Neat as a Pin

I think I did about 20 projects without cleaning the shop up...

The bench was piled high with stuff...

Now there's space to work.

The lathe had piles of chips and tools everywhere.

Ready for a new mess...

Pieces of stock, chips and tools all over.

Nice and neat.

I can't do anything here.

But now I need to get to work...

I should have just left it messy. I filled a garbage can with chips and other trash.

Cleaning the Old Magneto Housing

Chris, our neighbor, brought over a magneto housing for me to clean up on the lathe.

The old, ugly housing.

Taking off about .005"

Nice and shiny.

Ha, I snuck in a picture of Chris.

The company I did all the 3D modelling work for has finally put up a page of Keith's and my work on a tactile braille display. I'm especially proud of my "penmech" animation.

I think the future of tactile display is something more like this though.

Kiko's Mom told me about these excellent science toy pages. Lots of ways to edu-tain your kids.

Day of the Triffids

Well another week has gone by...

Henry and Max playing in the dining room.

The daisies have taken over.

Poking up all over.

Like in the "Day of the Triffids" they may be plotting something more sinister.

I mentioned our friend Nome two posts ago, I forgot to mention her fascinating father.

I'm reading Isaac Newton: The Last Sorcerer and mentioned in the book is the 4 volume set of "The Mysteries of Nature and Art" as inspiring the young Issac Newton. It seemed interesting enough that I looked around to see if I could buy a reprint. Sad to say, only the original is available... $19320.18
Anyway, the biography is well worth reading, if a tad repetitious.

I joined the Project Dalek Forums to gain access to their .pdf Dalek plans, should I ever have a few hours to waste on 3D modelling. Which I likely won't. But I'd like to make a Rhino model of a Dalek.

Here's a good guide to machining polyurethane.

This is a great way to fixture ring waxes for CNC milling.

Pizza est omnis divisa in partes tres.

Saturday is frozen pizza night.

The pizza is shattered.

A clean break.

Damage to the box.

I ate it anyway.

Darryl's Fork Problem...

Nome's husband Darryl called up last Sunday night. This was, in and of itself, unprecedented so I knew he needed some help. Turns out he had managed to break an "easy-out" off in a stud he was trying to remove from his Ducati fork. So he came over on Monday and I ground the "easy-out", out. Then we removed the rest of the studs and replaced them with threaded inserts I whipped up on the lathe.

One of two finished forks.

The threaded inserts.

Besides that, not much has been going on. I am about to watch the last disc of the first season of "Intelligence", a CBC drama by the creator of "Da Vinci's Inquest". The series is addictive. Unfortunately the series was only made for two seasons. While I was trying to winkle out information about the show, I found a wonderful Canadian TV Blog, "TV eh?". Anyway, "Intelligence" is a cross between "The Wire", "The Sopranos", "Da Vinci's Inquest", with a dash of spy intrigue.

Open Shop Night Fun

Most Thursdays I hang out at Kent's open shop night. Some weeks we just sit around BS-ing, but this time Bill had a project.

Heating up some rototiller tines.

Hammering them flat

And checking for truth.

Tempering in oil. Kent opened a virgin can of quenching oil.

This is Kent's welding/blacksmithing shop, or a corner at least.

Greg and Kent discuss.

Greg tells Carey how to straighten out a clamp for his motorcycle.

What is it?

One of a pair of static balancing edges that Steve made. They were clamped to his mill table (which was level) and the shaft rested on the knife edges. He made them from planer blades.

He used it to balance some belt sander rolls. A few months ago Steve would have been wearing glasses, but he recently had synthetic lenses put in...very cool.

Preschool Graduation

Henry and Max go to a wonderful preschool run by Philomath High School as a class in "Advanced Child Development", called Little Warriors. Thank goodness they didn't change the high school team name to "The Cadets" (There's a bit about the controversy in the interesting film "Clear Cut"), because "Little Cadets" just sounds wrong.
But I digress.
The school has one high school student per child supervised by the wonderful Mrs. Melonuk, is inexpensive and Henry and Max enjoy it tremendously.

Singing at the ceremony. Henry is 2nd from the left and Max is at far right.
You can even "enjoy" a low res video that captures the experience...

Henry bashes the pinata. This is the 2nd pinata Henry has pummelled this week.

Max enjoys some juice and cake. He's wearing his "olympic" medals for shot put and balance beam. Henry won (although it's shared by three kids in all cases) for short run and something else he doesn't remember.

Henry starts kindergarden next fall and Max will continue as a Little Warrior.