Studio711.com – Ben Martens

Just trying to get through life without looking stupid, so far it's not going very well.

Tool Safety

A wood shop can be a dangerous place. There are blades spinning and cutting all over the place. One key part of staying safe is knowing what can be dangerous. A 2011 study from the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System lists these as the top injuries:

Table Saw: 39,750 annual injuries
Jointers, planers, shapers, and sanders: 10,930 annual injuries
Miter Saw: 6800 annual injuries
Band Saw: 3550 annual injuries
Radial Arm Saw: 350 annual injuries

Now obviously these numbers are a bit skewed by which tools people use the most often. For example, the radial arm saw isn’t very popular anymore as people are using table saws with sleds for many of the same purposes.

Whenever I get a new tool, I like to do a bit of reading about common injuries and tips for staying safe. One thing I learned with this new sliding miter saw is that after making the cut, you should let the blade stop spinning before lifting it out of the wood. Otherwise you run the risk the cutoff piece catching the blade and flying around the room. It can also give you a cleaner cut since the spinning teeth only touch the wood once.

It’s also important to keep the wood clamped down when possible. When the blade in a miter saw goes through the wood, it pulls up on the back side. It’s not uncommon for it to catch on the wood and rip it up in the air. If the wood isn’t firmly held in place, this can be pretty bad news.

As someone who makes money with his fingers, these kinds of tips are extra important!

benmartens April 3, 2015 Woodworking

Epson 8350 Projector Repair

After 3.5 years of faithful service and 1100 of operation, my Epson 8350 suddenly decided that it had an internal fault. The symptom was a red flashing temperature light. A quick call to Epson verified that I was way out of my warranty period. The closest official repair place was down in Vancouver, WA. I chatted with a local (unofficial) place too but didn’t get a warm and fuzzy so I shipped my projector down to Compass Micro down in Vancouver. Thankfully I had stored the original box and foam up in the rafters in the garage so I wasn’t too concerned about damage in transit.

Shipping only took a day and was about $20 (each way.) The gang at Compass Micro diagnosed it the same day it arrived. The lamp fan was dead and the part was $29. Tack on their $60 minimum labor charge for the first hour and I was back in action. The part took a few days to arrive and then they quickly shipped it back to me.

So while it would have been nice to not have this problem at all, I was very happy with the service and the total bill was a lot less than buying a new projector. If I have something like this happen again, I might be inclined to open up the projector myself and see if I can tell that a fan obviously isn’t spinning.

benmartens April 2, 2015 Gadgets

Bark

Last weekend I spread seven cubic yards of bark around my house. Thanks to Logan for helping! It took a lot of wheelbarrow loads, but it looks great now. The bark lays nicely over the drip irrigation that I put in place (under Tim’s tutelage) to water each plant. It will help hold in the moisture from the drip irrigation, and, in conjunction with the pre-emergent I put down, it should keep weeds from growing. And oh yeah, it looks really nice too!

benmartens April 1, 2015 Home Improvement

Bracket Update

Here’s an update on our little bracket challenge. AndyB, LoganB, JimM, and TimS are still in the running. The rest of us are down for the count.

Winner	Loser	Bracket King
Kentucky	Michigan St	AndyB
Michigan St	Kentucky	AndyB
Kentucky	Duke	LoganB
Duke	Kentucky	JimM
Wisconsin	Michigan St	TimS
Michigan St	Wisconsin	TimS
Wisconsin	Duke	TimS
Duke	Wisconsin	JimM

benmartens March 31, 2015 Fantasy Sports

Cut List Generator

One challenge with woodworking projects is figuring how to make the best use of the wood you have available. If you’re working with expensive wood, your decisions can have a dramatic impact on the total cost of your project. I did some quick searching around and found a few solutions, but my favorite (free) one so far is the Free Online Panel Cut Optimizer.

For the Adirondack chair project, I thought it took two 2″x6″x8′ boards and four 2″x8″x8′ boards. Using this tool, I got it down to three 2″x6″x8′ and two 2″x8″x8′. That drops the price by about 20-25%!

