Between 265 & 485 SQ/FT Made By Miller Studios

[MadeByMiller]

I finally went out on Friday evening to take the last of the photos I needed to make the F-150 sale listing. Although not perfect, I was able to get shots of everything I wanted to in a manner that I was satisfied with. I had about 45 minutes to get all the pictures I wanted before I ran out of light, so I had fun running around trying new things. I'll post up my favorites from the "shoot" here, but you can view the full Craigslist ad HERE if you're curious about how it all came together. So far, the response has been lackluster, with no interest besides scammers ha. I sort of expected that because I am asking a premium price for it. We aren't in a hurry though, so I'll stay patient and see what happens.

 

[MadeByMiller]

We had beautiful weather on Friday, almost 70*, so I took the opportunity to get the extension ladder out and get the Christmas lights hung up. I'm not the biggest fan of being 20'+ up on a ladder, but the outcome is worth it. I took these photos with the fancy DSLR camera, not my phone, and it was challenging. I'd love to hear how I can improve night time shots like this! I know I should have got the tripod out and that would have helped with the clarity.

 

[MadeByMiller]

Yesterday was an exciting day for my wife and I. I happened across these vintage Chromcraft chairs on Facebook Marketplace. The picture was not great, but the listing said 9 chairs for $100. I immediately messaged the seller asking of the condition aside from the clear layer of filth, and she claimed they were in great shape. We headed out to purchase them, and to our surprise we discovered that they had a barn full of MCM furniture they were selling. Unfortunately, we just had missed out on two heaping dump trailer loads that someone else had purchased to outfit their vacation rental, including an authentic Herman Miller Eames chair sold for only $350! That was a bummer, but we poked around and found a great walnut end table and a cute little footstool that I forgot to take a picture of.




After we put the kids to bed last night, I headed out to the shop to see how the clean up process would go. Three hours later, I had one chair ready to bring inside. To say that these chairs are gross is an understatement. Bird poop, ground in food, hair (sickening), greasy oily grime, and barn dust is absolutely coating these things.

The first thing I did was pull the back off of the chair. Fortunately this is a simple process of removing four screws and four nuts. What I found was some disgusting combination of years of food crumbs, dust, and hair (sickening). I vacuumed that mess, used compressed air to blow out all of the crevices, and got to work scrubbing the base with Simple Green. The base is cast aluminum and gives the chair a really nice heft that recalls the quality of days past. Cleaning the legs didn't do much to help them because they were corroded, but some Mother's Mag/Aluminum polish and elbow grease brought the shine back to them and went a long ways to bringing the chair back to life.



I cleaned the grime caked vinyl with more Simple Green and my Drill Brush, revealing a surprisingly good condition chair for being 55 years old. The gross oily grime was stubborn and required many passes with the Drill Brush and even some scraping with a pick in the really tight areas and embossed stripes. In the end, the chair came out very nice and importantly is not a disgusting thing to sit on haha.

BEFORE:


AFTER:



Here it is at the table. We will be keeping our eye's peeled for a matching table, but for now this will work.


Now I just need to repeat the process a few more times! Thanks for stopping by guys, hope you all had a great Thanksgiving!

 

[loganb]

An Eames in even filthy condition for 350 is a steal, sorry you missed it but those chairs are cleaning up great!

 

[MadeByMiller]

An Eames in even filthy condition for 350 is a steal, sorry you missed it but those chairs are cleaning up great!

I know! The seller said the buyers didn't even know what the chair was and she had to explain to them how iconic it is. I cringe at the wonder of what else may have been taken away in those trailers, but at least we got some neat items. Thank you!

 

[zmotorsports]

WOW! That's awesome being bumped to the home page of the forum and being spotlighted by Ryan. Congrats and well deserved.

 

[MadeByMiller]

WOW! That's awesome being bumped to the home page of the forum and being spotlighted by Ryan. Congrats and well deserved.

Thank you - it was a shock to me Mike! There are many individuals and shops here that I follow closely and am inspired by, with you and yours at the top of the list. To have my humble shop and passions made and held within be so prominently displayed on this website was quite the exciting moment for me!

