When I was a kid my uncle taught me the basics of how to print posters and t-shirts with silk screens. He’s an artist and would use the technique in some of his work. I, of course, immediately tried to find a way to make money off the idea. (I sold printed t-shirts to kids in the neighborhood.)

The way I learned was very labor intensive - I cut paper stencils with an exact-o knife and taped them to the silk screen. These took a long time to cut and didn’t hold up well when printing. Usually I’d get 3 or 4 prints before the stencil started to come apart. I also didn’t have the benefits of computers and Photoshop for preparing my artwork.

Times have changed. It’s much easier now to prepare artwork and silkscreens for printing. I recently came across a few websites that give step-by-step instructions for printing t-shirts and posters with silk screens. It’s a great arts and crafts project. You can approach it as a low-cost hobby or ramp it up to a full-fledged business. These links will show you the way:

• www.NoMediaKings.org - Step-by-step instructions with lots of pictures

• www.StencilInternational.com - Step-by-step instructions with attitude

• www.StencilInternational.com - Guide to making a home made printing press

• www.SilkScreeningSupplies.com - More professional business approach, check out the free instructional videos on this site. The screen preparations are the same as the other sites, but they use presses designed for high volume commercial printing. There is plenty to learn here.

Screen printed t-shirts are great for fundraisers or to give out at family gatherings. I’m planning on creating a design for a theater group I work with to sell during their next fundraiser.

Happy printing,

The Go-To Guy

The challenge I’m working on today is to devise a way to stretch 10 black sound blankets (about 5 feet by 6 feet each) across a 26 foot expanse to create a false ceiling over the top of the theater playing space. This is for the theater project I’m working on (Angels Fall, by Lanford Wilson - Produced by the Theater Forum in New York.)

The show takes place in a small Pueblo-style Catholic mission church on a Navajo reservation. The production takes place in a high ceilinged gothic style church in Manhattan. The space is very echoey and has enormous vaulted ceilings. The director wants to neutralize the space as much as possible to make the stage feel more simple and intimate.

Creating a Church Inside a Theater Inside a Church!

Our plan is to create a false fabric ceiling which will cut down on the echoes and visually drop the ceiling and mask the more ornate ceiling above.

The area being used for the show as at the back of the sanctuary, where the building is a little more simple. On both sides of the area are 3 large arches resting on top of 3 twelve foot tall columns. The tops of the columns are squared off with a small ledge and the columns are 8 feet apart.

We will essentially be creating a clothes line out of metal cable and threading the corners of the blankets onto it. Since the space between the columns is wider than the blankets, we can’t attach the wire directly to the columns or it will tear the blankets when we tighten the wire, and the first arch actually rests on the outer wall, so there is no column to wrap a cable around. So, we’ll make a little modification.

The Cable Rigging Plan for the Theater Ceiling

By resting metal struts on the outsides of the columns, I can attach eye bolts to the struts and hook the cable onto them. As the cables draw tight, the struts will pull tight against the columns. This will allow the blankets to be centered between the columns.

To tension the wire, I will connect one end to a 8 inch long eye bolt and then use a wrench to tighten the nut that connects the eye bolt to the strut. Each turn of the bolt will bring the eye closer to the strut and tighten the wire.

Once everything is rigged up, I’ll use heavy duty zip-ties to connect the blankets to the wires.

One More Wire Rigging Job

I’ll also be rigging a curtain on a wire at the back of the space, but this will connect directly to the column, so I’ll be using an eye-to-eye turnbuckle to take up the tension on that wire, but the principle is the same.Not counting the sound blankets, curtain, or labor, the material costs for all this rigging will come to a little over $100. Tomorrow I’ll be out trying to get some, or all of the materials donated - just part of the process in non-profit theater!

Here is the final setup for the false ceiling!

The Go-To Guy!

I like writing for this website and began it with no profit motive. It was, and is, intended as a place to collect and share my knowledge, thoughts, and experiences until I decide what to do with them. It’s also a platform for promoting my work.

With that said, I clearly intend to try and make some income from this site! If the Google ads didn’t give that away, I’m telling you now.

