DIY

My nephew is a bit of a wiz when it comes to building and fixing things. He’s an early teen now and has been taking apart, fixing and re-assembling small engines for years.

Recently he started buying components for remote control aircraft online and has been his own air frames. He came over to try his foam board and coroplast spitfire a few weeks ago and I was duly  impressed.

Check out the video and let us know what you think? His next project is a quadcopter that he’s building from scratch.

Happy New Year!

You can never have too many canoes, but you can run out of places to store them. To solve that, you’ll probably need to make a canoe rack, so we’ve made a DIY video for a canoe rack that can store up to 3 canoes.

We like to keep ours out of the snow to prevent damage, so we built this one to go into our storage container for winter. Watch the video above and if you have any questions or tips, leave them in the comments below.

Quick Tip: Attach pipe insulation to the arms of this canoe rack with a couple zap straps to add a bit of protection to the gunnels.

If you have heavy canoes, you may want to make the braces longer to support the heavier weight.

Remember: a canoe must be stored upside down on its gunnels to prevent warping, water collection and rot.

Try it out and let us know what you think!

This past weekend we were up in Prince George visiting, when a friend pulled out some homemade model rockets and solid fuel engines.

They were leftovers from school projects, so we decided to take the kids and try them out. Setting them up required taping the engines, adding a launching fuse and then connecting the wires.

Standing way back, of course.

The dangerous work was done by adults and the fun was had by all.

It was quite impressive to watch the rockets go, and much whiplash was experienced as they took off.

The larger engines disappeared from view. If you try this, give yourself plenty of space and make sure there is little to no wind.

We were definitely hooked. The great thing about a hobby like model rocket launching is that you can work on building the rockets in the evenings or on rainy days and then take advantage of Saturdays to do your testing.

Have you ever built a model rocket before? What do you think?

After many months of outdoor adventure we took an opportunity to finish off this indoor adventure project. We started our bouldering wall a while ago, but this weekend was a weekend in (due to rain) and we made a lot of progress.

The kits came with a tool to attach the holds, as well as the bolts and T-Nuts. So we were able to get right in and start working. I did manage to snap the too into its two allan key parts. It meant a little more work, but I was able to finish the project as is.

We mixed in another pack of natural rock holds too to give us a mixed look.

Our goal was to mix up the holds in a way that made it more challenging and offered easier and harder routes. In the end it was a success.

There is enough variety that the kids can get up and navigate around the wall, while still challenging themselves (and us) with some much more difficult holds.

All in all it was a huge success. We used super-thick winter sleeping bags as padding below the wall. Matresses and crash pads are also suggested.

It was an awesome project and based on our experience we’d recommend it to anyone. It will be especially useful to burn off kids’ energy in the winter months.

On a recent tour of garage sales in our area, we found this little treasure: A DIY Bottle Catamaran kit. At $3 I figured it’d make a great spring project for my son and I to work on. Typically these things retails for $15 on amazon so it was a steal, especially as it was new in box.

From a company called 4M, this kit makes use of your empty pop bottles for the floats of the catamaran. It’s a neat concept, and one of many “Green Science” kits available.

Aside from the bottles, the kit includes everything you need to make the watercraft. The majority of the components are made of lightweight plastic that are assembled with Philips screws.

The kit is designed for 8 years and up, so there’s no need for soldering. My 6 year old son was able to do pretty much all the work himself.

Instructions are straightforward and were easy to follow.

The concept was cleverly simple. The floats attach via the lids to the bottles and two zap-straps to hold the back on. It really was a simple and rewarding build.

In no time at all we were up and running. I expected it to sit in the water and disappoint, but when we put it in the tub it picked up speed pretty well. Don’t get me wrong, you’re not going to break any records, but it can move. We can’t wait to try it out in a bigger pond.

Take a look at the video above to see the build and check out the kits available on amazon.

 
The only downside is that the edges don’t hold a straight edge after a lot of use. It’s hard to peg it tightly, but it really hasn’t been a problem.

Oh and when it’s all done it’s easy to wipe down with a wet cloth.

Do you use Tyvek? What do you use it for and have you found to be a good purchase?