Studio711.com – Ben Martens

F150 Tonneau Cover

Shortly after I bough the truck, we took it on a weekend getaway. It rained on the way back so I tarped up. As I was fighting the tarp and the wind, I thought about how many times I’d be doing that over the course owning the truck. It didn’t take much to convince me to look for a better solution.

I ended up buying a TruXedo cover. They have a variety of models but I think I got the fanciest one: the Lo Pro QT. I paid about to have it $450 shipped from Amazon. If you order one, make sure you get the right size for your truck. Thanks to Jay for originally recommending this to me. Installation was pretty easy for me, but I heard that Don and Logan struggled with the install on Don’s truck recently.

Over the last 10 months I’ve grown to really enjoy this. Sure, it’s not as fancy as other retractable ones that roll down into the bed, but this one also cost a small fraction of the cost of those nicer models. I’ve used it to cover camping gear, trash for the dump, groceries and even loads of mulch and dirt. I can unroll it or roll it up in less than a minute and there’s very little vibration or flapping as I drive down the road.

There are no signs of wear or fading on it yet, but even if I have to buy another one in 5 or 10 years, I’ll still say it’s a good investment.

benmartens June 20, 2017 Commentary

Magnetic Coasters

Ever since Bob Clagett made a set of magnetic hexagon coasters on his I Like To Make Stuff YouTube channel, I’ve had it on my list of projects to attempt. Father’s Day seemed like a good excuse.

I decided to use up some scraps of 8/4 maple and walnut. I resawed them down to thinner pieces, jointed and planed them flat and then glued them together. The two pieces of wood together were somewhere a little more more than 1/4″ thick.

I basically followed the instructions directly from Bob’s video so I won’t repeat them all here. I did take a little different approach to cutting the hexagons though. Instead of drawing it on each coaster, I made some marks on my sacrificial miter gauge fence and used those to make all the right cuts. That worked very well and they came out very close to identical.

Honestly the hardest part of the whole thing was remembering to alternate the magnets when I put them in. They were such a tight fit that I really couldn’t get them out once they were in. At first I was using a bit of CA glue to hold them in, but in the end, I skipped it. I think the friction will hold them just fine and with the extra time to put the glue in each hole, I kept forgetting which way to put the next magnet in. By the end I had a good system down though. Dad, if those magnets start falling out, I’ll fix them on my next trip out there.

I finished up with five or six coats of spray lacquer on each side. After some really long projects, it’s fun to watch a project come together relatively quickly!

benmartens June 19, 2017 Woodworking

Dodged A Win

The other day on Facebook, Ken posted this: “You never regret being kind.” My snarky mind immediately tried to come up with a joking way to refute that. A story from college came to mind and I was surprised to see that I hadn’t blogged about it before…

After coming out of a class, I waited for the bus to get back to the dorm. (It was about a 10-15 minute walk from class to my dorm so sometimes I’d take a bus if the weather was bad.) I wasn’t paying much attention but as the bus rolled up and opened the door, another guy and I arrived at the same time to get on board. I stepped back and motioned him to go first. As soon as his foot touched the bus, a couple guys in suits appeared out of nowhere, grabbed him and asked “Are you getting on this bus?”

I thought, “HA! Sucker. I’m glad I let you go first!”

The bus started moving after we all got on and one of the guys in suits said, “I’m proud to announce that Joe is our one millionth CityBus rider!” He ended up winning a $500 gift card to the mall.

A friend of mine on the bus saw the whole thing and he got a good laugh at my expense.

benmartens June 16, 2017 Commentary

Lime Kiln Trail

After the success of our Little Mt Si hike, Logan, Elijah and I headed out again. We picked out a very kid-friendly trail so that Elijah could spend a lot of time on his feet instead of in my pack. That worked for about half a mile and then he rode the rest of it. I didn’t push it because he seemed legitimately tired (he was falling asleep in my pack) but it worked out fine. The trail doesn’t have a lot of elevation gain but it is 8 miles round trip.

There isn’t a huge payoff but the walk is pretty. You go past an old lime kiln and then in another mile you hit the end of the trail at the edge of the river. We had lunch there and made our way back.

The trail itself is indeed kid friendly. It’s generally fairly wide and relatively smooth. There were, however, a lot of bushes and trees growing in from the side of the trail so you have to be careful not to smack people in the face behind you. It was especially tricky with a kid riding in a backpack.

I really enjoy these hikes but I’m struggling with how to keep Elijah engaged at this transition point. I don’t love hiking without a destination, but a lot of the destinations that are fun are also more than he can handle at this point. If you have suggestions of waterfalls, lakes, fire lookouts, etc that are only a mile or two round trip without a ton of elevation gain, please send them my way.

