Sunday I got uppity with Jess and demanded we build a SCUBA rack. We haven’t been diving since we moved because hiding in the back of my mind was the problem of dealing with gear. It’s a minor thing; I’m sure we could have figured something out. My OCD kicks in at funny times though and I wanted a rack now.
So we knocked our heads together, sketched something out, and ran off to Home Depot.
Materials
Five 8′ long 2×4 (if you have half a 2×4 laying around you can get by with 4) — $1.99 * 5 = $9.95
Two pieces of 4′ long ¾ inch threaded metal pipes — $7.48 * 2 = $14.96
Four ¾ inch threaded pipe caps — $0.57 * 4 = $2.28
16 sets of bolts, nuts, and washers — $0.61 * 16 = $9.76
Four casters — $3.47 * 4 = $13.88
Twelve 3 inch deck screws (already had ‘em)
Sixteen 2 inch deck screws (already had ‘em)
One 3′ long piece of 3/16 inch wire — $2.18
So the total cost is about $57. I went for the kiln dried (KD) wood since I wanted to build this the same day I bought materials. If you’re not in such a rush buy the less expensive “green” wood and leave it out to dry for a week or two. I bought 125 lb load casters since they fit well on the bottom of a 2×4.
Tools
A miter (chop) saw (or you can have Home Depot cut the wood for you)
A drill
A 3/8 inch drill bit that can cut through metal
A bit the same size as the bolts you bought
A 1 inch (or 1+1/8 inch) hole saw
A Dremel or something else to cut through the 3/8 inch wire
A pair of tools (like wrenches, sockets, whatever) for dealing with the bolts and nuts
Optional: A sawhorse or two really come in handy. So does a square.
Process
Cut two of the boards 6′ long, retain the 2′ pieces.
Cut one board 4′ long (in half), retain the other half.
Cut two 2′ long pieces (that half board you had laying around would come in handy here).
Lay down flat one 6′ and one 4′ board. Put one 2′ board flat on top of them near the bottom. I left 6 inches of clearance between the bottom of the long boards and the bottom of 2′ board. Drill two holes all the way through both boards using the bit that matches the bolts. Insert bolts, washers, nuts and hand tighten.
Repeat on the other side.
Put the second 2′ board 6 inches from the top of the 4′ board and repeat.
Repeat that whole procedure to make the other side.
Mark about 3 inches down from the top of the 6′ and 4′ boards. Mark across the center and drill a hole in the middle using the hole saw. You really want these holes lined up, it makes putting the metal poles through a lot easier.
Set the two sides down on the ground on their backs. Grab one of the poles and put a cap on each end, hand tightened down. Lay it on top of each side with the cap pressed up against it. Measure the outside distance. It should be about 47 inches. You could figure this out with math, but I don’t trust numbers. Cut your last 2×4 into two pieces of this length.
Lay one of these short boards across the two pieces, near the bottom. You want it above the bolted on piece to make sure all the bolts and screws have clearance. Screw this on.
Flip the piece over and repeat on the back. You should now have a square of support at the bottom.
Stand it up and run the poles through the holes and put the caps on. Move everything apart so that it’s relatively tight. Mark a spot on the pole just on the inside, one on each side. Repeat this on each end of each pole. Take the poles back out and drill holes through them where you marked. Cut four pieces of wire an appropriate length. Longer is better. If it’s too short it’ll cut into the wood when you tighten it down.
Now run the poles back through, put the pins through and tighten the caps on. This should be difficult; if it’s not your tolerances are too big. Tension on the pins pushes the whole thing apart, while the caps will keep it from popping out. The supports on the bottom will keep tension pushing it back in on itself. The balance of forces makes it sturdy.
Now go back and tighten up all the bolts.
Flip it on its back and install the casters.
At this point you should have a nice new SCUBA hanging rack. I decided to make Jess paint ours day glow orange.
So after spending most of Saturday moving, today we got together Kurt, Marla, and Charles, and tried to replace the carpet in the living/tank room with hardwood floors. Carpets plus tank just don’t mix very well.
As you can see from the video we got off to a pretty rocky start, but by the time we were about half way done we were really kicking butt. We weren’t able to completely finish because the final row of boards need to be rip cut (cut down their length) and we didn’t quite have the right saw to do it.
Charles is going to bring over a jig saw (I think) tomorrow and we’ll finish it up. We have to get this all done before Saturday so we can move the tank in. There’s also two different stairs we need to do, but those can wait until we have more time or energy.
Sunday we saw the Leopold Bench go up on Make. Since we’d just gotten back from twodives we decided to wait until this weekend to build it.
