My fianceé & I are moving from Las Vegas to Washington state. I now know that relocating is, in the words of a theatrical colleague, “one of the most stressful things we do on-purpose.”

Sure, moving within town can be tough but moving to a different temperate zone carries extra layers of stress & challenges. In my case, I happen to think the payoff well outweighs the rest.

But moving is one of those things that is often done so hastily that we forget to use our intellect to make the process easier (indeed the stakes are often so high that we refuse to experiment for fear something may dramatically go wrong.) This is a particularly pressing issue for those of us that tend not to live on the ground floor.

BUT WHY?! Why is it that we don’t invent, build, and succeed at making one of the most common of modern labors a smarter & easier affair?

Sure, I have for years enjoyed the benefit of wheels when moving my belongings by using hand trucks, piano dollies, and by installing casters on heavy objects. But that’s been the end of innovation in this regard both for me & for almost everyone.

Take a look at the above video of the men from the piano store moving the piano down the stairs, how barbaric!

Surely we have come far enough along that methods & inventions which employ our modern understanding of fundamental concepts of introductory physics, the empirical laws of Nature, and our own dislike of manual labor should be available to to men & women the world over?

Driven by a desire to make things easier on my lady-love (in an embarrassingly un-chivalrous twist of fate I was not able to assist with the loading of our moving truck) I decided that I had just enough time, tools and lumber to do some justice to the grand march of evolution that produced thinking man version 2010 CE: I would build a Simple Machine [wiki].

Since we were moving out of a second floor apartment our boxes would be moving down stairs, gravity is on our side for this operation. I decided to build a slide, ramp or chute [wiki].

Luckily I have piles of remnant wood available from building scenery for theater, so I was able to slap this together quite fast. Basically, I overlapped  two pieces of 1/2″ plywood that each were a bit longer than half the hypotenuse of the stair tread run. I used an air-powered nail gun to join the pieces with 1″ brads. I added a 2×4 piece to the underside of the top to grip the landing/top stair.

After twice-measuring the stairs & material, I added nailed a small piece of plywood to the bottom of the upper chute board. This allowed me to hold the two pieces together in exactly the right spot as I nailed the two boards together while it positioned on the staircase.

I was concerned that the friction of the unfinished & un-sanded wood and the length of the run would overcome the potential energy of the weight of the object combined with the incline. I was prepared to staple heavy polystyrene plastic sheeting to the chute to decrease friction. It didn’t turn out to be necessary – after testing a few boxes, I realized I didn’t even need to push the boxes, gravity took care of the whole job.

In all the hubbub & haste, I forgot to take any pictures. Here I’ve created a limited test recreation plus video:

Click for full-size.

The users of the ramp were said the ramp worked wonders until someone “stepped on it wrong” and broke it. After that it continued to work wonders; it just had to be adjusted every so often.

After the ease & success of this project, I’m tempted to try all manner of cockamamie ideas for moving that come to my head. This seems like an huge area of human advancement just ripe for the picking!

Have you come up with any great tricks & tips for moving? Let me know! Comment or email mike@mikefigueroa.com

Books & Stone

Here is a quick method for bringing stone masonry to life, one that is also cost-effective.

First cut a sheet of Styrofoam to the desired size+shape, then layout your brickwork design with a marker. Your choice of foam thickness will depend on the application, for this sample given to a client I used only 3/4″. I can imagine situations where 2+ inches would be desirable.

The next step is the most unconventional. Let’s abuse a power tool:

I use a standard plunging palm router for quickly carving precise grooves into foam. This is definitely tool abuse, as the router’s air intake will most assuredly suck in tiny EPS bits. That is why I have a cheap router that I use only for this purpose.

In the photo above, you can see a large paint stirring stick. I used this as a straight edge to guide the router.  If this were a larger piece, a drywall square would have been more appropriate.

Foam is messy, when possible use a clean suit. Or, have your air compressor charged & ready to dust you off.

