Bill Hillgartner's TOUK GIKS:
(Project Sketches)
  Two months ago I had some free time on my hands and decided  to make some simple sketches of the projects I have been puttering around with since retirement. 
  Why the simple sketches?  Every once in a while I take a look at my ideas and try to convince myself that maybe one of them might be patentable.  But after prudent cogitation, I decide to spend my money now rather than wait for royalties to come in some 10-20 years hence!  I do run some of my ideas past patent facilitators and novelty manufacturers, and they request I not publish exact details in case they decide one of my gadgets might be marketable, therefore the very crude & not-to-scale sketches.

Sketch #1.  "The Hillgartner Baby B(u)oy".  Have you ever tried to hitch your boat to a bobbing buoy in a heavy sea?  The thing will not only bang you in the head, but punch holes in the sides of your boat.  There are commercial versions of this slimmer buoy on the market, but I couldn't find one in Thailand so I made my own.
   This slim version is a little harder to find at dusk, so I attached a flag during the week we spent at the beach each month.  The length of the anchor rope (a stainless steel cable) was taken up til the painted markers were just above water at high tide.  There was a 13-foot difference between high and low tide where I moored my boat.

Sketch #2. "Anchor Rope Snubber".  There is nothing wrong with a good heavy duty nylon rope, but if left out in the sun those UV rays do get to it.  The sun is directly overhead two times each year at this latitude and it is intense.  Yes I know all about polypropylene rope but my pension check has to cover my daily "medicinal" shot of Thai whiskey too.  You have to use a snubber when the anchor rope is all metallic otherwise the first high wave that came along would strip the keel from the hull (Note: I was using an anchor that didn't drag.)  I intentionally rode out a big squall one afternoon to test my design.  It held up fine but I sure took a beating.  FYI, if you get caught in a squall in open water, just forget which direction you were going and go with the wind and waves.  Big waves will lift the prop out of the water, but you make up for the wheel spinning by surfing a bit.
  The original tie point for the anchor rope was fairly high up on the bow which put the boat at a disadvantage when hit by a wave at an oblique angle.  I relocated the hitch point to the the front of the keel.  The ideal tie point would be approximately 1/3 the length of the boat keel from the bow end, but it would have to be recessed or you would be grounded when beaching the boat to take on passengers.  This is the kind of gadget you come up with when what you need isn't available in the marine supply stores.
  You can buy many different types of anchors that will keep your boat from drifting ashore during stormy weather.  But it will take two men and a winch to get it aboard when you want to pull up anchor.  The permanent one I show here is my own design.  I was glancing through the tide book when I noticed a very low tide coming up in a week.  As soon as we got to the cottage I dug the form in the sand (bottom sides up) and started pouring.  Why the three sections?  Since this was a do-it-alone job I had to keep the weight per section down so that I could ferry each section out in the dinghy and off-load it myself.  The orbital configuration of the planets producing a very low tide doesn't happen often so it was a do-it-now-or-never situation.  The concrete had only five days to cure but it held together and I'm certain that it is still there.  If you have ever tried to pull a gumboot out of a gumbo loblolly you can get some idea of how much tugging it would take to move my anchor.

Sketch #3.  "Swimming pool/spa vacuum attachment".  I consider myself an experienced layman expert on pool maintenance.  My best advice is:  Whatever you do don't place the puddle in a yard full of trees!  After three years of messing around with vacuuming and filtering I wised up and fabricated a plastic sheet cover that could be rolled up before I cannonballed in.  (There is no way I can ease myself into the water if the temperature is below 90F).  There are all kinds of pool vacuum gadgets but they are expensive.  This simple design does the job and it's fun to watch the crud being sucked up. My working model is made of aquarium plastic. 
  Not shown is my pool light.  The cost of the cheapest commercially available hermetically sealed light fixture I could find was over 500 bucks, and you have to incorporate it in an elaborate access pit.  I connected a couple of wires to a waterproof (not leakproof under pressure) light socket, stuck it in a piece of PVC pipe, screwed in a conventional 100W lightbulb, enclosed in a plastic mechanic's light and placed in the water. It works better than Aladdin's lamp.  There is a trick to it but you will have to come visit for an explanation. 
  Also fabricated a cute water fountain.  Used an ordinary sump pump (make sure it is an all plastic job because those pool chemicals are a bit corrosive), added a piece of PVC pipe and fitted it with a spray head of my own design to create my own little Niagara Falls in my front yard. 
 