 

[MadeByMiller]

Yesterday I was able to get a second chair cleaned up. I was hoping to get a little faster with this one, but it ended up taking almost exactly three hours again. With that being said, I think I did a little better job cleaning this one and therefore I will probably be taking the first one back out to the shop to get that extra 2% improvement in cleanliness that I was able to achieve on the second one. I'm really happy with how they're cleaning up!

BEFORE:


AFTER:


BEFORE:


AFTER:


BEFORE:


AFTER:

 

[kevinsummers]

I had fun designing and building this firepit as an exercise in creativity and potential local sale product. Everyone with a welder builds firepits, my goal was to design a cool and unique one that I've never seen built. (8/29/20).

Killer design - love it!

 

[Nolift911]

This thread is the reason for Garage Journal - tons of great ideas here. Awesome thread. I have wanted to weld like that since I was 10, will never happen, you either have it or you don't, incredible skills so kudos to you. Subscribed.

My only add here (and just a suggestion) is that your shop is dying for some type of cool door for the front and enable you to get rid of the rails inside for more room. Old metal bi-fold with tracks etc? I am sure you could mock something up quickly

Jeff

 

[CN Spots]

Awesome thread and awesome find on those chairs! The Chromcraft factory is just a few miles down the road from me. Nice to see some of their work brought back to life.

I looked through their history and they even had a chair featured on an episode of Star Trek TOS. A version of yours with casters is shown in the 1980's section:

About Us | ChromCraft Home

Learn about ChromCraft Home, where quality craftsmanship meets innovative design. We are committed to creating stylish and functional furniture for living spaces

chromcrafthome.com

 

[MadeByMiller]

Killer design - love it!

Thanks a lot!

This thread is the reason for Garage Journal - tons of great ideas here. Awesome thread. I have wanted to weld like that since I was 10, will never happen, you either have it or you don't, incredible skills so kudos to you. Subscribed.

My only add here (and just a suggestion) is that your shop is dying for some type of cool door for the front and enable you to get rid of the rails inside for more room. Old metal bi-fold with tracks etc? I am sure you could mock something up quickly

Jeff

What a nice thing to say! Thank you for complimenting my welding as well. I do my best.

I totally agree, and initially I planned on building some carriage doors for the shop. The roll up door is truly hideous inside and out. Building them would require a significant time/money budget that unfortunately I can't justify at present, but maybe some day!

Thanks for stopping by, and I absolutely love your 911 by the way. I'm not a big sports car guy, but I'd love to have a Porsche just like yours some day.

Awesome thread and awesome find on those chairs! The Chromcraft factory is just a few miles down the road from me. Nice to see some of their work brought back to life.

I looked through their history and they even had a chair featured on an episode of Star Trek TOS. A version of yours with casters is shown in the 1980's section:

About Us | ChromCraft Home

Learn about ChromCraft Home, where quality craftsmanship meets innovative design. We are committed to creating stylish and functional furniture for living spaces

chromcrafthome.com

Well how neat! It looks like present day Chromcraft has lost it's bold charm.

The Sculpta series that was featured on Star Trek is absolutely one of the coolest dining sets I've ever seen. I had the pleasure of seeing a minty full set at an antique store in town a few years ago. Unfortunately we can't own a set like that until our absurdly destructive children become old enough to treat things "gently".

Thank you for the kind words!

 

[MadeByMiller]

Last night I finally finished cleaning up enough of the chairs to fill our dining table. I'm really happy with the way that they came out and how they look in the house. We will be keeping our eyes peeled for a more appropriate table, but this one works for now. MCM furniture rarely pops up in this area, so we will be looking for a while I'm sure. Here's a photo dump of the "shoot" I did this morning with the fancy Canon DSLR.