How Do I Make Money?

I currently employ three methods to generate revenue:

• I sell Ad Space (Currently through the Google Adsense program)
• I recommend Goods and Services that pay referral fees
• I accept outright donations from people who value my work but don’t wish to visit advertisers or purchase recommended products and services

My Promise to Readers

The links I make will be for products and services I have used or trust. I will refer you to companies I trust. When recommending things I’ve only heard about, I’ll let you know.

If readers alert me to negative experiences with a product, service, or company, I will consider removing a link or adding a note to the article. Understandably, I have less control over the ads provided by Google.

My Dream

I would like to make enough money from the advertising on this site to work on it fulltime - but that is the dream and not the goal. Mostly I’d just like to offset the cost of hosting, etc. and maybe take my wife out to a show sometime.
I hope you will become a frequent visitor and find help, insight and entertainment from AndrewSeltz.com.

The Go-To Guy!

“Refuse to Choose!” Do you love so many things that you can’t choose? Would you on one thing if you only knew which one? Do you start a lot of projects but only finish a few? GET THIS BOOK!!! You might be what author Barbara Sher calls a ‘Scanner.’ My wife came across this book and bought it as a surprise for me. I recognized myself on every page (she even comments that Scanners are often referred to as “Go-To” people!) The book is filled with strategies to take advantage of the way a Scanner’s mind works to manage the never-ending curiosity that is the hallmark of Scanners.

“Mental Floss” This is my new favorite magazine. It’s tailor made for the Scanner personality. A little of this, a little of that, with just enough detail to satisfy my curiosity and amuse people at cocktail parties!

One of my current projects is as technical director and set designer for a production of “Angels Fall,” by Lanford Wilson. The show is being produced by the Theatre Forum at Church for All Nations, in New York City, and my wife Ellen is producing.

The Project: 6 Rustic Benches

My first construction project for this play is a set of 6 benches for the set. The director requested I make them first so the actors could get used to them during rehearsal. So, this past weekend, I sketched up my design and built 6 wooden benches.

The play takes place in a poor southwestern church. The director wanted something that looked like it was put together from leftover materials. I decided to use 2×10 floor joists as my primary material as scraps of these can be found on any timber frame construction site. The design consists of two 1.5″ uprights supporting a 4′ wide seat with triagular gussets at each joint for extra strength.

Overall, the design of the benches is very consistent with the type of benches that you might find in a location like the one described in the play. We bought four 12′ long 2″x10″ floor joists and had less than 11″ of scrap left when the benches were finished (Ellen helped me with the math on getting the most useable materials out of each board, as well as how to get each board cut down at the Home Depot so it would fit into our car.) We bought one box of screws and the last one I needed was also the last one in the box.

Finishing Work

All that remains for these benches is to sand down the rough spots and paint them. I’m going to use either a pickeling stain or milk paint to add a bit of color but let the grain show through and give them a weathered look. The stain and milk paint both have a flat finish with a chalky look that will make them look worn out and dull. After that I’ll rub them down strategically with a little dark paint to ‘dirty them up’ and let the director determine if they need any more ‘distressing.’

Counting the trip to Home Depot, I’ve got about 4 hours of work into this project and they turned out pretty nice! It will take another 3 hours to do the sanding and painting.

For more info on the play visit the Theater Forum webpage.

The Go-To Guy!

Over lunch today I stopped at the bookstore to check out some books in the Internet section. While looking over a book, a store employee brought a young woman to the section filled with website design books and said, “well, here it is!” (Okay, I’m paraphrasing but that’s about as much help as he offered her.) She stared at the dozens of books available, grabbed one that mentioned a design program she’d heard of before, and started thumbing through the book.

I felt bad for her. She’d been dumped in front of a whole lot of confusing information and didn’t know where to start - I’ve been there! Fortunately I had some helpful folks along the way who steered me toward the right topics to study. I decided to pay back the favor by helping someone else.