Sketch #4.  "The Eureka Cue Stick".  This gadget won't make a professional out of an old duffer potter but it sure does make you look better.  Since the action may not be self-evident at a glance, here in brief is how it works.  When the cue stick is stroked and strikes the cue ball, the developed kinetic energy of the free-floating auxiliary driver is sequentially transferred to the neoprene ball as a result of compression, and forward motion is further enhanced by depression of the neoprene ball which provides sustained duration of contact between the cue tip and cue ball.  This sticky contact provides better ball control when added English (spin in snooker lingo) is applied to the cue ball to make very difficult shots when snookered.
Critical parameters were the size and compound of the neoprene ball and weight of the driver.  I used to enjoy demonstrating my cueing abilities to visitors and guests, but two years ago I attempted to make some improvements using a hand drill as a lathe and literally scrambled my pet gadget.  I will eventually fabricate another demonstration model but in the meantime drop by for a few games anyway.

Sketch #5.  "The Hydrokinetic Dibble".  Nothing patentable here, just a very practical garden gadget.  The prototype (& working version) consists of an ordinary garden hose nozzle with a pistol type handle,  with a section of pipe glued to the nozzle and fitted with a specially "engineered" tip to ameliorate splatter when you start drilling.  Just remember to squeeze the trigger if you don't want mud in your face!
  It comes in handy if you are in a hurry and want to plant a weed or bush in hard-packed soil.   As a matter of interest, although we are only one meter above sea level with water all around, there is no rain from October to May of the next year.

Sketch #6.  "A Steady-Flow Paint Applicator/Brush".  I must say I was a bit nonplussed to find an almost exact commercial "copy" of this idea just recently in a house & garden store.  Be that as it way, it is a very efficacious gadget and actually makes painting with water-based paints fun.  Feel free to copy this idea because the commercial one will cost you a pension check.
Sketch #7.  "Hatch Door/Tonneau Lid & Pneumatic Lifter".  It took me one month of seven-day weeks to fabricate this hatch door/tonneau lid.  I elected to buy a racy half-size camper cover and add the hatch window/tonneau lid so that I would have something different.  There isn't another one like it in this village of 12,000,000 people.  Adding the pneumatic lifter was what I call gilding the lily.
  I built the window & deck combination to take rough handling and it ended up weighing 65 lbs., which is a mite too much to lift at my age!  While contemplating what type of lifter I wanted, I conjured up a host of versions using hydraulics, electric motor driven gear boxes and cams, etc.  One day I stumbled upon a rack of bicycle pumps at a shopping mall and voila.  My cap lit up like a cartoon light bulb.  These pumps were big deluxe jobs imported  from China.  I surreptitiously dismantled one and was quite surprised to find a neoprene ring being used rather than the ubiquitous leather washer.  A bit of serendipity here.  I paid all of $12 for two pumps that probably retail for $60-80 each in up-market bicycle shops back in the U.S.
  I couldn't wait to get home and hook one up to a battery operated EMG tire pump.  Hastily put together a jury-rigged adapter so that I could supply air in the reverse mode.  Clip lead connected the EMG tire pump to an old but fully charged car battery, and that pump handle came up under my chin quicker than a Thai kick boxer's foot.  I disconnected the pump and bled off the air, sat on the handle, connected it up again and was promptly lifted off the ground.  Boy, I knew I was onto something that would do the job.  But than I took a wrong turn.  Decided to use a reserve tank (a junkyard LPG bottle) and raise the pressure to a nominal 50 lbs. to provide instant lift.  It worked fine but I was using Toyota fast idle air solenoids, and since they were designed to handle a nominal 20 lbs. they would leak a bit when jostled around under rough driving conditions.
  I reluctantly abandoned the dramatic quick lift provided by the reserve tank to keep the project affordable.  One commercial air solenoid like those used with load-leveler shocks costs more than I spent on the entire project.  Although one EMG tire pump will do the job, two worked better and four got me back to where I was with the reserve tank.  They are noisy little gadgets though.  So I removed them from the fanciful cases and installed them in a soundproofed box.  There is a healthy rumble when you hit the raise button and the action is quite lifting.
  Now back to those "state of the art" neoprene cylinder rings.  The darn things would take a set when left in the rest position for a couple of days, just enough to cause a little bypass and a slight delay in lift about 50% of the time.   So I replaced them with an "improved" version of those ubiquitous leather washers!  Adding expansion springs inside the washers did the trick.  As you have probably gathered by now, this is the kind of diy project that I like best.

Sketch #8.  "The Solar Panel".  The original use was to heat the pool to a healthy temp (90F) for my daily aerobic exercises, but it was useless on cloudy days.  So I repiped it to the house hot water line.  Not very practical here either since heating gas is highly subsidized in Thailand.  A simple PVC pipe solar panel will provide 140F water but the sun has to shine!  So I moved on to other more practical projects.  How do you like that state-of-the-art timer?  I have several 555 chips and all kinds of pratical timer circuits in my project files but it only took me one evening to put this Rube Goldberg job together and it has been in service every day for the past six years.
  This is a highlighted list of some of the diy projects I had fun doing the past nine years.  I find retirement about all it could be.  I won't mention all the mods (improvements?) made on our fleet of vehicles.  I still mess around with savonious rotors and equatorial sundials, but can't use either at my present QTH because of all the deciduous trees.

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