Studio711.com – Ben Martens

Getting Started With Woodworking

jigsawObviously I’m loving woodworking right now. It’s a very relaxing and satisfying hobby, and it’s a great one for me right now because I can easily do it in the garage when I have a few spare minutes. Any new hobby can seem intimidating at first, but woodworking doesn’t require a huge investment or training course to get started.

Theoretically you could do a lot with just a handsaw, but you’ll probably want some sore of power tools to get started. One of the best initial purchases is a jig saw. It’s small, easy to control, relatively safe, and best of all: cheap! There are plenty of options, but I have a $40 Black and Decker that still serves me well. Toss in some wood glue and sandpaper and you’re pretty much off to the races. From there just check to see what your specific project requires. You might need to add in a hammer and nails or a screwdriver and screws. You may end up wishing for a drill and drill bits too. Even if you bought all that stuff, you would have spent less than $150 to pick up a brand new hobby.

Now, what should you build? The best projects are ones that fill a need. Maybe you want something to organize clutter on your desk, a toy for your kid, or a place to hang your coats. If you want some more guidance, there are tons of great YouTube channels. I’ve covered many of them before, but specifically, check out Steve Ramsey’s list of videos for projects that require limited tools.

Making things with your hands is a wonderful experience whether you’re doing woodworking or some other kind of craft. Just try it out! The worst that will probably happen is that you waste some wood and you learn something.

[UPDATE] Great timing! Steve recently posted a video showing how to build a bed with just a couple basic tools. No fancy workshop required!

benmartens November 6, 2015 Woodworking

My First Car

cars_mustangLast week’s post about the cars we had when I was growing up got me thinking about the experience of picking up the first car that I ever purchased: a 2002 Ford Mustang GT. It was a beautiful car, and I bought it right after college. The dealer had to transfer it in from another dealership so I couldn’t drive it off the lot after making the deal. Mom took me to pick it up a few days later when it arrived at the dealer. After getting the keys, I sat down in the car to drive it away for the first time. I looked up and noticed about four sales guys watching me from the window. With my foot on the brake, I disengaged the parking brake, put it in reverse, slowly released the clutch and… stalled it. My face turned bright red as I restarted the engine and gave it plenty of gas to make sure I didn’t stall it twice.

It doesn’t sound so bad now that I write it out, but this event sticks out in my head as one of the most embarrassing moments of my life. I’ve stalled cars plenty of times, but never with all those guys laughing at me and my fancy new car that they probably thought my parents purchased for me.

benmartens November 5, 2015 Commentary

Fantasy Football – Week 8

2015_week8_drewbreesThe Seahawks squeaked out a win. It wasn’t the prettiest game with an offense that still can’t score in the redzone, but they did figure out a gameplan that helped to avoid any sacks for Wilson. This win brings them back to 0.500 on the season and keeps them limping along with a hope for the playoffs. They get a bye week in Week 9 to rest up and maybe make a trade to improve their offensive line.

This was a big week for our league as Drew Brees set the all time record for most points in our league (sitting on Tim’s bench, oops), I tied Micah’s all time consecutive win record, and I almost broke the all time biggest blowout record. With six games left until the playoffs, Logan and I are looking like pretty good bets to participate. Dad currently has a solid hold on third and the rest of the league is fighting for the fourth spot. Even if you’re one of the teams with a 2-6 record, you’re only one spot out of the playoffs right now!

The Power Rankings stayed mostly stable except that Austin jumped up to take Dad’s third place spot.

1. Ben
2. Logan
3. Austin (+4)
4. Andy

Now on to the weekly awards.

This Week Season All-Time
Highest Team Score Ben had 184.04 Tim 200.51 (Week 3) Tim 200.51 (2013)
Lowest Team Score Dad had 72.61 Austin had 64.70 (Week 5) Luke 47.01 (2011)
Biggest Blowout Ben beat Dad by 111.43 Ben beat Austin by 68.23 (Week 4) Luke beat Andy by 113.02 (2010)
Closest Win Logan beat Jim by 21.41 Ben beat Andy by 2.46 (Week 7) Jim beat Ben by 0.12 (2012)
Highest Scoring Player Drew Brees had 60.54 on Tim’s bench Aaron Rodgers had 44.92 for Tim (Week 3) Peyton Manning had 60.28 for Andy (2013)
Longest Active Winning Streak Ben has an 8 game winning streak Was Ben had a 7 game winning streak (Week 7) Was Micah had an 8 game winning streak (2011)
Longest Active Losing Streak Tim has a 5 game losing streak Luke and Austin had 5 game losing streaks. (Weeks 5 and 7) Kyle had a 14 game losing streak (2011)
benmartens November 4, 2015 Fantasy Sports

Storing Gasoline

I lived much of my life not realizing that gas has a relatively short shelf life. I figured it out by sending one of church’s mowers to the mechanic because it was running terribly. The result? He replaced the gas and it ran beautifully. The gas had gone bad sitting in the shed over the winter.

