Tag: Gardening

Growing and sometimes fixing

Garden Step2 Seat: Axle Repair
The cart in Mary’s Vassar Farm plot returned in need of repair:

$Garden Seat - fractured body$
Garden Seat – fractured body

Those fractures near the end of the axle let the axle erode the side wall:

Garden Seat – eroded body

This will obviously require some sort of reinforcement on the body holding the axle, but the first challenge involved getting the wheels off the axle:

Garden Seat – axle cover

Some brute force revealed the hub covers snapped over an install-only locking fastener:

Garden Seat – axle retaining clip

More brute force cut those fasteners (a.k.a. star-lock washers) to get the wheels off the axles.

While contemplating the situation, a box of 606 bearings (as used in the PolyDryer auto-rewind spindles) failed to scamper out of the way and produced a victim fitting perfectly on the 8 mm axle:

Garden Seat – bearing idea

I regard such happenstance as a message from the Universe showing I’m on the right track. The alert reader will note the axle should not rotate, but does sport scars showing it’s done some turning in the recent past, so the bearing may not be a completely Bad Idea™.

Finding a Lexan snippet exactly as thick as the bearing suggested bolting a plate across the side of the body to support the bearing, like this:

Garden Seat – reinforcing plate installed

Some layout work in LightBurn produced a template to mark the body for hand-drilling the holes:

Garden Seat – drill marking template

In retrospect, that was a mistake. I should have:
- Laser-cut an MDF sheet to make a drill jig
- Drilled one hole and inserted a screw
- Drilled the rest of the holes in exactly the right places
Instead, three of the holes in that nice Lexan sheet ended up slightly egg-shaped to adjust for mis-drilled holes in the body.

Lexan does not laser-cut well at all, so that sheet was drilled to suit after using the template to mark the holes:

Garden Seat – plate drilling

Then it got bandsawed / belt-sanded into shape.

I squeezed 5 mm rivnuts into whatever fiber-reinforced plastic they used for the body, which worked better than I expected. They’re intended for sheet metal, so I set the tool for 5 mm compression and they seem secure. I hope using plenty of screws across a large plate will diffuse the stress on each screw.

Then I threaded the axles and used acorn nuts:

Garden Seat – repaired axle installed

In this situation, I regard JB KwikWeld epoxy as “removable with some effort”, as opposed to the destruction required with those star-lock washers. High-strength Locktite might also be suitable, but I do not anticipate ever having to remove these again for any reason and do not want the nuts to fall off in the garden.

The re-replaced seat conjured from a cafeteria tray continues to work fine, as do its 3D printed hinges.

It’ll reside in the shed until Spring rolls around …
2025-12-05
Garden Knife Sheath Redux

A knife found in Mary’s Bucket o’ Gardening Gear was in need of a sheath:

Serrated Garden Knife

Unlike the time before or the time before that, a few minutes with LightBurn laid out the overall pattern:

Garden Knife Sheath – LightBurn layout

The knife’s silhouette came from a few minutes with GIMP, because cleaning up the edges on a graphics tablet is easier than fiddling with precise spline curves. Export the selection as an SVG, import into LightBurn, set to Fill, and Fire The Laser:

Garden knife sheath

The upper block in the LightBurn layout is an oversized rectangle so I could cut that out first, stick craft adhesive on both sides, trim the edges, drop it back into the hole, then cut the middle part of the sheath.

It’s made of recycled through-dyed chipboard and it won’t last forever, but that’s not a problem because these things tend to wander off before they disintegrate.

I must do a few more for the other garden bucket, but those should be straightforward.

