DO IT: Projects, Plans, and How-tos

DIY Surfboard Rack

Posted on October 28, 2009 by mike

Growing collection of surfboards starting to clog your garage or hallway? Jeff Z solved this problem in an elegant, quick and cheap manner, with easy to find materials from your corner hardware store. Check out the full how-to and get your board collection organized!

Best of all, you can pull this off for next to nothing using stuff lying around the house/garage. However, I did spend some cash, which I’ll price out for you later on. (Had I been more diligent though, I could have cut the price down even further!) Price really depends on how many board you are building for and how deluxe you want the rack. (I went deluxe.) But look around your house and garage for materials to use, be creative. Chances are you have much of the supplies you’ll need at the ready. (This whole project could fall under the Reuse portion of the Reduce, Reuse, Recycle ethos!)

Read: How to build a vertical surf rack on the cheap

Gorgeous HD Parasailing Video Shot on Canon 7D

Posted on October 25, 2009 by mike

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Gorgeous colors, beautiful movement, rich light. All from the new Canon 7D.

(The interview shots are done on the Panasonic HVX 200 – an awesome camera and something I’d love to own.)

I’ve been meaning to post about the new Canon camera for a couple months, and this parasailing video finally me to do so. The recently released Canon 7D is the current pinnacle of video-enabled digital SLR cameras. Perhaps because they’ve got a history in the video segment, and understand it better than Nikon does, Canon has made some desirable moves in video functionality on their cameras with each new release.

The 7D finally gives video makers a range of framerates: 23.97, 29.97 50 and 60
An impressive bitrate of 50 mbps
Manual exposure control
And the price is totally reasonable: just under/around $2000 (check it on Amazon)

This camera is a filmmaker’s dream. The APS-C sized sensor does tasty things with the background blur, and works great with older Canon lenses by dropping the fringy edges from the shots – something that a full frame sensor would pick up.

DIY video expert Eugenia Loli-Queru posted a great 7D entry on her blog with additional information and excitement.
Here’s another great wrap-up of 7D info, with a wish list for the next generation (autofocus being #1)

Makes me think about selling my Nikon.

Anvil Launching: How-to video

Posted on October 24, 2009 by mike

Sunnan Synth: Solar Powered Ikea Lamp Hacked to Make a Theremin Synth

Posted on October 23, 2009 by mike

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Sunnan Synth. The solar powered strobe-opto-theremin-synth-thing. Made with an Ikea Sunnan solar lamp ($20, available in-store only), photoresistors, potentiometers and a cmos 556 integrated circuit ($2). Not too pricey nor complex, and it sounds awesome.

Here’s the full writeup on how to build your own.

DIY Ikea Theremin Synth

Homemade Pumpkin-Launching Catapult That Shoots 2000 feet – Punkin’ Chunkin’

Posted on October 15, 2009 by mike

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Looking for pumpkin catapult/trebuchet plans? Check out my roundup of online trebuchet plans here.

I’m hosting the 2009 Punkin Chunkin competition alongside my Catch It Keep It pal Zach Selwyn. During the preliminary filming, we stopped to visit with “Sir Chunks A Lot” — a team hailing from southern New Jersey. I spent the day learning about their approach to the competition, growing pumpkins, and testing their rubberband-powered catapult. The rubberbands on these machines aren’t the ones you wrap your newspaper with — they’re about as thick as a 2″ piece of PVC pipe. For those test shots, the team uses bowling balls, which gives them a consistent shape and weight for each shot. I’ve never seen anything like watching a bowling ball whip through the air with so much backspin that it creates lift like a perfectly hit golfball at the driving range — on some shots, the finger holes on the ball made a whistling sound, like a whiffle ball — but it lasted for a good quarter minute or longer. Watch the speed on this thing – and it’s only at 70% power.

Every year in Delaware, a group of backyard engineers gathers with a single goal of seeing who can launch a pumpkin the furthest. The event is called Punkin Chunkin, and in the early years, the machines slowly pushed into the hundreds of feet. In short time the flying pumpkins passed the 1000′ mark, then the 2000′ mark, and are now closing in on the “holy grail” of chunkin’: one mile.

Calling these catapults “homemade” is something of a tease – sure, the machines that the participants mastermind for this event are all entirely custom built. Some of them even laugh that every year someone asks “Wow, where did you buy that?” – a testament to the years of work that goes into crafting each and every part of the machines, giving them such amazing throwing power. The event itself has become a gathering of the world’s foremost experts in the realm of catapult and trebuchet technology, and the innovations happening are pushing past anything that’s been imagined.

Watch Punkin Chunkin on the Science channel this Thanksgiving.

How to Build a Temporary Wood-fired Brick Pizza Oven with Cheap, Easy to Find Materials

Posted on October 5, 2009 by mike

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This is a great, low-cost project for someone who wants to test out the ins-and-outs of brick oven cooking. Super fast and easy to build, and with minor modifications, it can be assembled semi-permanently and get you through a season of baking delicious breads and pizzas.

For more specifics and tips on the construction of this oven, I’ve posted details on making and using the arch jig, and a full parts list with build notes from a reader who built one from this page.

I attended a fantastic pizza making event at Machine Project (instructor: Michael O’Malley) that included the construction and firing of a DIY temporary brick pizza oven – the ultimate in pizza cooking. Hugely educational and inspiring, even for a committed pizza fanatic such as myself. The oven, built, fired up, and torn down over the course of an afternoon, worked amazingly well – I cooked the best pizza I’ve ever made, by far.

