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.

An interesting way to make a washer...

I came across this article a while back, outlining a technique for making shim washers. I posted the results of its use on my airgun blog but figured it would also have applications in jewelry making that might interest some people.

Some copper sheet is placed in a disc cutting die (this is actually a shim punching die, but there is no difference)

A transfer punch (this one's a nice Oldak, but any type will work) punches a divot in the center.

It's important that you not shift the stock at all...

The OD (outside diameter) of the washer is punched out, I use an arbor press instead of hammering.

The disc.

I then insert the disc in the die again, and align it to the ID (inside diameter) hole with another transfer punch. Then you punch out the ID just as you did the OD

This is a set of fractional transfer punches.

The washer...the hole was within about .004" of center, which is pretty good!

Hot and Bothered

Ok, mainly hot! It's about 95 degrees right now.

Henry is enjoying a popsicle.

The rhododendron is blooming for the first time, ever.

The UPS driver is wearing shorts.
Then again, he's always wearing shorts. I, on the other hand, was blinding people with my unclad, porcelanous, legs when I went out to do errands today. First day I broke down and used the AC in the car as well.

I've been way too busy to blog here lately. I was involved in a long project on the airgun blog, as well as more custom silhouettes (will it ever end?) and some new modelling work on the braille display. Some of the work is open source, you can see some examples here and here. It's fun to be back at that job. Then there's the normal work selling machine tools too!

Here's an interesting telegraphy site.

A Sunday Hike

The weather was (and still is) beautiful today, so we went for a hike up Bald Hill.

It starts on a long paved trail from the parking lot.

The hill, she is somewhat bald, no?

Henry and I steamed up the hill while Felice and Max ambled.

The woods are cool and green.

Marys Peak still has some snow.

Those people were having a loud discussion about "Iron Man".

Looking towards our house, which is hidden behind the small brown rise in the center.

Southeast into the valley.

We tried to take some family pictures.

The girl behind me was writing secrets in her diary.

We all enjoyed a juice box.

That housing development is relatively new.

No, it's not an elliptical UFO, but an attempt to show that through the haze you could just make out snow on the Cascades.

A beautiful flower. What is it? I have no idea.

Beware of things trying to eat you!

All the people in this picture were using their cell phones. The one on the left was having a gregariously emphatic conversation in Russian.

Anyway, we're a bit exhausted from the moderate exercise but had a lovely time out in nature.