Many of the pictures were just me playing around. I've learned so much about using this camera even just this morning, most notably the importance of using as low of iso as possible. Many of these pictures and the pictures I've taken prior are really grainy because the iso was way too high. The flip side is, with the dim lighting in my house I had to decrease the shutter speed using the lower iso and then had trouble getting clear pictures without having a tripod for stability. I also am learning how to better manually focus and use aperture to change the depth of field. I'm not under any illusions that these photos are good - in fact I'm not really happy with any of them, but they do represent the point in which I'm at on the learning curve. I'll take what I've learned from these photos and apply them next time I pull the camera out, and hopefully I'll see more improvement. I know there are a lot of talented photographers on this site, maybe one of you guys will see this and give me some criticism.

 

[zmotorsports]

Those turned out AWESOME! Great job.

 

[555]

In the early 70s, I bought a severely chopped and channeled 1930 Ford 3 window coupe hot rod. It had a pair of those chairs without the pedestals in it. I didn't know what they were until a friend told me his parent's dining chairs were the same. I pulled them out and sure enough the Chromcraft tag was on the bottom of one.

 

[MadeByMiller]

Those turned out AWESOME! Great job.

Thank you Mike! It's a pleasure to have these chairs cleaned up and in my house. I know you've discussed it in your thread, but the payoff from keeping older things alive and functioning really far exceeds the experience of purchasing almost anything comparable in the store. These chairs are built like tanks and probably weigh close to 30 lbs! Not to mention, the styling is unlike anything you will find made today and is just to my wife and I's taste.

In the early 70s, I bought a severely chopped and channeled 1930 Ford 3 window coupe hot rod. It had a pair of those chairs without the pedestals in it. I didn't know what they were until a friend told me his parent's dining chairs were the same. I pulled them out and sure enough the Chromcraft tag was on the bottom of one.

That's a really great story, thank you for sharing! Hot rods/customs from that era were wild and I love them for that. If you happen to have any pictures of that Model A, I'd love to see it!

 

[gearhead1960]

Ahhhh! The pleasures of finding old MCM furniture. My wife and I have been shopping Estate Sales for years purchasing old MCM stuff to furnish our house. My addiction was fueled by my parents taste in everything MCM. I have most of my parents Paul McCobb stuff. Our dining room set is a 1950's vintage Heywood Wakefield set. We had one of our purchases recently re-upholstered:


Don't get me going on my wife's glass (Blenko and many others) addiction

 

[MadeByMiller]

Ahhhh! The pleasures of finding old MCM furniture. My wife and I have been shopping Estate Sales for years purchasing old MCM stuff to furnish our house. My addiction was fueled by my parents taste in everything MCM. I have most of my parents Paul McCobb stuff. Our dining room set is a 1950's vintage Heywood Wakefield set. We had one of our purchases recently re-upholstered:


Don't get me going on my wife's glass (Blenko and many others) addiction

It's really exciting when we find an MCM piece for sale locally because they pop up so rarely! Your collection sounds wonderful. I've seen some Heywood Wakefield dining sets for sale locally, but they were expensive and in amazing condition and I was worried about my small children destroying them. That chair looks so good, nice choice in fabric!

 

[gearhead1960]

It's really exciting when we find an MCM piece for sale locally because they pop up so rarely! Your collection sounds wonderful. I've seen some Heywood Wakefield dining sets for sale locally, but they were expensive and in amazing condition and I was worried about my small children destroying them. That chair looks so good, nice choice in fabric!

Thanks for the complement! Here’s a quick shot from my spot on our “new” Joybird couch.
The black chair is from “Sal” that my wife picked up for $40. She had to beat people away when she snagged that one. Christmas tree is circa 1959 Aluminum tree from an Estate Sale I paid $5 for in original box. Glass you see is only a small amount of all the pieces we have. If you have sharp eyes, there is more in the picture to spot. It’s an addiction…

 

[MadeByMiller]

Thanks for the complement! Here’s a quick shot from my spot on our “new” Joybird couch.
The black chair is from “Sal” that my wife picked up for $40. She had to beat people away when she snagged that one. Christmas tree is circa 1959 Aluminum tree from an Estate Sale I paid $5 for in original box. Glass you see is only a small amount of all the pieces we have. If you have sharp eyes, there is more in the picture to spot. It’s an addiction…

You guys must have some great estate sales out east. Ours are pretty lame around here. That's a lot of glass, but it is cool looking! That black chair is wonderful, heck of a score at $40! Thanks for sharing.