2025-11-10
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
Taylor Rain Gauge Holder Spike

One of Mary’s gardening buddies gave her a Taylor rain gauge he picked up at a closeout sale, but the exceedingly thin aluminum holder obviously wasn’t up to the task:

Taylor Rain Gauge – OEM metal stake

I briefly considered 3D printing a better bracket, but came to my senses:

Taylor Rain Gauge holder – front

A generous fillet of tan JB PlasticBonder holds the thin aluminum clamp ring to the top of the ~~dagger~~ spike:

Taylor Rain Gauge holder – rear

The spike is 6.3 mm acrylic and should survive for a while despite the stress-raiser corners. The next iteration will have radiused corners and could last longer:

Taylor Rain Gauge Holder – LightBurn layout

The holes will fit 4 mm screws, although the OEM holder isn’t good for more than 3 mm.

The LightBurn SVG layout as a GitHub Gist:

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view raw Taylor Rain Gauge Holder – LightBurn layout.svg hosted with ❤ by GitHub

Took longer to write it up than to do it, even counting mixing the adhesive.

2025-08-13

Hose Fitting Grip Redux

Replacing the sun-rotted hose for Mary’s garden called for a new grip, because of course all hose fittings are different:

Garden Hose Fitting Grip - installed — Garden Hose Fitting Grip – installed

The ridges on the fitting looked close enough to half-cylinders and the fitting wasn’t tapered enough to worry about:

Hose Fitting Grip - simple - solid model — Hose Fitting Grip – simple – solid model

The OD came from the original grip, because it neatly fits Mary’s hand, and the nubbles are round-end cylinders.

Got it done the day after the old hose split, glued it on the hose with E6000+, installed it the next morning, whereupon the weather delivered three inches of rain. It’ll get screwed onto the faucet in a few days …

The OpenSCAD source code as a GitHub Gist:

	// Hose fitting grip – simple plastic extrusion
	// Ed Nisley – KE4ZNU
	// 2025-07-30

	include <BOSL2/std.scad>

	/* [Hidden] */

	HoleWindage = 0.2;
	Protrusion = 0.1;
	NumSides = 324;

	$fn=NumSides;

	ID = 0;
	OD = 1;
	LENGTH = 2;

	NumRibs = 8;
	RibOD = 3.0;

	GripOA = [32.5,66.0,16.0];

	KnobBallOD = 6.0;

	union() {
	difference() {
	tube(GripOA[LENGTH],id=GripOA[ID],od=GripOA[OD],orounding=2.0,anchor=BOTTOM);
	for (a = [0:NumRibs–1])
	rotate(a*360/NumRibs)
	right(GripOA[ID]/2) down(Protrusion)
	cyl(GripOA[LENGTH] + 2*Protrusion,d=RibOD,anchor=BOTTOM);
	}
	for (a = [0:NumSides–1])
	rotate(a*360/NumSides)
	right(GripOA[OD]/2)
	up(GripOA[LENGTH]/2)
	cyl(GripOA[LENGTH]/2,d=KnobBallOD,rounding=KnobBallOD/2);

	}

view raw Hose Fitting Grip – simple.scad hosted with ❤ by GitHub

2025-08-04

Solar Garden Light

I salvaged a solar garden light from the Vassar Community Gardens midden heap and stripped it down:

Solar garden light – internal

The single IC is a YX805 “solar lawn light boost control chip” and the resistor-like thing is a 82 µH inductor setting a 13 mA input current.

Cleaning off some minor corrosion, charging the NiMH cell, and soldering an amber LED onto the pigtail wire brought it back to life.

It’s now perched on the porch railing where it catches some afternoon rays:

Solar garden light – deployed

Maybe we can think of something better for it to do …

2025-07-25
Dripworks Micro-flow Valve Knob Crack

One of the Dripworks Micro-flow valves in Mary’s garden blew a fan-shaped spray into the air when she turned the water on for the first time this season. Fortunately, the main valve is far away and she didn’t get hosed down.

I replaced the deader from my Bag o’ Prepared Spares and autopsied it:

Dripworks Micro-flow valve – knob crack

The poor thing may have frozen and cracked during the winter. Seeing as how this would have been its fifth year in the garden, we can’t kvetch too much.

2025-05-27