Rain Gutter Regatta

My sons Cub Scout pack is getting ready to have their rain gutter regatta. Most of the boys have their balsa wood boats in various stages of completion. After speaking with the pack leader, I found out they didn't have a rain gutter to race their boats in. Since southern California doesn't get much rain, certainly not enough to race boats in the rain gutters, we had a problem.. So I went through several designs of various sizes and settled on this (to the right). It's 8 feet long, and divided by a Plexiglas sheet to create two lanes to race boats in. The tradition is for the boys to blow on the boats (sails) to make them move, so I made the divider tall enough to make sure one boy's boat didn't interfere with the other. The bottom of the rain gutter is a 2x6"x8' long plank that I cut the sides at a 45 degree angle. I then put the two 10" wide sides on with wood glue and screws (I hate nails) every 6" or so. The ends are held in place with wood glue and screws as well. The divider rests in a slot between two slats on the bottom of the rain gutter. The inside of the rain gutter is blue (like water), and the outside is gray (my son picked the colors). At some point I'll add designate one end as the starting area, and the other as the finish line with a painted pattern, and some posts put into the sides. I thought about adding a small bilge pump (batter operated) to create a slight current, but the pack committee wants to stick with tradition.
I chose this design to maximize the width at the surface and depth, while reducing the amount of water (weight). This is also the simplest of the 5 designs I considered (KISS). After sealing the rain gutter, and 3 layers of oil-based water-proof paint (behr representative recommended suggested 2 layers should be enough), it should hold water easily. I'm giving it 48hrs drying time between layers of paint. I'll post actual pictures upon request.

Fruits of Spring

This past week my kids were on spring break. No chance to work in the garage, or much else constructive (in that way). I gave in to my kids demands, and we went to color-me-mine, a local ceramic paint shop. The left pic is my new coffee cup after my painting efforts but before it's kiln firing. The right is the same cup, post-firing. I'm much happier with the handle, but the bowl itself is still not right. I think the first cup I did in this motif was better, albeit, flawed. The handle chipped/cracked after the firing, rendering the would-be coffee cup a pencil cup.

Round 2 of testing

This is my test set up. The garden hose on the right is pulling water after the in-line whole house filter I previously showed. The ball valve is connected to my eFilter, then an adapter for the 1/4" tubing to the 1micron filter. During this test I used 120vAC. I ran the water through the filter with the current on for about 2 minutes prior to water quality testing to ensure the water had gone through both filters.

..the test results post serial filter. If you compare this with the previous tests you'll see that the results are about the same. There is a very slight drop in the the water hardness. I'm still getting that bizarre nitrate test result. I'm not sure what to make of that. This proves I'm moving in the right direction, and that I need to make v2.1. I've done some reading and ran across an article (I can't find it via google atm) that was doing similar de-ionization of water. They were using around 170 volts at about 240hz. Since my goal is to use a minimal of electricity, I'll investigate using an even higher frequency 1khz? I'm a bit leery about this, I don't want the FCC coming down on me.

Water + Electricity = WHEEEeeee

Here's a video of a rheostat I put together. On/off toggle on the bottom. The two outlets are split, the top are regular AC, the bottom two are DC via a heafty bridge rectifier. I needed some sort of indicator so I pulled a incandescent bulb I had laying around.

Balsa Styracosaurus

While this looks a bit rough for my taste, it's not bad for a 3rd grade student. Balsa wood cut on the band saw, and hand sanded for details. We weren't able to find any pictures from the top down, so getting an idea what the pelvis/hip looked like from that angle was best-guess. The left front leg is articulated so it can be posed. The neck/head as well. The pelvis has both right and left bones. The hind legs have only 2 toes, but do have tibia and fibula bones. I told her that she should tell her classmates that the various scratches were a result of the fossilization process, and that this is in fact a baby styracosaurus. She had fun making it, and is already talking about next year. Makes me wish I had science fair when I was 8. :)

Pipe-Cleaner model

My daughter had her science fair this week. She chose to make a dinosaur model. For some reason she selected the obscure styracosaurus as the subject. This is a relative of the more widely known triceretops. While the tric. had 3 horns, this ugly beast had 17 horns. I made this model out of pipe cleaners and a few pics I was able to pull off the internet. There are a few missing details, hip bones, right/left pelvis, and there a lot of missing ribs and rib-like structures. The final model she made with balsa wood, not my first choice of material, but it required nearly no power tools, so I can't complain too much.

Test Reults

Last week I picked up a few water test kits from the local hardware store. These tests are about $10 each, so the quality/resolution isn't great. They gave me a basic idea of how well the current filter arrangement is working. Each kit consists of a litmus-style "dip-stick" that you compare the colors to a chart. In most cases the colors were difficult to match exactly. The copper and iron tests were clearly 0 (zero) in all cases. These tests are without the eFilter I've been working on. The nitrate tests results were consistently abnormal (pic on the right). Both the pre/post filter results were the same for the nitrate tests.