Rog Builds Cool Stuff
Hello everyone,
My name is Roger Anderson. This is my first year professional skiing. I grew up in the twin cities and skied for Armstrong High School. The past 4 years I skied for UNH and studied mechanical engineering.
As a professional athlete I spend many hours training but many more hours recovering from training. It is important when doing any sport to recover well so you are ready for the next workout and so you continue to improve instead of tire yourself out. Due to this there is a lot of down time.
During this down time I have started working on projects. First I spend a few days completely disassembling a chainsaw I had bought that was not running. Just to figure out all I needed to do was replace the dry rotted fuel line. I put it all back together and it ran like a charm. Below you can see all the pieces of the chainsaw before I reassembled.
Next I became obsessed with the idea of building my own jet boat. I had seen other people cut the engine out of jetskis and put them into row boats. I hopped on Facebook marketplace and got the cheapest jetski and rowboat I could find. The jetski needed quite a bit of work: it had been taken apart because it was leaking oil. I fixed the leaking oil and put the jetski back together. I took it out for a few test rides and after many setbacks like it filling up with water or over heating I finally figured out all the problems were caused by new parts I put in the engine so I replaced them all with the original old parts and it ran great. I ended up taking it for a 5 hour ride around the Apostle Islands on the great gitchi-gami for over 60 miles. Below you can see my route.
After this voyage I decided I had had my fun with the jetski and it was time to tear it apart and put it in a boat. I began by cutting up the fiberglass hull with a reciprocating tool and a grinder. I removed as much as I could and left all that was needed to hold the motor and jet pump. Then we cut a hole in the 11’ aluminum fishing boat just big enough for the pump to stick out. Then we layed down caulk and sandwiched it between the fiberglass of the jetski and aluminum of the boat, holding it together with rivets When the Caulk was set the next day I took it out for a rip but it began sinking quickly as I tried to get the motor started (always finicky getting it to start at first). Once it was started the boat was almost half full with water so I started gunning it and pulled the plug to drain the water. Quickly I realized I was going far too fast for what this 11’ row boat was made for; capacity plate says no over 10 horse motor and the jetski is over 70 horse. So let off the throttle, as I did this all the water sloshed to the front of the boat and I almost submarined as the boat halted to a stop and spun me over 180 degrees. I then barely limped the boat back to the landing as it was sinking faster and faster and the motor was puttering out. SAfe to say this project will need some more work. Below you can see a picture of me building, then the boat full of water from almost sinking it.
Finally my most recent project which I only finished a few days ago was sewing together my own custom carhartt style jacket. I had bought the fabric from a fabric store as they were going out of business and then used old sleeping bags from a thrift store for the insulation. I will definitely be wearing it on the podium. Below is Henry Snider wearing it.
If you know me, which now you do a little, you know I always have at least two projects in the cooker and probably ten more that I'm thinking about for the next project.
You can follow along with all of Roger’s projects by checking him out on instgram @rog_builds_cool_stuff