The downside is that the cuts aren’t as simple to make. The way I had it originally drawn, I cross cut the wood and then ripped it to the right width. This more efficient use of the wood requires more strategic cuts, but if it saves enough money, it’s worth the effort.

benmartens March 30, 2015 Woodworking

Plants

The final step in the back yard and front yard makeover was putting in new plants. We held off last year to spread out the bills and because I was more comfortable installing the new plants at the beginning of the growing season.

Picking plants for the entire yard would normally be a pretty daunting task, but it only took Tim a couple hours to figure out what would look good and walk me through it. He showed up with all the plants and we got them planted in less than three hours. Thank you (again) Tim!

The grass in the back yard heading down to the gate under the magnolia tree never had a chance. The constant wet weather in the winter left a steady stream of water flowing down an area that rarely got sun and it just turned to mud. I gave up on that and decided to bark it over as a walkway down to the gate. I also took the opportunity to make a planter along the fence out to the corner to add a little life to the back yard. You can see that new planter area in the last picture. We had planned ahead for this possibility and there was a drip line stubbed out in the corner.

This week I’ve been working on finishing off the drip irrigation lines and then this weekend I’ll be putting down six yards of bark over the top of all the planter areas. It will look nice and help slow down the weeds.

benmartens March 27, 2015 Home Improvement

Dust Collection Update

About two months ago, I picked up a Dust Deputy and attached it to my shop vac to help control dust while woodworking. I let the 5 gallon bucket under the cyclone fill up completely before emptying it the first time and you see the results below. The bucket is mostly full and the shop vac has almost no trace of dust in it! I did take the filter off anyway and blow it with compressed air to clean it anyway, but it didn’t need it. If I had sucked up this much sawdust without the Dust Deputy, I would have easily gone through two shop vac filters and those things aren’t cheap. I’m very happy with this setup!

benmartens March 26, 2015 Woodworking

Pedometer Phone

With one of the latest updates to my Nokia Lumia Icon, I now have a pedometer with me at all times and I don’t even have to carry a Fitbit! Newer Lumias have a motion sensor in them and one of the features is a step counter. (The steps show up in the Health and Fitness app.) You can also get some pretty cool data about your location and motion in the motion data settings section. WPCentral has a good rundown of the new features there.

As long as this doesn’t drain my battery too much, it makes a lot of sense to have it integrated into the phone. I almost always have it in my pocket anyway so why should I carry a separate device?

benmartens March 25, 2015 Gadgets

March Madness

After watching a grand total of 0 minutes of college basketball this year, I filled out my bracket and then proceeded to watch 0 minutes of the first weekend of the tournament. I didn’t even realize that some of the games were being played in Seattle until I saw last minute tickets being sold. I’m a super fan! I did watch the recap of Purdue’s loss. Ouch.

So while I can’t speak to any of the actual game play, I do know that I have very little chance of winning our bracket pool. What a surprise. Here are the standings so far. AndyB is on top and also has the highest possible remaining points. That’s the column you really want to look at to get an idea of how things could finish up.

Rank	Owner	Correct Picks	Points	Possible Pts
1	AndyB	36	47	171
2	LoganB	35	44	156
3	JimM	32	41	149
3	JayA	33	41	133
5	TimS	31	40	132
6	BenM	31	39	131
7	AndyD	29	36	120

I hope you all are getting more opportunities to watch basketball than I am!

benmartens March 24, 2015 Fantasy Sports

Guest Room Makeover

We have four bedrooms in this house so two of them were relatively unused. One was Tyla’s craft room/workout room and the other was the guest room. We decided to flip flop the rooms and while we were doing that, we might as well paint it. Those are two of the last rooms in the house that have original paint on them (one other is the formal dining room.)

Tyla did a bunch of research and came up with a color scheme. I did the grunt work of painting the room, painting the door (it was a weird off white color), and installing shelving in the closet. And then Tyla got the room all put together. Teamwork! We finished the project pretty quickly by working in the evenings after Elijah went to bed and it was done in time for my parents when they came to visit.

I’ll skip the before pictures since they basically just show white walls, no curtains, and no shelves. Here’s what it looks like now!

This project is done enough for now but we have lots more that we would like to do. The room could use a mirror and some wall hangings. I also want to build a nightstand, a dresser and maybe even a bed. This would be a good room for me to practice my woodworking skills since it’s not generally in use and we can get by with it the way it is now.

benmartens March 23, 2015 Home Improvement