We went out to Home Depot and got the required bits and pieces:
6 3/8“ hex nuts
6 3/8” by 3“ hex bolts
1 2×6 (8′ long)
2 2×8 (8′ long)
1 2×10 (8′ long)
That totaled up to around $25 ($27 after CA state tax) and is the base price of the bench. Not too bad at all!
Jess convinced me (she’s very convincing) that we needed to stain it pretty colors: green and brown to be specific so we picked up some more stuff:
2 3” brushes
2 quarts of stain
1 can of
1 5“ orbital sander
2 packs of circular sand paper
This all totals up to around $100 and is entirely extra.
After we got the materials home we started by cutting the boards down to the right sizes and shapes. We got to use the mitre part of the mitre saw for the first time, making the 30° cuts for the supports. Since our saw can only cut up to a 2×8 we had to make two cuts for each one. Lining this up was more difficult than I imagined, but it worked out.
Once it was all cut we sanded stuff down. Doing this with an orbital sander worked out pretty well. Since we’d be sitting on this thing splinters weren’t acceptable. Consequently there was a lot of sanding.
After the sanding was done we drilled some holes for the bolts. It turned out to be easiest to take one board, mark the three holes, drill them, then line things up and mark the second board and drill it separately. This may sound more complicated, but trying to drill through both boards at the same time just doesn’t work. Also, our wood was really wet (actually gooey on the inside. yuck!) and that didn’t help at all.
We then test fit the bolts and ran in to an alignment issue with one of the holes. In the process I managed to smash the top thread on one of the bolts. This completely prevented the nut from going on. Jess decided to whip out the Dremel and take the first few threads off Gaijin Smash style. Once we got the bolts in there was the matter of screwing the seat down. This part was very easy — three screws per side and your done! We used 3” deck screws to make sure there was enough grip.
The final building bit, the back rest, is an issue of personal preference. According to the plans you’re supposed to make some extra cuts on the long supports so that the back rest can be perpendicular to the ground. Since we intend to use this bad boy primarily by watching the aquarium, we were looking for a more reclined look. We achieved this by not making the extra cuts, and just screwing the back rest directly on. This provided the correct posture we wanted, and was really really easy.
At this point a test was in order and it passed with flying colors.
Jess got out the stain and some paint brushes and got to work. The main color is “Green Tea” and the secondary color is “Coffee”. This is a water based stain that went on very easily. Sunday we’ll put on some clear urethane to seal it up be done.
Well, it’s taken us a few days (weeks) but we finally got the work bench finished and in place. The total amount of work wasn’t that bad, we just had lots of other things going on.
We finished it up by painting the main body orange and the shelf gray to match the concrete. We then took some metal flashing, primed that and painted it the same gray as well. That finished off the edges and removed of some of the sharp corners while adding a few more. Once those were done we used some silicone to keep them in place. After that was all done it was just a matter of picking up and moving it where we wanted it to go. Then we put some of the stuff for the baby clown fish up and it’s serving its purpose. Stuff includes an air pump, a baby bring shrimp hatchery, and a little cube for raising baby sexy shrimp. No, those aren’t our babies, we’re not in that thread. There’s a nice picture of sexy shrimp (that I didn’t take) in that thread to let you know why it’s of any interest.
After watching Bre put together a pretty sweet looking workbench in a few minutes, we decided to finally get industrious and do it ourselves.
We started off with one slight modification to Bre’s plan: no overhang. We had our reasons for this but I’ll get to that later. We started out with the top on the floor and screwed the supports around the edge of the plywood. We then moved on to the legs. Since the legs are 2×4’s I decided to use a triangle of screws in each leg. That seemed like a relatively smooth move. Since we didn’t want the overhang we had to get an extra 2×4. The extra 2×4 meant that we could put two supports in the middle of the work surface. That made it even sturdier. If there’s one thing we value, it ruggedness. By the time we got the shelf supports in, it was even tougher.
The next move was to get the lengthwise support for the shelf going. That made the whole thing even tougher and less wobbly. Yup, it looks pretty awesome — almost like a real workbench. It even sounds good when you thump on the top of it. It sounds… sturdy. Already it could handle a gargantuan load. Awesome. I mean, look at guy! We’re not even done yet and he could dance the macarena on it!
By the time we got the bottom shelf put together it looked like a real workbench. The only problem was that shelf. It did not inspire confidence. The heaviest thing we’d want to put on that would be a bucket of paint — I don’t think it could have handled it. We’ll take care of that later, after some more awesomeness is put on it.
