Adjustable gate latch

The soil in Winnipeg is all clay so it shifts a lot between dry and wet times. That means nothing is ever straight and level for long. So, the gate latch needs to be adjusted frequently.
I finally added the quick release from a bike seat for tool-less adjustments. I have a bunch of them around because I don’t like to help out the thieves by leaving them on a bike.

3d printed fence for a Stanley #78 Rabbet Plane

I picked up an old Stanley #78 rabbet and bull nose combination plane at a garage sale. It works OK as a bull nose and full-width plane, but it didn’t come with the fences needed to make consistent rabbets. I made the following 3D model in Fusion 360 and printed it, this is the final tweaked version. It also requires some nuts and bolts, and I had to re-cut one of the holes in the plane body because it used some crazy non-standard thread.

Stanley #78 fence and depth stop fence model.f3

 

Block heater cord

In order to start after -30C nights most cars around here have block heaters. Usually the plugs hang out from a radiator slot or just from under the hood. So in that-30C you have to hold the male end and hold the female end while wrangling a -30C stiff cable, while wearing mittens if you have any sense. I wanted the cord to be a bit tidier on the car, and make it so that plugging in is a one-handed thing that can be done more easily with mitts on. So, I took an existing plug and build a Casing for electrical cord plug to mount on a flat surfacenew body for it. I have done 3d modelling before, but this was my first exposure to Autodesk’s Fusion 360. It is the nicest 3d modelling software I have used so far – very easy transition from other tools I have used and it just works. I feel like a total sell-out to use it instead of an open source product like FreeCAD, but it’s like I tried crack, there is no going back.
A friend 3d printed the model for me, we installed it on Friday. The temperature was only -11C and sunny, but with a bit of wind. It was not optimal for playing with small parts and bare hands, but we got it done. For now the setup works, but it will be interesting to see how well the body and the silicon glue pad I used to hold it on will hold up. Generally gluing things in -11C is not a good idea, but this pad did better than I expected.  New blog heater plug on my car