M2aestro

I suspect that most of today's beginning woodworkers have never held a spokeshave unless when visiting a very well furnished shop, or when perusing items on sale in a woodworker's specialty store, or as fortunate as I was, when, despite being enrolled in an academic program during the 8th grade, 60 years ago, was instructed on the use of the spokeshave and the drawknife. I suspect that I won't likely need one unless I eventually build the great wooden clock movement that has one very large wheel which would look much more elegant with spokes. None-the-less, if I were to find a suitable very small iron, I would pick it up. I had enjoyed carving odd things back then, including two wood chains, a combination lock, and a few years later, a walnut capo with band of very heavy monofilament a…

I suspect that most of today's beginning woodworkers have never held a spokeshave unless when visiting a very well furnished shop, or when perusing items on sale in a woodworker's specialty store, or as fortunate as I was, when, despite being enrolled in an academic program during the 8th grade, 60 years ago, was instructed on the use of the spokeshave and the drawknife. I suspect that I won't likely need one unless I eventually build the great wooden clock movement that has one very large wheel which would look much more elegant with spokes. None-the-less, if I were to find a suitable very small iron, I would pick it up. I had enjoyed carving odd things back then, including two wood chains, a combination lock, and a few years later, a walnut capo with band of very heavy monofilament and peg of carved walnut for my guitar.

Yup, Jeff; my comments were heavy on the keyboard; and that about mpg being important to an Xterra driver came from my gut reaction to the low mileage that the rugged Xterras deliver, a highway efficiency even lower than the abysmal mileage delivered by my Tacoma 4WD.

Yup, I accept the criticism, for I was most undiplomatic in my comment about the aerodynamics of the product...and perhaps that aspect is not of much concern to this enterprising builder, who has certainly crafted a visually attractive package. BTW, he is planning to make a V-nosed conversion, not necessarily as I suggested, but likely something he had considered from the outset. From what I read, the interior was designed to be very efficient with the space available, and that becomes somewhat more difficult as one approaches other geometries with curved surfaces and vee noses.

I would be uncomfortable with cooking near my propane tank unless the tank were removed for cooking time and had a sufficiently long hose.

That too struck me as a dangerous practice, and possibly not legal. Even with many louvers a slight leak could trap a critical vapor:air ratio and become a real bomb. Any specific suggestions out there for how to fix that while still providing a vee-nose? ....perhaps with bottom open frame and side of vee vents?

You can get fine flash photos with well-designed flash units, and I do mean flash photography that does not have saturation spots. You merely have to know how to use them and to know when to put on temporary diffusing devices for close-up work, etc. I have used a section of a plastic milk bottle over an already screen-diffused flash attachment, for example. None-the-less, a light box can be a very good thing, and even can be used in field work to an advantage when you have excess sunlight and wish to take wildlife macro pictures.

Not all cameras allow you to adjust color temperature (if yours does, it would be a menu item), for many point and shoot cameras attempt to do this for you in an computerized automation, sometimes with good results and sometimes the opposite.

mach1950 is essentially correct and giving good advice for the hand-held shot; more light does in fact allow you to use a smaller aperture (larger f number), which gets you a greater depth of field. A point and shoot camera will automatically adjust to the greater light flux and in some cameras, also correctly sense equivalent light temperature to give you proper color in many situations. We still find automatic mode sometimes fails to give proper color for flowers and scenery on a new camera, almost as much as good digital cameras made a decade ago, but your chances today are pretty good. You can adjust this post-shoot in some phones and cameras, and use free-ware to adjust many color problems in photos via freeware in your computer when the color problem is global for the picture.

You can get that depth of field with the larger numerical aperture (smaller actual aperture) and the light shown from her box setup by merely extending the exposure time, of course, if the camera gives you control of both aperture and shutter. More light is not the only way to the desired end.

See my other post, please, on how long ago this was (25 years). We have no surviving pictures.

No; refrigerator compressors are terrible compressors for air brush supplies without a specialized oil and moisture removal filter set. Read the other comments before you get too excited about that misapplication of hardware!

