I've had a little 12 ft (3.28m) aluminum boat with a 6 HP Johnson outboard for years. The motor is big enough to get from point A -> B but not big enough to push the boat up on plane if I'm the only one in it.

I try to put as much weight at the bow as I can but it's usually still not enough. Yesterday, I was going fishing for a bit and I thought, "I wonder what would happen if I put this cinder block up front?"

It worked great. I don't know why I didn't try it years ago.

Our house has a large double sided fireplace right in the middle of it. It has a vent above the doors on either side to circulate the hot air, which is not all that effective. I wondered if it would help to have air forced across the firebox and decided to try an experiment. I rigged up a window fan to blow air into the vent in one room.

It actually does help. It makes the living room, on the other side, nice and toasty.

If necessity is the mother of invention, laziness is the grandaddy.

I have almost a half acre which gets covered in oak leaves during the fall. I have to get them all to the burn pile on one end of the property which usually involves blowing them into separate piles and transporting each pile to the burn pile a bit at a time.

I figured there has to be an easier way to do this. I used a leaf blower/vac, a 4" flexible hose, and an insulation disposal bag that I had leftover from another project. It works pretty good. Actually better than the vacuum does with the shoulder bag probably because the airflow isn't as restricted.

What do you do when you have a pretty comfortable swivel chair but want to move it around like an office chair? You bulid a six wheel flatbed trailer for it.

The swivel chair is attached with zip ties so it could be removed any time without damage to the chair. Now the chair has two functions: swinging/ swivelling and moving around. The part underneath the chair can be used as additional storage space as it moves around with the whole contraption.

That was my first attempt at electrifying a gas mower. I used a 2 HP induction motor attached to a mount designed to be a drop in replacement for the engine. The first version used the frame from a Troy Bilt front wheel drive mower. This one only had a single speed transmission and couldn't handle the added weight from the motor. I think I used it for one season before replacing it with Version 2.

If you want to buy a new lawn mower, you can go down to your local big box retailer and find that most of the available options are probably battery electric mowers.

But, not that many years ago, electric mowers kinda sucked. The few choices you had were all corded but more importantly, they were cheaply built and lacked power. They also had none of the features of gas mowers, like being self propelled. After wearing out two of them within a couple years I thought, "This is cannot be that hard. I bet I can build a better electric mower."

A rotary lawn mower is pretty basic. Engine spins blade, blade cuts grass. That's pretty much it. If you wanted to "electrify" a gas mower, you would need a motor that could supply sufficient torque and keep the blade speed within the right range.

I picked up a 2 HP induction motor and mounted it on a frame which would basically serve as a drop-in replacement for the engine. I also built a switch which connected to the dead-man switch/engine brak

I just noticed this community in the "Trending" box on my home page. I love the premise, and am looking forward to seeing what people post. I'll try to remember to post as well, if I do any interesting DIY projects.

Keep your stick on the ice!