Bigs Journey (2025)

17/02/2022

They finally arrived! I've been waiting to finish this organization wall for over two weeks. Our local stores had no stock of the bins, and Harbor Freight wasn't taking online orders for these, until last week. I ordered the last 5 boxes I needed to finish and was very excited when they arrived.

This will give us LOTS of room to sort all of the screws, bolts, nuts, and other small parts we have in the shop. In total, there are 240 bins there.

Another recent acquisition are the two letter cabinets seen below. These each have 33 drawers that are approximately 8.5"x12"x 2.75". These will likely be used for nuts and bolts that are too large or heavy for the wall mount bins. I do have some dividers for the drawers, but I will need to make more than came with the units. I got these really cheap as a Marketplace find.

12/02/2022

Some updates on how things are growing.

I also included a pic of the spider plants and the nice root growth that they have made in just one week. These should be ready to move onto hanging planters very soon.

The sweet potato slips are rooting nicely in my centrifuge tube propagation rack. Rooting so well that it's time to start moving some on to their next home.

I potted a few in pots and put some others in my Kratky bus pan. The pic is after just one day in their new location and I wish I had a before pic so I could see how much they actually grew, because the obviously made noticeable leaf growth in just one day.

11/02/2022

Making some more hydroponic Kratky bins. Doing something a little smaller. These are bus pans, you know, the things they use to put all the dirty dishes in at restaurant. I like these as I can get them at a local supply warehouse, they are sturdy, and I especially like that I can get the bin and lid in solid black, which could be good for preventing algae growth. These bins are less than $6 with the lid, and are really sturdy.

These hold just a bit over 6 gallons, so I am drilling them for 6 holes. This should be a good plant to volume ratio for my lettuce and sweet potato greens. I am using a 1.25 hole on these as I am not ever planning to use cups, just homemade plant collars.

I am making my plant collars from pipe insulation that I get a Lowes for just over a dollar for a 6’ length. I am cutting it into 1.5” pieces, so just a few cents per plant. I do need to slice a small section out of the ring to allow it to close tighter around the plant and to fit the holes I drilled.

I’ll keep you posted on how it works out.

10/02/2022

A quick and easy plant propagation tip today.

I have some spider plant babies that need to be rooted. Simple thing is to cut these from the mother plant and dunk them into some water for a few days and they will send out roots. Once the roots are sufficiently long, they be put in soil. I usually keep these in hanging planters.

I needed a good way to root a bunch and the idea I came up with was pool noodle slices. A 1.5” slice of pool noodle and then a quick cut down the side of the “ring” makes it really easy to wrap these around just about any cuttings. And a great vessel for the water; these fit perfectly into a regular mouth mason jar.

Spider plants are great to have around your home. A NASA study shows that they filter out compounds like formaldehyde. Check out this Wikipedia article for more details and other common house plants that can improve air quality.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_Clean_Air_Study

09/02/2022

This week is going to be filled with some serious projects… and I say that only to let you know there is some fun coming soon. The workshop is going to be going into high gear building some fun ‘props’ and decorations for a few events later this year. But, for now, we need to feed ourselves.
Today’s project is a Kratky hydroponic bin. I will be building a bunch of these in various forms and sizes over the next few weeks.

I grabbed a stack of these 27-gallon totes when they were on sale at Lowes. When I first started researching the Kratky method, I saw a lot of people using these. Figured it would be a good idea to go with what has already been shown to work.

The beginning of the process is drilling the lids. I did two different patterns. The first one is for small plant starting, and then the second has less than half of the holes drilled to give the plants more space to grow to full size. From my reading/research, moving plants is a bit of a tossup, as any damage to the roots during movement can stunt the plant. I figured I would give this a shot to start, and if it doesn’t work, the tote that has 35 holes can easily be converted to an pumped system for plant rooting and cloning. The holes are made by drilling with a 2” hole saw. The drill is run in reverse which allows the hole saw to lightly scrape away plastic, otherwise you will likely crack the plastic. The holes are made this size to fit 2” net cups. I chose CZ brand net cups as they are a bit more heavy duty and I want cups that are not going to break.