 

[gearhead1960]

You guys must have some great estate sales out east. Ours are pretty lame around here. That's a lot of glass, but it is cool looking! That black chair is wonderful, heck of a score at $40! Thanks for sharing.

Estate Sales can be hit or miss. Early bird does get the worm, but sometimes there are diamonds in the rough that others look past. I found a similar chair to the black one, but with a foot stool and it's a rocker. The wife hated the upholstery but it was super comfortable. It was priced right ($50) and now sits in our bedroom (on my side). The funny thing about these type of chairs is you look on ebay and people want crazy money ($1,000-2,000) for them. While the chairs and the furniture are nice, people think they are worth a ton more than they will ever get. I didn't buy them to flip, just to enjoy....

 

[MadeByMiller]

Recently I was hired to do some promo/product release CG work for my good customer Overkill Racing and Chassis. They released some products on Black Friday (a MIG gun holder and TIG torch holder) and wanted some media to post on their website and social media accounts. I brought the provided files into Blender and first put together this fun animation HERE which was both challenging and fun to do.

He then requested some still renders of the products in each of the color options. I mentioned to him how neat it would be to render the products with the machined toolpaths and explained to him how it was possible based on some experiments I had done about 18 months ago. He liked the idea, and soon the files I needed landed in my inbox. I setup the lighting and part orientation in a manner that I thought gave the best visual description of the product and highlighted the beautiful toolpaths, and hit the render button. I'm pretty pleased with how they came out. I am partial most to the purple anodize color option, but you can see them all (and purchase them) HERE .

 

[MadeByMiller]

Today got up to about 50*, so this afternoon/evening (the sun sets sooo early) while I was in town running errands I finally had time to wash the filth off from the snowfall we've had within the last month. I'm really envious of folks that have their own indoor wash bays at home and are easily able to keep a clean vehicle in the winter months. I feel so bad having road salt sit on this thing since it's so cherry and rust free. On a positive note, the truck washed up really nice and easily thanks to the wax I put on it after I purchased it. I took this picture after I backed out of the wash bay where I pressure washed the body and undercarriage, hand washed with a bucket and microfiber wash mitt, hand dried, wiped jambs, and applied satin tire shine. I love this truck!

 

[zmotorsports]

I'm jealous. While we had 50~ish degree weather yesterday and most of the snow melted off my yard from the storm two days prior, we had another winter storm roll through last night and today it's another sloppy and slick mess out there so I figured no sense in washing the Jeep yet. It is pretty much brown right now due to the road conditions and needs a cleaning desperately, as does the wife's car.

 

[MadeByMiller]

I'm jealous. While we had 50~ish degree weather yesterday and most of the snow melted off my yard from the storm two days prior, we had another winter storm roll through last night and today it's another sloppy and slick mess out there so I figured no sense in washing the Jeep yet. It is pretty much brown right now due to the road conditions and needs a cleaning desperately, as does the wife's car.

Don't be too jealous, it's in the 20's today and windy, and we don't even have any pretty snow to look at.

Have you ever considered setting up a wash bay in your shop Mike? Something temporary like curtains that can be collapsed, or is the potential for high humidity and mess or perhaps drainage just not worth it in your situation?

I didn't fully realize how fortunate I was growing up to have free year-round car washes in my dad's heated, insulated shop with diesel burner heated high pressure washer and in floor drainage. I always had the cleanest vehicle at school even though we lived 6 miles from town because it was so easy and convenient (not to mention enjoyable) to wash the winter grime off in a t-shirt whenever I wanted. Now I just stare out at my poor dirty vehicles and wince at the thought of having to wait for an above freezing day to drive to town and spend $30+ for the pleasure of using a wash bay to keep them clean.

 

[zmotorsports]

Don't be too jealous, it's in the 20's today and windy, and we don't even have any pretty snow to look at.

Have you ever considered setting up a wash bay in your shop Mike? Something temporary like curtains that can be collapsed, or is the potential for high humidity and mess or perhaps drainage just not worth it in your situation?

