benmartens – Page 86 – Studio711.com

Sync 3 With Windows Phone

As I researched the possibility of ordering a new truck last year, I thought I’d save some money by skipping the Sync system. We have it on the Escape and, while it’s functional, it’s not WOW and for the extra cost, it should be at least 72% more wow. Then I heard that the 2016 F150s would be receiving the brand new Sync 3 system. It’s a complete overhaul and a break from the Microsoft system. The early reviews were very good so I went for it. So far, I’m glad I did. My main beef with Sync 2 is that it’s sluggish. Sync 3 is very responsive. I can pinch to zoom and get much faster reactions to touch selections.

Using either Sync system with Windows Phone is a bit underwhelming. You get Bluetooth connectivity and it will do things like show the name of the song you’re playing, but it won’t display your text messages on the screen, run connected apps or anything fancy like that.

In the new truck, I was having trouble getting Cortana to speak to me or hear me when connected to Sync 3 via Bluetooth. I finally found a checkbox in the advanced Bluetooth settings on my Nokia 929 that says “Use an alternate Bluetooth audio connection for Speech”. I don’t know what that means but after I checked it, Cortana would break in and read my text message and let me reply. Perfect!

benmartens July 1, 2016 Gadgets

Three Year Old Photos

Tyla had some great ideas for photos of Elijah at three years old. She picked out outfits, bought a prop and corralled Elijah and me for photo time. Here are a couple of the better results. Thanks for all your hard work, Tyla!

benmartens June 30, 2016 Family

Hand Hold

The door to our garage has a spring in the hinge so it closes automatically. That’s generally handy but I’m waiting for it to smash Elijah’s hand. He has to hold onto the door frame to step down. So to help keep all his fingers attached, I pulled out some scrap wood and built a little hand hold for him. It was a one night project using an old broom stick as the round piece to grip and so far it’s working out really well.

benmartens June 29, 2016 Maker, Woodworking

New Truck

The truck is here! I got a call Saturday morning saying it had just arrived on the train at the depot in Kent. They put a rush on it and I got to pick it up on Sunday afternon. Kudos to Evergreen Ford in Issaquah for helping me do a bunch of the paperwork by phone and email on Saturday so that Sunday went faster. That was really appreciated since we had Elijah in tow.

The final deal went very well. When you order, you get the rebates and factory incentives at the time of the delivery. That equated to $4200 in extra savings that I hadn’t planned on! They gave me a fair deal for the Subaru and incorporated a change to our previous agreement because Uncle Mark was able to let me use his A-plan family pricing deal. Ford temporarily extended it to nieces and nephews. Yay!

I got out without paying any extra money except I did add mud flaps and the spray in bedliner. Both were planned purchases at some point in the next month so I just tacked them on there. It’s in the shop today getting those things done.

I’ve only had it for a couple days so I can’t give a full review, but I have no buyers remorse. The Sync 3 system is a great improvement over Sync 2 and it will get even better once we switch to Android phones this winter. The truck drives nicely and the big backup camera view is a help trying to maneuver this beast into parking spots. But enough jibber jabber, how about some photos?

benmartens June 28, 2016 Commentary

Mallets

After a couple failed projects, I was looking for a quick win and decided to make some wooden mallets. They’re handy for assembly wood parts. The big wood face is gentler on your project than a standard hammer. There are a lot of different ways to approach the project, but I chose to use Jay Bates’s laminated method.

First I had to choose some wood. When we got married, Tyla already had an old, beat up oak dining table. She always dreamed of refinishing it, but last summer we agreed it was better to just get rid of it instead of continuing to store it. I salvaged quite a bit of wood from it. It has just been sitting in the side of the garage and I decided to make use of it. I grabbed one leaf and rain it through the planer to get all the old finish off of it. It cleaned up nicely.

After that the rest was pretty simple. The head is built from three layers of wood with the middle layer being chopped in half to make a hole for the handle. The handle is tapered so it slides into the hole and sticks there. When finished, the handle can be detached from the mallet by just pounding it through. There’s not much too it but I think it will come in handy.

I made two thinking that I’d probably screw one up, but both came out reasonably nice so I gave one to Tim since we were heading to his house for dinner that night.

benmartens June 27, 2016 Maker, Woodworking

Truck Downsides

Tired of hearing about the upcoming truck delivery? Too bad! Ha! I think about it a LOT so that’s what ends up coming out of my mouth and my fingers. Most of my thoughts are excitement and anticipation (current estimated delivery date is 6/28), but I’ve also been taking time to enjoy my Subaru. Here are some things I’ll miss about it:

It’s so inexpensive and reliable! I only paid about $17K for it brand new and other than oil changes and standard service, I’ve only put about $4-5K into it. The cost per mile was phenomenally low.
It’s a manual and I really enjoy driving manual transmissions. I drove an automatic for a couple years after getting my license but then I started a run of manuals: 1991 Ford Probe, 2002 Ford Mustang GT and this 2006 Subaru Impreza. That adds up to about 16 or 17 years of driving a stick.
I’m pretty sure that the Subaru will be a lot better in the slippery conditions than the truck will be.
The small size is very convenient for parking and driving in traffic. I’m sure that there will be plenty of annoying times trying to find a parking spot for the huge truck.
Oddly enough, some types of wood purchases will be more difficult with the truck. For example, I can fit 20-30 8 foot 2x4s in the Subaru with the hatch and the windows closed. That means I can get wood even if it’s raining. With the truck those will have to go in the bed and they’ll hang out over the tailgate. Obviously there are plenty of other hauling situations which are way easier with a truck, but the Subie was no slouch.