Here’s a basic rundown on how the pizza oven was assembled. Firebricks and fireclay are available at kiln and pottery supply stores. Use these over standard red bricks as the red bricks tend to pop or explode when reaching extreme temperatures. The metal table might be the most challenging/expensive component used – watch Craigslist for used welding tables. Pavers are found cheaply at Home Depot, Lowes, or gardening/hardware stores.

(Note: bricks are heavy, and brick ovens generate a lot of heat. Please use proper precautions to ensure that you don’t burn or crush yourself while making or using your oven.)

This is my pizza, about 2 minutes into cooking. The crust had a crispy exterior and a soft chewey interior, with the perfect char. Tastiest pizza I’ve ever made.

Firebricks, pavers, and a heavy metal table. All the materials needed for our oven.

Make sure the table is strong enough to hold the weight of the bricks and pavers, and can withstand the heat. Lay out the pavers first to create an insulating buffer.

This is the jig that will be used to form the archway.

On top of the pavers, lay down a tight-fitting pad of fire bricks. Keep them as even as possible–this will be the floor of the oven.

Build up the back wall, using half-sized bricks along the sides to keep everything fairly even.

With the back wall set, place a length of angle iron along what will become the side walls. The angle iron pieces are pre-drilled for threaded rod to extend across and keep the side walls fitting snug.

The side walls shouldn’t be too tall – you want to keep the internal heat contained in a low area. A standing brick is the right size. Continue these all the way forward on both sides, keeping the bricks as tight as possible.

With the side and back walls finished, it’s now possible to start sealing. A mix of fire clay and sand will keep in the smoke and some heat, but isn’t weather proof – this allows you to clean and disassemble the oven easily.

Apply the mix to the corners and all seams. Use a liberal amount of it to make sure no gaps form when it dries.

The archway is formed on top of the jig, starting from the back. Put the bricks on from both outside edges, moving inwards.

A small shard of broken brick helps maintain the spaces that occur by the curvature of the arch.

Before removing the jig, place another layer of bricks onto the sidewalls and lock them in place with angle iron, as done on bottom. Once done, the jig can be shimmied out to let the brick arch settle into place.

Three layers of bricks gives a fairly sizeable pizza area. You can see how they stack tightly.

Another piece of angle iron bridges the bricks on the side of the opening (large enough for a peel but not too large). Bricks on top leave a space for the chimney to vent from. Keep the chimney in front, to help pull the heat forward from the burning wood at the back of the oven.

Here is the front of the pizza with the bricked-in chimney and walls.

A healthy slathering of the sand/fireclay mix on the roof and chimney areas help seal everything from escaping heat and smoke.

Firing up! Start the fire small to let the heat build gradually, without blowing a ton of smoke out the top.

As the fire continues, soot collects on the interior of the dome. After the heat raises, the soot cooks off.

This design doesn’t have the same heat retention as a multi-thousand dollar commercial unit, so reaching the idea temperature can take 60-90 minutes or more. Once it’s hot enough, sweep the embers to the back and use a wet toweled stick to mop the bricks.

Finally, here’s a video of the oven we built in action. Enjoy!

Don’t forget, you’ll need to get a pizza peel and a decent slicer. I like to use a wood peel for preparation and inserting (dough doesn’t stick as much to wood), and a metal peel to take the pizza out. This design doesn’t need a very long handle, but larger ovens will warrant it.

The Mario Batali pizza slicer is the best slicer I’ve found. Cleaver-like satisfying heft, oversized sharp, smooth wheel and comfortable handle. It cuts through anything without dragging the pizza across the plate. I actually bring this with me to friends’ pizza parties now–it’s spoiled me.

If you have any questions, comments discoveries or discoveries, please post them in the comments.

Build Your Own Camera Gyro-Stabilizer With a Spare Hard Drive

Posted on September 30, 2009 by mike

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Universal, 2 Gyro Image stabilizer – More DIY How To Projects

The most extreme camera operators use a gyro attachment for their camera to get smooth, steady shots. This applies to both still and motion (video) photography. The attachment works by two internal gyroscopes spinning in opposite directions, creating an X-Y stabilization pattern. In an rough, rocky environment (helicopters, boats, Deadliest Catch), the gyroscopic effect holds the camera steady, resulting in a much smoother shot.

You can buy camera gyros from places like Kenyon Laboratories, however such high precision results in a seriously high price tag – they can easily cost over $10k. Or, if you have a couple external hard drives laying around, plus some USB phone chargers and a few scraps of wood, you can assemble your own lightweight gyro assembly following the steps in this great Instructable.

Two things to try:
-Use 2.5″ laptop drives for size (they may not have enough mass to stabilize anything larger than the smallest pocket cameras)
-Putting the drives in-line instead of a 90º offset

How to Wax A Surfboard

Posted on September 15, 2009 by mike

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Periodically all boards need to be waxed, new and old alike. It’s pretty simple but if you haven’t done it before, this guide will get you familiar with the process.

Basecoat:
1. Take your basecoat surf wax and bring it across the board from rail to rail. Start at the tail and work your way up, slightly overlapping as you move upwards. Apply enough pressure to leave a layer of wax as you move. Read More