Studio711.com – Ben Martens – Page 91 – Just trying to get through life without looking stupid, so far it's not going very well.

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

Birthday Party

Last weekend we had a small birthday party for Elijah. Elijah thought it was extra special that cousin David was in town to come to the party too. His cake was a Dairy Queen ice cream cake with Thomas, Annie and Clarabel trains on top. After cake and presents, our neighbors came over so their kids could help Elijah smash his piñata. Everyone got a turn, but it didn’t take too long for them to break it open to find the candy and toys inside.

The highlight of the day for me was watching Elijah’s face as he heard everyone sing Happy Birthday to him. I can’t describe the pure joy on his face, but I think it’s evident in this picture below.

benmartens June 17, 2016 Family

Skylight Cover

We have two skylights in our house. One faces is over the stairs and the other is in the master bathroom. The extra light is nice, but the one over the stairs faces south, and, on a hot day, it turns the top of the stairs into an oven. Even with our AC running and the fan circulating air 24/7, upstairs will be 6-7 degrees warmer than downstairs.

I looked into adding a shade to the interior of the window but that looked like it was going to be pretty pricey. And since the skylight is so far overhead, the pole contraption would be pretty long and we’d have to store it somewhere.

I stumbled across skylightsolarshades.com. I was wary of the site because it just feels like a bit of a scam site, but I finally decided to just go for it. I crawled up on the roof and carefully measured out the dimensions of my skylight. It required a custom order, but the total with shipping was under $100.

It arrived a few weeks later and the installation took only a few minutes. It stretches to fit over the skylight and is held on with friction. So far it hasn’t blown off and I think it would take a lot for that to happen.

Our model blocks 90% of the light coming through and wow does it make a difference! The top of the stairs is now the same temperature as everywhere else upstairs. We had a couple warm, sunny days and with the air conditioner running, it was only 3-4 degrees warmer upstairs instead of the previous 6-7. That seems like a huge impact for a $100 purchase so I want to see some more data on hot days, but so far, the results are very promising.

We’ll take it off at the end of summer to benefit from the free heat that we get from the sun in the winter (though there’s not a lot of sun in the winter around here anyway.)

benmartens June 16, 2016 Home Improvement

Happy Birthday Elijah

Little Man is three years old today! When I was thinking back over the last year, I felt like the change from 2 to 3 wasn’t that huge (except for no diapers, yay!) but then I started going back through the old video clips and I realized just how long ago his last birthday was. Enjoy this look back at the last 12 months…

Here are some quick links to previous birthday videos:
One Year
Two Years

benmartens June 15, 2016 Family, Video

Train Track Fail

I’ve had a lot of projects go really well lately, but there’s one that has continued to haunt me and I’m officially tossing the idea. I give up.

Tyla found some motorized Thomas the Tank Engine trains for Elijah. They aren’t the size of the standard wood tracks, but they do make plastic tracks. I thought it would be fun to make my own tracks because then we could have whatever pieces we wanted and it could exactly fit on his play table.

The first few attempts involved etching the wood repeatedly to burn in the tracks. I tried multiple times and finally got the interlocking knobs to fit properly, the curves to be big enough that the train could make the turn, and the rails to be the right width. The problem was that they were never deep enough to hold the train in place. When you’re etching wood, you can only take so much off at a time before it starts the wood on fire, so these attemps amounted to hours and hours in front of the laser cutter watching it slowly take away material. Here’s one of my best attempts with that method. It was rare for a train to make an entire circuit around the track without falling off and I eventually tossed these in the trash.

I gave up for a couple months and then had the idea that maybe I was approaching the problem backward. Instead of trying a reductive process of burning away material, why not do an additive process? I cut one piece that formed the bottom of the track segment and then the top segment was made of three pieces: the middle and then the two outer edges. The “rails” were left blank on that top piece. So the whole segment was two thicknesses high but the rails were only one thickness high. These were very quick to cut and it didn’t take too long to glue everything together. I thought for sure this would work but… the bottom of the train drags on the middle piece and the wheels can’t get to the bottom of the groove to push the train along. Fail. In the trash it goes.

If I spent enough time I could probably figure out the right way to do this, but this project has ceased to be fun and if I decide that I really want Elijah to have tracks, I’ll spend the $26 on Amazon so he can have tracks that actually work.

It wasn’t a complete bust because I learned a lot about the laser cutter and fine tuning designs, but it stinks that I don’t have anything physically complete to show for all that time.

benmartens June 14, 2016 Maker, Woodworking

Post It Holder

Our process for getting things done at work involves a lot of sticky notes. The person who has the office closest to the tracking board inevitably ends up with a huge pile of Post It Notes in their office. I decided it would be more handy to have them right on the wall next to the board so I grabbed a scrap piece of maple and set to work. I had a stack of post it notes on hand and kind of planned the design as I went. It’s held onto the wall with a French cleat and to hide that, I etched the Microsoft logo into some maple veneer.

benmartens June 13, 2016 Maker, Woodworking

WiFi Password

Now that we have a house with a dedicated guest room, I thought it would be nice to put a little sign in there that has the guest WiFi network and password. When I took my last trip to the laser cutter at work, I brought along a scrap piece of cherry and etched it right in. It’s a good reminder that projects don’t have to be complicated to be fun.

benmartens June 10, 2016 Maker, Woodworking

Best Of YouTube

I usually spend 15-30 minutes in front of the TV at the end of the night but I’m not watching TV. That time is almost always consumed with YouTube content. There’s so much good stuff to watch on there and I have a nice setup that downloads the content I’m interested in and puts it into my DVR so it’s really easy to see what I’ve watched and what is still in the queue.

Every once in a while I stumble across some really great content like the Adam Savage speech that I posted earlier this week. I’m going to try something new and every once in a while, I’ll make a post with some of the best videos that I’ve seen recently. So without further ado, here’s the first such post…

Just a few days ago I subscribed to a new channel called Cook With Meat. It’s delicious food and the videography is beautiful. The tequilla sunrise pulled pork recipe looks fantastic:

It took me a while to warm up to Jimmy Diresta. He’s a maker who previously had some small TV shows but now runs a very successful YouTube channel. Now I’m watching all of his stuff and even listening to his podcast. He knows how to incorporate a lot of different materials and techniques. One of his latest videos was a biplane scluped on the bandsaw.

Do you remember Zane Lamprey? He has done a lot of great shows like Three Sheets, Drinking Made Easy, and Chug. Now he’s focusing on YouTube. It’s the same formula where he travels the word looking at culture and drinking customs with a lot of laughter mixed in, but this time it’s a series of 3-5 minute videos and he’s traveling with his wife. He releases about three videos a week and he’s been at it for a while so there is a lot more where this came from.

benmartens June 9, 2016 Links, Video