AWESOMENSS! That’s right ladies and germs — self-levelling concrete with “charcoal” color mixed in. We couldn’t find a concrete paddle at Home Despot so we had to go with a “mud mixer” — it got all but the largest, and smallest lumps out. What it missed, our fingers took care of.
Since it’s not every day you get to sign a work bench, well, yeah. The kitty helped too. Begrudgingly.
A few hours and some Mexican food later the concrete was firm enough that we could break down the dams. Jess started priming the whole thing and that’s where we are. Tomorrow (Monday) night we’ll paint it and try putting it in place. Hopefully it’ll still fit.
I’ve decided to make a new light box. The last one I made was constructed easily out of 5 pieces of white foam board, and some masking tape. While it worked, it’s not exactly portable. Plus, it’s pretty fragile. All of these qualities made it suck.
To remedy the situation, I’ll be making a new frame based light box out of PVC. It’s similar in concept to the other ones you maybe seen on the web, but the plans are much more simple.
Equipment
½ inch PVC, at least 20 ft.
4 PVC three-way corners (not tees!) — one end is threaded
4 male slip-to-thread adapters
4 caps
Optionally: 2 small plastic coated hooks
Additional
2 cans Rust-oleum plastic primer
2 cans spray paint
1 can Plasti-dip
Spray paint trigger adapter
masking tape
Fine grained sand paper
String and a well ventilated area
Assembly
Cut 4 legs of equal length
Cut 2 legs of whatever width you want the box to be
Cut 2 legs of whatever depth you want the box to be
Shove the caps on to one end of each leg and the slip-to-thread adapters on the other end
Shove the sides of the box into the corners as needed. It’s easiest to make a square, but you should go crazy.
Test fit everything and make sure you like it: screw the legs into the corners.
Painting
It really helps if you have something you can hang the 5 major pieces off of.
Mask off the female ends of the connectors. Trim up the tape so there’s not too much excess.
Mask off the feet of the legs
Sand everything down, then rinse it off and dry it
Mask off the male ends of the connectors.
Tie some string around the threads of each leg and tie them up for painting.
Tie some string around some part of the square. If you wanted to be tricky you could drill a small hole somewhere, run string through it and tie a knot in the string so it hangs off there. Tie it up for painting
Spray with primer. Make sure you can’t see the natural markings on the PVC. Anything that’s not white now won’t be the right color later.
wait…
Paint with your top coat
remove masking tape, resume hanging, and wait… (you’re probably done for the day)
Mask the bottom of the legs (just above the caps) and dip them in the Plasti-Dip. This will make them pretty grippy and non-skid. Awesome. It’s hard to get an even coat if there’s paint on them, hence the masking earlier.
Optionally: Pick a section to be the back and screw the hooks in.
You now have a pretty (depending on the paint color you chose) light box for your photography projects! I’ll have pictures of mine up in a little while.
When we moved in we just threw boxes into the garage. That works for a while, but it doesn’t scale very well. So today I built some shelves, from scratch. I went down to Home Depot and bought some lumber and screws and headed back home. Having the mitre saw from the tank stand project came in handy. We already had a corded drill from a previous project as well. Those two tools would cost a pretty penny if you had to buy them together.
1 lb. of 2 in. deck screws
$6.97
5 boards of 8 ft. @ 2×2
5 * $2.19 = $10.95
1 sheet of 8 ft. x 4 ft. 1/2 in. plywood
$18.88
4 boards of 8 ft. @ 2×3
4 * $1.74 = $6.96
Tax
$3.39
Total
$47.15
The first step of this project was to visit Home Depot to get the materials. To be honest, I didn’t find everything in one trip — it took about 3. If I’d planned a little more ahead of time, it would have worked out better. Since I don’t have a table saw or a circular saw, I had the guys at Home Depot cut the plywood for me. I made it easy on myself by deciding that 4 ft. wide by 18 in. deep shelves would be great. That meant they just had to make 5 18“ cuts and I’d be all set. Plus, the sheet wouldn’t fit in the car.
Once I got everything home I got to work cutting the 2×2 and 2×3 into the appropriate lengths. Each 2×3 was cut to 6ft. in length. Since boards come in standard 8 ft. lengths, and my shelves are 4 ft. wide, I could just cut the 2×2’s in half to get front & rear supports. Once everything was cut to size I put away the saw, got out the drill, and realized I needed shorter (2 in.) screws. The box I had was 3 in. — we’ll use those later. Screwing the shelves onto the supports is pretty simple: one on each end (not in the corner!) and one in the middle. Repeat on the other side, and you’re done.
