The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning

Ed Nisley's Blog: Shop notes, electronics, firmware, machinery, 3D printing, laser cuttery, and curiosities. Contents: 100% human thinking, 0% AI slop.

Category: Home Ec

Things around the home & hearth

New Dryer Vent

After the deck stain cured for a few days, I replaced the dryer vent:

Dryer vent

The alert reader will note it’s held to the siding with four stainless steel 4 mm socket-head cap screws, for which I’m not going to apologize one little bit.

They fit into a quartet of threaded wood inserts driven into the siding, because the previous vent had small steel screws that pulled out many years ago.

I used a 4-¼ inch oscillating hole saw to embiggen the original 4.000 inch hole through the wall that doesn’t fit contemporary “4 inch” dryer vent pipe. The 4.000 inch hole in the interior seal plate also needed embiggening.

We must add a filter bag of some sort, as the dryer really wants to coat the deck in fuzz, but that’s in the nature of fine tuning.

There are no other pictures, as this was a ten minute job that burned an entire afternoon …

2025-10-07
Worst Deck Staining Job: Recoated

A year after using up the rest of the stain that Came With The House™, I pressure-washed the worst deck staining job into submission:

Deck restaining – pressure washed

Given the variegated ugly remaining, a “solid” color seemed appropriate. Based on web color samples, we independently decided “Cedar Naturaltone” was the least awful choice:

Deck restaining – Behr Cedar Naturaltone

I am not an expert on woods, but IMO that ain’t close to any real substance named “cedar”.

The instructions insist two thin coats will produce a better outcome than one thick coat, so I did my best:

Deck restaining – starting

The first coat dried slightly less orange than I feared:

Deck restaining – first coat

After the second coat, it’s not really pumpkin out there, but it’s pretty close. The phone camera + GIMP seem unable to cope with the situation, so trust me when I say that’s a sheet of pure white EVA foam:

Deck restaining – not pumpkin

I suspect the stain / paint will outlive the deck structure, but now it’s uniformly ugly.

2025-10-06
Glow In The Dark Pool Sandals

For reasons not relevant here, after Having Been Advised to not walk barefoot on our wood floors, I picked up a pair of beach / pool sandals with comfy soles. Although they have a white logo, they’re black and essentially invisible in the dark when I need them most.

Start by taking a photo of the logo on the clamped-flat upper strap:

UnderArmour logo – flattened

Use GIMP to select the white area, clean it up a little, convert the selection into a path, export it as an SVG file, import into LightBurn, scale to match reality, and Fire The Laser:

UnderArmour logo – GITD tape cutting

That’s a roll of glow-in-the-dark tape which is almost certainly a lethal combination of PVC and phosphorescent stuff, so hold your breath while it cuts.

It’s “actually a “kiss cut” through the tape, but not through the backing paper, letting the whole thing hang together after the operation.

Peel-n-stick on the (still flattened) sandals, expose them to light, and It Just Works:

UnderArmour logo – glowing

The fit isn’t perfect, perhaps due to insufficient flattening, but it’s close enough for my simple needs.

2025-10-02
Worm Bin Fly Trap

Despite freezing the kitchen scraps going into the worm bin since the previous fruit fly infestation, a zillion flies are now in residence. Lacking the peppermint-stick tube of yesteryear, I conjured another fly trap from common household items:

Worm Bin Fly Trap – overview

The gap around the top got a strip of tape after I took the picture.

The gallon jug has cardboard stiffeners supporting a sheet of the sticky paper I used for the onion fly traps:

Worm Bin Fly Trap – sticky paper holder

I was all set to 3D print a threaded adapter to join the two bottles when I realized they already had lids. A few minutes of lathe work added a passageway:

Worm Bin Fly Trap – Bottle caps

They’re held together by a generous ring of hot melt glue:

Worm Bin Fly Trap – lighting detail

The LED strip provides enough light to simultaneously attract the flies and repel the worms.

The laser cuttery looks like this:

Worm Bin Fly Trap – LightBurn parts

The white shape in the black block is a scan of the cut-open jug, with the other shapes in that row being rectangularized versions. The two tiny notches in the Top and Bottom shapes hold the sticky paper.

The two rings at the top adapt the LED-wrapped bottle to the existing fitting on the worm bin from the previous episode. They’re visible as shadows near the bottom of the bottle.

The circle is a laser-cut hole in the gallon jug bottom for the screened plug made for the pepermint-stick tube; the less said about that operation the better.

So far, so good, although previous experience suggests the flies will be breeding ahead of their (considerable) losses for the next few weeks.

2025-09-30
HOKA Shoe: FAIL

Mary got a pair of HOKA shoes in the spring and, after a few months of what we consider light usage, had the upper detach from the sole:

HOKA shoe – failed joint

The oddly shaped holes in the rubberized area are a stylin’ thing, not defects.

The wet-looking stuff is E6000+ adhesive, which then got clamped overnight:

HOKA shoe – clamping

It cured and seems to be holding the pieces together:

HOKA shoe – glued

HOKA shoes came highly recommended by a friend and carry a corresponding price tag. Mary felt expensive shoes should hold together better than that, so (before I undertook the repair) she returned them under warranty. Some weeks later, the shoes reappeared with a note describing the failure as “normal wear and tear” which is not covered by the warranty.

Whereupon I was given permission to have my way with them.

For whatever it’s worth, this also happened:

HOKA site blocking

Mary’s conclusion was they’re nice shoes and fit well, but they’re definitely not worth three times the price of the shoes she’d been wearing.

2025-09-29
USB Charger: Safety FAIL

Mary reported a problem unplugging the USB charger powering the light pad (the successor to the pad I repaired) she uses for quilting layouts:

USB Charger – as found

Yes, that blade is sticking out of the hot (“Line”) side of the outlet.

The only way into the charger was through its other end:

USB charger – interior top

Because I had no intention of returning it to service, I tried pushing the errant blade back in place, only to have it overshoot the mark and bulldoze various parts aside:

USB charger – PCB blade contacts

The two upright shapes contact the blades, but do not lock them in place. The PCB pulled easily out of the case, with no objection from the remaining (“Neutral”) blade.

The blades are simple steel bars press-fit into the plastic case, without holes / dimples / notches to lock them into the plastic. As far as I could tell, they were not molded in place.

I tossed the corpse into the e-waste box, extracted another USB charger from the Box o’ USB Chargers and returned the light pad to service.

I do have a few Genuine UL Listed USB chargers, but these are not among them.

2025-09-25
Dances With Disease

So then this happened:

Positive COVID test

This being my first round in this particular rodeo, I’m unlikely to be doing anything useful for a week or two.

Paxlovid incoming …

Protip: Wear your mask, no matter how much trouble other folks have understanding your accent.

2025-09-03