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Wood for pantry shelves

Dave Farquhar DIY January 2, 2020March 2, 2020

As a landlord, one common thing I run into when rehabbing a house is questionable pantries. You don’ t have to use expensive wood for pantry shelves, but if you use the wrong lumber, or the wrong design, you can end up with a shelf crashing down. And that’s no good.

You can use nominal one-inch pine boards for pantry shelves, or 1/2 inch plywood, as long as you don’t make it excessively long. Particle board and OSB are not ideal, and reinforcement on all four sides is absolutely necessary with those. Pantry shelves need to be fairly strong, as canned goods can be fairly heavy. Having lots of pantry storage so you can take advantage of sales is one of the best reasons to have a house. So you want to make sure the pantry is put together pretty well. Read more

Best way to cut laminate countertop

Dave Farquhar Uncategorized December 31, 2019January 11, 2020

Laminate countertops are inexpensive and easier to work with than stone. But the cheapest places to get laminate countertops often only offer fixed sizes and won’t cut them for you. So here’s the best way to cut laminate countertop so you can install it yourself and avoid custom orders.

The key to cutting laminate countertop is a straight edge, a fine-tooth sawblade, and lots of support. The most common reason for difficulty cutting laminate countertop is lack of support causing the countertop to pinch your blade.

What is pot metal?

Dave Farquhar Toys December 30, 2019September 18, 2023

What is pot metal? It’s a catch-all phrase that covers casting parts out of nonferrous metals. Usually when the phrase is used, it refers to pieces of unknown or possibly questionable manufacture. But there are sophisticated processes, such as diecasting, that fall into the category of pot metal.

Pot metal originated from the practice of gathering all available nonferrous metals and melting them into a pot for casting. Any process that involves casting nonferrous metals is technically pot metal, though the phrase usually refers to a more haphazard composition. Outside of prototyping, it is still used for making toys, trinkets, cheap jewelry, and even hardware.

How to maintain Lionel trains

Dave Farquhar Toy trains December 27, 2019April 7, 2022

Lionel trains have a reputation for high quality, but like any machine, you have to take care of them. Here’s how to maintain Lionel trains to ensure they last another generation or two.

Even if you run your trains a lot, your trains should only need maintenance every few years. For about $30-$35 worth of materials, you can ensure your Lionel trains have a long, productive life.

Get permanent marker off plastic

Dave Farquhar DIY December 26, 2019October 26, 2021

Permanent means permanent, right? Not necessarily. It’s difficult to remove permanent marker from plastic, but not impossible. Here are several ways to get permanent marker off plastic.

The favorite trick is coloring over it with a dry erase marker, then erasing it. But if this doesn’t work, or you don’t have a dry erase marker, there are other solvents and cleaners that can also work. On cloth, permanent marker really is permanent, or nearly so, since it can soak into the surface. On plastic it can’t, so permanent marker is more like semi-permanent on plastic.

Barracuda garbage disposal review

Dave Farquhar DIY December 24, 2019August 9, 2020

I’m a landlord, and my tenants can be hard on garbage disposals. One time I couldn’t get my preferred brand, so I ended up installing a Barracuda. Was it any good? Here’s my Barracuda garbage disposal review.

Barracuda garbage disposals are made by Moen. They are made overseas and imported, and sold in discount hardware and home improvement stores like Menards. Barracuda garbage disposals are also sold under the Waste King brand name.

Extend case panel connectors easily and cheaply

Dave Farquhar Hardware, Retro Computing December 23, 2019December 2, 2019

Sometimes when you’re fitting a motherboard into a case, especially an aftermarket board into a name-brand case, the connectors for the panel LEDs and switches don’t match up with the board. You can usually rewire it fairly easily, but extending them means splicing the wires. But there’s an easier solution, and it’s cheap. Here’s how to rewire or extend case front panel connectors with plug-in connectors.

I ran into this on my IBM PC/AT. Its HDD connector wasn’t long enough to reach an ISA IDE card because it was designed for a full-length card. And the LED for the power light didn’t reach either. The problem is less rare with recent hardware, but not non-existent.

How tall is an O scale train?

Dave Farquhar model railroading December 20, 2019December 1, 2019

How tall is an O scale train? It varies. It can vary quite a bit. But I can give you some general guidelines. I can do the same for a related question, how long an O scale train is.

Can you put laminate over tile?

Dave Farquhar DIY December 19, 2019December 7, 2019

Can you put laminate over a tile floor? That’s a fairly common question. But unfortunately, like so many things, the answer is, it depends. In many cases you can install laminate over tile, but in some cases, you can make a problem worse by doing so. Here’s how you can know.

You can install laminate over tile if the tile floor is in reasonably good physical condition. But installing laminate over cracked, uneven tile will result in wavy, uneven, undesirable laminate.

How to open a Commodore 64 or VIC-20

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing December 18, 2019May 10, 2024

The original breadbin-style Commodore 64 and VIC-20 are designed to be easy to open while keeping production cost reasonably low. But they made the design so easy it’s hard. Worse yet, due to the age of the plastics, if you open one today the way Commodore intended, you can damage it. So here’s how to open a Commodore 64 or VIC-20. Let’s also talk about how to fix one if you damage the case when opening it.

The breadbin-style 64 and VIC-20 have three large L-shaped tabs on the back that originally behaved like pivots or hinges. If you try to use them like a hinge today, you’ll probably hear plastic popping, so the trick is to open the case slightly, then pull the top forward.