Next, use a plaster of your choice. I wanted this to be feather-light so I used pre-mixed Joint Compound (drywall mud) which, if purchased in large enough quantities, can be very inexpensive. For example, the contractor’s tub below (61.7 lbs) costs as much as 12 lbs of consumer-packaged DAP brand mud.

Simply brush the joint compound on with a brush. This is thick stuff, so you may find it easier going if you use scissors to trim the brush down to 1″ hairs or less. Click the image below to see additional detail in the almost-finished faux stonework:

Click for full-size.

Paint in whatever what suits you best, but I personally like lightly dusting with spray paints. Use an airbrush for larger pieces. Due to it’s plasticity the joint compound adds some strength to the foam, but is by no means safe from injury.

Cheers, FIG

This is my stapler, Excalibur. Excellent stapling action, wonderful “PLINK-ahh!” sound.

As you can see, it’s learned a new trick: holding a book open.

Being watched?

]]> http://mikefigueroa.com/blog/2010/06/deus-ex-natura/feed/ 0 http://mikefigueroa.com/blog/2010/05/fungi-milagro/ http://mikefigueroa.com/blog/2010/05/fungi-milagro/#comments Tue, 04 May 2010 04:21:59 +0000 MikeFig http://mikefigueroa.com/blog/?p=740 I missed every opportunity to document this prop mushroom’s build, so you’ll have to just do the whole “theatre of the mind” business as I describe the process.

The southwest or desert miracle mushroom enjoys dry but shaded spots. Look for them near other vegetation.

I produced the cap separately from the stalk.

For the mushroom cap I first cut a home trash bag into 3″ strips, then laid laid them inside large (18″ diameter) chip bowl as shown below:
By lining the bowl with strips of plastic rather than larger sheets, the plastic better matched the form of the bowl. I then mixed and poured some FlexFoam-iT!® V expanding foam from Smooth-On into the bowl. I used a GLOVED hand to evenly spread the foam.

I waited until the foam started expanding (which was my cue that the foam touching the plastic strips was tacky and becoming solid) then I picked up the bowl and tipped the bowl in a circular rolling motion to evenly distribute the foam.

A sweet-variety desert miraculo nearing maturity. Now outgrowing the surrounding plants from which it leeched moisture and nutrients.

While the polyurethane foam mush-cap cured I ran down to the wood shop and, using the jigsaw, cut the following “kit” for the stalk structure out of 1/4″ plywood.

As you can see, they assemble into a locking structure as shown below:

Note: Add mild asymmetry as pleases the eye.

I then stuffed the void-quadrants with tissue paper, then wrapped with clear tape. I painted to match the pale yellow complexion of the foam.

Now we're cookin' with gas! Although toxicologists agree the milagro poses neurological harm to infants and the elderly if ingested raw, when properly prepared anyone may enjoy the this fungal treat. Baking whole (as pictured above) allows harmful enzymes to metabolize into simple sugars.

First, find a suitable pine cone. They’re a lazy lot, so you can usually just find them lying about.

Gotcha!

What a cute little nugget. It reminds me of all the other little babies out there…

Baby carrots...

... Not mention these little things.

Anyway, I used my Dremel to flatten its bum, then used one of these round bits with the spiral groove pattern to carve out a cozy space for the magnet.

FINISHED! Click for full-size.

Finally, I covered the whole thing (excluding the face of the magnet) with a clear ceramic glaze. I (apparently) did this (ostensibly) to (hopefully) preserve the pine cone in its current state (I guess.)

We’ll see. I want to do this with a more mature/picturesque pine cone, when I do I’ll use a stronger magnet. The ones we had in our craft inventory were fairly week; I wouldn’t trust this to hold more than 2 or 3 sheets of paper.

–

Usage note: My incredibly cursory research indicates that “pinecone” is not a proper word. Also, they’re properly referred to as “Conifer cones“.

Sometimes my impromptu drawings are like self-administered Rorschach tests. I’m always finding new ways of looking at the finished product. I would really be interested to know what it is you find in this one, which could be anything from futuristic sails unfurling to robotic DNA:

Here’s a quick one. I’m calling it moonrise.

I made a funny.