Farewell Odd Dryer Arrangement

In the interests of making my house more typical (and therefore more marketable), I just dismantled my dryer arrangement. It eliminated the need to bend over with armfuls of damp clothing, although I would've had to relocate the dryer's controls if I'd kept it that way. It will be missed.

Oil Filter Strain Relief

Typically a heating system's oil filter is attached to the tank, which anchors it solidly allowing you to loosen the nut holding it together easily. Since my tank is in a crawlspace I wanted an equivalent system upstairs. I'm sure something is made for this, but I needed a cheap and fast solution so I took a 3/8" coupling and welded a 1/2" pipe to it and then attached a flange for a base. This setup supports the filter and allows me to open it up without risking damage to the soft copper oil feed lines. The clearances are a little tight where it's going so I snapped a picture before installing it. The image is a bit fuzzy but you can get the idea.

Heating System Manifold

I am designing a five zone heating system, and bought the parts necessary to hook up all five pumps. Not only was it rather expensive, but assembling that many joints would be time consuming. Instead, I decided to weld up two manifolds (one for supply and one for return). Each manifold is simply a 12" long 1.5" nipple with four 3/4" nipples coming off of it (actually two nipples cut in half as threads are only needed on one end). The fifth connection is provided by a 1.5" to 3/4" adapter screwed onto the end. Together, the two saved me 14 fittings and 24 joints as well as being a fair bit lighter and more compact. To get the nipples attached solidly, I printed out a paper template of the shape they needed to be ground to and taped them on. This made getting a good fit simple and was rather easy to produce, as the 1.9" outside curve of the 1.5" pipe projected onto the 3/4" nipples is just an ellipse.

Getting the welds airtight was a little bit of work, and you can see the pressure testing setup I used. Some old washer hoses were the easiest way to seal the 3/4" nipples, and while they looked comical it worked fine.

Butcher Block Resurfacing

Originally posted on my private blog May 26th, 2009.

This butcher block table had seen some serious use, creating depressions over an inch deep and some nasty discoloration. It sold rather cheaply at an antiques auction because while some use adds character, a lot apparently just looks kind of gross. When measuring it up, I discovered the original top hadn't been parallel to the base so I corrected this while I was at it. Fortunately I was removing enough that all traces of the previous edge bevel were erased. Using some straight pieces of lumber as rails to ensure my router remained parallel to the surface, I made four passes, removing 5/16" and a final one removing only 1/16". This took about three hours. Next I need to sand the top smooth, round the edges, and sand the sides to remove the slight discoloration there. I may add a small groove around the periphery to catch liquids.