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Digital Caliper Power Cable

January 13, 2020 by Adam@SheekGeek

The worse thing about digital calipers are those stupid-small batteries that don’t last 5 minutes and don’t stay in too well. Sometimes you lose the battery cover then you’re really screwed. To find a workable solution to this issue, I googles and saw a bunch of 3D printed solutions for data cables on these calipers. I decided that I didn’t care much for the data part, but to 3D print a connector just for this seemed a waste of time. Sure, you can find some Dupont connectors to 3D print, but is it worth it? I set about a different way.

I happen to have a large number of servo connector cables from my quadcopters days. It just so happens that one of these female 3-pin dupont connectors fit perfectly in the caliper’s data slot. And if you used male wires, bent them backwards and shoved them in the data connector slot, it holds tight and provides a great connection for the power rails.

First, get a stabby thing and take the dupont connectors off some single-wire connectors (red and black are a good choice for colors).

Take out all 3 female connectors form a servo cable and shove the male wires on the two ends of the servo connector as shown. Next you want to be careful and bend the male wires around the edge. You have to make sure your orientation is correct for the pins as they need to line up red with the (+) terminal and black with the Gnd otherwise you’ll be making a new cable—ask me how I know… I did this in 2 stages since the pins are fragile. I slowly bent them against a tabletop to 90 degrees. Assessed their quality and angles and bent the remaining excess to 180 degrees

When done you should have something that looks like this:

Plug it into the data port and you should have good connectivity with the power rails. It is a tight interference fit.

I’ve considered adding this to a AAA or AAAA battery pack I could mount on top or the back of the calipers. I’m pretty busy so that might not happen. If it does, I’ll post my janky design here though.

DIY Card Scraper From Old Credit Cards

December 19, 2019 by Adam@SheekGeek

Credit card companies such as Chase and American Express have been adding metal to their cards as a gimmick. I had a few old credit cards that have metal piece inside them. Sometimes when you get a new one, the card company sends you an envelope to return the old ones in for recycling, or they suggest you use tin snips to destroy them. I found a better use.

In woodworking, many times in order to get a nice smooth surface, you might use a card scraper, which is just a thin steel card with sharp edges. You hold it roughly perpendicular to the surface of the wood and draw along the surface perpendicular to the flat side of the card. This shaves a very thin layer off the top of the wood.

You could buy some card scrapers, but since I had these extra credit cards, I tried to make some myself. I attempted a few different methods to remove the plastic form both sides of the cards. Firstly, went in brute force and pulled the plastic off both sides. As the edges of these cards are sharp without the plastic, I gave myself a pretty good gash in my thumb. This is not a great method.

For the second card, I attempted to melt the plastic with acetone…. which didn’t fully work and made a nasty, stinky mess.

The third attempt, I went in the garage and used a little torch to heat up the plastic on the card. Once I saw that it could work, I stopped. I recommend doing this completely outside with the garage door shut. Of course use some pliers to hold the card. This method could work well, but just be sure not to heat the metal until it changes color. You can then clean off the melted plastic blobs with a flame retardant sacrificial rag.

The end results work great! I also punched out the tiny SIM card in mine, but you can leave it in. It is potted with clear epoxy so you can see the chip and gold connection wires on the back side if you leave it in which is pretty cool.

Simple Tissue Box DIY Christmas Presents

November 18, 2019 by Adam@SheekGeek

Each year, Jess and I make crafts as Christmas gifts for family members. This year, our first idea was too hard (as is typical) but we had another project we had wanted to do as well that worked out great!.

Firstly, we got some wooden Tissue Box covers.

The next step was to get a gel stain. We reused the same stain we used for our ukulele project which goes a long way.

We then used our KNK Zing vinyl cutter to cut a vinyl sticker Jess designed as a template to help up print a design on the boxes. We placed our clear transfer paper on the box and drew the outside dimensions to help us align the design.

When placing this on the actual box, it helps to hold it up to the light so you can see the edge of the box well.

When we ran out of large pieces, we cut the designs on scrap vinyl and pieced it together on the transfer paper. Here’s an example:

Once we had all the templates set up. We removed the clear transfer vinyl and used a dark gel stain and a foam brush to blot the stencil.

This was left for about an hour to dry until tacky and then we removed the stencils.

We then left the stain to dry completely overnight.

We finished the boxes with a light coat of white gel stain. The trick is to paint it on with the foam brush, then wipe off excess with a nice paper towel (This brand of paper towels are best for these kinds of crafts as they don’t leave any fuzzy mess behind). Do this technique to all sides of the box, even if they don’t have a stain design. This gives a rustic whitewashed look that still shows the figure in the wood a bit and evens out the design overall, making it look completely finished and cohesive.

Wipe on:

and wipe off:

Our Top Picks from the Etsy Design Awards #TheEtsies

February 26, 2020August 26, 2019 by Jessica@SheekGeek

For the first time ever, Etsy is running a global award program: The Etsy Design Awards. There are 160 global finalists that fall into one of the following five categories for #TheEtsies: Inventive Decor, Signature Style, Festive Celebrations, Earth-Friendly, and Creative Collaborations. We’ve done round-ups on favorite toddler products, but this is our first Etsy round-up.