When I asked asked what she was trying to do, it turned out she wanted to make a fairly simple website, but just couldn’t remember all of the things they taught her back in the college class she once took. I’m glad she didn’t walk out with a book on Dreamweaver!!! I gave her some basic advice on where to start her learning process and made some website recommendations for research.

My General Advice

• Learn about Standards Based Design
• Learn About CSS (Cascading Style Sheets)
• Be wary of anyone who instructs you to use tables to layout your webpage - This is ‘old school’ and NOT recommended!
• Be wary of ‘old advice’ on the Internet - the practice of web design has changed a lot in the last few years and there are plenty of old sites laying around
• Start your research on the web unless you just learn better from a book
• You don’t need software any more complex than a text editor to create a website (an image editor is helpful, but you’d be amazed at how much can be done with just a style sheet!)

Website design can be a huge topic, but you don’t need to go crazy to put together something nice. Start with a small project and learn good standards based design skills. You’ll discover whatever else you need to learn about through the process.

Standards based design basically means seperating the content of your website (the HTML pages) from the layout and design (the Cascading Style Sheets.) There are many excellent reasons for doing this and the websites I recommend at the end of this article will point out most of them. One big one is, if you ever need to change the design of your site (and you absolutely will) you don’t need to change every single HTML page - only the Style Sheets.

Visit www.CSSZenGarden.com to see the power of this approach. You can select different designs from a list and the website look will change radically. But, the HTML of the page never changes. You really have to see it to get what I’m talking about.

There are a number of great web links listed on the Zen Garden site. They are all good. Here are some of my favorite resources on web design:

Recommended Web Design Sites

• www.W3Schools.com - Online tutorials and reference guides to just about everything you might want to do on the web!
• W3Schools Web Building Primer - This is THE PLACE TO START if you are new to web design
• www.CSSZenGarden.com - See the power of standards based design in action!
  
• www.AListApart.com - Great collection of CSS design articles
  
• www.WestCiv.com - Free Introductory information online and a comprehensive version for sale
• www.Glish.com - Sample Layouts that you can use for your website project

Recommended Web Design Books

• Head First HTML with CSS & XHTML -If you don’t know where to start, start here!
• Eric Meyer on CSS - the book that was recommended to me for learning about standards based design
• The Zen of CSS Design - you’ve seen the website, now read the book it inspired!

Good luck on your web design projects. Email if you have any questions.

The Go-To Guy
GoToGuy@AndrewSeltz.com

P.S. If you are looking for a web hosting company, I highly recommend www.1and1.com. They are the company that I use for this site and others I manage.

If you have a website, odds are you are always looking for new ways to bring in traffic and get relevant links to your site. Writing articles can give you the following benefits:

• 1000’s of potential promoters distributing your content
• Relevant links to your website
• Stature as an expert in your topic area
• Fast listings in major search engines

The Article Writing Process

The process is simple. Write a short article that is related to the content on your website. You can excerpt something you have already created for your site or generate something new (which you can then put on your website.)

Next, create a by-line for yourself that includes a link to your website. The by-line is your chance to advertise yourself and your website and make readers want to see what else you have to say on the subject.

Finally, register with websites such as eZineArticles.com and ArticleCity.com and start posting your content onto the sites. It usually takes no more than a day to get your article approved and listed on their article databases. Then, E-Zine and website producers from around the world will start finding your articles and including them in their work.

Each person who uses your material will include your by-line with a link to your website. As search engines re-index their sites, they will find your content and the links back to your site. These producers get relevant free content and you get free advertising.

The Results

It has been three days since I posted my most recent batch of articles to the article directory websites. Already, 3 of the top 10 links that come up when googling “Andrew Seltz” are to the articles I submitted to eZineArticles.com and ArticleCity.com. 10 article links show up in total.

Keep in mind, these same articles have been published on my websites for weeks. Those websites have all been submitted to the major search engines for indexing. Yet, not one listing that showed up is from one of my sites. It took less than 4 days for those articles to start popping up in Google - and each instance has a link back to one of my sites!