Common estimates say that after about 3 months, your ethanol blended gas (which is almost everything you buy these days) should be thrown away and replaced. If you put Sta-Bil or some other fuel stabilizer in it, you might get 6-12 months. The longer you store the gas, the more water that the ethanol attracts. Watered down gas is a mess for your engine to deal with. At best you’ll get decreased fuel mileage and power, but in extreme cases you can really mess up your vehicle.

It’s not a big deal in cars because we generally run through the tanks of gas pretty quickly. It’s a more common problem in lawn equipment. During the winter months, that gas is effectively rotting in your shed and gums up your carburetor.

To help avoid these problems, I do a few things:

  1. Whenever I fill up our gas can, I set a reminder to replace it in two months. The can is pretty small so I usually just pour it into my car’s gas tank when the car is already mostly full. I figure it can deal with a gallon or two of older gas mixed in with 10 gallons of good gas.
  2. The last time I fill up the lawnmower for the season, I use ethanol free gasoline. You can buy it from special gas stations, or you can pick up a can from the home center. It’s not cheap but spending a couple extra bucks to save yourself the headache of cleaning a carburetor is probably worth it.
  3. My weedwacker accepts multiple attachments so I can also use it as a leaf blower and an edger. It gets used pretty often during the spring, summer and fall, but even then, I hardly go through any gas. Rather than keep a small gas can with oil-mixed gas that will go bad before I use it all, I just buy the premixed ethanol free gas. It lasts “forever” and I don’t have to remember where I put the oil to mix in.

It costs a little extra but these simple steps can save you time, headaches and money.

trufuel

P.S. It feels like I just wrote an eHow article. Ew.

benmartens November 3, 2015 Commentary

Ted’s Woodworking Scam

tedswoodworkingThe internet is missing something like Amazon for woodworking plans. There should be a site that hosts plans from various authors and has reviews from people who have purchased the product. There are plenty of tiny sites, but no master collection.

That allows scammers like Ted’s Woodworking to step in. They have collected some freely available plans, stolen a bunch of plans that they don’t own, and then packaged it all up into one bundle that you pay for. It’s sad and frustrating that these guys can somehow get away with this. Many of the major wood magazines have done articles about this being a scam, but I’ll do my part by announcing it here too. Here’s a great article showing all the companies that Ted has stolen from and Steve Ramsey has an older video about it. This has been going on for a very long time.

If you’re looking for great plans, check out these sites which have a mix of free and paid plans:

There is so much awesome content out there, and much of it is free anyway. Don’t perpetuate the scams.

benmartens November 2, 2015 Woodworking

Childhood Cars

I’ve been spending a lot of time dreaming and learning about my potential next vehicle purchase (TRUCK!) and it got me to thinking about all the vehicles I’ve owned over the years and the cars that Mom and Dad have owned. I asked Mom to dig up photos of all the cars they owned together (until I left the house) and here’s the list:

1973 Ford Gran Torino Sport
Dad loved this car. He actually kept it until probably the late 80s though it didn’t run at that point. He gave it to a neighbor who restored it.
momdad_torino1978 Ford Mustang II
I don’t remember this car. The only thing I remember about this car is a story Mom and Dad tell about driving through Nevada (?) and it was so hot that it felt like being in an oven.
momdad_mustang1979 Ford LTD
This is the first car that I remember. Dad used to hold me on his lap and let me drive down our quarter-mile long driveway in this car. I didn’t know it until Mom sent over the info for this post, but this is the only car that they purchased from a used car lot. A couple others were used cars as well, but those were purchased from friends and relatives.
momdad_ltd1981 Mercury Grand Marquis
This car belonged to Great Grandpa Hinkle. Mom and Dad bought it from Great Grandma after Great Grandpa passed away. The only thing that I remember about this car was that a bottle of acid for the pool accidentally spilled on the floor behind the drivers seat and ate through the floor mat. Oops.
momdad_marquis
1989 Ford Taurus
I have a ton of memories about this car. For one thing, it’s the first car that I remember them purchasing. I was so excited about how “small” it was. I remember doodling the dashboard layout while sitting in Miss Loescher’s class. And this was the car that I drove to high school. By the time I got it, some of the paint was starting to flake off the gray part on the bottom and there was a little rust on the maroon parts. I tried to grind off the rust and repaint both parts. It wasn’t a great idea.
momdad_taurus1991 Ford Probe
Dad and Mom bought this from Uncle Mark who works for Ford (which explains all the Fords…) and what a cool car it was! It came with a stain on the floor in the backseat from where cousin Ryan had accidentally spilled an orange pop. I spent a ton of time in this car as well. In the photo you can see me driving it to prom. I took this to college for about three of my years at Purdue and drove it during my internships at John Deere. I got over 40mpg from it! It was also the start of my love for manual transmissions. I started driving this around 1999 and drove a manual from the until now.
momdad_probe1995 Ford Taurus
Dad and Mom liked the first maroon Taurus so well that they bought another one six years later.
momdad_taurus951999 Mercury Sable
And last but not least (while I was living there) is the Mercury Sable. This one was extra fancy. It had leather seats and a six disc CD changer in the trunk.
momdad_sableMom, thank you for finding all this information!

