Breakfast, Dinner, etc.

I made pancakes this Sunday morning.

Apples fried in butter and glazed with brown sugar, the whole thing drizzled in maple syrup. 1/2 whole wheat, 1/2 white flour pancakes, recipe largely from the Joy of Cooking.

Max says "wipe my hands", overlooking the fact that he probably needs a shower as well. This is what happens when you don't supervise a dinner of rice noodles.

We couldn't decide which of the two pictures was cuter.

This webcast has a segment 2 minutes in on our html head earrings. Yay, we're on fake TV. Now I need to get back to work and make more as we're out of most of our geeky stuff right now.

This is why I love America.

Various Stages in Making a Girandoni Receiver


Ok, only one air rifle picture, this is the ugly green Crosman 400 I resealed this week. The stock is now stripped and stained a walnut brown, and I reblued the metal parts, and painted areas where the original paint rubbed off. I'll post a picture of the completed project later...

Happy New Year!

Drilling Paper

Someone asked on the Etsy forums about drilling paper. I figured that it would be a good learning experience to try drilling paper with some pretty low tech methods.

A 3/8" diameter thin wall piece of tubing from the hobby store. I countersunk the end with a 82-1/2 degree countersink.

The "zero-flute" or "weldon" style countersink, but any countersink would do.

Set up in the drill press, rotating around 1200 rpm, I brought it down into a stack of paper.

Drilled 1/2" deep, a little ragged, but overall a very quick way to put holes in a bunch of paper at once.

The tube is jammed up with paper discs, it would be best to add a slot/hole in the side to allow the discs to eject. I then tried this using a hand drill and it worked fine as well. While not as good as a professional paper drill, clearly this method works well enough for short runs.

Yet another topic to address in my massively outlined, completely unwritten, guide to drilling for craftspeople.

You'll Put Your Eye Out!

Just a few staged pictures for your Christmas.

My Little Sharpshooter

Is this how it works?

Deadeye Max.

Having brought Christmas Cheer to my Redneck friends, let me reassure those of you who may be ready to scream at me about gun safety that:
1) I know the internal workings of the Daisy BB gun, and removed the shot tube, determined that there were no BBs in the rifle (or anywhere that the children could lay hands on them), plugged the shot tube (barrel) so that nothing could escape the gun were it to be fired, and finally that Max is incapable at this point in his development of physically cocking the rifle in order to make it shoot.
2) Max was under my watchful eye at every instant of this photoshoot, and I do not let him wander around with a BB gun normally. This rifle is always locked up in a cabinet. He was reminded constantly not to aim the rifle at any persons or animals, the last picture was taken by holding the camera away from my body, so at no time was the rifle being aimed at my person.
3) This is a part of our embracing Korean culture, as Korea has a great tradition of using air powered weapons for hunting and shooting.
4) Were I to let Max fire a BB gun, he and I would be outside, with a suitable backstop, and both wearing safety glasses.
5) This is part of my clever plan to get one or both children into the 2016 Olympics.

Have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

The New Taig Carriage

A small Christmas present, the new carriage:

It's a hard anodized aluminum extrusion.

Note the t-slot on the back of the carriage, and the dovetail on the front.

They will, at some point, be used for mounting a stepper motor...

The small setscrew locks the gib adjustment screw. The ding on the t-slot was not part of the production design...

Anyway, not a bad redesign?

Recovering...

Apologies for not posting lately, we were all stricken with severe colds, as well our businesses are harsh masters at Christmastime. We hope to be less busy in a few days...but here are some pics.

Max started using the computer. I wish he could do my book keeping.

Well, it's a start.

"Noodle Sandwich!"

Mmmmm. Henry invented this treat.


I was recently reminded of one of my favorite children's books:
100 Pounds of Popcorn
Which is a great primer on sales and capitalism, even for adults!

Did I ever mention that you can still buy Hardtack?

Not PC, "Shooting: For Boys" It has a great chapter on convincing your parents to buy you a rifle.

I just bought this fly by night branded LCD TV at K-Mart. I feel better about shopping at K-Mart if I remember it's really S.S. Kresges

Tuff Shed, Wimpy Truck

We need storage space. We should probably just throw out a bunch of the stuff we have but instead decided to buy a "Tuff Shed" as extra storage space. I could have built a shed for much less money, however I'm not much of a carpenter and it would have taken me weeks if not months to get one made. We tried to order one through the local Home Depot and failed as they couldn't process an order after a half an hour of trying. So I called "Tuff Shed" directly and ordered a 10' x 12' shed.

The two guys they sent out worked hard and paid attention to detail.

Max was inspired to a work as well.

The "finished" shed. The window is missing because I wanted to put in an insulated one. I'll be insulating the inside for condensation free storage (in theory).

It rained hard for about a half an hour, causing their truck to sink 8" into the ground. We spent a while (I helped them out) trying to jack it up onto traction increasing materials to no avail. The big problem was that their tires were almost completely bald.

So they called a tow truck - goodbye profit! Then again they probably make a chunk of money on the sheds.

It took almost an hour to drag the truck around to the road. As I said nice guys and they handled it well. One had moved down to Eugene from Alaska for the exciting life in a big city.

