Wood working pictures

Working on the trike!

Via Flickr:
It works, but…

Via Flickr:
Hoist base slid into the receiver hitch tubing beneath the truck.

Via Flickr:
Even without a motor and batteries mounted the trike is heavy and awkward to lift. Getting it into my pickup truck requires a hoist of some kind. I’ve got a smallish truck so the hoist had to be mounted off to one side. This contraption fits into a bit of receiver hitch that’s part of the subframe of my Ford Ranger. An old wheelchair hoist I bought from a pal will bolt on top of this.

Via Flickr:
Original pinion to left and new, improved one now mounted to the motor shaft. I broached a 3/16″ keyway slot but I had to make a special key that was thinner on one half because the motor shaft has a keyway cut to a slightly smaller 4.5mm or .177″.

Trike parts, this is a test post from flickr.

So then it was off in the rains for the trip to the hospital for the deed. Bizarre incident #2 had to be the image on the screen: I’ve seen this sort of thing in a dentist’s office but it was mighty strange to stick my head up my own ass as it were. The good news: no lesions; the bad news: the beginnings of direticulitis. Doc took a biopsy and that was damned odd to see and even weirder to feel. It sorta itches now… In the recovery room I discovered that my resting heart rate is a rather incredible 55; I’m obviously still in semi-hibernation from our prolonged winter.

Got a prescription so hopefully the pain from my predicament will fade and the area will heal but there still wasn’t an obvious trouble spot that indicated whence cometh the problem. Doc sez he recommends going in via the front door next time but that’s a real procedure and I’ll have to go to the big hospital for that one. Sigh.. Patients leave via the back door which seems appropriate; from there I went and pigged out on fast food just because.. Skipped the fries at least. Pharmacy is out of the prescription so I gotta suffer another day of burning butt syndrome B4 I can get some relief.

–Next up: must shake off lethargy and disspel writer’s block to produce invites for the big birthday bash..

–And then I got a call from Todd with the news that one of our pals tried to commit suicide the other day. Nice guy but he’s living with the burden of two families; i.e. his own (married a gal with 4 kids: go figure…) and his parents who won’t leave him alone to live his new life. Family biz and he’s stuck in the web: no way out. Kinda wait and see Todd thinks; i.e. leave him alone to sort for a few days and then nag him to get back into his network of friends who can at least commiserate with ‘been there, done that’ anecdotes.

–More later; it’s getting cold and I gotta got put more wood on the fire. Sigh.

–Had a very nice Christmas day with all the kids and grandkids in one place (Stockton) and Jerry and Serena cooked up a wonderful Greek feast. We went home with ziploc bags full of leftovers and those should sustain us thru New Years Eve. Made it home in the rain (which was less severe than feared), low fuel light just started blinking as we pulled into driveway. Paid the dog sitter and wound up with $5 in my pocket. My sister gave me $50 for Xmas and I’ll be cashng that post haste. The dilemma: should it be food or gas money? I fear it’ll have to go into the tank.

–Managed to make a tiny bit of income in the shop in ’10; a couple of interesting, if small, jobs; have now been waiting 2 weeks for latest parts to come back from anodizing so’s I can ship ‘em with a bill for all of 2 hrs labor.

–With help from Eugene I started reconfiguring shop ‘furniture’ to set up a dedicated welding space in an area that’s thankfully free of flying metal chips and coolant mists. Hope to have that all sorted in a week or two after wall sockets are upgraded.

–Missed Burning Man in ’10 but managed to rent out the RV which really helped the bottom line. After much rainy weather RV now has a warped door and I’ll have to get that mended in ’11. Hopefully I’ll be able to rent it out again for the next BM which, sadly, I must also miss. Might buy tix when they become available but will probably sell ‘em as the date draws nigh.

–Found out that the reason I’m hobbling around is due to a growth in my left foot. Doc sez surgery to remove it is complex and risky and suggested I just live with it. Going to WESTEC in March so must go directly to my goals then leave B4 pain becomes excruciating. Sigh. Still waiting for Trevor to make his avatars available for rental so I can do these expeditions virtually. Despite lack of dough I really need to look for a larger capacity lathe: had to farm out a big job to another shop a few months back because my Myford didn’t have the horsepower needed to remove metal fast enough to make the job profitable.

–Judy’s a trooper: the things she does for our rescue doggies is really over the top. I handle the bills and she handles the gooey bits: pills, poo, and even worse. Still it ain’t cheap; I figure $20k in vet bills and meds in a bad yr and ’10 was a bad year. Haven’t managed to set up a 501-C-3 yet because we can’t afford lawyer and accountant to keep up the paperwork. Catch-22 kinda thing. So holler, friends, if you know anyone who might want to take a couple of middle-age, cuddly Cockers home..

–And speaking of expenses (when am I not?) Blue Cross saw fit to raise our rates THREE TIMES this yr and now I’m paying $24,000/yr for just the two of us. The good news, such as it is, I’ll turn 65 in July whereupon I at least will be able to tell BC to take a FLYING FUCK and switch to Medicaire and supplemental coverage; said total being around $500/mo: not cheap but hey, every little savings helps, eh? Oh, did I mention I’ve registered the domain http://www.fuckbluecross.com ? Don’t know what to do with it but I saw an opportunity and I took it.