benmartens October 30, 2015 Commentary

Forza 6 Review

forza6My gaming time has dwindled to almost zero, but the Forza series is still going strong in my house. Forza 6 launched in September and I jumped in. I was unimpressed with the changes in Forza 5, but 6 really is a great step forward. Here are my bulleted impressions:

  • The visuals are incredible, but you need to hit pause to notice all the details. You should be focusing on your driving, not watching blades of grass whiz by.
  • The addition of nighttime and rain modes adds a lot of challenge. My only complaint is that rain mode is REALLY wet. There are huge puddles of standing water around the track and they realistically change from lap to lap so it can be a bit of a crap shoot.
  • The game has always been very light on story/guidance but I felt like 5 was pretty bad and 6 regains some ground.
  • The AI is fantastically good. One of the frustrations of racing up through the pack has always been that AI cars will be super aggressive (or just dumb.) Unless you’re being ridiculous, the AI does an excellent job of staying out of your way in this version of the game. (DrJeffS, is that your code? If so, thank you!)

And of course, if you had anybody a piece of software, they’ll enjoy it for 5 seconds before spouting off a list of feature requests.

  • I can’t find any way to get updates on how many seconds ahead or behind my nearest competitors are. All I get is a display about how many feet ahead or behind they are. Really? Who cares about feet. I need time. The only situation where distance is useful is when I’m very close to another car. It helps me know if someone is right beside me without looking over.
  • Forza 6 makes it easier to see the leaderboards after a race, but it’s still not as good as it used to be. As soon as I finish a race, I want to see the top time for the track, my time for the track, what rank that is and what percentile I’m in. I love the thrill of posting a top 50 or top 100 time!
  • You start every race mid-pack. Why not use my Drivatar data to pre-qualify me and give me a better starting spot? I’d probably crank the difficulty up to max if I didn’t have to pass a dozen cars just to get to the front. It’s fine if you don’t want to put me in the #1 spot, but at least let me get in the top 2 or 3.
  • When I was doing go kart racing around the turn of the century (how’s that for making me feel old?), we had a system on the kart that would map out the track based on gyros and overlay a bunch of stats like when you were on the gas or brake, etc. You could compare your lap times and look at characteristics that might have led to those lap times. Forza has all that data and more! Give me a screen where I can see something like that and maybe even have an AI coach that will point out where you could gain time.

And then there are some ridiculous/futuristic dreams:

  • Imagine this game in virtual reality. I don’t care too much about VR, but I would buy a VR setup just to play Forza. I already play on a 110″ screen, but it would be incredible to be able to look around by turning your head while having a full field of view. Couple that with a full driving rig (seat, steering wheel, pedals, etc) and you’re closer than ever to the real thing.
  • The tracks in the game are great, but we have all this real-world map data available. What if you could pick a car and tear off on streets that you drive every day?! Obviously the scenery would be difficult to match exactly, but if you just got the curves and elevation changes right, I’d have a blast. Yes, I know that Forza Horizon is an open world game, but I want to drive on streets that I know. There are some roads that where I’ve always dreamed about setting up a road course. This would be the way to make it happen legally and safely with unlimited budget. Maybe one of the PC racing games has some sort of feature/hack to make this work. I should look into it…

If you love racing simulators, you probably already own this so I don’t have to tell you that it’s worth your money. In Forza 6, I finally feel like the graphics, physics and audio are so perfectly tuned, that any improvements will probably not be noticeable. I’m happy to be proven wrong, but I’ll also be happy to see how the series can branch out into other areas (like the driving coach or VR?) to keep us buying the next versions.

