Ed's Experiments and Stuff

Do you have a charcoal grill? After awhile if you have moved it around do the legs come out? I have two of these grills and they both have this problem. But then again I did get both of them out of the trash! I suppose they were in the trash in the first place because their owner was tired of dealing with the legs coming out. The problem is that the legs are typically just crimped as you see below instead of firmly attached. Well, we are going to fix this! First, what you will need is a drill, a small-ish drill bit, and either 3 screws long enough to go all the way through the leg with nuts to go with them, or 6 rivets and a rivet gun. The drill bit naturally will be sized to fit the size of the screws or rivets. I like rivets because with screws there is a chance the nuts will come loose and then you are going to have wobbly legs again. Rivets are a permanent fix. So now that you have everything you need, drill a hole through the leg where it attaches to the grill. Make sure

I wasn't going to post this because the repair failed but what the heck, maybe someone can learn from it. I have a 30" widescreen Sony WEGA TV, a really heavy picture tube TV. Several months ago it wouldn't come on and the light on the front flashed 7 times. I googled it and found out that this meant there was something wrong with the high voltage board, specifically two chips. After debating rather to bring it somewhere to fix it (probably $200 range), replace the board (also $200 range), or replace the two chips ($70 for the parts and a new soldering iron with a small tip and a couple other supplies). I finally decided on the $70 option even though I was leery about being able to unsolder the chip's pins, get them out, and then replace with new ones. So I ordered the parts, got a new iron, took a bunch of pictures of the inside of the TV so I could remember where all the connectors went, and disconnected everything. I actually did a good job of getting the old

One of my hobbies is beekeeping . Unfortunately it is quite expensive to buy all the wooden-ware needed. As a result I decided to make my own hive bodies. But the problem is pushing a 2 x 10 of any length through the table saw and keeping a straight edge is challenging. I was talking with a workmate who recommended making a jig and using my circular saw. So this is what I came up with: The base is a piece of 1/2 inch plywood about 12" x 12". There are 2 1 x scraps of wood on the sides sized to the 1 x 10 that hold it when the saw is pushed through. The top is another piece of plywood that is screwed down. Now I use the edge of this to piece of plywood as the guide for the circular saw. So I force the 1 x 10 as far back into the jig as possible and it is the right size for the long ends of the hive bodies. Once I cut a few pieces off it is much easier to push it through the table saw for the small sides. I could always make another jig for the small sides if I wanted

I will judge the plastic glasses a success. I planted the last couple out in the garden yesterday. The roots were grown against the sides of the plastic cups, which is pretty normal, but usually in a V shaped pot you would see the roots had grown down to the bottom of the pot and started winding around. Even after letting them grow a little too long in these glasses this wasn't really the case. Of course there was some but not nearly as much as I would have expected. There is a chance these patio tomatoes don't send deep roots. That I don't know. But the only problem they seemed to have was that I didn't water them enough once they got bigger. Sometimes I have a problem with that. Right now I have a few shriveled cabbage seedlings in the basement. Something for me to work on. Anyway, two of the plants have half inch tomatoes. It has been cool here lately but I should have tomatoes to pick in a week or two. Not bad. The regular soda cup lids tended to get br

Last year I put a blanket on the water heater. It is made from a radiant barrier product that is basically bubble wrap with aluminum foil on both sides. It is R-6 I think and I used it on some other projects and had a bunch left over so I made the blanket. (One of the other projects I did was to take a car seat heater/massager that you can find at Kohles for $20-$30 dollars that the heater element shorted out and used scrap pieces as a replacements for the seat and back. It is working pretty well. Of course it doesn't heat up but it reflects enough body heat that even on those freezing mornings within a few minutes my butt and back are pretty warm.) Anyway, I was over at my buddy Andy's house the other day and he asked how it was working. So this weekend I took our indoor/outdoor weather station downstairs and slipped the outdoor sensor inside the blanket and put the station a few feet beside it for the room temp. Room temp 65.3. Inside temp 82.4. I don't remembe

It appears the patio tomatoes are taking pretty well to the drink glass planters. I have 4 that germinated and that I potted, although one is not growing very well. It was rather iffy when it got put into the pot (it was sitting in too much water when it sprouted). I was hoping it would start growing after a few days but it is languishing. The others are doing well. The roots seem to like the extra room. Notice in the picture that there are roots right against the container wall. Bottom watering with these pots works well. Since the glasses are clear I can easily gauge how far up the moisture has reached so it is easier to not over- or under-water them. The straw hole is providing enough moisture to get through. When I potted them I bent two pieces of the straw hole up (into the pot) in two of them and left 2 of them alone. That doesn't appear to matter as all 4 pots are getting water drawn up into them to the same level. If I over-watered from the top it might make a di

Why are planters V shaped? Plant roots don't want to grow closer together the deeper they get, they want to spread out. Seems to me planters should be A shaped. Sure it would be tougher to fill with dirt, maybe harder to water thoroughly, and repotting would be more interesting getting the plant out of the old pot and into the new, but the roots would have more room to spread out. As I am having lunch with some buddies of mine I'm looking at the drink cup and it seemed to me that this would be perfect for starting garden seeds in the spring; tomatoes, peppers, cabbage, that kind of thing. The root benefit would be there and I wouldn't have to worry about repotting - they would be used once and then recycled. Using the glass lid as a base would allow the straw hole to be used for bottom watering. As my first try I started a couple varieties of patio tomatoes. It seemed like a good choice. They won't grow fast or big. I might not ever have to take them out of the

My Overwintered Tomato I had read an article in Mother Earth News awhile back (I don't remember the issue or date and can't find the article) about a guy who took cuttings from his tomato plants in the late summer or early fall, rooted them, and brought them inside for the winter, growing them by a big window. A couple of years ago I tried it but my cuttings had bugs and they didn't make it too long. This year I tried again and it is working pretty well. Unfortunately I didn't think about doing it last fall until I heard there was a frost warning one night. Even a light frost will kill tomatoes so I went outside and took 3 cuttings. There are two kinds of tomatoes: determinate and indeterminate. Determinate varieties grow and then flower and produce fruit over a relatively short period of time. After they fruit they may continue to grow and fruit some, but not as much. Indeterminate varieties continue growing, flowering, and producing fruit until frost kills the