A recent check of my website stats shows that I’ve already received traffic to my sites from links in these articles. I expect that these websites will keep my articles in their systems for a while and that I will continue to generate traffic for months from people following the by-line links back to my sites.

What if I Can’t Write Articles?

First, don’t overthink the process. You aren’t creating a literary masterpiece, you are conveying helpful information. Find a topic in which you have helpful knowledge and experience, then follow this basic model:

• Tell them what you are about to tell them
• Tell them
• Summerize what you told them

Use bullet points to summarize information and headings to mark the different sections of the article. Write short focussed paragraphs and include examples from your experiences to illustrate what you ar talking about. When you’ve written a draft that you are happy with, let someone else read it and ask them to point out anything confusing or places where your writing sounds awkward.

I suggest you visit one or more of the article websites I’ve listed and read a few articles in your topic area. Get a sense of how others are writing and model your work on theirs. (Note, I didn’t say copy. Find you’re unique perspective on the subject and distinguish yourself from all of the other voices out there - plus, copying without permission is illegal.)

If the process of writing articles is a real struggle for you, you might want to consider something like the 30 Minute Article Writing System, by Melanie Mendelson. She swears she can teach anyone to write a quality article in 30 minutes using her system (I just googled her name and got back over 18,000 results - she’s prolific.) There are other methods out there for helping you through writers block, just remember not to overthink the process. Save your criticism for your second draft.

Build on Your Successes

Save everything you write. Over time you will find that you’ve created a valuable body of work. This collection of short and useful articles might be re-edited into a book or serve as the foundation of a course or seminar. You will be gathering together the building blocks for your future work and also finding an audience for it along the way.

Happy Article Writing,

The Go-To Guy

Did you learn something new or were you entertained while visiting AndrewSeltz.com? Then leave a tip to show your appreciation. The amount you tip is up to you.

Why Leave a Tip? The Go-To Guy has spent 37 years learning all of the things that inspire the articles on this site. He passes on his knowledge pretty freely - both on and off-line. Andrew also spends a lot of late hours getting those inspirations online for you to read (Mrs. Go-To Guy isn’t really crazy about that!) Plus, he’d really like to get one of those Plasma TVs!

To leave a tip via PayPal, MasterCard, or VISA, click the link below:

To send a donation via check, money order, or cash, please use the following mailing address:

Andrew Seltz
730 Fort Washington 4D
New York, NY 10040

Make checks payable to: Andrew Seltz

I received a call this week from my church’s office manager saying we needed to have some repairs made before a visit from the building inspectors next week. One of the repairs was a hole in the drywall where a door handle had punched through the wall. The doorstop had broken and next thing you know there’s a repair job for the Go-To Guy.

Knowing how to do a patch like this is handy even when you’re not repairing damage. The first time I did one was when I installed phone and cable television service into an older home that my parents had purchased. My brother and I cut holes at the top and bottom of the wall to fish through the new wire, and then I patched up the holes and repainted and you’d never know the wall had been repaired. The same goes for running a new electrical wire or anything else that requires getting inside the wall.

If you don’t already know, a typical wall is mostly air. It is either 2×4 wood studs or metal studs that are placed every 16 inches on-center (when building walls you measure from the center of each stud and not the edges.) The surface is covered with drywall (a gypsum board covered with a heavy layer of paper) which is screwed or nailed to the studs. It’s quick to build and looks great, but can be easily damaged - especially when the builder uses 1/4 inch thick drywall instead of 1/2 inch or 3/4 inch (these are the standard thicknesses.)

When you have a damaged wall you need to replace the broken area with new drywall and then patch the seams and paint.

The supplies you’ll need for this project are:

• Drywall Saw
• Utility Knife
• Drywall piece large enough to fill the hole
• 1×3 inch Lumber or pieces of Scrap Plywood for supports
• Drywall Screws
• Joint Compound
• Mesh Fiberglass Drywall Tape
• 6 inch or larger Spreader
• Fine Grit Sand Paper or Drywall Sanding Screen
• Drill with Drywall Bit

All of these supplies can be found at your local home center in the construction materials area near the drywall. If you have a small patch, they may give you a scrap of drywall so you won’t have to buy a full sheet. There are usually plenty of scraps laying around in various thicknesses.

