Monday, March 23, 2009


that's a 4 foot straightedge, and a triangle. FOUR FOOT.

Saturday, March 14, 2009

Remember to properly fillet your joints, kids!

(HAPPY PI DAY!)

The shelf is done. I can't believe it. I was really expecting to procrastinate.

In a way, I was procrastinating by working on the shelf, instead of working on my labs/midterms. Anyway, here are the shots leading up to it:


This is a glue fillet.


Fillet drying. It looks like this shelf was designed by Casa Designs. It wasn't. Kind of funny my random cutting of cardboard worked out that way.


Final panel clamped down after gluing, with the force of THREE CAMPBELLS lol. David donated his international edition paperback Campbell to the cause. Other books helped too (damn Vollhardt).


Goddamn shaky fingers. Anyway, this is one possible configuration of shoes. As you can see I really should have made it ~4 inches wider to accommodate a third pair of shoes in each shelf, but it helps plenty like this.

Final shot:


Man, that was really fun. REALLY. It's like, more relaxed than papercrafting: with cardstock papercraft I had to cut with a precision of 0.2 mm and never ever designed anything myself. My precision is way off with this shelf (sometimes an eighth of an inch off!), not to mention I only have an 18" straightedge, but it works fine. Someday when I have more furniture and I don't care about this piece, I'm going to test it to failure. I wonder if I can sit on it.

I feel kind of empty now. Although it was always a mess in between our living room and kitchen, it was really fun. The thought of always having something to do to this thing was comforting.

I think my room might need some more organising help in the form of post-consumer recycled tree pulp.

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

HOLY CRAP PROJECT

Oh my goodness, I've begun building something. FINALLY.

While it doesn't involve any kind of wiring, soldering, or moving parts, it's a lot harder than it looks.

But first: Some of what I wanted on this blog I've actually done in lab for a class I'm taking right now. Last week I made an amplifier circuit using a dual opamp to amplify a signal from a function generator. It's a shame I didn't take any pics of the breadboard or oscilloscope. Maybe I'll take some next week, where I'm going to be making an AUDIO SYNTHESIZER using the famous 555 timer, an 8 pin IC.

Anyway, onto the project!

This is actually day 3 of it, and I'm doing the least today (I have a 17 page lab due tomorrow and homework, and a midterm Thursday).

It all began last summer when we (my roommates and I) were moving into our new apartment. Moving into a new place usually involves a lot of new furniture, at least if you moved from a pre-furnished dorm. This left us with a LOT of cardboard. I figured, hey, why not save the cardboard? I want to experiment with cardboard furniture. It has been several months and the extra cardboard boxes have been an eyesore that I've made my roommates endure.

So, as you might have guessed, I've begun building a piece of cardboard furniture. A shoe-rack, or a shelf, essentially. Our entryway is cluttered with so many shoes, (and I know we don't use all of them on a daily or even weekly basis, I'm not going to explicitly mention anything more) and simply getting into our apartment can be a hassle at times, tripping over shoes and whatnot.

I've been wanting to do something like this for a while, but I really didn't know where to start with a design. I got some ideas from this instructable.


It gets worse than this. This is when everyone's GONE.

I don't feel like uploading the plans. the next pictures are just progress.

some pieces cut out

Bottom struts inserted

All struts inserted, bottom two rows glued.

Back support glued. Front support in position.

And this is where I am now. Front glued on, two shelf bases glued on. The second shelf supported most of those books on the left (and there's ANOTHER Campbell biology book). They're heavier than they look (especially Campbell, and there's an Ochem book on the bottom).

I guess I could do it faster by using tape (like the instructable above dicates) or hot glue (like this guy). Although it's only going to be supporting shoes, I would like some more strength. Most of the joints (with the supporting struts) are made using small pieces of cardboard folded in half, glued, and then placed as you would normal tape.