Thursday, June 29, 2006

Summer is here, send ice.

Some of the latest cute pictures.

Max enjoys his hummus.

Henry relaxing and reading a Thomas catalog.

Max contemplates the plastic friend chicken drumstick

Henry paints his 1st model airplane. I put it together (superglue and 3 year olds don't mix) but he was very patient and watched carefully. He painted it blue.

Henry works! He helped Felice put earrings on cards so she could take them to a local gallery. He did an incredible job, pushing the ear wire end through a tiny hole in the card.

What can I say, the kids are good, it is very hot (it was 100+ on Monday) and summer is here...

Links:
Crosley Icyball

Horn & Whistle Magazine

Machine Shop Instructional Videos

"An American Cruiser in the East" from this site:
Korean Traditional Archery

DraftIt free CAD software

Peter and Victoria's Waiting for the baby blog

Wipe your hard drive

Friday, June 23, 2006

Push Me, Pull You.

Well another week or so has passed....

Henry and Max play together well now.

Judging by the drool stain on Max's shirt, I would hazard a guess that he may not...
The shirts were a gift from an old high school chum of Felice's, who sells children's wear.

Every child should have at least one emotional scar from a teddy bear.

Max offers a green apple to Shel Silverstein.

A few weeks ago Henry rode a horse.

My little equestrian.

Not much to report, Henry is taking swimming lessons and enjoying them. Max can now walk. I guess that's something to report.

I was feeling a bit vague last week, one of the joys of self employment, but had an old lathe customer hire me to do some Rhino modelling work for him. This is my first paying job as a draftsman (or the 21st century equivalent) so it swelled my ego up into a right bit of puffery. It is the sort of thing I hope to do for money more often. Unfortunately the work is top secret so I can't divulge anything here.

I did pick up a terrible virus/trojan/spyware somehow (I am very careful, but Norton, etc did not save me from it) which was killing my computer, but this piece of software completely destroyed it.

Some links:

An Introduction to Buffing and Polishing

I Love My Chapman Screwdrivers

A French Metalworking Forum

The Gauge Block Handbook (pdf)
(I use the "Gage" myself...)

TECHNICAL TIP #47; THREADING: H LIMITS vs. D LIMITS
This is becoming more and more important.

INSULTINGLY STUPID MOVIE PHYSICS

Why the Future is in South Korea

Aimee's Blog

Puritan Quote of the Week

This to That

Friday, June 09, 2006

A couple of small projects

Well the forklift car from Henry's "Culdee's Apple Train" set snapped in two.

A lovely clean break.

A 1/8" thick aluminum plate that screws into and is screwed into to repair the two halves.

You hardly notice the repair from on top...just those two countersunk screw heads.

A Williams peep sight I picked up cheap at the local gun shop, held in the vise on the Taig mill.

One of the mounting holes elongated into a slot so I could mount it to a Sheridan air rifle. I bought the rifle 2nd hand and the sight was missing.

The peep sight in place. Now I can hit the cans I'm aiming at.

Monday, June 05, 2006

Joys of Parenthood

Well, this week has been filled with vomiting, itching, crying and a smattering of fun... Felice, Henry and Max all came down with some sort of unpleasant virus, Max is still suffering while Felice and Henry have recovered. We took Max to the doctor today about his seemingly itchy rash and as we predicted the doctor suggested time, benadryl and calamine... Otherwise the kids are fine...

This will be Henry's future, making jewelry (if he majors in liberal arts as Felice and I did...). Every child needs a small anvil and hammer.

Max still has not learned that throwing sand, in this case wet sand, is not a good idea.

Henry drives a load of grass clippings.

We just keep Henry working, his wheelbarrow filled.

Max hanging out and having a snack.

Still not clear about the proper use of a toy telephone, but getting closer.

On Saturday, after I had woken at an extremely early hour to console Max, Henry suggested we got to Goodwill. I love going to thrift stores so we went. I proved that I am not insane by not buying the 4' high scale model trebuchet. I probably should have bought it, it haunts me now. Instead we bought a Thomas domino game, some chinese jigsaw puzzles (words in english and chinese) and a Microsoft EasyBall. Henry loves computer peripherals, last night he had two mice, the Easyball and a webcam plugged into his PC. Henry loves his jigsaw puzzles as well, although he often asks for help, just as often he does them alone.

Felice sold one of her hanging bottles on Etsy and is feeling validated.

I picked up a old copy of Literary Digest at the local thrift store, quite an interesting story about the magazine...

Harprit Singh Sandhu's Model Engineering website.

Illustrations and Definitions of Tap Terms

Sunday, June 04, 2006

Some of Steve the Locksmith's Shop Tools.

I went over to my neighbor Steve's shop last Sunday to look at some motion control components he had for sale. While I was there I snapped some pics of his modified/salvaged tools.

He welded up a number of these hammer racks to hold the vaiety of hammers, garden tools, etc. that he has.

He mounted a portable band saw on a salvaged chop saw frame.

A drill press made from a scavenged head, a non matching column and a bunch of scrap.

Notice the auto jack for raising and lowering the table of the drill press. He tends to use clamps while he ruminates on how best to finally finish an item...

He made his own micro adjustable table saw fence.
The white knob locks the frame, the red lever in the middle locks the fence and the red knob on the right fine adjusts the fence position relative to the frame of the fence.

