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.

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.

Another Week Gone By...

Yes, another week has passed, so I thought I'd blog a bit.

Here I am unsuccessfully trying to fix a 25 cent toy for Henry. I did just successfully helicoil the 1/4"-20 camera mount on his Finepix, which had stripped out from constant screwing and unscrewing.



Henry uses his tripod to arrange a picture of his Duplo creation.

We are getting a free weekend of premium satellite channels and last night we watched "Clear Cut: The Story of Philomath, Oregon" The movie was an even handed depiction of about the only newsworthy story to come out of Philomath in the last 10 years. That said, the town has moved on and our main concern is the never ending construction of the couplet.

I really want to figure out a business model that will justify the purchase of one of these 3D scanners.

Nothing else to say, so here are some links:

A Treatise on Lathes and Turning, Simple, Mechanical and Ornamental By W. Henry Northcott

English Mechanic and World of Science

Molding the St.Ninian's Isle Brooches

A Flickr photoset of a model ballista.

New Dies, Architecture and Loads of Links

I've made some new dies.

The Alto Clef

Bass Clef and Angstrom

Resistor, Transformer and Diode



Henry built this green tower, both Felice and I didn't notice until he pointed it out. We have no idea how he built it so tall.

Notice the juxtaposition with The Fountainhead on TV...

Now a slew of links:
I just finished There Are No Electrons: Electronics for Earthlings Which went a long way in teaching me some of the basics of electronics. A great informal primer for scatterbrains like me.
I think I'll buy his Calculus for Cats next.

How to use a french press

Tons of manufacturing videos

Free Pascal

Chris and Shelley's pig cam

Pictures from the Ascot (UK) model engineering show

A civics quiz (I got a 78%)

Ever lose your "Show Desktop" icon? I did, Here's how to get it back...

McLean Slides (neat little CNC lathes)

Henry's Latest Photographic Output

Henry is prolific with his camera, here are some typical works, with his captions.

"This one is called Lego Bridge but I wasn't done with it. I have to take more pictures of it if someone wants to buy it when I die."

"I call it Lego Bricks"

"Wormy worm, he's my friend and his name is name is squonky donky pepito and that's his last name."

"Fidel"

"His tail."

"Max's toy that I don't use anymore."

"Baggy Bear, he's my friend and he wakes me up in the morning."
"My knocked over trains from Max. I don't very remember."

"Your lamp."

"You, dad."

Friday Garage Sale Toolblogging

Rather than work all day, we started the morning by going to two garage sales.

Henry shows off the #2 Arbor press I bought for $5.00

A $20.00 Baldor bench grinder. I love Baldor grinders and already have two that I bought new. This one looks a bit rough but runs smooth as silk and just needs a little TLC.

We bought several boxes of model train stuff. This is a whole box full of G scale LGB train track. $5.00!

A few tools, clockwise from left bottom: Lufkin automatic center punch (missing point, but I had a spare, don't you have spare auto center punch points?), blacksmith tongs, Metalmitre die set, wire stripper and tiny crescent wrench.


The die set. What is it for, how do you use it?

Oh, look at that, I remembered I had a metalmitre tool with a 90 deg. die...you knew I was a degenerate tool addict, didn't you?

And this new one fits...

It makes a neat little notch. No information about what this notch is used for, but hey, at least I can make one now...

Links:
A 3D Milk Scanner
An Australian Ornamental Woodturning Forum
Old (and priced for collectors!) Children's Books. I met these nice people at a potluck on Sunday night and we had a nice chat about the joys of making a living online.

Lazy Sunday Morning

Just some random blogging today.


Look at all the countries I have had visitors from over the last year!


Steve the Locksmith was trying to peddle two surplus tonometers he procured as payment for a locksmithing job. I resisted the impulse to take up the assessment of intraocular pressure.

Neat gadgets, and it was hard to turn them down...Greg resisted as well.

Chris and Shelley and Aleah are doing hard labor on our land. Their goats and llama have eaten the last bit of their land bare, so they are going to put them in our woods.

Ahh, the excitement of extreme fencepost pounding.

Ready for another one, only 50 more to go. Seriously, what excellent neighbors. They do all the work and the goats eat all the brambles. We get a cleared out woods, which means we can once again walk through and look at our trees. I guess I'll have to take some pics of the trees as well for next time.

We had a great morning on Etsy, this is one of my favorite new customers.

Some links I've saved up:
Hirst Arts Fantasy Architecture Inc. "Cast Your Own Blocks - Build Your Own Castles" is an excellent site if you like to make, um, miniature castles...

A great site on modding and restoring Hot Wheels. I repaired one of Henry's Hot Wheels but forgot to take pics of the process, so this will have to do.

Here's another step by step Hot Wheels restoration.

Pipedia, a pipe Wiki.

I accidentally (surfed to CMT at channel 165 instead of CCTV at 265) found out about Shooter Jennings, Waylon Jennings son. I enjoy this type of music...watch the videos if you like Southern Rock...

Have a great Labor day!