I didn't fully realize how fortunate I was growing up to have free year-round car washes in my dad's heated, insulated shop with diesel burner heated high pressure washer and in floor drainage. I always had the cleanest vehicle at school even though we lived 6 miles from town because it was so easy and convenient (not to mention enjoyable) to wash the winter grime off in a t-shirt whenever I wanted. Now I just stare out at my poor dirty vehicles and wince at the thought of having to wait for an above freezing day to drive to town and spend $30+ for the pleasure of using a wash bay to keep them clean.

No, I don't have any desire to introduce water into my shop. I did have water plumbed into along with a floor drain in my last shop but only used it one time in the 25+ years in that shop and then valved it off and never used it again. I felt the introduction of moisture into the shop just led down a path to flash rust on everything that I was unwilling to accept.

For the past several years I will hit the car wash near my home then pull them into the shop to chamois dry and detail. Works well unless we get back to back storms then it will sometimes be a week plus before I'm willing to spend the time and money to clean them.

 

[MadeByMiller]

Tell/show me the 71/72 C/K 10 in the back. I have a 72 C10.

Hey, sorry I just saw this message. Mine's a '72 as well, a K10. It's my first vehicle that I bought when I was 14 and drove to highschool. It was a longbed, but I cut it down to a shortbed when I was at school at Wyotech. It's got some pretty bad rust issues in the cab - rockers, cab corners, cab mounts, lower doors, and some of the outer parts of the floor are basically gone. I keep it because it's worth a lot more to me sentimentally than it would be worth if I sold it, but it doesn't get driven much anymore and has not been licensed or insured in years. We just pile in with the kids and drive around the neighborhood with it. Truthfully I don't have much desire to work on it though, and I quite dislike working with rusty sheetmetal.

Here's a picture I took of it this morning next to the Dakota:


Here's another picture taken in June of 2019. I never finished the bed shortening, it has no inner bedsides and the seams as you can tell were never bodyworked, just spray bombed. It would be easier to just start over with new short bedsides at this point.


A similar shot of it hauling trash out of a storage unit:


And here are a couple of pictures I took back in December of 2013 when I had "completed" the shortening.



Working backwards in the timeline, here it is loaded up and headed to school to get chopped down. That's my 2011 Silverado 1500 that replaced the '72 as my daily driver.


Lastly, here is one of the first pictures I took of it that shows the condition that I purchased it in. I paid $3,200 for it in the summer of 2009 and drove it two hours home from Sioux Falls, SD.

 

[zmotorsports]

I've always liked those '67-'72 GM's. My BIL had a 1972 shortbed 4x4 when he was dating my sister back in the early 80's. Had all original chrome trim on it, original 350cid/TH350 powertrain and he had put a 4" lift with 33" tires. Truck was all black and a real head turner and I loved riding in it but he rolled it shortly after marrying my sister and then replaced it with a 1976 shortbed Chevy that we transferred many things over to. I would love to build one of those with a modern LS/6L80 combo as a daily driver but you know the old saying, want in one hand and **** in the other and see which fills faster. Unfortunately, I have a lot of things in my head I'd "like" to build but when it comes time to take the money out of the bank and actually follow through with it I start having buyer's remorse before even spending the money.

 

[MadeByMiller]

Since I brought up the 2011 I owned in the last post, I'll just outline all of my past vehicles here. The list isn't long, but I am very fortunate to have owned them all.

To continue with the C/K trucks, here is a 1970 C10 "show truck" that I technically owned for about eight years. My dad received it on trade for work he had done and he gave it to me. I drove it to the local car show and parade, some cruising, and that's about it. When I sold it in 2018, I tried to give the money to my dad, but he would not accept it. I ended up using the money for the down payment on my house.


Here are a couple of pictures of the 2011 Silverado. It's hard to talk about this truck and the '70 C10 without sounding like a spoiled brat. With that being said, my dad absolutely insisted on buying me a brand new truck before I headed off to Wyotech in 2012. I was appreciative and I took care of it the best I could. I spent a lot of my own money on it with a leveling kit, wheels and tires, tonneau cover, tow mirrors, led taillights, stereo system, paint matched rear bumper, tint, and more.