Monday, May 29, 2006

A week of moderate action

I just mowed the lawns, and my fingers are vibrating from the DR mower. We have 3.8 acres so I only mowed the front and back of the house proper, and a few trails so that we can go hither and yon at our whim. I hate mowing. Would that I could call in a napalm strike on our property.

Sleepy drinking.

Max and Henry having fun

Mommy sets up the coolest Thomas train track setup ever.

Felice didn't go to the market on Saturday, as it was rainy and quite cold. So instead she set up an Etsy shop. No sales yet...she is on tenterhooks.

I spent some time listing some stuff on Ebay that was getting in my way. I have much more to list that I hope to get to today. Even if it all sells for a pittance at least I don't have to pay to throw it out in the garbage. All this stuff accumulates when I buy a lot at an auction, stuff I didn't want but got with something I did.

We managed to watch Capote, Word Wars, and Match Point this week. All were good, but Word Wars was the most enjoyable of the three, I love a good documentary, and I love Scrabble. I did enjoy Capote more than I thought I would...it was compelling. Match Point was a minor Woody Allen film, technically good, but he covered much of the same ground as he did in Crimes and Misdemeanors which left me wondering why he made this movie. But it was well made and acted.

I have another post to put up on my visit to Steve the locksmiths shop yesterday.

This is one of the best written company histories I have read on a commercial site - too bad the rest of the site is largely useless as yet.

A Steam Robot! That would be a good gift. Not as good as my favorite steambot.

Tips on Designing Cost Effective Machined Parts Would that everyone followed these suggestions...

A free computer game about the Hungarian Independence War of 1848-49 Makes me realize how little I know of European history...

Wednesday, May 24, 2006

For James Chen's wife

James was lamenting the fact that his wife won't let him have a sand table outside for fear the children will track sand in the house. I told him that sand was the least of our worries, and thought I should show the state of our living room so he can show his wife when she complains about small messes

That's not even as bad as it gets, and indeed is what often passes for clean...

The culprits.

I might as well stick some links in:

My cousin-in-law Aimee has an Etsy store. We should probably have one as well.

The Reverend Corwin & Nellie Taylor Collection collection of old photographs of Korea.

A romantic story amid the conflict between US and Korean culture.

New Rail Models - check out the How it's Done section especially.

A good metalworking/machining blog

Thin Kerf Technologies - for Saw Filers...

DIY Babyproofing

Here are some of my home made babyproofing attempts. None of these are recommended as being actually child proof, so undertake any at your own risk!

A swinging latch over one of the bathroom drawers. This was an absolute failure as Henry quickly learned to swing it out of the way. The drawers are now empty.

A fixed latch over the drawers in the entertainment center. The drawers contain stuff we never use (so why do we have it?) and the latch is firmly screwed in, it requires a philips screwdriver to remove.

Foam pipe insulation laid over the sharp stone edges of the wood stove base (stone tile) and duct taped in place. This has saved us numerous trips to the emergency room. The cardboard is over the lower bit of stone, more to protect the stone tile than a child. It is now disgustingly filthy after several years in place.

Two heavy duty cable ties keep the wood stove closed. We only use the stove in emergencies (when the power went out for 3 days one winter) and if a child were to gain access to the lovely piles of ash within the mess would exceed even our standards of filth.

A pin that sticks into the medicine cabinet drawer from the side. Henry has yet to figure this out.

Only with the pin removed can the drawer open.

In the end the best babyproofing is to remove everything hazardous from any area where the kids will possibly be, and encase the children in foam sumo wrestling outfits.

Friday, May 19, 2006

More Tool Blogging

First some CNC lathe:

Roughing cuts

Getting closer

Almost looks like a chess pawn...

We went to yard sales today. Just hit two, one was at the same place I scored the Dumore high speed drill press.

This bunch of hand tools cost me $15.00 The 4 wrenches in the center are nice and thin...Everything is made in the USA. The oil cans are for Kent. I love the tiny Craftsman pipe wrench. I needed another Automatic Center Punch (just under the 4 wrenches), you can never have too many laying around.

Henry cranks the insane rotary table stack of chucks I bought for $110.00
I know you are saying to yourself, "Nick, isn't $110.00 a lot of money for some boring old steel chunks?", and I would have to disagree.

The rotary table alone is worth 4 times that, new. It is a Yuasa 6" rotary table, insanely smooth in action (seems like almost no backlash.) The chucks are just icing on the cake. The 3 jaw chuck looks a lot like the Bison 5" I have on my Jet lathe, with two part jaws. The 4 jaw looks like it's a Craftsman. The point is, I love this rotary table.

The graduations on the dial are 1 degree broken up into 60 minutes (notice the "30" on either side if the dial picture)...The vernier at the top oof the picture divides one minute of a degree into 20 seconds of a degree increments.

This week in child behaviour


Henry and Max at the sand table.

Max has yet to learn the self defeating nature of flinging sand.

Moments in good parenting #127:
Henry eating Cocoa Puffs (the whole grain ones) while in his bee costume.

Bought a simple HO train at a yard sale today.

Henry really gets into his trains...

Felice just found an egg from the Easter egg hunt behind the piano.
I wonder if it is still edible?