–Soooo what’s ’11 got in store? Hope to take calliope #5 to Maker Faire, along with blown-up still photos of the kind of things I’ve made in the shop. Hope to drum up some more biz. Hope to do some more welding work: that seems to be the quickest way to make money; i.e. it happens a lot faster. I think ’11 may be the first yr I won’t be able to attend Hackers but hey, I’m past due to skip it and let ‘em turn the pile a bit.

–Trying to think of other things I can do to pimp the biz. Have decided that WordPress is a PITA and not ideal for posting the photo/text stories of my various projects so am considering going back to basic, un-pretty html and saying to hell with “style sheets”. Would be interested in chatting with anyone who has been there/done that and succeeded.

–Welp that’s about it, world; stay tuned for further info.

If anyone in our extended family has any pull with a bank or has any suggestions what we can do to keep a roof over their heads please get in touch with me or Judy ASAP. Natch, money from a deep pockets pal would save the day but I have few illusions about your own individual predicaments and I only include this plea because the situation is so dire.

Thanks for reading to the end,

–I decided to find a way to increase the thread depth somehow. This would give the screw more bite and it would mean air would have to leak thru a longer, twistier path to escape. I thought about using nutserts but these don’t sit flush and I would have had to use gobs of sealing compound to make the connection air-tight. Another idea was to weld up the bad holes, ‘twist’ the hole pattern half the angle between holes and use a Formdrill to friction-drill the steel, stretching it so that a form tap would produce a longer thread. But I distrust the integrity and shallow thread depth produced by a form tap and so that was out. In the end I opted for Plan C: I drilled out every other hole to 3/8” dia and chamfered the edges a bit. Then I switched on the lathe and, using some 3/8” dia steel rod, I made six: 3/8” long threaded inserts. Next I made a ‘quicky’ bridge to hold each insert in the correct location, inside a drilled hole but flush with the surrounding steel and squarely so that fasteners wouldn’t go in crooked: http://www.flickr.com/photos/steamboat_ed/4853355009/in/set-72157608281318568/ This whole scheme worked very well and I think I might do it again intentionally, so to speak, should I ever again have need to attach something to thin wall tubing. Welding was, relatively speaking, a breeze and by the third one of the six I had it down. The mating parts had chamfers that permitted good penetration with a fusion weld and I used almost zero filler rod to connect the dots: http://www.flickr.com/photos/steamboat_ed/4853310601/in/set-72157608281318568/ End result: very little grinding needed and, after chasing the threads one last time with a plug tap and the right lubricant (Cool Tool II) I was able to snug up the six #10-32 socket heads well enough to get a good airtight seal using a bit of paper gasket material instead of the O-ring. As for the 6 remaining not-so-great bolt holes I added phenolic washers, the kind used for air logic fittings, to each bolt hole in the plug before gently snugging up each of these screws and that seems to have achieved an adequate seal.

–Thinking I might want to attach stuff later and not wanting to perforate the plenum’s integrity when the time came, I made six 1/4”-28 threaded bushings. Two were welded on top of the plenum, on centerline and at each end, to provide anchor points for a cable trunk which will run parallel to the plenum, along one side, to protect solenoid wiring. I welded the remaining four on the sides, near the bottom and close to the ends. These will provide attachment points for legs or whatever, to provide a bit of lateral stability as the contraption will be plenty top-heavy once all of the whistles and solenoid valves are fastened in place.

–Once all was set to rights I did a pressure test. Sure enough I found two massive leaks where for one reason or another I failed to complete a weld all the way around a 3/8” pipe fitting. Once I’d welded these two correctly test results were much better although not stunning. The big aluminum plug held great even at 60psi (3 times estimated working pressure). But it turns out one of the twelve fittings I used to plug the whistle attachment bushings leaked, despite being threaded in with two turns of good gas-rated Teflon tape. Well there’s always something, eh? Anyway once that was sorted the plenum seemed ready for paint: woohoo!

–I had intended to paint the plenum white but I couldn’t find the damned paint can anywhere. Bottom line: it’s blue, because it was handy. Looks pretty snazzy, I gotta admit http://www.flickr.com/photos/steamboat_ed/4853310567/in/set-72157608281318568/

–So today the moment  came when I could finally test one of the cheapy solenoid valves I got from ebay. I mounted one valve with a whistle attached, I dropped shop air pressure down to 5psi, rounded up enough AA batteries to make a 12-v supply and twisted wires together. To my delight I actually got a note out of the thing! I increased air pressure to 10psi and this produced a much brighter tone. Jumping up to 20psi (what it used to take to get any sound at all out of calliope #4) the sound went all to hell with several overtones in the mix so it’s definite: the new valves let through a much greater air flow than the old sprinkler valves.

–There is an oddity that happens when the valve first opens: there’s a very loud pop and wheeze before the bell sounds and I’m guessing this has something to do with me supplying air to the (short but fat) plenum from a long skinny source, i.e. two lengths of coiled air hose at the end of a 25-ft string of overhead plumbing. Once the first note has wheezed into life though, subsequent rapid activations of the solenoid valve seem to be ‘normal’. Something to do with the elastic properties of gases methinks. I’m hoping the whole system is good to go, but not entirely trusting my own gut feeleings as to the nature of the wheeze I hope to get a second opinion later today from Rich Gibson as to the readiness of the system, as it stands, for the remaining solenoid valves prior to ordering same.