Let’s hear it. No project too big or too small.
I did get around to the hand plane this week. Most of the rust and grot is off and now I need to lap the sole as best I can.
If there’s still a bit of rust left somewhere . . . I don’t actually care. It’s a 1970s Canadian-made Stanley Craftsman plane, which means that it’s effectively worthless. I just want it in good enough shape not to leave rust streaks on whatever I’m trying to plane. In five years or so, I expect I’ll either have given up on woodworking or bought a higher-quality replacement.
(I also need to fix a chair, which I didn’t quite get to today.)
Staining red oak for a slat wall around our fireplace. Hope to get it installed this week.
Starting the refinish job on our front porch. Got my broom and sander and some dry weather in the forecast, hopefully it’ll be finished before the next storm rolls through!
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That doesnt sound fun at all. Would a drain snake work?
Edit: responding to @jarfil@beehaw.org. Sorry, still getting used to the Connect app.
The one I have doesn’t fit through the strainer, I’ll try to locate a thinner one, or some of those hair removal ziptie lookalikes (it likely isn’t hair stuck down there, but who knows).
Reattaching my towel rack to my wall. It was held in with drywall anchors but those have failed so will either repatch and reattach or glue it back on. Depends on how done with it I am
Ideally, you’d want it anchored into a stud.
Going to be resealing our countertops today. Shouldn’t be too complicated, but it’s my first time doing it so we’ll see.
Was going to try to get the rust off my father’s crappy old hand plane (since restoring it would get me out of having to buy a hand plane of my own for now), but it doesn’t look like I’m going to get that far this week. Spent a couple of hours moving books around to clear some shelf space instead.
Edit: Turned out that my actual DIY for the weekend was fixing my computer mouse, which suddenly developed a tendency to jump the cursor randomly to the upper-left corner of the screen. Turns out that it’s possible to kill a laser mouse with cat hair if you get enough of it wedged into the little opening on the bottom of the mouse that the laser shines through. And here I thought fluff was only a failure mode for ball mice.
Probably going to practise using my new laser cutter/engraver I just got last week.
Trying to fix a slow bathtub drain.
It’s got one of those flexible ribbed pipes that keeps holding onto everything, and whoever installed the bathtub had the amazing idea of fully encasing it in brick and large tiles, with no access left to replace the pipe. To add insult to injury, the pipe is attached to the bathtub by a single screw going through a metal strainer, so no way to properly shove in a pipe cleaner without it coming detached and falling under the bathtub… inside the encased part; even if I managed to fish it out afterwards, no way it’s going to match the gasket again. The toilet is also so close to it, that even to try breaking the tile and brick to get to the pipe, one would have to remove the toilet first.
I’ve poured in some “gel drain cleaner”, left it for a while, washed it out, and some plunger action seemed to move some stuff around, but it was still slow. Poured some caustic soda, which outgassed pretty nicely, and the plunger worked some more, but I’d say it’s still less than 50% there.
I’m torn as to what to try next, whether some HCl, bleach, or sulfuric, but the strainer is metal and I don’t want to make it look worse than it already does. Could try more of the gel and/or soda, but I think they might’ve already done all they were to do.
Is there access to a cleanout from below?
It’s and apartment, so that would require access from the common collector. It is possible, some neighbors did it (to locate a leak they caused by DIY “re-tiling” the bathroom with a jackhammer, not kidding), but it takes a long snake to reach even the bottom floor.
For now at least it drains. I’ll try and locate a thinner snake, or some of those “hair removal” ziptie lookalikes.
I’m in the process of destroing an old, out of service fireplace, to rebuild a fake one with an electric radiator.
The chimney hadn’t been swept before it was taken out of service, and now I know how much I hate tallow.
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Should be ripping out Windows and getting Fedora Workstation working on a new machine. I’ll probably start working on installing the AI tools I used to justify the new rig. I’m halfway thinking about modifying my laptop bed stand to add more cooling capacity built in, but it kinda depends on how hot it gets with the GPU at full tilt.
I also need to make some progress getting my desk/hobby electronics workstation back to useful conditions and reinstall all of my lighting.
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I’m interested in integrating Stable Diffusion with Blender for CAD modeling, and using PrivateGPT (a text chat model) to process a bunch of text about computer science stuff and be able to ask it questions about the text, hopefully with cited references.
Trying to fix a slow leak in a toilet, likely, but the main project is patching a gap in the ceiling where a vent fan doesn’t quite fit
If it’s a standard style toilet that’s more than 10 years old, I would recommend one of these kits: https://www.lowes.com/pd/Fluidmaster-PerforMAX-Universal-2-in-High-Performance-Everything-Toilet-Tank-Repair-Kit-with-Install-Tools/5001419031
I’ve been chasing small leaks and it running when it wasn’t supposed to for a couple years now. I eventually bought the above kit and I wish I would have done that from the beginning. It replaces everything that leaks (except for the wax ring), was easy to install with good instructions, and came with all the needed tools. Now no more leaks, uses less water while still flushing as good, and is quieter overall. I also replaced the water line from the valve to the tank at the same time, That was another $4.
