More Toy Repair, A Fishing Rod

Max broke his magnetic fishing rod.

The plastic tube failed.

A classic failure.

I sawed off the tube with an Xacto razor saw.

I turned up a grooved dowel to fit inside the tube.

I mixed some epoxy. I will never again buy the twin tube style of epoxy...it's impossible to get the same amount of resin and hardener to come out at the same time, their viscosities being different.

Dowel smeared with epoxy inserted halfway into the tube.

Fixed!

A subdued, yet happy, Max.

Potsticker Potstickers

A while back I posted about Henry's invention of the noodle sandwich (scroll down). He's come up with another way to maximize the amount of starch ingested, the Potsticker potsticker...Whenever we eat potstickers he always surgically removes whatever filling is inside and eats only the wrapper.

Wadding up one standard potsticker wrapper.

Wetting the edge of the potsticker wrapper, with the wadded up one in the center, prepratory to folding it over and sealing.

Frying them up...

Licking his lips.

Train Time

Henry said "can we set the train up on the deck?" So out came the LGB track and trains. The setup went surprisingly quickly.

The layout on the cluttered deck.

Around the curve...

The rapt attention of the junior engineer.

A derailment! Henry leaps into action.

Road gang makes the repair.

Fixing Mike's Favorite Glasses

My friend Mike gave Felice his favorite pair of glasses when he visited her at the market on Saturday. This was smart of him as normally I'll chew my own leg off to escape someone asking me to do repairs. So I was presented with a fait accompli.
He emailed me "As I mentioned to Felice I'm not expecting artistry here. They are old and battered already. But I still use them for driving. I'll owe you one."
The "owe you one" is why I went ahead as Mike is a book addiction enabler.

The broken glasses.

If you ever have someone repair your glasses, do them a favor and clean them first. Nasty.

I removed the temples, nose pieces and lenses.
Then I filed off the old solder and made a nice clean spot to rejoin them.

Wha??? I don't have any heat sink compound (note to self, order some heat sink) so I used the old trick of a potato.

As you can see the potato is ready to eat. I used Easy Flo 56% (?) solder just in case the heat sink failed.

Cleaned up. The join shifted slightly (as with most of my skills, I'm not an expert at soldering) but is connected firmly. We'll see how long it lasts in Mike's rough and ready lifestyle.

All done.

Steam, Turkeys, not in that order.

Some wild turkeys showed up in the back yard.

Henry stalks the elusive wild turkey.

They weren't fooled by his turkey impression.

We did our annual pilgrammage to the Brooks Steam Up today. This isn't a typical Lamborghini.

Henry has a beautiful smile but if you tell him to smile for a picture it goes from bad...

to worse...That's a Stuart behind him.

Max, chillin' in the trolley.

An Army mobile machine shop. It's for sale, $8500 which is a deal! I have the guy's phone number if you want it.

I know, it's the Steam Up and I only take pictures of tanks. But it's the first year they had a tank.

This is not my idea of a hobby. Haying is not fun.

It was close to 90 degrees...we took it slow.

Every year for the past 4 we've taken a picture in front of the big Cat. (Notice that Henry, having not been told to smile, looks great.)