Once that was done we laid down the 2×3’s and screwed in (time for those 3 in. screws!) the top and bottom shelves. Now that the two supports (back or front, whatever) are in we screwed in the rest of the shelves. Once that was all ready, we flipped it over and repeated with the other 2×3’s. At this point we stood it up to see how sturdy it was … or in this case, wasn’t. All the shelves tried to rotate about their one screw independently and made everything very unstable. The problem here is that I used 2×2’s for the front supports. That meant there was only room for 1 screw between the vertical and horizontal supports. One screw means they can pivot freely. Crap. The better way to have done this would have been to use 2×3 for the supports so that two screws could be used. Luckily we still had 4 x 2 ft. of 2×3. I quickly cut them down to 18 in. lengths and put supports on two of the shelves. That really stabilized the whole unit.
At that point Jess abandoned me. I got the pile o’ junk out of the way, put the shelving unit in place, and put all the boxes back on it. Everything looks much nicer now! To recap: shelves are very easy to build. This recipe isn’t quite as inexpensive as those plastic units you can get at your local home improvement store, but they’re much stronger and they’re custom fit. Plus it’s fun to build stuff! The total cost in materials came out to $47.15. Had I been smart and used 2×3’s instead of 2×2’s it would have cost $2.42 less and I wouldn’t need those dopey looking supports. Oh well, live and learn — I’ll get it right next time!
It only took us a few hours — 8 to 10 — to get the old tanks broken down and the new tank set up. Since we did so much prep everything went very smoothly. Charles helped quite a bit and so did Jess’ parents.
After Charles went home Saturday night Jess and I decided to play with the plumbing for the new tank. We quickly discovered that there were some things we’d have to do differently, and some extra pieces we’d need. This wouldn’t be so bad since we could pick them up Sunday morning.
Sunday morning we went to breakfast, then ran to Lowe’s to pick up some more plumbing, and run some other errands. By the time we got back home Charles was there with his monster (100g) water container. We loaded that in to Jess’ station wagon and I took off for Scripps. The SIO (Scripps Institute of Oceanography) has a free “clean” seawater spigot at the land-end of their pier. For free you can take water that’s been put through a few sand filters. For aquariums this works out pretty well, until there’s red tide. It took 20 - 30 minutes for 100g to come out of that little garden hose.
By the time I got back home Jess & Charles had already broken down the 55 and were about half way through the 120. Jess had gone to Home Depot to get another big trash can to hold rock and such so Charles and I just bagged up coral and tried to catch fish. By the time Jess got back home I’d got a hold of her parents and they were on their way over. We managed to have the 120 nearly done by the time they showed up and just had to move it out of the way. Now the fun could begin!
We moved the stand and sump in to place and used a level to get it as good as we could. We then put some 1“ styrofoam insulation on top to even out the surface for the tank to sit on. That way it could compress where it needed to even itself out. The next bit was some heavy lifting to get the tank in place. At that point we sent Kurt & Marla home and started putting the plumbing together. A quick change of plans required me to get some more plumbing parts and some more 2” PVC. By the time I got back Jess & Charles were putting the finishing touches on the sump: a little light to make working down there easier.
We loaded up our pitiful amount of sand, then water, then rocks. And more rocks. Then a few more rocks. Then some water out of the containers the rocks were in. Then some water out of the back of Jess’ car. Repeat. I ended up going back to SIO for another 80g of water to get us where we needed to be, and have some left over for water changes. I got back to see a big murky blue tank. I couldn’t tell, but there were fish in there too! We pumped some more water in and called it a day around 9:00 PM.
We finally got the new aquarium set up! Hooray! It took a lot of work on Saturday, then a lot more on Sunday to get everything pulled off. I know it’s horribly cliché, but I could really use another weekend. Jess, Charles and I didn’t get any rest over Labor Day weekend. We had to finish assembling the stand, get all the plumbing taken care of, put together the sump, water test it, tear down both old tanks, get about 170 gallons of water from Scripps, move the new tank in to place, put the new plumbing in, put all the rock and stuff back in, put the water back in, and pray it all worked. Luckily, it did.
We started out Saturday idyllic and ready to go… around 11:00 AM. I’ve learned over a few tank moves (Brahm, Charles, our own once or twice) that they always take longer than they should. You accidentally glue two things together, you don’t measure something out right, you have to stop and go get water, etc. I was determined for very little of this to happen with ours.