That brings me to the next and last vehicle on this list, my 2004 Colorado. I traded the Silverado for it (plus cash) when I lived in AZ in 2014. It was a base model 2wd with crank windows and manual transmission, which as a former government vehicle made it very low mileage (I think it had 50,000 miles when I bought it) and in excellent condition. I statically lowered it with control arms, springs, and lowering blocks, put on the color matched grille, cleared headlights, led tails, rear roll pan, 5% tinted windows, and 18's with staggered tires. I loved that truck, it was so much fun to drive, and it remains the only vehicle that I miss owning. When we decided to move back to SD though, I knew I had to sell it as it would be useless here in the winter. My wife had a matching 2wd crew cab Colorado that you see in the background that was equally clean and eventually traded here on our 2009 F-150 that I'm currently trying to sell.

 

[MadeByMiller]

No, I don't have any desire to introduce water into my shop. I did have water plumbed into along with a floor drain in my last shop but only used it one time in the 25+ years in that shop and then valved it off and never used it again. I felt the introduction of moisture into the shop just led down a path to flash rust on everything that I was unwilling to accept.

For the past several years I will hit the car wash near my home then pull them into the shop to chamois dry and detail. Works well unless we get back to back storms then it will sometimes be a week plus before I'm willing to spend the time and money to clean them.

Sounds like my moisture suspicions were correct then. Having the option to pull the vehicle into a heated space to dry and detail is a good happy medium.

I've always liked those '67-'72 GM's. My BIL had a 1972 shortbed 4x4 when he was dating my sister back in the early 80's. Had all original chrome trim on it, original 350cid/TH350 powertrain and he had put a 4" lift with 33" tires. Truck was all black and a real head turner and I loved riding in it but he rolled it shortly after marrying my sister and then replaced it with a 1976 shortbed Chevy that we transferred many things over to. I would love to build one of those with a modern LS/6L80 combo as a daily driver but you know the old saying, want in one hand and **** in the other and see which fills faster. Unfortunately, I have a lot of things in my head I'd "like" to build but when it comes time to take the money out of the bank and actually follow through with it I start having buyer's remorse before even spending the money.

To say I was obsessed with 67-72 Chevy's in my younger years would be an understatement. I still love them now, especially my '72, but the years I spent working in the aftermarket industry for them and being in that "community" kind of stole away that obsession and left me jaded.

I have to acknowledge that old saying that you mentioned because it is quite infamous in my household. I tell my kids that (of course replacing the cuss with "poop") basically every day. They don't find it as funny as I do haha

 

[SRU1436]

Hey, sorry I just saw this message. Mine's a '72 as well, a K10. It's my first vehicle that I bought when I was 14 and drove to highschool. It was a longbed, but I cut it down to a shortbed when I was at school at Wyotech. It's got some pretty bad rust issues in the cab - rockers, cab corners, cab mounts, lower doors, and some of the outer parts of the floor are basically gone. I keep it because it's worth a lot more to me sentimentally than it would be worth if I sold it, but it doesn't get driven much anymore and has not been licensed or insured in years. We just pile in with the kids and drive around the neighborhood with it. Truthfully I don't have much desire to work on it though, and I quite dislike working with rusty sheetmetal.

Here's a picture I took of it this morning next to the Dakota:


Here's another picture taken in June of 2019. I never finished the bed shortening, it has no inner bedsides and the seams as you can tell were never bodyworked, just spray bombed. It would be easier to just start over with new short bedsides at this point.


A similar shot of it hauling trash out of a storage unit:


And here are a couple of pictures I took back in December of 2013 when I had "completed" the shortening.



Working backwards in the timeline, here it is loaded up and headed to school to get chopped down. That's my 2011 Silverado 1500 that replaced the '72 as my daily driver.


Lastly, here is one of the first pictures I took of it that shows the condition that I purchased it in. I paid $3,200 for it in the summer of 2009 and drove it two hours home from Sioux Falls, SD.

Cool truck, thanks for the information on it. I live in California so dont have to worry about snow or rust, I can understand the frustration on the rust issue.

