I had open heart surgery last December and I'm suppose to be exercising. Walking lasts until the feet give out so I pulled out this old rowing machine that Bill (of
Billlls Idle Mind
) gave me many years ago and started using that. Soon I discovered that I wished to track my progress and found many apps for my phone that will do that. So the problem is how to glom the phone onto the rowing machine in such a way that the phone can be taken off and put on with relative ease. Enter the packrat; in the vast reaches of my shop I have several types of these
cellphone holders and one of them kinda sorta works on my phone. {{Warning! Actually using something you kept because it was cool and you never know whether you might need it justifies the packrat urge to keep more stuff. Just so you know.}}
Anyway, there are four convenient mounting points on the back so all I have to do is come up with a bracket of some kind to put it on the "T" of the rowing machine. There are an amazing number of possibilities at this point, so some filtering is necessary. A) I'm not completely committed to this
exercise thing; so don't spend a lot of time on something I "might" use. B) If I do start using it regularly, I going to need to do some rebuild/upgrade work on some parts of it, creating an opportunity to revisit the mount based on experience. C) There is no "C", quick & dirty it is!
A further look through the shop finds a small pile of zip ties, and the light goes on!
Drill some holes in a piece of aluminum angle; the one on the far upper left is counter bored because one of the screws is too short.
A little bandsaw time...
...and some zip ties, and we're done.
The zip ties were too short, so I had to string them together.
There it is, ready for action. I've used it like this three times so far. The mount works fine and I'm sorting out how to use the software.
While I was at it, I made a hook for the bathroom door. This was a scrap piece, the end was already formed and drilled, I just sanded it smooth and bent the s**t out of it!