I try and make wise choices when using plastic… There is so much that goes un-recycled when disposed, and I want to minimize my contributions to the global pile of waste plastic. Plastic is important to use in systems like this as it must hold water reliably. But, I don’t want to needlessly dispose of waste plastic, so finding materials that will have a long lifetime are important.

Kratky hydroponics is interesting, as that it requires no pumps. It is a completely passive system. The tote is filled with water with nutrients right up to the base of the net cup, where it can contact the plant or rooting material. As the plant begins to grow and consumes the water, the roots will grow continuing to reach for the decreasing water level. This also provides a gap between the base of the plant and the water, which allows the upper roots to get access to air.

The nutrient mix commonly used for this system is a solution of MasterBlend, Calcium Nitrate and Epsom Salt. For every gallon of water, you need 2 grams of Masterblend, 1 gram of Epsom Salt (Magnesium Sulfate) and 2 grams of Calcium Nitrate. You must add them individually and make sure they are completely dissolved in that specific order. If you add them all at once, or out of order, the nutrient solution will not mix properly. Follow the order and make sure each is completely dissolved before adding the next one.

I’ll be posting a lot about my progress with hydroponics over the next few days and weeks. After all, its about the only way we can grow food in Pennsylvania while there is snow and ice outside.

Find out more about Kratky here:
https://www.growkratky.com/

06/02/2022

The Caverns
Bluegrass Underground
Lyte

It’s been a long week. This happens. I appreciate that my work offers me some flexibility with my schedule and in return I do the same. Big project and looming deadline called for long hours and virtually no personal life or time to do any of my projects. The list is long and I’m looking forward to tackling many as we move into the next week.

However, I do want to rant a bit… I have spent a large part of my life working in the entertainment industry doing sound, lighting, and video in varied settings; regional tours, corporate, and theater. I never made the jump to a ‘professional’ level. I was offered an opportunity to do several things at that level, but all of them came after I was married and had a mortgage. The responsibilities kept me tied to a steady day gig. I sometime think about the missed opportunities, but I am solid with the choices I’ve made.

That said; I have HUGE respect for the men and women that labor long hours, often the unsung and unrecognized heroes of performances worldwide. Where millionaires grace the stage for a few hours to their screaming fans, it takes an army of talented people working long hours to make the shows happen. I want to be sure to recognize these people before I make the following statement, as they are the people who have really lost livelihoods during the COVID shutdowns.

However, I will not be patronizing large music venues or festivals. These large-scale promoters now have written into their ticket policies, cancellation without refund clauses. It isn’t enough that ticketing fees can often be a large percentage of costs of attending events, but now the risk of losing your money when a show is cancelled, is fully a burden of the ticket buyer.

This has been recently brought to the forefront of my life as we were victims of an event cancellation just a few weeks prior to the event in March of 2020. Being fans of bluegrass, the PBS show Bluegrass Underground, and further excited by the addition of Goose to the bill, we decided to buy tickets to this event at The Caverns in Pelham TN. When COVID shutdown the event, the venue stated that tickets would not be refunded as the show would be rescheduled… well that has taken two years, and its not like the 700 mile drive is convenient for us. So, now that it’s rescheduled, we asked again for a refund. The answer from The Caverns was, ”No, you need to use our service called Lyte to re-sell your tickets to someone else.” We tried. I got an offer last week at 630PM via an email, which I didn’t read until the following morning. Followed by another email from Lyte saying that the offer expired in 30 minutes and that I would need to go through the entire process of relisting again if I would like to re-sell my tickets. Guess you are supposed to be on call. I don’t sit tethered to my email. I like a little down time away from the computer when I finally get home to eat dinner and relax.
I still have several weeks to try for successful sale, as the event is sold out. The amount of time we have already lost to this totals in the hours.

