes in the face of the box. Those are 12 volt adapter plugs. Each wired back to a fuse panel and designed to take 72, 150, and 230 watts current draw moving from left to right. They're connected to an independent fuse panel on the right side of the box, which in turn is wired to a toggle switch that will allow a draw of about 1000 watts. The negative terminal has a master cutoff switch for travelling, and there is space in the box to fit both a trickle charger (for charging at campsites that have power, and a 1.8 watt solar panel that will charge the battery and keep it topped up through the day. The battery itself is a heavy duty deep cycle unit with 120 amp hours capacity. This translates to 1440 watt hours, which in turn would run a 100 watt bulb for just over 14 hours without interruption. Seeing as the light I have draws 2.5 watts, and even our cooler (hello portable fridge!) only draws 65 watts, we've got enough power available for even an entire weekend of camping, and with moderation and lots of sun, I think we could draw it out to an entire week. It'll be interesting to see how the unit holds up under stress, but I think it was worth the effort. The entire cost was about $300 stretched across the whole winter (those batteries are bloody expensive) but what I end up with is a unit that is much more versatile than the commercial battery packs and holds a far larger charge. Worth the outlay I think.

In the beginning....

In the beginning, there was rust.. quite a lot of it actually... and wet rot, mold, warped wood you know.. the usual you expect to find when you purchase a gently abused trailer of any kind. But first, a bit more on the trailer! After some digging on the part of the former owner a VIN number finally materialized and in turn was converted into a trailer plate on my part. I've come to the conclusion that most people live in a state of blissful ignorance. His "198x" trailer (note the quotes here) actually turned out to be a 1969 Otto, formerly a tent trailer. Rusty? Yes indeed.. and rotted out in spots, but the frame is sound and so are the springs and tires, so the important parts are all there. Time to start some wood destruction!

First off however, here's the trailer itself in all it's green and black glory :P Not so shabby for $200, but it needs some attention desperately. The sides are heading to the trash heap and so is the decking. What I'll put in their place is 2x6 flooring to the edges of the frame, then bolt in 4 adjustable corner posts and attach the side rails through those. The end result will be a trailer that can have any side removed, but won't have any of the rust and rot. Need to change a floorboard? 4 screws and you're there. Not a big deal, and it'll look much nicer too.

Next up we have the tires! Rusty, but only on the surface. The bearings and seals are in decent condition too, so the important thing here was to add a set of bearing buddies onto them. The buddies are these little chrome and copper caps with an expandable grease seal and an external nipple underneath a rubber end cap. It makes it 10 times easier to grease the bearings, and renders the innards completely waterproof. Additionally, your grease stays wrapped around the bearings and can't ooze out.. for $4 for a pair, what's to complain about?

$9 later for a shiny new class 2 coupler, I'm starting to wonder just how much of a cheapass the previous owner was. The coupler he had on there was an inch too wide, so he just used longer bolts.. like.. 7 inches on a 3 inch coupler.. :( To top it off, the bolts were not only tearing through the coupler, but were only grade 2.. 64k psi, suitable for picnic tables and deck rails.. Nice.. $2 later and we have grade 8 alloy bolts for a quarter million psi shear strength. $6 for a coupler lock and $2 for a trailer ball I cut off and locked in place. Makes it _very_ hard to steal the trailer.

$19 for a piece of 3x3x3/16 angle iron at 6 feet long. Where the stabilizer bars angled into the trailer there were some very deep gouges cut into them. Something had been there in the past and someone had taken a cutting torch to them to remove it. One long piece of unstrained steel, with 6 one inch grade 8 bolts holding it to the frame and the entire nose is stiffened up and ready to go. Now to attend to the rest of it....





Here's the trailer deck currently, and ugly doesn't even begin to describe it. The top layer of wood is OSB and it's rotting away to nothing in fairly short order. To top it off, whoever added it to the trailer didn't even bother to clean off the layer underneath, they just slapped it on top and bolted it down. I keep hitting fairly sizable rocks with my saws as I start to get it sliced off, and I've found a half inch of assorted detritus sandwiched between the layers. What a disgusting mess. However, if you do the tally, so far the price is still right. I even picked up the light package I need for the unit on sale, so I have a reasonable majority of the pieces I need already in place. Current tally is Trailer - 200, Lights - 20, steel -20, misc bolts and other items - 30, plate - 110... so we're sitting at $380 not including my labour.. I still need to get the planks for the sides and floor, some paint, reflective markers and a trailer light, but the majority of the expense is finished. Worth the cost? Well, peek on the internet at some point. The trailer is a class 3 suspension and the deck itself is 77"x114". Try searching Kijiji.ca for trailers in the Calgary area... there's a 5"x8" with plywood decking for $950 (plus 110 for the plate, that's a set cost)... so $1200? I think I'm still a long ways ahead, and I'll have a better trailer in the end.

Welcome to the 21st century?

It's a touch depressing when all your friends keep telling you that you should have a smart phone, or text them, or meet them in facebook... I'm a technologically friendly sort of person, lots of gadgets and gizmos around the house, and I even fix computers on the side and make a reasonable amount of money doing it. What I am _not_ is an extroverted person. I don't really even like talking on the phone, let alone posting the second to second minutae of my existence. So! To silence the critics, I'm going to start a blog *is skooshed by the stampede of terrified people*, and no, it's not going to be about me! So there!

What it is going to be about is day to day progression on various projects I've been working on at home. My wife gives me hell frequently for never taking before and after photos of things I've worked on like the back yard, the patio, the 2 bathrooms I redid, the tent trailer, various oddball projects, things I've made for family and so on. So, provided I remember, I'm going to post photos and comments about things I'm currently working on.. not the most intriguing blog, but something to start with I suppose.

First victim (as of tomorrow.. I still need to take the pictures.. heh.. pretty sad for a photographer eh?) will be my not-so-shiny-and-new-only-to-me-and-possibly-the-Beatles-in-the-late-60's utility trailer!