I got a bunch of stuff I've been saving.

I was looking through the project folder in my pictures file and realized I have a lot of stuff saved up for posting on my blog. 
I guess I'll go back to the wet grinder project.
The first problem was removing the old, rusted tight, hub.
  Getting it onto the mill was interesting, but now I can do something with it.                                                                    

 I start by making a series of cuts towards the center, increasing the depth until I hit air.

 After that I start working my way around the perimeter making plunge cuts.

Finally, it's free! Sort of.

In the next post I'll show you what happened.

No, really, I'm back this time!

OK, so it's been seven months since I last posted anything. I feel really bad about that. When I'm in the shop doing stuff, I keep forgetting to take pictures. That, and my motivation to do anything with my evenings besides facebook and solitaire is very low.
I have been doing stuff.

One of the mechanics across the alley brought over this SOG tomahawk to see if I could make a longer handle for it. I told him I could, but it would take some time to fit it in. The original handle is above the tomahawk in this picture.

 I messed around with some different ways to use this aluminum tube I had. I think I made the best choice. The tomahawk head and handle are untouched and could be reassembled quite easily.
The band below the screws was going to be heat shrunk into place, but I didn't count on how quickly aluminum conducts heat. The fallback was J-B Weld.

I tapped the hole in the end 5/8-16 in case he wanted to add weight/length/or use it as a stash.

I will try to be more diligent about my blogging.

Today's meanderings

I'm sitting in the office trying to sort out some paper work. A fly is buzzing me. What I want is this:

 

What I got is this:

My good friend, Justin, shared his success in using his air pistol as a salt shooter, so I figured, what the heck.

First I need some wads. Justin used paper towels, so I thought I'd get more efficient.

.
Fold it over, I get four at a time!

I believe that will work.

Push it down a little.

Add a little salt. Please note the custom fabricated salt scooper.

Ram down to the bottom of the barrel. I know, it's a breach loader. Trust me, it's way easier to load salt from the muzzle.

Take a shot! This is about quarter size at about twelve inches.

This was all good fun as I was stalking the fly who was no where to be found, now that I'm ready.
Left the gun close at hand in the office while I worked. I got up to go back into the shop. Two feet in, there's the fly, but the gun is in the office. I guess it wasn't the fly's time.

Chisel restoration

 So, as promised sometime in the distant past, here are the chisels I'm restoring.
They've been abused and misused and left to decay.

That's the fixture I made to hold them at the proper angle on the surface grinder.
It is not possible to put enough coolant onto the chisel to keep from burning the tip, so I've abandoned the idea of using the surface grinder.

Here is the wheel I have found. That is a 2" square tube in the middle to approximate the new hub that I need to make. I may do a post about removing the old hub later. Suffice to say that the wheel is sound, no cracks, and that I can build myself a nice slow, wet, wheel with which to do hollow grinds on my chisels and other things.

Happy New Year!

Life has been in a state of flux for some time now, but I believe I can start to settle in to the new normal. Most projects have been on hold due to excess obligation in the stuff I get paid for. I guess there are worse things.
I was browsing around and came across a thing about restoring old wood chisels. This is because I own a set of pretty good chisels that have been variously abused and then neglected. I started on the 1/2" chisel because it's a handy size and one of the most abused ones. "Abused", in this context, refers to a really bad attempt at sharpening. I'll add some pictures in later entries.
Anyway, the rust is not much of an issue when you have a sand blast cabinet so the two main things have been smoothing out the flat back, and recreating the hollow grind at the tip. I spent a bunch of time building a holder that would work on the surface grinder, but sadly, that spins so fast that it's not possible to put enough coolant on it to keep from burning the tip. So I'm stopped while I research solutions.
I decided that I wanted a big, slow wheel much like you'd find at the antique store. Trouble is they think these things are worth something and if you do find one, the odds are good that the stone is cracked. I did find one that I think I can make use of, so that's where that project is.

...and he's back! Sort of.

Long, long lapse in posts due to many mitigating circumstances.

