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Trim-A-Slab was invented and field tested in League City, Texas, and is a product of the R&D Workshop.

 Trim-A-Slab is currently available for direct sales at the league city location by appointment only. Please contact us by email, text, or call us to schedule a pick up. Please see our purchase page for a listing of hardware stores which carry Trim-A-Slab in 50 foot rolls. For mail order sales, please email, text or call us. Trim-A-Slab can ship for about $12-$16 per roll, depending on distance from League City, TX.

 

About The Owner

Bob Wilkes,. Chief Engineer, Mechanical Systems

Bob is an expert in mechanisms, fluidic and electromechanical systems for both the space environment and on the ground, and has focused his entire career developing new products. He is currently Chief Engineer of Mechanical Systems in the Design and Analysis Group at Jacobs Technology and Tech Fellow of Product Development at Jacobs. Previously he was an Integrated Product Team lead and Project Manager during the design and development of EVA equipment for the assembly and maintenance of the International Space Station, and for EVA tile repair methods developed for the Space Shuttle. Prior to manned spaceflight work, Bob was an instrument design lead at the University of California Berkeley Space Science Laboratory for the WIND and FAST spacecraft, and chief engineer at Petrolphysics, Inc., performing design and development and field implementation of enhanced oil recovery systems based on water jet drilling. Additionally, Bob is a licensed professional engineer in the state of California, and a registered patent agent with the USPTO. He has received numerous awards for his technical work and is a named inventor on 10 US patents. He is a member of several professional organizations including ASME and AIAA.

Other product development efforts include:

- Design and manufacture of a machine to make candles for a family-run candle business

- Design and manufacture of a vacuum casting system to allow more precise and intricate work to be done by a custom jewelry maker in San Francisco

- Design and development of a brake for in-line skates

- Design and manufacture of a soda bottle launching system for neighborhood kids, powered by water and compressed air

- Design and manufacture of a pinewood derby track for neighborhood kids incorporating a jump through a wall of fire

- Design and manufacture of sets of teeth (shark, vampire, smile…) for car grilles, primarily bought by Miata owners

Some home repair / remodeling tips

Garden sprayer to the rescue

You probably have a garden sprayer.  One of those plastic tanks that you pump up with a 'magic wand' for dispensing all manner of chemical agents in the yard.  You are even more likely to have a toilet.  And some day, you are going to have a 'sanitary malfunction'.

No worries.  Your gardening supplies can avoid a call to the plumber.

I keep one of these sprayers around the house that I never put chemicals in because it is just such a convenient source of compressed air.  I bet the super soaker guy got his idea from one of these.  For a clogged toilet situation, a new sprayer is not mandatory, an empty sprayer will do just fine.

Here's the technique.  Get some long rubber gloves (avoid the dish-washing gloves to spare yourself a night on the sofa), or you can do it the manly way and just wash your hands afterward.  On the sprayer wand, remove any detachable tip that produces a spray pattern so that the air exiting the nozzle is as wide open as it can be.  Wrap a rag or old sock around the wand, a few inches away from the tip.  With the sprayer pumped up as high as she'll go, stick the wand into the toilet right down to the bottom, and into the place where everything is supposed to go when things are working right.  Hold this tightly in place with one hand.  The idea here is to use the rag as a seal between the wand and the toilet, so all the air goes down the drain in one big blast.

Now, hit the trigger, and if the seal is right, you won't see any air coming back around the rag.  Once this burst of air pushes the clog out and away, be sure to get your rag out of there, and the bowl will evacuate.  You'll be experiencing the satisfaction of accomplishing a 'dirty job', and while you won't get your own show, you will be the family hero.

Deck cover provides shade in summer, sun in winter

If you’re planning on building a trellis or similar cover for your patio, consider this possibility: Wouldn’t you like to have shade in summer, but let in sun in the winter months?

Most trellis’ are made with rectangular lumber, attached at regular intervals to a frame. This is actually backwards, if you think about it, because in the summer the sun is pretty much straight up, and it will shine through the top cover providing the minimum shade for your deck. In winter the sun is low in the horizon, and the top cover actually produces more shadow to the space below it.

You can have your sun and shade too if you build your deck cover to take advantage of the position of the sun in the sky in winter vs. summer, rather than it take advantage of you. To do this, you will need 1 x 6 cedar planks for the top cover. These need to run east-west, and to get the effect you want, they will have to be mounted at 45 degrees, south edge up, north edge down, with a 4 inch spacing . Houston just happens to be at the latitude that allows 45 degrees to work, which will make the carpentry a little easier.

To provide a surface for the mounting of the cedar, cut a 4 inch saw tooth pattern in the top of the support beams that run north-south. Lay the cedar boards on the north-facing sides of the saw cuts, and anchor with deck screws. I recommend putting a ¼” galvanized washer under every deck screw and use two at every location as the cedar is relatively soft. This will give a very airy appearance, and if you wish to mount a fan, it can be right up against the top cover, as air flows right through it.