Saturday, April 25, 2015

Caged Cats

Before
We have a problem with the neighborhood cats using our back yard as their own personal litter box.  It seems like every time I walk on the lawn, I step in cat shit.  Something had to be done.
The back corner of our yard is their favorite spot to enter and exit.  You can see how they've eroded the top fence board in the photo above.
Before
We looked into various repellents, but none seem that great.  Fortunately, Chrissy discovered that cats apparently hate walking on chicken wire, so we decided to coat the top of the fence in it.
After
Right in the corner, we folded the wire to be several layers thick.
After
We also caged in the corner area so they couldn't jump up there.  Hopefully this will deter them from coming through our yard in the future.
After

Sunday, April 19, 2015

Trashy Chair

Before
When we moved into our first apartment, my brother gave us a couple folding chairs as a housewarming present.  One of them is in perfect condition, but the one you see above has deteriorated a bit.
A bit of duct tape made it better than new.
After

Friday, April 10, 2015

Flex Fail

 While cutting holes in the hood of the Miata I destroyed one of my favorite Dremel accessories, the flex shaft.  The inner core, or drive shaft, sheared in two after some pretty hard abuse.
I was pretty sure I was going to have to buy another $30+ flex shaft (or live without it), but I thought there was a chance I could replace just the core.  I contacted Dremel and they provided me with a very helpful part number, which allowed me to find it on eReplacementParts.  I actually ordered two so I would have a spare.  The first one lasted 5+ years, so this is a long play to save $5 on shipping someday.

Once I received the shaft, the first challenge was taking apart the handle.  I removed two screws, the threaded tip and the spring on the bottom, but it wouldn't come apart.  After some unsuccessful prying, I looked online and discovered there is a little metal ring on each end that is practically invisible.  After removing those, it came right apart.

I removed the bit holder and the end of the shaft was exposed.

Here you can see the two pieces of the shaft.

I lightly greased the new shaft and slid it in, and now it's as good as new (except for a few pry marks).