Thank you Forza team!

benmartens October 29, 2015 Gaming

Fantasy Football – Week 7

2015_week7_lamarmillerThe 49ers and the Seahawks came into the game with the same record, but the Seahawks played like the dominant team. It was nice to see the offense working and Lynch getting some good carries. Both defenses put on a clinic showing how to rush through porous front lines. The win didn’t inspire a ton of confidence, but there was no fourth quarter collapse so that’s something. Here are some stats which further my belief that they won’t make the playoffs:

  • The Seahawks rank 30th in drives that result in first downs or touchdowns.
  • They rank dead last in touchdowns per red zone appearance.
  • They are last in offensive line pass protection.

All of these stats come from footballoutsiders.com. They have tons of statistics and you can lose a lot of time digging through them and having fun.

In our league, my streak was almost ended by Andy. It came down to the final plays of Monday night, but I eeked out another win. Next week I have a tough game against Dad to tie Micah’s 8 game winning streak record. Dad and Logan won their games this week too and kept their tie for second place. For a while it was looking like the surprise late scratch of Jeremy Maclin from Austin’s roster might lose the game for him but Logan had enough points that Austin would have needed more than just that one change to win. After last year’s massively tied leaderboard, we have a pretty stretched out set of teams this year. We’re only halfway to the cutoff for the playoffs so a lot can still happen.

In this week’s power rankings, Andy jumped up an impressive three spots to claim the fourth slot. In weeks 5 and 6 he was in last place so he’s making a strong comeback.

1. Ben
2. Logan
3. Dad (+1)
4. Andy (+3)

Now on to the weekly awards.

This Week Season All-Time
Highest Team Score Dad had 138.57 Tim 200.51 (Week 3) Tim 200.51 (2013)
Lowest Team Score Luke had 71.52 Austin had 64.70 (Week 5) Luke 47.01 (2011)
Biggest Blowout Jim beat Luke by 49.27 Ben beat Austin by 68.23 (Week 4) Luke beat Andy by 113.02 (2010)
Closest Win Ben beat Andy by 2.46  Was Austin beat Jim by 2.49 (Week 2) Jim beat Ben by 0.12 (2012)
Highest Scoring Player Lamar Miller had 37.10 for nobody Aaron Rodgers had 44.92 for Tim (Week 3) Peyton Manning had 60.28 for Andy (2013)
Longest Active Winning Streak Ben has a 7 game winning streak Was Ben had a 6 game winning streak (Week 6) Micah had an 8 game winning streak (2011)
Longest Active Losing Streak Austin has a 5 game losing streak Was Luke had a 5 game losing streak. (Week 5) Kyle had a 14 game losing streak (2011)
benmartens October 28, 2015 Fantasy Sports

Noel Sign

Tyla showed me a Christmas decoration on Etsy. It was a sign that said NOEL and was made out of reclaimed wood with a wreath for the O. Price? $50. I started adding up the cost of building it myself and I figured it was only the cost of the wreath since I already have plenty of scrap wood.

Tyla picked out a wreath and in just over an hour, I knocked out all the letters. The N is made from the fence at the house where Tyla grew up, the E is made from an old dining table that Tyla kept for a long time in hopes of refinishing (I ended up using it as oak lumber), and the L is from the palette that my band saw came on.

While we don’t get any real credit for the design, I’m really happy with how this turned out!

noelsign

benmartens October 27, 2015 Maker, Woodworking

Church Surveillance System

amcrest1080p8chI’m the volunteer IT guy at church so they came to me when they wanted to install a camera surveillance system. I have a DIY system at home that works pretty well, but for church, I wanted something that “just works” and doesn’t require a geek to operate it.

I ordered the following:

A couple Saturdays ago, I met DaveK and LoganB at church to do the install. It’s not very complex. You just decide where you want the cameras, where you want the DVR, and then you run wires to connect them. I’d say about 90% of the project was just running cables around. Yes, there are wireless systems but wired is a lot more reliable at this point. Plus you don’t have to worry about powering a wireless cameras. The cables carry both video and power.

I was really impressed by the quality of the cameras. Those eight cameras give us good overage over most of the church and the entrances. Even with it cranked up to record all 8 cameras 24/7, we still get over two weeks of storage on the DVR.

We were done in about four hours, and by the end I was itching to upgrade to some better cameras at home because these cameras at church look so nice!

benmartens October 26, 2015 Gadgets