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Showing posts with the label wood

More Aperture Masks

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T he other day, I went out to the shed in the rain to cut out a couple of aperture masks for my small 50mm guide scope.  I want to try to use this guide scope as an imaging scope for imaging the full disk of the sun.  I have previously worked out a potential configuration to do the same using my 72mm ED refractor but I want to compare the two and then continue to use the one that produces the best images.   I need these aperture masks because I need the guide scope's focal ratio to be in the f5 to f6.5 range.  Without these aperture masks, my guide scope is at f3.2 which is too fast for this particular use.  I'm using my Quark Chromosphere solar filter so I need the focal ratio to be between f4 and f8.  I'm thinking that closer to f4 might be better for capturing prominences while closer to f8 will be better for capturing details on the 'surface' of the chromosphere.  This surface isn't really a hard surface though...  it is a surface of plasma gas in the form o

More Progress on Telescope Pier

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I've had a couple of busy days.   I started off yesterday by doing some woodworking.  I needed to make the wood top to the telescope pier.  This wood top will then be topped with an all metal universal adapter which still needs some machining.  Yesterday was all woodworking though.  I started working in the kitchen on the kitchen table since the drill press was already inside the house and I didn't want to risk inflaming my spinal injuries by carrying the heavy drill press outside if I didn't need to do so.  The kitchen table is a nice height for working so I placed some newspaper down on the table to protect it and then placed the drill press on top of the table.  This project quickly proved to be too messy to continue in the kitchen so I reluctantly moved everything out to the backyard.   I had a series of holes to drill in two pre-cut pieces of poplar.  In the end, I needed four slots in each board...  larger slots in one, smaller slots in the other.  First, I h

Telescope Pier Seeded

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As expected after all the heavy work yesterday, today has mostly been a day of recovery.  I slept most of the day so far but I did manage to get a little bit of clean-up accomplished around the telescope pier. I was able to backfill around the pier.  There was only about a foot to backfill here because the rest was filled with quick setting concrete.  After leveling it off, I put down some grass seed.  Someday down the road (certainly not this year), I may add stone or concrete pavers to this area.  For now, it will be grass. Those four little stakes in the ground along the timber step (seen in the photo below) are where I will be putting in 4x4 fence posts.  I'll have a gate in between the second and third posts and then the fence will turn back toward the house at the end posts.   The grass seed is green in these photos...  the areas that appear to be just plain dirt on each side of this telescope pier area are wildflower gardens that we planted yesterday.   I desig

A Telescope Pier

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I'm in the process of building a few little (relatively little) things outdoors as the weather and my health allows...  which means, over the course of only a few hours a week...  but at least things are progressing.  I am making some headway so that is good.  One of the things I'm building is a small fenced area in our yard where I can do some astronomy.  Last summer we had too many bears freely roaming around our neighborhood for me to feel safe out there alone in the pitch darkness.  This year, I'm enclosing myself inside a small fenced area that includes a shed.   Rather than constantly lugging a tripod from indoors to the outdoors and then lugging it back indoors again, I decided to build a pier within this fenced area.  I will be able to mount any of my telescope mounts on this pier, electronic or manual, without the use of a heavy-duty tripod.  Having a permanent pier outdoors will give my spinal injuries a little bit of a break.   The pier, itself, is q

Trellis At Back Door

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Since I haven't been able to tackle any larger home renovation projects due to our daily visits to the hospital, I have decided to attempt to tackle a few smaller projects around the house. My theory is... as long as my health is stable enough to allow me to get some work accomplished, it doesn't matter what I do as long as I simply keep busy and do something. One such relatively small project was to design and build a timber trellis-type structure at our back door to the house.  I sketched out a few ideas a few days ago and Sheila liked the idea. We stopped at Lowes after leaving the hospital yesterday to pick up some lumber and galvanized lag bolts. This little project didn't require a whole lot of supplies since most of it is being built using scrap lumber from previous home renovations. The first thing I started with today was transposing my sketches to full-size cut lines on the lumber. Once I was happy with this transposed design, I got busy with my new jig

The Disappearing Antique Boat Show

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Every year we always look forward to a few different annual events. The annual Lake Champlain Antique Boat Show has always been one of these annual events and it has always been a great time in the past.  The show was yesterday and, since it has been raining almost everyday here in Vermont, we were very fortunate to have a beautiful sunny day! I was feeling "fair" (which is better than I've felt in the past week) so I packed up a camera, a couple of lenses and a bag full of medications and we headed to Burlington in anticipation of viewing a fleet of antique boats on beautiful Lake Champlain with the rugged Adirondack Mountains looming in the background.  It was a beautiful day for walking around Burlington. The sky was clear. The sun was shining but it was still quite comfortable with temperatures in the 70s. Since I don't do well in hot climates, this was my kind of weather!  Our walk toward the waterfront was very nice and a much needed break from recove

Almost Finished Closet

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This morning my health was stable and I felt well... and the weather was beautiful for working outdoors (it is already raining though)... so, I pulled out all my power tools and got to work finishing up trim in the new walk-in closet. Next, is to lay the flooring... an ebony stained hardwood floor (yes, real wood, not plastic) which will run through the entire bedroom. Before I can install this flooring, however, I need to paint the room. I don't want to get any paint on this new flooring so I'll do all the painting before I install the flooring.  Here are some photos of the walk-in closet... That is some of the hardwood flooring being used as spacers.

Mini Mount Photos and Art

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I've always had this idea for a series of portraits... frameless photos, all mounted on a wall, in sort of a random pattern at different depths. I had this idea in my head for about two decades but never really did anything with it. Recently, I've been using a professional printer who  puts out very high quality products and I couldn't be happier with them. This printer has a wide variety of products, one of which is a p roduct called Mini Mounts.  These Mini Mounts are a product printed on Fuji paper and mounted on wood with a black beveled edge. This product has a very clean look and I am very excited about how great these Mini Mounts look. I ordered a series of 12 prints mounted on Mini Mounts about a month ago and finally mounted them on the wall in our new bedroom this morning (I was waiting to finish the bedroom). As any series of photos should, this series of photos has a theme.... in this case, 'The Lake House'. In order to hang these Mini Mounts

Finish Carpentry Skills A Bit Rusty

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I'm still working on this custom door. The door is residing in our kitchen on top of the jig which is on top of two sawhorses. The weather has been lousy so I am stuck working indoors this week. Throw in Adam's wisdom teeth problems and my off-and-on lousy health, and things are moving a bit slowly... Since my last blog entry about making some progress in assembling the door for our new half bathroom, I've managed to drill out the holes for the pegs which are intended to hold each joint together. Unfortunately, like so many other things on this half bathroom project, this didn't go as smoothly as I would have liked. Worse yet, I need to make three more of these doors so I need to figure out how to avoid repeating these mistakes. I figured that writing about the problems might help in avoiding these same mistakes on the next three doors.  Pegs are inserted through this joint to hold the pieces together. First let me explain how I intended to fasten each of th