And for that reason, we will NEVER patronize The Caverns or The Bluegrass Underground. Along with that I will NEVER patronize LiveNation or Ticketmaster.

For the artists that have pushed through and are embracing the use of livestreaming to shows, congratulations… we’ve purchased several streams. The event is much better that way. The bathrooms are clean, the beer and refreshments are affordable and high quality, and I don’t have to deal with some A**hole screaming lyrics in my ears when I paid good money to hear the person on stage.

29/01/2022

Organizing the shop.

Another cheap... actually lets say economical Harbor Freight buy. For what I need, ad what they do, these wall mounted storage bins are perfect for the $12 price for a box of $20.

I think we all are aware of the cycles of supply chain issues plaguing retail chains over the past few years. Anytime I need a nut, bolt, screw, or other small part for a project, I buy a bulk box, instead of just one or two. This has allowed me to become a little less dependent on the hardware store. This also means less time wasted having to jump in a vehicle to drive somewhere to pickup a 78 cent part so I can fix something. As I've continued to accumulate more inventory, I needed a better organization process and these HF bins fit the role nearly perfect. I say nearly only because the bins are only 4” deep, so it limits what I can put in them.

I used my Bosch laser level to align the mounting brackets. I included a pic so you can see the model number. These currently sell for $99. I'm not really going to recommend this unit. I do like the green laser. The thing that I don't like is it's field angle. You can see in pic where the green lines are on the wall, that it dims pretty quickly as it gets further from the center. This is a function of the lens/scanning system. This limits its use. If I can move the laser further back from the wall the bright region could span a wider area. Unfortunately I was limited as I already have some equipment in that location.

One thing to point out about these Harbor Freight bin sets is that they do NOT come with screws for mounting the wall brackets. I used 1” Kreg screws as the flat truss head makes for a more robust mounting.

I have six of the 20 bin kits mounted....that's how many were available at my local store. Now that I go them mounted, I think I may get another 4 kits so I can have 10 rows. I have the space, and I am sure I will fill them up as I start going through all of my stuff. I started putting together a spreadsheet so I can print labels, and I will have most of these already occupied.

28/01/2022

Expanding plants with our new plant shelf and lighting.

I previously posted that the sweet potatoes were sprouting in storage. It's a bit earlier than I would like to be starting sweet potato slips. They can't really get planted outside until ground temps are at least 60 degrees, which usually means early June. Since the sprouts are already coming, I need to figure out a way to get them growing and rooting. I may try potting some indoors for growing sweet potato greens. In case you were unaware, the greens of sweet potatoes are edible and highly nutritious.

For now, I have a bunch of small slips that broke off of their mother plant as I was pulling them out of the box. Not wanting to waste them I dropped them in a small glass of water to see if they would start rooting. Some of them have already set roots. The problem is that these slips are very short stems and will need to be grown out for a while before they should be potted in soil. I need to try and separate the slips as the roots will tangle as they continue to grow.

Realizing I needed to try and keep the roots of the slips separated, I recalled that I had a box full of centrifuge tubes. All I needed was a way to hold them. Time to build a propagation tray. This is just a cheap Ikea cutting board that I have drilled with the appropriate sized holes to fit centrifuge tubes. I used a 1-1/8” forstner bit to drill the holes. Just for the record, my forstner bit collection does not have a 1-1/8” sized bit; I had to order that separately. I'm still a bit confused why this size seems to be skipped in the series. I used a couple of 4” long carriage bolts to act as legs. This project was super easy and took about 30 minutes to complete.

Centrifuge tubes are plastic 'test tubes' with a cone at the bottom. When they are spun at high speeds in a centrifuge, heavier things collect at the bottom of the tube, which allows for samples to be collected in labs. I ended up finding out about centrifuge tubes when I was attending a talk by Tradd Cotter about his work on edible and medicinal mushroom cultivation (a topic for another day). The tubes turned out to be a great find as they are very useful for so many things. They are a great size for sorting small parts and storing them. Since the lids screw on, things don't fall out easily. I've used them for all kinds of things like screws, nuts, electronic components, etc.