This is the third computer since the last post.
I decided to save some money when WinXp went out of favor by converting the machine to Ubuntu Linux. I discovered that Linux is a tinkerers paradise. Sadly, it's not the kind of tinkering I'm best at. Eventually, I got it to a condition I could live with.

Earlier this summer, M'lady and I took a weekend holiday up in Glenwood Springs.
http://www.visitglenwood.com/

We had a fine time. I collected my first speeding ticket in the Miata, 83 in a 65. Met up with some friends and drank good whiskey and soaked in the pool. Came back through Aspen and over Independence Pass. Had a picnic. Life is good.

We get back and we have a mystery; there's debris from the tree all over the backyard. We begin imagining scenarios involving mating racoons when we find the burned end of the phone line that corresponds to where it was touching the tree. The box mounted to the side of the house is barely attached and looks like it exploded. Lightning has struck somewhere very close, but fortunately, not the house.

In the end the losses were two computers, one cable modem, one answering machine, the sprinkler control box, and our peace of mind.

The cable was back up in two days. The phones were out for a week and a half.

This happened on M'ladys birthday that ends with "0".
Not that we're superstitious or paranoid or anything.

A Time of Many Changes

The past two months have brought many changes to my life, the least of which is converting my old XP machine to Ubuntu, a user-friendly Linux. The important things like documents and photographs were easy. It took a couple of weeks to get the sound to work; I'm not happy with the fix, but I'm not going to knock success. The trackball is crippled, there are fixes out there but I'm tired of fighting computers and it works well enough. I got a refurbished machine for the shop running Win 8 that presents a completely different set of problems and frustration. Add to that a new version of QuickBooks and I feel like if I can remember my name, I'm doing well.

 Somewhere along the line I broke the tip off of one of the good kitchen knives.

It's good to know how to do stuff. I tried to take as little metal off as possible, so the drop to the point is a little steeper.
Working on knives gets me inspired to want to make a Fairbairn-Sykes style knife. http://www.fairbairnsykesfightingknives.com/
There are several examples of "field made" knives that I really can't resist trying one myself.

Expiriments

One of my pet peeves is the way chapstick is packaged. It is sold by weight, but the design is such that you can't get at the last bit of it. There is a small cup that is threaded so that it moves up and down when you twist the bottom. If the cup were turned open side down, all of the product would be accessible. For me, that little cup full is several weeks worth of lip balm. So I've been saving them in hopes of some inspiration in extraction. 

I own a heat lamp, so I figured that applying a little heat might do the trick. I can remove the little pink cup from "empty" tubes, so I position one on top of another tube and put it under the heat lamp. Then several people and many distractions arrive. Finally, an hour and a half later, this is what I find. The pink stuff at the top is what's left of the two pink cups, the lip balm was a puddle on the bench.
Note to self; set a timer next time.
Curiously enough, my smart phone has such a function, if only I would remember.
Second attempt of five minutes worked like a charm. I made a heat shield out of some gold mylar, but I don't think it mattered.

Worn out things

So I have this issue with things that wear out unevenly. Things that are otherwise in good shape but are rendered unusable because a crucial feature is worn. Take this snow shovel; light weight, sturdy, and the working edge gone.
Sort through the stock room and find some pieces of stainless steel. The new working edge is .060" and the back plate is .090.





You can see some of the old edge here. The cutouts were made on the bandsaw and are what's left of the original stiffening ribs.
It works pretty well but wants to bite deeper than it did. Gets under ice really well!

Next up was this ice scraper my son gave me. I like it because it will extend out so I can clean the truck windshield without over reaching. I've seen brass ice scrapers and had heard that they work well and won't scratch the glass, so...










Put an edge on it to come close to the original angle.  The plastic was thick enough that I didn't feel the need to have a back up plate.

It goes through ice on the windshield so easily that I almost feel guilty when I hear my neighbors scraping, and scraping. Almost.

The Worlds Most Expensive Shelves-assembly and finish!

So, the very first thing was to clean the years of
accumulated crud plus smoke residue off of the
shelves. They were REALLY dirty!

