Day 2 of 9. AM report.

Checking in on the second day of nine in a row with the fambly.

This morning, when I hauled my butt out of bed around 8am (it was my turn to sleep in - we take turns again, and this is what got me unbanned from blogging), The Mrs. announced that she and HannieC were going Christmas shopping. That leaves MaxieC home with me. I can't figure out what to do with ourselves. All MaxieC wants to do is watch Pixar moovies. He's sitting there in his jammies (won't put on his clothes) watching the tail end of Toy Story 2 and eating candy corn right now. [Oop - just ended. Now he's watching Finding Nemo.]

What a life.

Today I am planning to build HannieC a pellet backstop commensurate with her shooting skills. Mean, really really big. I bought some material last weekend for it - an 4x8 sheet of 1/2" OSB and 2 2x8 sheets of 2" rigid foam insulation. My plan is to cut the OSB roughly in half to end up with 2 4x4 sheets, cover these sheets on one side with the rigid foam, and then set one on the floor and lean the other at ~45 degrees above it to form the backstop. The idea being that anything that hits the backstop and doesn't stop in the foam will ricochet down to the piece on the floor, where it has another 2" of foam. Nothing will get past that. Lead pellets really lose their energy pretty fast on impact, but HannieC managed to ricochet a bunch back all the way to the shooting station at the old house.

There, I was using a 45 degree canted piece of OSB as a backstop, no foam, and just the concrete floor of the garage. I would lean the backstop against the bench on which I set the pellet target/ trap.

Now, as I get closer to the construction of this one, I start to fret the details. For instance, I'm not sure I want to just lean the backstop up against the bench. I'm thinking I actually want to put some hinges or something back there to attach it to the floor piece and keep its foot from sliding out. I am also thinking I should put some 2x4 legs up front to hold it up rather than leaning it against the bench.

Then, if I put legs up there, I'm going to need to cover those with some foam or something. Maybe a piece of surplus carpet. And I'll need the router to cut angled notches into the 2x4's so that they mate properly with the backstop. So I'll need a trip to Lowe's for hinges and 2x4's (since they wouldn't move any of my lumber, I have to buy new lumber for every project now). This will end up being a big, day-long build by the time I'm done over-designing it. The Mrs. will probably holler. But I'll let HannieC help, and that'll make it easier on everyone but me.

And it'll give me an excuse to finish up that 3.2 Heineken that's in the fridge. Nothing goes better with power tools than 3.2 beer.

I'm also thinking of upgrading my Christmas tree lights to LED this year. Average LED life is 20,000 hours. That's pretty darned good. Problem is, they cost like 5x what normal lights cost. Most of our light strings have gone bad lately, so I need to buy new anyways. I'll have to see if I can find them on sale somewhere.

I'll check in again later.