Here are our top picks from #TheEtsies!

My Picks:

My top 5 choices represent items that inspire me to buy from Etsy or make myself.

minimalist wall calendar from Etsy seller

Calendar Wallplanner from the shop WiLaNo (Inventive Decor Category)

Custom Painted Photo Backdrop by the shop thesmallcreative

stylish pegboard organizer for your home

Monstera Leaf Wood Pegboard Organizer by the shop littleanana

I think this makes a perfect jewelry organizer, although I think I’d rather have the larger version (it’s almost twice as big!). I love the versatility of the moveable pegs. The dinosaur pegboard would also be a great addition to a child’s space. My daughter would love it in her room. Plus, I’m game for anything that will encourage my kid to clean!

Paper Cut Custom Portrait by the shop PurplePaperPeople

minimalist wood dollhouse for etsy design awards top pick

Large Modern Dollhouse “The Milky-house” by the shop MilkyWood

Well, we already made a dollhouse for our daughter with our CNC machine. But, if we hadn’t already done this ourselves I would totally buy this modern dollhouse.

Adam chose his ideas independently of me, and all his picks were different except one. He also picked the dollhouse! I chatted with him for his reasoning behind his picks. This is what he had to share:

Adam’s Picks:

My top choices are designs I appreciate in terms of their form, function, and material choices.

ECOWOOD Table Lamp by shop TedzukuriAtelier

This lamp uses an interesting recycled veneer from a banana’s plant trunk.

Custom House Portrait by shop yeiou

The use of white paper for a 3d representation of your home results in a minimalist, elegant design. This would make a great anniversary gift for parents.

Designer Cat House by PetsandPods

I feel like my cats would crawl into this immediately. It’s a cat bed you don’t mind having in a prominent location in your house.

Succulent Wedding Ring Holder by shop Waen

This ring dish stands on its own as decor, with or without a ring.

special wooden ring box for gift or proposal

Diamond shape engagement ring box by Woodstorming

Woodworking is one of my hobbies, and I like the movement of the lid on this uniquely shaped ring box.

From design inspiration to must-haves for your home, this round-up features a variety of designs. These top Etsy design awards picks for this year are based on our current tastes, which are ever-changing.

So, what is your favorite ETSY nominee for #TheEtsies and why?

Revamp Your Old Kitchen Table with this DIY Tile Idea

August 15, 2019 by Adam@SheekGeek

FTC disclosure: This post contains affiliate links, which means I may receive a commission for purchases made through my links.

We’ve had the same table for more than 10 years. It was showing some serious wear, especially once the little one came along. The table isn’t made of actual wood, it’s compressed dust with a thick wood veneer. For years Jess wanted to do a tile mosaic on top of this. Due to an abandoned project (I was going to build a tile gas fireplace for our patio), we had some tiles in the house. We had both this wood-patterned tile (which is on clearance for half off at the time of writing this blog post!) and this Spanish patterned tile. Both of these can be substituted for other tiles and patterns depending on your personal preferences and table preferences. For instance, this similar but more gray tone wood-patterned ceramic tile would pair well with this patterned tile.

We arranged our tiles on the table just to see what different designs might look like. Here were our three main options based on tile and table size:

1. ) This first arrangement idea was the Spanish tile on everything. This was too busy by itself, so we added our place mats to break up the pattern.

We weren’t really feeling that one, so we tried a different arrangement.

2.) The second idea was with a centerpiece of the Spanish tile and a border of tiles that look like wood planks. Overall we liked the look, but it didn’t work out well because the two types of tiles were ever-so-slightly different dimensions.

Plus, if you are going to go with a bold tile you might as well feature it, so…

3. For the third idea (which we picked) we laid out a Spanish tile centerpiece and border with the wood tile only in the middle.

Once this was decided, we glued the tile down to the table with acrylic adhesive. Once this dried for a week or so, we then grouted the cracks with a dark grout called “truffle”. A couple of things we learned was not to have too much water in the grout mix, otherwise it’ll dry with lighter whitish spots in places. This was (sort of) fixed by using white vinegar. Another thing we worried about was the edging. At first we just used the grout and our finger to cover the edge of the tile and smooth the transition to the table edge, but over time this proved quite fragile and pieces kept breaking off. The fix was to move to a silicone caulking material (in Charcoal color, the best match to the Truffle color we could find). This isn’t the first time we used silicone caulk as you can see on our hardwood to tile transition of our flooring.

When we applied the sanded silicone caulk, it didn’t look the same at first, but when it dried it became much darker and looks great!

First we laid out painters tape on the whole table, including around one tile that had come off when I got too aggressive digging out the grout on the edge. We then caulked around the edges with this sanded caulk, smoothed with a gloved hand and then peeled off the tape. Don’t touch it for a few days! It takes a long time to cure.

Overall, it has been holding up great to the wear and tear of our toddler. This DIY has brought new life to an old table.