Now I have to finish the shed, it will probably be done by 2008.

I decided I've been too airgun obsessed here, so I put my latest up on my site instead:
Making a Replacement Breech Bolt Screw for a Crosman 150 CO2 Pistol

Some links:
My Aunt Joan's webpage

Stock Stippling

Don't Shoot Your Eye Out

O-ring design data

Static Gland design

South Bend Lathe Videos

Taig Lathe with Servo Drives video

Miro open source video player

Have a Happy Thanksgiving!

A Custom Ring

I finally finished what I hope will be the last custom job of the year, as things generally get too busy to take on extra work during the holidays.

6.022 x 10^23=

=Avogadro?

number?

=1 mol?

Yes, it's a size 11, 316 stainless steel ring engraved with Avogadro's number

I could have used one in chemistry class.

A Muzzle Brake for My Slavia 631

I told you I was getting a bit airgun crazy again, didn't I?

Five or six years ago I bought a Slavia 631 spring piston air rifle at the Rickreal flea market. I only gave $40 for it, as I am a shrewd negotiator. It came with a Simmons scope but no iron sights.

The rifle looks too short because a couple of inches of barrel is missing. The previous owner must have had a problem removing the front sight., or dented it, or something. So he removed an inch or two...

Really, it's just too short.

I turned some random aluminum alloy down at the end on the South Bend and drilled it to fit the barrel. I was going to bore it exactly to size, but the drill I used cut just right at the diameter I was aiming for (which is technically a mistake, but it actually didn't matter).

Turning the OD (it's scrap so it was dinged and had spots of oxidation), grasped by the short section I turned previously and supported by the live center so as not to stress the thin tube section it's chucked by.

I moved the work over to the Jet 920, which has a DRO for cutting the grooves.

Groovy.

I drilled and tapped for some #10-32 set screws on the underside, but I should have used something like a 4-48, as I only got about two threads engagement, and the setscrews had to be ground down to about 1/8" of length. Poor planning just like the drilling, but it was a "for fun" project so I just winged it and it holds fine.

Now the rifle looks pretty, which was the whole point. I took it out and shot it a bit and the muzzle brake makes it easier to use, the longer barrel giving more leverage when cocking.

Here's the .pdf of the Slavia 631 manual
A Czech airgun forum
A Slavia 631 Tuneup

Lamest Candy Ever!

Looking over Henry's candy from Halloween, I discovered the lamest candy ever.

Candy Sticks? You mean poorly extruded cylinders of pure sugar? What connection do they have with Spiderman? Couldn't they have at least made an effort? At first I thought they were relabeled candy cigarettes, but they're even lamer than that. Did Stan Lee sign off on this?

They have a larger size (yes, I Googled it) that comes with a temporary tattoo, which is probably the reason anyone ever buys them, but this 2 pack doesn't even come with that.

I just hope they're contaminated with radioactive spider juice or something.

Massive Pictures and Links Festival.

Sorry I've been so busy! Here are some pictures.

Henry paints the red dog red.

Max paints water. He always thinks outside the box.

Henry the farmer.

Picking sunflower seeds.

Felice and Max on the Moo Train at the Muddy Creek Maze. We went with Amy and Aidan and Lauren.

Henry on the Moo Train.

Off they go! Max, Felice, Henry and Aidan

I take the path less travelled. Felice and Amy gave up after we went in circles for half an hour and left through an emergency exit, I then took only right hand turns and was out properly 15 minutes later.

Max picked up some corn for good luck.

Max ponders the culvert.

Max plays in a "corn box".

Lots of Links:

Shopwork Teaching Tricks was a neat find at the local used book store, here's the author's "In Memoriam" bio. You don't find many books on the subject of teaching shop classes, especially one that recommends using dynamite to salvage lumber from an old building.

Here's a great thread on making a stepper motor damper. This is a commercial one.

All about Fly Presses

You Tube gear machining video.

The Engraving Forum

Interactive Logo programming language online

All about the Mikado engine in Avery Park

Mechanical aptitude test (long)

Unending vocab test that gives free rice to the hungry. It's addictive, but goes on forever...

Korean War Children's Memorial

How to be kind to your collets

The Rum Rebellion

So I recently got re-addicted to airguns. This is partly the fault of a customer who wrote the book "175 Years of US Pneumatic Airgun Patents" (scroll down to the book section)

He alerted me to DT Fletcher who sells Crosman related books in his Ebay shop. Fletcher's web page is awesome. I bought his book on the 160, and while spiral bound (arghh...) I've read it twice, fascinating stuff.

As I have Crosman 167, 150, 187, 130 and a few other newer ones, all of which need some work, I was delighted to find all that information.

Now of course I've decided to pry open my wallet and buy a chronograph. You really can't tell if you are successful in tuning/repairing a gun without one. (build one yourself!)

Then I was led to various fora (forums?) such as those on Network54 Like I need to read more forums!

Crosman has Crosman U, where you can download owners manuals for all the old guns, and vintage targets, etc.

Here's a big bore airgun blog...

Oh and airgun classifieds, as Ebay doesn't allow you to sell airguns.