 

[Boostingaz]

Love that C10, nice!

Your car history got me thinking.....and I had to think really hard so I didn't miss any (which I still might have). Going back to 16 when I got my license, I've had:

26 Cars ? I think is right/close
2 Boats
1 Motorcycle
2 Tractors

Where in AZ did you live?

 

[MadeByMiller]

Love that C10, nice!

Your car history got me thinking.....and I had to think really hard so I didn't miss any (which I still might have). Going back to 16 when I got my license, I've had:

26 Cars ? I think is right/close
2 Boats
1 Motorcycle
2 Tractors

Where in AZ did you live?

Dang man, are you a used car dealer?? I didn't picture a 1993 Pontiac Grand Prix we were given that I got back on the road after sitting for 14 years, we drove it from 2017 until last year when it blew a head gasket. I also didn't picture our 2009 F-150 that we're trying to sell right now or our 2008 Expedition.

I lived in Mesa first and then moved to San Tan Valley. We liked it way more down in San Tan Valley than in Mesa. We were there from Jan 2014 to the end of Sept 2016.

 

[Boostingaz]

Dang man, are you a used car dealer?? I didn't picture a 1993 Pontiac Grand Prix we were given that I got back on the road after sitting for 14 years, we drove it from 2017 until last year when it blew a head gasket. I also didn't picture our 2009 F-150 that we're trying to sell right now or our 2008 Expedition.

I lived in Mesa first and then moved to San Tan Valley. We liked it way more down in San Tan Valley than in Mesa. We were there from Jan 2014 to the end of Sept 2016.

No haha. I just used to get bored really fast and trade or sell them.

Nice. I've always stayed north. I lived in Anthem when I was single and then when I got married we moved to a little house in north Phoenix. Then when we found out my wife was pregnant with our first we moved to Surprise, because at that time the houses were BIG and cheap. I for some reason got it in my head that 1 baby was going to need lots of room haha. So we moved from an 1,100 sq/ft house to a 3,400 sq/ft house . Those first couple summer utility bills almost gave me a heartache. Now we are up by Cave Creek in a more rural area.

I've been to Mesa a couple times for work but never been to San Tan.

I've been here since 2005.

 

[fouckhest]

Love your colorado! I've had a 2wd ext cab z71 for over 10yrs now, that 5cyl is such a great engine, if it was a 4wd unit I'd struggle finding a need for much more truck (until i need to pull a car trailer).

that k10 is a great looking truck, follows the mantra of, "it dont eat" so might as well just keep it!

 

[MadeByMiller]

About a month ago I ordered a new hotend and replacement print fan for my Prusa mk3s+ 3D printer. I had a job come up that would make good use of a larger diameter nozzle, and so I reached out to my good friend (@davemoneysign on IG) to ask him about his e3d Revo Six hotend kit he had installed some time back. It's really a neat system, the nozzles utilize their RapidChange tech, and thread in and out by hand for super quick nozzle changes. I placed my order through MatterHackers and after some delay I received everything I had ordered.

I figured that since I would be doing some disassembly of the extruder assembly to replace the hotend, and due to the fact that the machine had well over 43 print days, I should also take this time to clean out and re-pack all 10 linear bearings, clean the linear rods, and perform the "nylock mod" to flatten my print bed. All of this work required about a 60% disassembly of the printer. First, I set all of the bearings into a sealed glass bowl of IPA to dissolve and clean out the old grease:


The following day I did some quick scrubbing with cotton buds on some of the more stubborn remaining grease, and blew them out with compressed air. After letting them air dry for some time to be sure the alcohol had evaporated, I re-packed the bearings with a tube Super Lube and an adapter that I found HERE and printed prior to disassembly. It worked better than I expected it to.


It was then time to start reassembly, so I did so following the original build instructions on the Prusa website. I took my time and even corrected a couple of issues I found from when I had assembled the printer initially. I watched a good YouTube video that helped me with the installation of the e3d hotend, and with those items wrapped up it was time to perform the nylock mod.


