SecondMoonshot

I have been looking for a better safer and more professional looking DIY free book mailer I can make from available free cardboard boxes and stock. I worked out this method which I think came out well and offers lots of protection and can be used for albums, puzzles and anything that is generally ridges and square or rectangular. Hope you find this useful.  I have made a few changes to the design, primarily to not have the seam in the middle but have it cover the front (or back) completely, that way the tape goes on the edge and have an additional 1” which goes under the front flap. This makes it look much cleaner, easier to seal and a nice blank space for your shipping label. I used this design to ship a signed art print which I wanted to ship flat with the mat board. It worked better than any packing option I have used prior and super rigid. Once you get the hang of the dimension offsets, it looks truly professional. And a finished book ready to ship. John

I thought I would document what a typical week is like for me with SecondMoonshot. I’ll start with Monday and close with Sunday. This will be a live blog post and will update as I progress through the week of May 16th to 22nd, 2022. Monday Monday through Thursday are mostly days filled with posting new listing from purchases acquired over the weekend. I start the week with creating new listings on my iPad. I normally will have all the items filtered in the great room downstairs an sort between garbage, donate/yard sale and resale by Monday morning. Garbage goes in garbage, donate/yard sale goes in attic waiting for the next neighborhood yard sale, and resale goes into the office for new listings. Zabrina hates when I have the piles in the living room for too long so have to have everything moved by Sunday night.  Purchases will have come from One Man’s Treasure Auctions primarily, consignments I picked up the prior week, with an occasional estate sale or thrift store thrown in. I usual

I bought several lots of vintage tools at auction…some good, some just some tools. But I wanted to clean off the rust before I listed some of them so after watching some YouTube videos and seeing what I had and needed, came up with this contraption. No DeWalt was injured in the process.  Iteration #1 Used a lot of zip ties and will improve down the road. I wanted to do a hanging implementation as sounds like it will agitate better. Pictures of the ultrasonic cleaner DIY (ok, agitator): The bucket is a safety in case something goes wrong and the container somehow comes off. It is held on with Velcro but wasn’t too confident so added some zip ties as well. I had an old plate for the sander and bolted that to the lid and put Velcro on it as well. For solution, went to Harbor Freight and got Evapo-Rust and we’ll see how that works, kinda pricey at $30 for a gallon (or less), so hopefully you get what you pay for. Also got some CLR to try for larger items as I can mix with water. Results: W

Had some time to kill today (not a good thing), so Zabrina found a couple wooden round cheese boxes and bought some hair pin legs on Amazon. Put a fresh bottom on the box for leg stability from some 1/4” plywood I had sitting around and put a light coat of spray on varnish to preserve. Was going to sand it down, but decided to keep the rough look. One will go in my office next to the couch and the other will go in Zabrina’s office where she works and does her daily journaling.  John