Bike Overhaul (Step 2)

The plan is to remove some high-quality components from an old mountain bike that someone donated to Steph (but is too small for her) and replace the cheap components on my mountain bike with them.

Time: 2 hours

Cost: $40 (for new cables and housings and new grips)

Witch-gear: Repair stand, torque wrench, headset wrenches, pedal wrench, bike chain tool, allen wrenches, socket set, needlenose pliers, dry degreaser, dry lubricant, synthetic grease

Level of Difficulty: (What's with the saws?)

What I Learned: 1) Bike cable and housing are very hard to cut. I tried older pairs of metal shears and diagonal nose cutters, but the only tool that worked was the cutters on my newer pair of needlenose pliers. (Even then, they really had to be squeezed.) and 2) Before you grab your chain tool and pop any old pin out of the chain to remove it, research how your particular chain is supposed to be removed. I popped a pin all the way out of my bike's chain, only to discover when I tried to reconnect the chain that it wouldn't go back in. Turns out the pin was only supposed to be pushed through the outer plate enough to allow to inner plate to slide out. With the help of an assistant I was able to get the pin back in the outer plate, but it was really difficult.

Bike Overhaul (Step 1)

The plan is to remove some high-quality components from an old mountain bike that someone donated to Steph (but is too small for her) and replace the cheap components on my mountain bike with them.

Time: 1 hour

Cost: $50 (for a set of specialty bike tools)

Witch-gear: Repair stand, crank puller, headset wrenches, bike chain tool, allen wrenches, socket set, diagonal nose cutters, large adjustable wrench, WD-40

Level of Difficulty: (What's with the saws?)

What I Learned: Taking the components off of a bike requires several specialty tools. Performance Bike's Essential Tool Kit includes most of the things you'll need for a bike made in the past 10 years. The tools aren't of superior quality, but they get the job done, the price is better than even buying two or three of these tools separately, and I'm not going to use them that often anyway, so I consider it a good value.

Living Room Shades

Living Room Shades

New shades for the living room. Oak flooring was cut, glued and clamped into blocks to mounts these on.

Time: 2 hours

Witch-gear: Table saw, drill, countersink

Level of Difficulty: (What's with the saws?)

What We Learned: Cheap oak flooring is awesome. It has lots of uses and doesn't look bad.

Ukulele

Uke

A Ukulele kit for Kate's arrival home. Now we can all play. A kit from grizzly.com.

Time: 10 hours

Cost: $25

Level of Difficulty: (What's with the saws?)

What I Learned: Rubber bands can make good clamps.

Room Bebuild #2

Room Rebuild 2

Here is another room that we "rebuilt." It's my brother's old room and has now been converted into a guest room. While we didn't take the room down to the studs like the first Room Rebuild, replacing the ceiling, the lights, the floor and painting made this room look a lot better.

Time: 3 weekends

Cost: $500

Level of Difficulty: (What's with the saws?)

What I Learned: 4 - T-8 bulb light fixtures are bright!, drop ceilings make a room feel like an office.

On the Roof

The Witchger's do The Drifters 1963 classic Up On The Roof for Mother's Belated Mother's Day present.


On the Roof from Katian Witchger on Vimeo.

This project, despite kevins best efforts, was entered into with less planning than enthusiasm. (most of the little technical direction there was centered around how to get the double bass on the roof; which took about 3 minutes) needless to say it was an editors dream! because the metronome couldnt really be heard up on the roof a lot of our timing was off on top of not finishing the editing before recording the song. so there were some timing problems. luckily my father has taught me a golden rule which can be applied seamlessly to all endeavors. Split the difference! So I spliced and doubled a few frames on either side when the recording and video didnt match.

seamless.

special thanks to mom for catching my uke and resetting the metronome and bonnie for helping run the camera.

What we learned:
1. there is atleast one plausible reason to have a double bass on the roof
2. protools hasnt changed much
3. the old iMovie is better than the new iMovie
4. old technology still does the job.
5. 500 temporary tattoos for 1.99 is not a challenge

Witchgear:

TECHNICAL This project was all done on some ancient technical witchgear
*old Canon ZR500 MiniDV Camcorder (My new camera is in the shop for 6 WEEKS!!!)
*eMac G4 & iMovie4 (I've never really tried iMovie before but someone seems to have deleted the copy of FCP4 we had on the old eMac so I put it onto dads new macbook pro and gave the new iMovie a try... It is pretty HORRIBLE, I got a rough cut and exported to the eMac/old iMovie to fine cut it. It worked ok it is a little frustrating b/c it does things for you you dont necessarily want done but you have a little more control than you do with the new version. Id say if youre going to use iMovie use the old one.)
*kevs old G4 (w/ set-up) and protools 5(it only crashed once! a solid machine.)
*MXL 990 microphone/xlr cable (I can only assume kevin got on craigs list)
*cheap aluminum tripod (prob came free with something)

*our new witchgear could not go unused one of the 3 macbook pros in our house was used in the production of this music video...as a metronome. (it got hotter than fire)


MUSICAL
bob: lanakai concert uke (27th birthday present from steph)
kate: hula ukes tenor uke (25th birthday present to self)
kevin: 'uke's by kevin' soprano uke (kevin made this from a grizzly ukulele kit mom bought for him to make for her... I'm not sure she'll be getting it back)
dad: double bass


SET
roof
werner electro-master 6 foot fiberglass/aluminium ladder


2.5 sawzalls (this project wasnt too difficult just lots of steps all of which went pretty smoothly)

Free Mulch Day

Mulch Day

Free mulch day does not happen often, but when it does we stop everything. The bathroom is not finished, Bobby's old room has been torn apart, I am in the middle of building some shelves and most of the cars have something wrong with them, but it's free mulch. We must get free mulch.

Time: 8 hours

Cost: $10 for an excavator to load the mulch. $8.50 in gas.

Witch-gear: s-10, trailer, shovels, lawn mower

Level of Difficulty: (What's with the saws?)

What I Learned: The lawn mower needed to be fixed and as usual, I thought the carburetor needed to be clean out. After cleaning it thoroughly, and filling up with new gas, nothing. It turns out the spark wire was being clamped in the sheet metal and not in it's correct routing hole. It fired up first pull after the wire was feed correctly.