27/01/2022

The spring plants are starting TOO EARLY.

I purchased a box of organic locally grown sweet potatoes at market in the fall. My intention was to store them and use them to grow slips, which are small plants that you use to grow more sweet potatoes. Unfortunately the box of sweet potatoes accidentally got buried under something else and never got moved to 'cold storage'. My guess is that when our heat came on in the basement due to winter, the potatoes warmed up and decided it must be spring and started sprouting. While moving some things around, I found the box with little plants starting to pop out of it.

I remember in my youth, we would sprout sweet potatoes as a science experiment. I don't remember what grade this was, but it was definitely pretty young. Simply poking a few toothpicks in a sweet potato and suspending it in water is usually all it takes to get a sweet potato to sprout. Even more simple is just putting it in a jar with water, to keep it hydrated while it starts growing. The potato will start to grow roots and then small stems (called slips) will start to form.

My sweet potatoes started growing the slips, even without being set in water. And to make it even more undesirable, the potatoes were just laying randomly in the box, so some of those slips started growing upside down. Anyway, trying to salvage this, I pulled some of the larger stems/slips off and put them in a glass of water to start rooting. The rest of the potatoes I just started placing in mason jars and filling with water, in hopes that they could start rooting and continue to form more slips.

I'll do my be best to make the best of this very early start. I might have to plant some of these in soil and start growing them indoors.

26/01/2022

Snow and Ice are on the ground outside, but that's not keeping us from enjoying some green plants on the inside. We've kept a few plants at the top of our stairs, precariously perched upon the railing overlooking our foyer. We like keeping them here as we have a nice big picture window that lets in some diffuse afternoon light, but certainly not enough to keep these plants happy. Most of the plants we have here are tropicals or frost-sensitive herbs that we want to overwinter.

I've had another LED plant light that we have used here for the past few years, but recently half of the unit stopped working. I will eventually get it on the electronics bench and see if it can be fixed. However, the failed light was the inspiration for getting this area fixed up and more productive.

The first few pics are the simple plywood frame that I built to hang the new led plant lights. These are Barrina full-spectrum LED lamps. I purchased these from Amazon as a package of 6 strips. You can usually find these for $100 for the pack of 6. The package has multiple mounting options, and a bunch of wiring options. It comes with (3) input power leads, and (5) of the daisy chain cables. This is enough cables to separate the lamps into three separate groups of two strips. I decided that I would do two sets of three, even though I would be mounting them all on one mount. The reason I did this, is to allow me to turn on just half of the lights if I want a reduced intensity. Eventually I will be adding some timer controlled relays to automate these.... for now, we manually turn them on in the morning and off in the evening.

I also built a shelf for my plants. I made this out of some recycled plywood. This plywood comes from crates that are used to ship apple juice concentrate from China to the US. I get this pretty cheap, and will say its worth what I pay for it. I've tried using it for building some shop cabinets, and that has been a total fail, as the plywood has a tendency to warp. For this project that was going to end up with a bunch of support ribs, I wasn't concerned about it warping. This is also something I am considering a temporary experimental installation.

The shelf has four sections that hold boot trays. The trays are there to catch any water that may come through the pots during watering. There is a support rib that runs across the shelf between each boot tray. This is there to add strength to the shelf and prevent the aforementioned warping. One thing I realized is that I want to round over the corners on the shelf as they do protrude a bit into our walking path (I'll do that in the next day or two as my jig saw was at the workshop and not at the house).

The lights are hung over the shelf with jack chain. In the pic without the lights on, and without the plants in place, you can see a bunch of excess chain. This will allow me to raise and lower the lights as needed. Right now I have some taller things there, but they will get moved to another location after I build another set of lights. At that point, this location will be for some smaller plants, possibly some vegetable starts for our garden, and other propagation stuff that will require the lights to be lowered.

Overall, I am very happy with this project. The intensity of the light seems to exceed the output of the previous fixture, which was more expensive. I can't quantitatively evaluate this, as I no longer can test the output of the older unit due to its failure. We'll see how the plants react over the next few days.

