Sharkey's blog

I posted previously about some of the custom vehicles coming off the drawing board of Mike Leeds and Randy Grubb, cars with V16 Patton tank engines and roadsters built from Seagraves fire trucks, etc. I dropped by the Blastolene web site this evening out of boredom and found that Randy is working on a new project, a "Flash Gordon motorhome":

Nothing says this has to be a practical motorhome project, right? Well, it looks like it is well underway, with completion slated for August of 2011. Knowing the history of previous builds, it will be completed by then, if not very shortly thereafter.

Visit the page and see the progress yourself: http://www.blastolene.com/Work_in_Progress/deco.htm

OK, new project: 10 meter amateur radio antenna.

Materials: Old CB base antenna the previous owners left behind.

New technique: Remove heavy rust from antenna mounting bracket without sanding, scraping, grinding, etc.

Here's how:

Time for some unscheduled maintenance. Last week, I went out and turned on the plant at dusk in preparation for the evening's lighting. About nine o'clock, I noticed that the plant wasn't putting out any power, as indicated by the dedicated ammeter inside the Housetruck. "Great" I thought, "the spring has quit again, I'll have to trudge up the hill again tomorrow and get it put back into shape", and got on a coat to go out and switch the house and truck over to the backup water supply.

Today, I did something that I've wanted to do since the first day of this project, I took the hydro down to the lower garden and connected it to the water supply there. Being as the garden is about 40 feet lower in elevation, there was more pressure available. I was able to put the larger orifice nozzle on the plant and maintain about a 27 PSI running pressure.

The power output of the plant into a 12 volt battery was doubled with this increase in pressure and nozzle combination. I was able to put out a scorching 20 watts!

A year and counting. This little project is still paying off, as I'm using it once again to keep the batteries topped off as the light disappears towards winter. To be fair, it didn't get run much over the summer, but it still seems to be holding together.

Once again I sort of stumbled onto John's housetruck build while cruising referrals in my logs. It looks like he had some travel adventures in the first part of this year, and then moved into the truck about two months ago, writing about it in his blog:

http://polymecca.com/housetruck/first-night

It will be interesting to hear and see more.

This exhibit opened on Saturday, and apparently was popular enough to get some local media attention.

Roger even gets a few words in!

The exhibit at the Lane County Historical Society & Museum for the next year and a half is "Tie Dye & Tofu: How Mainstream Eugene Became a Counterculture Haven". The exhibit runs May 8, 2010 to September 31, 2011.

Running up to the three month mark, with a week off for rebuilding...

Yesterday, I decided to do something about all the tail water coming off the plant. I've been a bit concerned about it from the beginning, soaking the ground right next to the house on a hillside didn't seem real smart, and that ice buildup couldn't have been good either.

The hydro plant is back on line. I couldn't find a solvent-based cement that would fuse both the wheel and buckets. ABS plumbing cement reacted with the wheel, so I used it to "pot" the buckets into the lower wheel, filling all of the voids between the bucket mounting tabs and the wheel assembly. Before putting the top cover back on the assembly, I drizzled cement over the tops of the buckets, then pressed the cover into the layer, latching it into place.