I opted to setup OctoPrint on my old laptop, as I felt that the Prusa Bed Leveling plugin was the best thing out there for ease of accuracy. For those interested and unaware of what the nylock mod is, I followed this video but there are a lot of sources out there. Here was the result of the first mesh bed leveling


After the first round of adjustment:


The OctoPrint plugin can be set to show you how many degrees of rotation each screw needs to be turned to achieve flatness. I didn't have a protractor handy, so I used my calibrated eyeball here with the allen wrench. The following pictures show the progression of each round of adjustment:




Now, not to toot my own horn, but .008mm total variance is better than I had seen reported by anyone doing this mod, and is plenty flat. Here's what it looks like on OctoPrint's Mesh Bed Visualizer plugin. All green would be a perfectly flat bed.


With the bed leveling done, I calibrated the Super PINDA and got some filament loaded up to set the initial Z height. It was straightforward and went well, and I then printed THIS to test that the bed was in fact as flat as OctoPrint had showed. The resulting print was quite impressive, and miles better than I would have achieved prior to the mod. Also, with the bearings freshly re-packed and the noisy print fan replaced, the printer is now quieter than ever!

 

[MadeByMiller]

To test the new nozzle sizes I now have access to with the new hotend, I first printed a Benchy with the .8mm nozzle at .55mm layer height. It only took 25 minutes and left those fat, juicy layers that I think are really cool! You can see that the heavy extrusions don't do well with bridging, but that's to be expected.


On the opposite end of the spectrum, I loaded up the .25mm nozzle and sliced a Benchy this time at .05mm layer height. This took almost 11 hours to print! It came out extremely smooth, but you can see that some of the more extreme overhangs on the bow didn't quite agree with the layer height.


Here are a couple of standard Benchy's printed with a .4mm nozzle and .15mm layer height for comparison:



Here's the printer and the printer stand which sits about 8' from my desk in my office.



Speaking of my desk, here it is in all of it's glory. This is where I spend most of my time.

 

[Vette60]

Hiya. First post to your thread...I read a bunch of your stuff a ways back and didn't save it and lost track of you here. Really enjoyed catching up to what you have been up to.

From the fab projects, to the Dodge Truck work, to the mid-century modern stuff, to the 3d printing...all really fun to follow.

I haven't created a post for myself yet, but this inspires me to do so...I bought myself a Prusa Mini last year and really love it. It's done a great job for printing and I have been really pleased with what I have been able to do with it thus far...

I'm really jealous of your Vidmar cabinets - we had a bunch at work that got "removed" that I really wanted to take home, but company policy got in my way...it was such a crusher that they weren't repurposed in a better way.

That's all for now! Thanks so much for sharing with us here.

 

[MadeByMiller]

Hiya. First post to your thread...I read a bunch of your stuff a ways back and didn't save it and lost track of you here. Really enjoyed catching up to what you have been up to.

From the fab projects, to the Dodge Truck work, to the mid-century modern stuff, to the 3d printing...all really fun to follow.

I haven't created a post for myself yet, but this inspires me to do so...I bought myself a Prusa Mini last year and really love it. It's done a great job for printing and I have been really pleased with what I have been able to do with it thus far...

I'm really jealous of your Vidmar cabinets - we had a bunch at work that got "removed" that I really wanted to take home, but company policy got in my way...it was such a crusher that they weren't repurposed in a better way.

That's all for now! Thanks so much for sharing with us here.

Well thank you, I'm glad that you like what you see here!

I love my Vidmar's so much and I'm always watching for more (even though I don't have anymore room ha) but man that hurts to read your work totally wasting a bunch of them, what a shame!

Speaking of mid-century modern stuff, I'll leave a teaser of something in the works...

 

[wannabridin]

Great job w/ the Prusa! i've built and used a few of those in the past, but through employers, so i'm "struck" with an ender 3 pro at home. But it gets plenty of use and gives some nice results! Currently saving up to do a bondtech upgrade and maybe an "ender extender" to ultimately get to 400 cubed!

Fantastic work here! Excellent craftsman, talented designer, what a combo!! Have you been following Gregor (@sakurama) w/ his "Mid-Century Moto Mecca Makeover"? I'm sure he'd dig your build here too!