Wednesday, October 31, 2007

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...




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.


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

Thursday, October 18, 2007

Tiny Car Mechanic

Sorry for not posting recently, we have many family members visiting all at once, many cute pics to post once they have departed.

Henry had a Hot Wheel car with a bent axle...so I fixed it. Don't do this if the Hot Wheel is rare or anything...you can even clean it up and paint it nice while it's apart, but we just wanted it rolling again.

It won't roll like that...

Clamped in the vise

Rivets drilled out

Body separated

Axles are held in tightly by the die cast chassis.

Filing, scraping and chiselling the minimum amount of metal to free the axles. Henry took this pic.

The axle removed...

The bent axle, soon straightened with pliers.

Squeezing the plastic wheel hub all 'round to tighten up the hole. This makes it less wobbly.

Drilling to tap #2-56 where the rivets used to be (the rivets are actually part of the body casting, thus drilling them makes them go away...)

Tapping...

Staking the axles back in place by smooshing the metal with a chisel.

Two small screws and it's back together.