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The Third Sword

Here’s the video for the last of the three swords.  It did a rough cut out of the shape for this one and it made it easier to work with.  I like starting with the blade.  It makes it easier to cut and shape the transition between the blade and the hilt.

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Jack’s Foam Sword

Here’s the second video of the three swords that I made.  I took a different approach on each one.  This one started with the blade.

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Foam Swords

My sons asked me to make them foam swords on Saturday, so I decided to make a video out of the project.  This is the first of three swords that I cut out.  I traced this from a sword that came with a Lord of the Rings game.

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All Soldered Up

I got everything soldered together tonight. Then I found out the screws I bought to mount the electronics were too big. Looks like I’ll be making another trip to Ace.

Here are some pictures of the progress and what it will look like once installed.

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It’s Coming Together!

Started soldering the components of my weather station together tonight.  It’s taking longer than expected because I don’t have a lot of practice soldering.

Here’s the temperature and humidity sensor wired up.

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My Weather Station is Working!!!

I finally got my weather station connected to Wunderground.com!  The hardware has actually been working for several months, I just didn’t have the code completed.  The code wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be, once I found the right source online.

It is still inside my house, but now I can hard wire the connections and get everything mounted up for going outside.  There’s a snapshot below or a direct link here.

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Caterpillar Home

I came home from work and the boys had found a caterpillar and were trying to find a place to keep it. My 5 year old got out the big tub of pretzels and said, “I have an idea. Here you go.” I helped the boys drill some holes in the lid and we had an instant caterpillar habitat. It was fun to see how interested they were in the caterpillar.

 

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Fidget Spinners

My oldest son wanted me to print him a fidget spinner because other kids on the bus had them. I remembered that I had some bearings from some rollerblade wheels that I had never replaced. So I got them out and printed some spinners. The middle son wanted a Batman spinner, and they both wanted to use glow in the dark plastic. The bearings aren’t the best, but they work. I used a hair dryer to heat up the plastic to make the bearings fit. Unfortunately, that made the plastic (PLA) soft.  The part stretched and I ended up super glueing the bearings in place. They are pretty fun to “play”with.