In addition to the pictures below, you can also see the hyperlapse that I posted on Instagram. (A hyperlapse is basically a video that is sped up and smoothed out so it kind of looks like you’re flying along without the normal video bumps caused by walking.)

benmartens June 14, 2017 Outdoors, Timelapse

Piano Playing

I played a piece on the piano at church on Sunday for the post service music. It occurred to me that I don’t think I’ve ever posted a video of something like that so here you go. This is actually from one of my practice sessions earlier in the week. It’s a combination of Christ the Lord Is Risen Today and Hallelujah from Handel’s Messiah.

benmartens June 12, 2017 Music

Shop Tour

I often find myself flirting with the idea of starting a YouTube woodworking channel, but I think that’s unlikely to happen. Still, I thought it would be fun to dip my toe into the water with a shop tour. Plus it’s a chance to show you all where I do my projects. It’s a good chance for you to hear how everything in my shop “works great”. I apparently say that a lot.

If you want to see pictures of my projects as they happen, follow me on Instagram @martenswoodworks.

benmartens June 9, 2017 Woodworking

Chalk Roads

Elijah and the neighbor kids enjoy riding their bikes along chalk roads which basically just consist of two parallel lines (or something resembling parallel depending on who draws them). When you’re hunched over holding chalk on the ground and walking backwards, it doesn’t take long to start thinking about ways to make it easier.

On Sunday, Elijah and I headed into the shop and whipped out a little gizmo which worked amazingly well. It’s a broom handle with a 26″ long straight board across the bottom. A little over an inch in from each side, we drilled a hole to hold one of his big pieces of chalk. Then I cut a little slice through the end of the board and through the hole so that a bolt with a wing nut and clamp it shut and squeeze the chalk. The cross piece is a scrap of mahogany. That’s overkill and extra fancy, but it was a scrap that probably would have ended up in the trash and I wanted a hardwood for the clamping part.

It was a bit of a random attempt and I think the clamping part could be improved, but it worked awesome! Elijah could even do it by himself.

We’re going to need more chalk.

 

benmartens June 7, 2017 Commentary

Little Mt. Si

On Saturday, Logan, Elijah and I headed up Little Mt. Si. Tyla messed up her ankle a bit and decided to stay home. We got to the trailhead at 9am and there was already no parking. Thankfully someone pulled out right as we pulled in.

It’s too much hike for Elijah to do all on his own so I packed him about 3/4 of the way up and then he walked about 2/3 of the way down. He’s technically still under the weight limit for the carrier we have but wow, that’s a load. It’s funny though that carrying him doesn’t seem as heavy as when I used to load a couple water jugs in my pack to train. I think it’s because I always knew I could stop and pour out the jugs.

It was my first time on the hike and I enjoyed it. The trail was packed since it was a nice day and there is still snow on a lot of the higher elevation trails. We were on our way down before the big rush came, but we had plenty of company at the top of the mountain. The view, unsurprisingly, isn’t as great as it is from the top of Mt. Si, but it was still nothing to scoff at.

Thanks to Logan for suggesting a hike and picking it out! Hopefully there are a lot more hikes coming up this summer.

 

benmartens June 6, 2017 Outdoors

Garmin Fenix 3

I pulled out my GPS watch for a hike and while it was charging, I was surprised to find out that I’ve never done a blog post on it. So here’s a “long term update” on the watch even though it doesn’t get used a lot.

Last fall I picked up a Garmin Fenix 3. It’s a ridiculously fancy watch. The key features that I use are hooking it to my phone for text message and phone call notifications, GPS tracking of my hikes, and tracking my skiing. It also has some cool golf features (distance to hole, etc) but I haven’t played golf in a long time.

It’s expensive. It was around $500 when I got it, but thanks to a health benefits program at work, I sort of got it for free. But if you are really active and like to have a great GPS tracker with you at all times, this seems like a pretty good fit.

Last weekend, Logan, Elijah and I hiked up Little Mt. Si and I used the watch for that hike. It was really nice to have a good feeling for how far along in the hike we were (I knew the total distance and the total elevation) and then watch us follow the track back.

When it’s all done, you get a website showing all the data from the hike and you can share that with other people. Here’s a link if you want to see it: https://connect.garmin.com/modern/activity/1776138597

So yeah it’s cool. It’s fun to put random watch faces and different apps on the watch. Would I ever pay for it? Nope. I don’t wear a watch day to day and I don’t do enough activity stuff to justify it. But is it fun to use? Yep!

benmartens June 5, 2017 Gadgets