A Little Night Smithing

Kent's postman wants him to make a 12" long, 3" wide wedge. Kent has no idea why.

Sawing off a chunk of 3" square stock.

Smoky.

It took a long time to heat up the steel.

Kent starts with the hammering.

More hammering.

The ends were starting to curl over on each other, which is bad. So he started correcting it.

You can't really make out the look of sheer terror I felt with Kent swinging a 20 lb sledge at me.

Kent had welded a pipe on the end of the wedge chunk.

I wouldn't want to do this all day.

Still a long way to go.

Massive Linkfest

Felice has been stealing all the good pictures of the kids for her blog, so I figured I'd just dump a bunch of links I've saved up for the blog:

• Stuff Korean Moms Like
  A funny blog by a Korean Daughter.
• Pandora Radio
  A wonderful way to listen and discover music.
• My First Two Linecasters
  My friend David bought two linecasters.
• Spaceweather
  What's going on up there?
• Report: 60 Million People You'd Never Talk To Voting For Other Guy
  Best political analysis ever.
• BIC Mossy Oak Lighter
  Saw this in the store. Best way to lose a lighter on a camping trip.
• 100 Skills Every Man Should Know
  I know most of them, do you?
• State gives two local schools A+
  Turns out Philomath has a pretty good school system.
• Physical Display With Deformable Skin
  An interesting deformable display system.
  

Here's what I've been reading:

• Much Ado About Me
  Fred Allen's autobiography and account of the days of Vaudeville.
• Fallen Angels
  Beware the coming ice age.
• Swing, Swing Together: A Sergeant Cribb Mystery
  An enjoyable little mystery.

Finally, I watched Southland Tales, which is a mess of an apocalyptic movie. Yet I enjoyed it. Most reviewers didn't. You probably won't either.

Just Hanging Out

Well, Henry started taking Taekwondo lessons. The local ATA franchise is Karate for Kids in Corvallis and they have conveniently started giving classes at the local Philomath dance studio, so it's less of a commute. 2 classes a week, only 1/2 hour at a time...

The uniform is cool, as is Henry.

He likes the classes.

Max has another opinion on the subject of outfits. He'll start Taekwondo in a year or two.

Max made this "Batman" mask at the Fall Festival in Corvallis. I think he looks more like Hawkman. I brought both boys down and we all vended(?) as a family. We were set up at what we call the "fake fall festival" which takes place across the street at the First Christian Church.

Extending an existing woodruff keyway for the neighbor. Notice the jack supporting the free end against the force of the cut.

Corneal Abrasion, Helicoils and an Anaglyph

Thursday night, in a bout of typical roughhouse on the couch, Max managed to scrape his fingers across the surface of my eyeball. The good news is that corneal abrasions heal very quickly. The bad news is that while they heal it feels like there's a porcupine rolling around under your eyelid. But I'm all better now.

Rudi, our next door neighbor at the Saturday Market, stripped out one of the clamping screw threads in his Sherline rocker toolpost. He uses a Sherline lathe for some of his turned boxes and needed it repaired or replaced ASAP. So I volunteered to fix it.

Out came the #10-32 tpi Helicoil kit.

The stripped hole on the right.

Drilling out the hole.

Tapping with a Helicoil tap. The tap is of the same pitch as the stripped hole, but with a larger diameter.

The helicoil insert. It is basically a helical coil of wire.

The straight tang at the end enables the insertion tool to drive it into the hole.

The insert is loaded into the tool and screwed through the body to compress it around the insertion screw. Then the end of the tool is pressed against the hole and the insert screwed in.

And the insert is inserted.

The tang is visible at the bottom and must be removed.

One sharp whack with a punch does the job.

I found my old Red-Blue Anaglyph camera jig and showed the kids how to take 3D anaglyphs. I used the free Anaglyph Maker software.

How I ever got Max to stand still for the minute or so it took to make the two images I'll never know.

Modifying Some Parts for Spud

Spud wanted me to bore out some parts for him.

Of course he wanted me to bore out some seriously odd shaped parts...dialing in the center on the 4 jaw chuck, trying to remember not to hit the internal keyway as I rotate the chuck around.

Taking a pass, I had to go lightly due to the interrupted nature of the cut.

Zeroing a caliper, with extensions, on a gage block stack. I checked diameter after each pass.

I set the tool to just kiss the bottom of the bore and zeroed a travel indicator.

Finished.

A few of the parts.

Some Pics in the Buff

I mean some pics of buffs, and arbors and adapters...

A left hand taper adapter for a straight shaft grinder/buffer. Bought it from Rio Grande. It attaches to the straight shaft with the two setscrews.

Buffs with pin holes are used and they screw on.

A deburring/unitized/beartex wheel held on a grinder. The large washer transmits the rotational force to the wheel.

The hole in the wheel is larger than the shaft and reduced by the bushing.

I made the bushing myself on the lathe, but they are a common part that often come with grinding wheels when you order them.

Saturday Thrift and Yard Sale fun...

I drove around with the kids and Joe (Felice's dad) today and hit a few yard sales, Goodwill and the Habitat for Humanity building materials surplus store...We didn't get much, but I think I did alright.

I thought it was just one of those grabbers for picking up stuff you can't reach. Turns out it's a Gentle Giant snake tong...$1.00 for a $79.00 tool! I may clean it up and put it on Ebay if I ever have the time. Or take up snake wrangling.

I bought three tools at the Habitat store. An old Thorsen 3/8" ratchet for 50 cents (just needed a squirt of oil to loosen the mechanism), A Mightyvac vacuum pump (works) for $3.50 and an old, small, Indestro torque wrench for $1.00.

I bought it just on principle...

Baking Soda and Vinegar Fun

The kids were getting a bit restless this afternoon so I arranged for a quick and simple chemistry lesson...baking soda and vinegar.

Baking soda in the glove, vinegar in the bottle, shake and reaction!

A little dish soap added to the mix and you get a foamy fountain...

In a wide mouth container it's almost more compelling.

Henry and Max had fun...and I kept a boredom related meltdown from happening....

Oh, and a few links I kept meaning to post:

This is the ultimate Hotwheels track, they had some set up at DaVinci days.

A great memoir of wartime in the Dutch East Indies.

Simple Book Repair.

CNC Milling a torso.

Shop Vac Flange for the Sand Blast Cabinet

Chris needed a flange that would allow him to mount a shop vac hose on his Horrible Freight sand blast cabinet. Without a vacuum sand was getting everywhere, to the point that a pair of contact lenses were ruined. Not wishing to have actual eye surgery, he came over and we whipped up an adapter flange.

Chris wisely controlled the camera. Here I am drilling a 1" hole in a block of UHMW. Notice my ponytail is tucked into my shirt.

The block is a 3" x 3" piece sawn from a chunk I had laying around.

Boring out the hole to be a push fit on the vacuum hose.

The camera batteries died midway through, so you don't get to experience the excitement of turning down to produce the flange. Here it is flipped in the chuck to face the other side flat, once we got new batteries in the camera

All done! Chris is going to counterbore for some screw holes, then screw and silicone seal it to the blast cabinet.
He's also sealed every seam on the cabinet with silicone as well. That thing leaked like a sieve.