25/01/2022

The 'journey' hit some serious bumps and detours over the recent time. I had really hoped to be putting out regular posts, and occasional video content for the beginning of 2022. Obviously, that didn't happen.

I started breaking down a lot of my bedroom furniture between Thanksgiving and Christmas, with the hope of getting a new studio desk built and setup during the Christmas break. I really need a good place to edit videos and other social media content.

I woke up Christmas morning to a disturbing situation. I couldn't hear out of my left ear. For those that know me well, you know I really need my ears for a lot of the sound work I thoroughly enjoy. We wound up at an emergency/urgent care center on Christmas day. The diagnosis, an internal ear infection; the cure, antibiotic drops. Well, there were no pharmacies in the area available to fill the prescription on Christmas day, so I had to wait a day to start the antibiotic treatment. 7 days of drops and no improvement... New Years came and my ear was still completely blocked.

This really messed with my schedule, as I usually work at my day gig between Christmas and New Year, its a time to do equipment maintenance when most of the staff are away. I also was counting on getting a pile of personal projects finished, too.

Things went from bad to worse, when I tested positive for COVID the first week of January. This meant even more time away from work and my workshop. Fortunately my ear infection cleared up while I was going through some high fevers due to the COVID. I do consider myself fortunate that the situation was not too bad.

It's now almost three weeks later and I am finally getting back to a regular routine and schedule. Except for a bit of a cough, my health is back to 'normal'. The struggle is managing my time and trying to catch up on what now feels like a three week delay and a huge pile on the to-do list.

With the recent history out of the way, let's get to the plans and future.

First, I want 2022 to bring some balance to my life... not just the balance between work and home, but more importantly a balance between obligations and enjoyment. Life is short, and we really need to take time to do things that bring us joy. I recently saw a meme about retirement that said “Retirement age is 67, Life expectancy is 78. Work for 50 years to maybe enjoy 11? Start enjoying life now. No one is guaranteed tomorrow.” This really resonates with me, as we have seen several friends and colleagues pass away at early ages.

Secondly, I want to really focus on 'making things'. I've always enjoyed building things; many times I enjoy building equipment more than using it. The design and fabrication phase is most pleasurable to me. Right now I am in a major workshop mode. I will be posting a lot about new/new-to-me tools and equipment, and lots of projects around the homestead.

Third, is a return to roots. There are many things that we have done in life and one of the most impactful has been our progress towards homestead life. When I talk about homesteading, I refer to an ability to provide much of our daily necessities without relying upon the typical commercial retail consumption lifestyle that is typical in our country; growing food, developing self-reliance skills, and engaging with a community of people that value similar ideals.

That's enough for this post... I have plenty of things to write about and plenty of time to do it. I really am hoping that this is just the beginning of a “new” journey.... so I will leave you with this simple build I finished this morning.

I've had a few back aches recently. I am getting older and lifting heavy things isn't quite as easy as it was when I was younger. A friend suggested a Chirp wheel. I've seen these things advertised online. Basically a plastic hollow wheel with a bit of a rubber cushion, but it's novel design is a groove in the center that eliminates pressure on your spine while rolling on it. I looked at Amazon, and the price wasn't the shock, it was the reviews. Although it is rated for 600 pounds, the number of people that said it broke on them was a major concern. I guess the thought of having a shard of PVC thrust into my back was enough to discourage the purchase. So I decided to build my own similar item. I started with some inexpensive solid rubber tires I sourced from Harbor Freight. I'm not a big fan of that place or most of their tools, but I have found they have some things that are economical and usable. I would certainly consider these 10” Solid Rubber wheels to be in that category. I had a small circle of masonite that was a cutoff from when I was making a fan mount that fit perfectly to space the wheels, and a 5/8” nut and bolt was the completion of the unit. This gives me a robust roller, with a 'spine groove'. And I can't image this crumbling under my weight as it is a solid unit. And on the budget this whole thing was less than a third of the cost of the Chirp wheel... I rolled on it as soon as I finished it, and my back definitely feels better today!