And I guess the final one isn’t specific to the Subaru and the truck, but it’s kind of relaxing to drive a car that’s already dinged up. Those first few scratches in a new vehicle can be extra annoying.

So yes, I’m going to be thrilled when I swap keys for the truck, but this Subaru has been an excellent vehicle for me.

benmartens June 24, 2016 Commentary

Follow On Facebook

Facebook is a monster. They have over a billion and a half unique users who visit every month. That’s a staggering number. So the odds are that many of you are on Facebook and some of you might even preferred to get notified about new posts via Facebook.

I recently added a WordPress plugin that automatically publishes a news story in Facebook for every post that I make here. They all end up on the old, but rarely used, Studio711 Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/studio711.com

If you Like that page, you should start seeing some of the posts show up in your newsfeed. Due to Facebook’s algorithms, it’s highly unlikely that you’ll see all of them, but you’ll, of course, always be able to find the full list once you come to this site.

I will take no offense if nobody follows that Facebook page, but I thought I’d throw it out there in case it’s useful for you.

benmartens June 23, 2016 Site News

Beer Festival

This past weekend was the annual beer festival at Marymoor. Last year I went with Don and Logan. This year Don was out of town, but Logan went again and Luke and Tim came too. It was a pretty wet day but somehow it didn’t rain while we were there.

There were 111 breweries there and most breweries had four or five different beers on tap. You get a 5 oz glass and 10 tokens. I definitely didn’t hit a home run with every beer, but it’s a fun way to try beers that you might not normally buy.

A huge thanks to the ladies for watching the kids while we enjoyed ourselves. I love this event!

benmartens June 22, 2016 Commentary

Dozer Days

On a very hot day a couple weeks ago, we took Elijah down to the Puyallup fair grounds for Dozer Days. It’s a charity fundraiser event that gives kids the chance to drive and operate big construction equipment. We didn’t really know what to expect when we headed down there, but it was an excellent event! The whole day was very well organized. Each machine had it’s own area to operate in with dirt to dig, etc. In addition to the operator in the machine, there was a helper moving kids between the line and the machine. They organized the lines in such a way that you never had to wait too long for a turn. Everyone working there was a volunteer and they were great with the kids.

If you’ve ever seen Elijah around construction equipment, it’s no surprise to you have that he LOVED it. We let him pick out any of the equipment and he always chose the smaller machines. That was fine with us since those lines were generally shorter. He got quite a few turns and we also spent some time walking around the static displays.

I don’t know that this is something we need to do every year, but I’m sure we’ll go back at some point. Why don’t they have this for adults?!

benmartens June 21, 2016 Family

Cribbage Board

Dad and I enjoy playing cribbage when we’re together so I thought that a cribbage board would be a fun project and a good gift.

Since I have access to the laser cutter, I had dreams of creating a board with a very custom shape and design, but I never really liked the way they looked and decided to settle on the classic track design. That also made my life a lot easier because drawing out a crazy curved shape with three tracks of equally spaced dots is not a simple math challenge!

I experimented a lot with the laser cutter to determine the kerf of the laser (how much wood does the laser remove) so that I could get the inlay as close to perfect as possible. There’s still a little room for improvement but it came out very nicely. I only used the laser cutter to cut out the inlay track and the piece that it fits into. The track is a piece of bubinga that I found in a “sold by the weight” scrap bin the wood store and the body of the board is cherry.

On the back of the board, I routered out a holder for the pegs (which I purchased from Amazon) and then did a sliding dovetail door to cover up the pegs. The door has a little message engraved on the inside of it. There’s a small magnet to help keep it latched, and I drilled a finger hole through the door so you can grip it to move it in and out. That door design is largely based on the way Grandpa Martens made the board that he made for me.

The final step was cutting all the holes. I had spent a ton of time getting the laser cut pattern to excatly match the metal hole guide that I purchased. So after everything was glued up, I very carefully taped the metal guide into place and drilled all the holes on the drill press. I’m glad I went with that guide instead of trying to do something like using the laser to mark the spots. The holes came out perfectly straight and perfectly spaced. I don’t think I could have achieved that without a guide.

The finish was a three part mix of boiled linseed oil, wipe on polyurethane and mineral spirits. I applied it four times with a one day dry time and a light sanding with a synthetic abrasive pad in between each coat.

Happy Father’s Day, Dad!

benmartens June 20, 2016 Woodworking

Studio711.com – Ben Martens

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