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Loading ...cheapskate
—18 1 08
-Work-wise, I’m making huge progress. Mod-wise…well, I made a jig.(Yawn.)
-and I screwed the rough plate to the psu cover.(More yawn.)
-I got my order in from geeks, but something was odd about the floppy. The housing was bent in the back, and the front has silver paint on it. someone tried to hide it with a black marker. That seems strange for a drive advertised as ‘new’.
-I took the c r a p-tastic thing apart to find someone had painted the insides to hide some rust spots. They left a bit of dust and hair in there too. This is either a returned floppy, or used. In my book either means used.
…but hey, it runs! I’ll keep it. (-aaannnd I already broke the tamper seal and filed down the sides of the faceplate.)
The other $5 item I picked up WAS new. A shiny Chinese made optical mouse. I forced the poor thing apart and sanded the casting line off the clear top. I’m currently trying to figure out what I can do with it that won’t be in the way of my fingers. Racing stripe fins look like my best option for the back.
—21 1 08
-I ran into a snag putting the new floppie in. The new drive has a huge button. I decided the best option was to chop the button down. (Sorry, no pics of my tiny button.)
-I think I know what happened to the old one too. There’s a nice hole burned in the chip.
-My cable work at this point. I need to un-sleeve the motherboard cables a bit, I cant get the PSU cover on.
-It’s far from over yet. Look at the pretty snarl of wires under the CD drive. Utter chaos! I have an extra coil of tubing over one of the copper lines here because I wanted to see what the pipes would look like if I had added a red candy coat.
-I slipped in some quick soldering when I got in the other night, (around midnight.) I had the outer ring ready to add, but I must have tweaked it at some point. When the heat hit it, it went ‘boing’ and the solder to close the loop separated.
It’s difficult to use the porch for torching stuff at the time. in the winter it’s converted into a greenhouse. It’s filled with plants, -Nice, FLAMMABLE plants! I’m not sure where I’m going to use the heat gun, either.
-That didn’t stop me from geting started. I had a thin sliver of red tubing in the scrap box. I decided to use that to ‘paint’ the mouse buttons. The stuff the mouse is made of gets really soft when the solvent hits it, so I have little bubbles coming out from under the stripe. I have more than a few fingerprints to sand out too. Maybe I should melt my thumbprint into it to sign my work.:D
-This is all I have so far. -Better than nothing.
I got my Christmas the other day. A scroll saw! It may be a while before I get to use it.
—25 1 08
-I was digging around in the scrap box for parts again. I came across some 2-ply bits and decided to glue them together like this. I’m using this stuff to make some stops for the pipe support bracket.
-For cutting tiny bits on my new scroll saw, I used a bit of sandwich box lid.
-The packing cellophane came out again to keep the parts from fusing together during gluing. I wouldn’t be able to remove the power supply if this bracket was permanent.
-The unfinished bracket. One unfinished part? I sure am watering the updates down, eh?
—28 1 08
-Bits to make a hook for the pipe bracket.
-Magically finished bracket. -No pics…It just, happened.
-I’m making more checkerboard for something. (I don’t know what yet either.)
-I proceeded to give my mouse a mohawk. Heating this bit and getting it straight was impossible. It has a slight curve to it in the back. I used the heavier Tap/IPS #16 glue because of the gaps.
-Adding a blue stripe on the top was much easier. I only needed a blowtorch lighter to shape it.
-I alternated between gluing and heating.
-The final touch was to trim off the extra and add the finger groove to the front.
-I cut up a paint stirring stick to make a spacer for heating up the next set of fins.
-The second set of fins were an even bigger pain in the butt to shape. I could hardly touch the strips with gloves on. Thanks to the weather, I only had about 10 seconds to get it in place after heating. That sucked. I will make cover plates to do the rest of the mouse.
—2 2 08
A small update that involved a lot of squeaking.
-This is a pic of the fins getting glued on. The wood spacer also came in handy when filing the fin tops down. It kept me from damaging the center fin.
-Finned and (singing) ~cut off their tails with a carving knife.~ I got a little wild with the dremel and added a slit in front on one side.
-Polishing left polish wax in all the cracks, so I washed everything. Then I had water and gunk between the layers. I had to do more mouse torture and skinned it alive! Bwa! Ha! Ha!
-I’m in the process of stapling antlers to his head now.
-Someone in another thread mentioned pci slot covers, and I got a completely different image in my head. How about a plate that plugs into the unused pci slots? I could use it for a LED spotlight platform. I dug into the magical scrap box and found a perfect part for this.
-They fit right in. Let’s pray in advance that the specs on these slots are the same on the ASRock board.
-I cut out a coverplate and marked it for driling. There’s some capacitors on the board in this area I don’t want to bake (much.)
-Holy and countersunk on both sides. I hope this one is easier to polish than that monster I did for Hypnotoad. -And I swore I would never make plexi mesh again.
—6 2 08
I think having the other log is throwing my rhythm off.
-This should have been in the other update. I snapped the clips into a dead motherboard and glued the top on them. After it cured I just plugged in into the other board.:
-I’m still screwing around with the copper fan grill thing. Right now I have a stack of curved wire that ended up too short after bending. I need to dig out a bit of 3″ pvc and hammer all these into a lazier curve. The whole things looking pretty lumpy at this point. It may get scrapped.
-I added a bit of blue plexi over the mouse LED to get it closer the the cases color.
-I used the paint stick again to level the front fins of the mouse during gluing. I had to use the gel glue for the curve and the watery stuff for plexi-to-plexi bonding.
-The 2nd fins glued down. I still need to sand the edges down so everything is even. Is this mouse starting to look like a chicken to anyone else?
-The plate during a test fit. You can see the clumsy LED mount in front. I knew I would never get away with this, so I changed it.
-I had to splice my wiring again to get this tubing on.:rolleyes: The copper wire was originally going inside the tubing to help with positioning the LED…
-but it looks like I don’t need it.
-Rember that pipe rack? I don’t think I ever took a shot of it in place. Where it’s at isn’t easy to potograph, anyway.
…and that’s the news for today.
Now go visit Danger Den!
it look nice.
Thanks!
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