08/11/2021

Density: : the quality of having parts that are close together

Before I drift down the topic of density, let me start by outlining some plans for my “Journey”. My plan is to write a post every week for the remainder of this year, with a goal of producing a weekly video starting at the beginning of 2021. After reading my initial posts, reflecting on my current life and some plans, I realized I really need to build a strong foundation for some of these things, and one building block I need is a good system for editing videos. Which got me thinking, that it would be really good for our lifestyle and schedule for me to put that system in my bedroom, where I could work whenever I am awake, without disturbing others. That lead down a path of how to reorganize the bedroom to make room for such a station, which then resulted in me starting a total clean out and reorganization. Which gets to the topic of the post: Density!

In recent years there has been a movement into tiny house living. I love the idea, with some concessions. I can relate to much of this by referencing our RV camping. We manage to camp for extended trips in our RV, most times in what is referred to as dry camping: Camping without a hookup to water or electricity. We have slowly modified and upgraded our equipment and camping style to better adapt to these conditions. This is where the concept of tiny house 'living' diverges. I have lots of stuff that I use in life. I love building things, which means I have lots of tools. I really could reside in my RV as far as eating, sleeping, even showering... but living; there is a lot more to my life than I can squeeze into a tiny space.

Several years ago, the big New Year's resolution trend was downsizing and de-cluttering. There was a particular author that was leading the way, Marie Kondo. I would see memes on social media about things like cleaning your bookshelf. I recall something about getting down to ten books. HAHA; I have at least ten reference books on a single topic. I'm not dismissing the value of de-cluttering, but every time I read about this lifestyle, it describes becomes a dependent lifestyle: using libraries and community resources to fill the voids you create by getting rid of all of your stuff. My lifestyle has been mostly about attaining independence, which has yielded quite collection of stuff, because I don't want to be reliant on other people's stuff, when I need stuff. Honestly, the first book I would eliminate from my library is anything authored by Marie Kondo, if I owned any.

My bedroom is much more than a common bedroom already. My custom under-bed platform provides storage for seeds and other gardening supplies. I still have a large quantity of books and periodicals on a bookshelf. I have ham radio equipment, from when I was more active in the event communications and emergency preparedness community. I have a lot of camping gear, mostly tent type stuff, that we rarely use now that we have the RV. I have several shelves of camera gear that satisfies my desire to occasionally shoot photos or video. I have lots of clothes; not a lot of fashion, just lots of functional stuff. I have some other things in there that are for pure personal enjoyment (and I am realizing that not everything has to have a purely utilitarian purpose).

The big problem is that the bedroom slowly became filled with all of that stuff without ever planning for storing all of that stuff. It just slowly piled in, and now it is hard to manage. I am getting rid of stuff I don't use, or have no intention of ever using... but there is value to me in tools that may be used even if rarely.

The task is devising a system to create a lifestyle of density. It is the exact opposite of minimalism. I am trying to maximize the amount of stuff that I can fit into a finite space, and still provide efficient functionality. This means maximizing the use of vertical space. It now brings a bit of humor to me when I think of real estate listings showing square footage. I am now more interested in finding out what is the actual usable cubic footage of a space.

So this weeks pic is something that I quickly whipped together in the wood shop. These are some plywood caster trays. They hold up a Metro-style adjustable wire shelf, which has its shelves spaced perfectly to hold some clear plastic totes from Ikea. You can get casters for these shelves, but they are all swivel casters. I wanted rigid casters to limit the movement in one linear path, which is why I decided to build these. They are all made from plywood cutoffs that I obtained from a cabinet shop. The cost of buying this plywood in today's market would make this cost prohibitive. Thankfully I sourced and stored a lot of these materials pre-COVID.

I'll followup with some more pics of them in use in the coming weeks. For now, the transitions from organized chaos to organized is really a big mess!

Bigs Journey