Then we set up the workmates, boxes of hardware, tools and uprights. I put the feet on the uprights as soon as the paint was dry. I had a square handy, but there was surprisingly little tendency to become a parallelogram. Eight screws, nuts, and lock washers on each shelf. I had flat washers, but there wasn't room to put them on.

The finished product! I have three 5 shelf units and one 2 shelf unit. Very sturdy!
Total cost; maybe $100 in materials and five years agonizing over the process.

Walking on the Moon!

I've been suffering with plantar fasciitis for a little over a year now and finally decided to see the doctor. I'd been avoiding this because I know that there is very little that can be done beyond what I am already doing, icing and stretching. No surprises from the doctor except the recommendation to try custom insoles. He gave me the name of the guy he went to, heck of a recommendation IMHO! Anyway, the end result is I can walk again without pain! A couple of weeks later I'm at the cardiologist for my one year surgical follow up; I'm fine, moo, and I'm telling the nurse about how much walking I've been doing. So she gives me a pedometer.  This is not a high end unit, but a cheap chinese piece they have been giving away as part of their 10,000 steps a day campaign. Cool. First day I notice that it keeps resetting to zero, not useful  for counting steps. Instructions say that it holds the data when it powers down after two minutes. WTF! Further testing reveals that I'm hitting the reset button inadvertently, probably when I sit. The reset button is very tall for the size of the unit, so I decided that some kind of guard might be the ticket. I started sketching up a full cover but decided that that was a bit over the top. Looking at the thing and visualizing what it was I was trying to accomplish I started looking for a washer of an appropriate size. After a little belt sanding and a drop of super glue, we have what I think will work. Testing is in progress. Results are favorable.

Although it worked for awhile, it would still reset at random. Then I broke the clip off and decided that I had devoted entirely too much energy to this.

One a side note; the reason it's been so long since the last post is that I've not been able to get this picture from my phone to here. It's my lie, and I'm sticking with it.  Solved the problem by plugging the phone into the computer.

Workmates

I'm very fond of the Workmate portable workbench, I own three of them. I was skeptical of them right up to the moment I put my hands on one and gave it a shake. I was an instant convert. My first one was bought new for full retail as an effort to buy something worthwhile with some birthday money.  The second one was free, found abandoned and given a new home.  The third one I bought at a garage sale and was a bit of a disappointment; it's about an inch taller than the other two. WTF Black & Decker?  It's a newer model but I never would have believed changing that basic dimension.
The bad news is that they have parts that wear out; the good news is that you can still buy replacement parts. 
So...in my infinite spare time I have finally gotten around to installing the replacement parts!

Over here we have the newer unit supporting the one
being worked on. Since the new one is a different height than the other two, it has been moved to the house to serve for home-based projects. One of the accessories I have made is a table top that can be clamped into the Workmate, it's surprisingly sturdy.

 This is the one I bought new for full retail many years ago.  It was stored next to the catbox for many years.  One of the reasons it has taken me so long to fixing it is me not wanting to deal with the damage I caused a good tool by my neglect.

A little elbow grease, a wire brush, and some paint!  Almost new!

New parts installed!  Self imposed guilt trip eliminated!  Pigs airborne!

So I got busy...

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!

It's been a busy month!

I had a Critter Crunch, the first and longest running robot fighting contest, to get ready for and run. Paying work started coming in at a pretty good clip. Every time I finish something it's " I should have taken pictures and posted this to my blog!". I've never been good at the documentation side of things; a fact that gives some people worry because most of the important stuff in my business exists only in my head.  The blog is supposed to be an exercise in documentation. I'm guessing that means more ofter than once a month.

World's most expensive shelves, Part 3

 The problem with projects is that they begat more projects. I'm looking at the angle iron uprights for the shelves, and I'm looking at the floor in the various proposed locations for the completed unit and decide that some feet are required.
I salvaged these plastic blocks when one of my neighbors moved, he built bird habitats.
A little measuring, a Bridgeport, and an 1/8 inch end mill and I have eight of these.  Cut between the lines and I have sixteen feet.