Here’s the step-by-step process:

1. Cut a hole larger than the damaged area. Make the corners of the cut as square as possible to make it easier to cut the replacement patch. Use a drywall saw cut the hole
2. Cut several pieces of 1×3 inch wood or plywood scraps that are several inches taller than the hole. Place them in the wall near the edges of the hole and use drywall screws to secure the wood to the exisiting wall. (Tighten the screws until the heads are slightly below the surface but don’t completely tear through the paper. A drywall bit for your drill is designed to prevent overtightening. It’s not essetial, but recommended.) The point here is to create a good solid surface to attach the patch too. If you have a large opening you can put an additional support in the center.
3. Using a utility knife, cut a new patch piece that is slightly smaller than the hole. (To cut drywall, cut the paper on the finished side and then bend the board backward until the gypsum ’snaps.’ You’ll want to support the back along the cut so it breaks evenly. Once it has snapped, use the utility knife to cut the paper on the back.)
4. Insert the patch into the opening and securely attach it to the supports you installed using drywall screws. One screw at the top and bottom of each support should be sufficent. (Don’t put the screws too close to the edges or the gypsum will crumble.)
5. Now that the hole is filled you need to cover the seams. Apply fiberglass mesh tape over the seams. (The joint compound used to fill the seams is not strong and will crack if not reinforced.)
6. The last step is applying joint compound to the seams with a wide spreading knife Spread the joint compound over the screw holes and tape creating the smoothest surface you can. Don’t get too fussy at this stage. Just get it close. Let this dry overnight and then put on one more light coat. After this coat dries, smooth out any surface bumps with a light sanding.

Your wall is repaired, good as new. Put a coat of wall primer over the patch to seal the surface and then paint it to match the rest of the wall. It’s important to put on the primer, because raw drywall and joint compound, when painted, will dull the finish of the paint and give away your patch job.

Happy home repair,

The Go-To Guy

Mix big screen home theater dreams with a skimpy budget and you have the makings of a fantastic do-it-yourself project. Just think of how impressed all your friends will be watching blockbuster movies on a video projector you made with your own 2 hands.

It was just these motivations that landed me in front of my web browser digging for information for this project. There are a lot of cheesy websites that promise the moon and sell you a plastic magnifying lense and the instructions to stick a television into a box and put this lens on the front. You will get an image, but it will look like you made it yourself. - dark, and blurry.

Is there any way to make this work? The short answer is yes. A video projector is essentially a high resolution LCD video screen with a really bright light shining through it and a projector lense enlarging onto the screen. New portable models use very tiny, and expensive, LCDs along with sophisticated light sources and high quality lenses. If you are willing to end up with a projector that isn’t quite so tiny, you can scavenge the parts you need from an LCD computer monitor and add some electronic components and relatively inexpensive lenses. For $200-$500 you should be able to create a high resolution bright projector that will really impress your friends.

The parts you need are:

• High resolution LCD computer monitor
• Projector lens (and possibly 2 fresnel lenses depending on the plans you use)
• Cooling fan(s) - bright lights get hot when you shove them in a box
• Bright lightsource (one approach to the project is to use an old overhead projector)
• Electrical power supply

There are dozens of websites with step-by-step plans for free or for sale. Some sell parts that you’ll need. Two that I’ve found to be excellent are LumenLab and the DIY Projector Company. They both sell parts and parts kits. LumenLab sells a very nicely produced PDF instruction guide with detailed plans. DIY offers plans free, but expects that you’ll buy one of their kits to actually make the projector. They both use the LCD in a box with a lamp approach.

InventGeek has a great article explaining the whole process in depth including the theory behind projectors. I recommend you check it out. The DenGuru website shows another approach to the project. They use an old overhead projector for both the lightsource and lens. You strip the LCD panel out of its frame and lay it on the projector like a transparency. Ugly, but it works! Check out their tutorial.

Break out your toolkit and get busy - and let’s be safe out there people!