We went out to get all the rest of the supplies we’d need, primarily plumbing and such. After we’d obtained everything we came back home to put the sump together, around 3:00 PM. After it was together we put some padding in the corners to keep the pond liner from tearing when it was full. Once the pond liner was totally stapled together (excessive stapling) we put some water in it to test it. One thing we noticed was that the edges bowed out a bit. That’s to be expected, but it wasn’t very bad. That took about half an hour taking us to around 3:30 PM. To let it test for longer than 10 minutes we went out to get lunch. That was the first sign that we wouldn’t get everything done. You NEVER have time for food when actually moving a tank. I was starting to feel like it just wasn’t going to happen today.
We got back to see that the sump was still holding water! Hooray! We moved the four pieces of the stand over to the same vicinity and screwed it together. This was quite easy and so far everything had been going well. Around 5:45 PM we had the stand together and were jumping on it to see how sturdy it was. It held Jess, Charles, and my tubby self without any problems. Great. The total weight it will bear is in excess of one ton.
We picked up the finished stand and put it around the sump… almost. Though we couldn’t tell at the time we’d put it in the wrong way. Though it doesn’t look like it, the sump is actually a rectangle. We decided to drain the sump so we could move it around within the stand and figure something out. The sump is a lot lighter than that stand. Once we rotated it and saw how it would fit there was much joy in the air. We put the refugium in as well to get a good feeling for how it would all work out. We finished all that around 6:00 PM.
At this point it was very clear to Charles and myself that we could not finish today. We still had to glue all the plumbing together, baggie up the animals, take out all the rock and water, break down the tanks and get them out of the way, get Jess’ parents over to help us move the new tank in to position, and restock it. That would take at least another 6 hours, probably longer.
Our second day of fabrication went much more smoothly than I expected. We had to buy some more wood, got to play with the saw, and nobody lost any fingers. All things considered I’d say it was a good day!
The first thing we had to do was put the saw together. Luckily saws are very simple devises and most of the work is done for you! This saw is pretty cool with it’s laser sight and spinning blade of death.
We made pretty quick work of the lumber once we had the saw set up. I can’t imagine having the guy at Home Depot do this kind of nonsense for us. He’d probably go nuts. That’s what we had to do for the TV stand we built in January. We didn’t have a saw and we needed everything cut up. This saw barely handles the 2×6’s. It leaves about 1/8“ connected unless you’re really careful.
The rest of the night was spent driving deck screws into the boards and playing with liquid nails. This stand is pretty heavy and should hold the tank up just fine. The only bits left to do are: measure the cross beams, cut, attach. Put the four pieces together, and level. The guy that was going to buy the 120 flaked out, so the mad rush is no longer in effect. We still need to get it done this weekend, but we can easily go diving now!
cialis blues Cialis In India cialis comments
lilly cialis! 50mg Viagra Retail Price Q cialis restrictvalue web tadalafil soft tabs usa 576.
cialis patient assistance program Buy Real Cialis Online cialis generic pharmacy online
cialis en ligne de pharmacie How Do I Get Cialis australia viagra cialis supply;
cialis alternative
what is better levitra viagra cialis
tadalafil prescribing information Viagra Pfizer taking cialis and viagra together
5 mg cialis Best Canadian Pharmacy cialis segmentation,
are enseignes sp cialis esLevitra Uk hiv drugs and interactions with cialis
cialis best price Legal Pharmacy Online "cialis without a perscription"
buy cialis online say wordpress Buy Viagra Online Without Prescription lowest price cialis
very cheap cialis Soft Viagra cialis accessory
cialis general information Buy Viagra Soft Tabs cialis and erections
cialis dependence
net cialis
cialis blues Cialis Online From Canada cialis comments
cheapest cialis price Best Canada Meds Q cialis restrictvalue web tadalafil soft tabs usa 576.
cialis patient assistance program Viagra 50 Mg cialis generic pharmacy online
buy cialis domain Canadian Non Prescription Viagra australia viagra cialis supply;
cialis alternative
Q cialis restrictvalue web tadalafil soft tabs usa 576.
cialis and viagra Cheap 25mg Viagra cialis generic pharmacy online
cialis en ligne de pharmacie Propecia 1mg australia viagra cialis supply;
cialis alternative Buy Cialis Once Daily what is better levitra viagra cialis
Lay down flat one 6′ and one 4′ board. Put one 2′ board flat on top of them near the bottom. I left 6 inches of clearance between the bottom of the long boards and the bottom of 2′ board. Drill two holes all the way through both boards using the bit that matches the bolts. Insert bolts, washers, nuts and hand tighten.
Set the two sides down on the ground on their backs. Grab one of the poles and put a cap on each end, hand tightened down. Lay it on top of each side with the cap pressed up against it. Measure the outside distance. It should be about 47 inches. You could figure this out with math, but I don’t trust numbers. Cut your last 2×4 into two pieces of this length.