I am sorry, but I must acknowledge to all that no matter how cool what I described as a coolant chiller in one application and as an air drier (identical basic device before accessories) as the second device might be, I can no longer provide photographs of the devices and systems because we did not save the documents after about 10 years had passed. The last one was executed about 25 years ago, but the basic technology hasn't changed.By the way, I second whole-heartedly all of the comments about how using refrigeration compressors for air supply pressures is a very poor idea, both because of lubricant mist contamination of the air, and because of the low delivery volumes. It is not difficult to find very good mist removal filters, and I have even seen one ;that used a roll of toilet pap…

I am sorry, but I must acknowledge to all that no matter how cool what I described as a coolant chiller in one application and as an air drier (identical basic device before accessories) as the second device might be, I can no longer provide photographs of the devices and systems because we did not save the documents after about 10 years had passed. The last one was executed about 25 years ago, but the basic technology hasn't changed.By the way, I second whole-heartedly all of the comments about how using refrigeration compressors for air supply pressures is a very poor idea, both because of lubricant mist contamination of the air, and because of the low delivery volumes. It is not difficult to find very good mist removal filters, and I have even seen one ;that used a roll of toilet paper as the oil vapor removing element, where that roll of toilet paper happened to be a good fit into an old metal bowl filter housing fro a sediment filter. The problem with that one was there there was not a very efficient mode for monitoring the useful life of the filter, except by monitoring the reduction of flow at free flow setting, or the increase in pressure drop for a set flow through that filter. Many ways to make cheap substitutes out there, but few that I would describe as elegant solutions.

Anybody who knows this history should understand what we would be dealing with here, and that this hardware does not need to be very complicated. Most of us knew of the Marconi work first, I would venture to say, and that work should show the tinkerer easier ways to do what is discussed here.The first time I tried to use the EM waves to power at distance was in an attempt to make an amplifier that required no battery for operation and was supposed to amplify a crystal detector's AM output signal, using tuned AM circuits detecting a powereful area transmitter to power one of the first cheap audio frequency transistor amplifiers. I'm not certain that I got more than a few dB boost, if that. It wa fun, however.

Yonotan; keep your eyes peeled for short sections of railroad track. They make very good anvils, I've found. BART track, the worse track around for supporting a train, because it is square on top with respect to the flange side, rather than angled with a crown as standard wide gauge track is, would be handy for anvils and fixtures if you ever had the opportunity to obtain a short section. I have not, but have a track section about 14 inches long that is great for metal beating and the like. I have seen some track that was re-ground to have a horn at one end. Just keep your eyes open, for there is much useful stuff out there for very elegant fixturing and solutions for productivity.

I prefer to use a short actuation of the vise and to get the large capacity for width by use of alignment and clamping pegs in holes bored into the bench. This way I don't have to have the jaw reaching far from the bench for some jobs. Of course, some jobs do require that you have the work off the bench, but remember, please, that in many cases you can extend your clamping capacity by having the vise aligned such that the work sits in it at bench surface height, rather than above the bench. Another thing that you can do with very good dowels is to use eccentric bushing cams on bench dowels to clamp work. This is very handy for work that is very large or has non-parallel sides. You can sometimes use a cam in place of very slightly tapered shims for non-parallel clamping.Lastly, I woul…

I prefer to use a short actuation of the vise and to get the large capacity for width by use of alignment and clamping pegs in holes bored into the bench. This way I don't have to have the jaw reaching far from the bench for some jobs. Of course, some jobs do require that you have the work off the bench, but remember, please, that in many cases you can extend your clamping capacity by having the vise aligned such that the work sits in it at bench surface height, rather than above the bench. Another thing that you can do with very good dowels is to use eccentric bushing cams on bench dowels to clamp work. This is very handy for work that is very large or has non-parallel sides. You can sometimes use a cam in place of very slightly tapered shims for non-parallel clamping.Lastly, I would comment that I have some small double screw clamps that I use to clamp work where the two clamping surfaces are not parallel. I note that one of the vises depicted has double screw clamping, and one could extend the concept to 3, 4 or more screws clamping. For these I would urge folk thinking of building such a vise to investigate machine leveling screw pads. These screws have the same sort of foot that C-clamps have, that is, free to tilt or swivel, and in the better ones the foot can be removed and modified. I've used them in many places that had nothing to do with leveling machine shop hardware and found them quite useful. For precision jobs, however, I've made my own that used fine pitch threads.I only wish that life were not so busy during retirement that I seldom now get an opportunity to play with things like this.Oh, a postscript: About 43 years ago a friend showed me a very short travel quick actuator for clamping a long surface where things were pretty well aligned already, but very uniform clamping force was absolutely necessary. He placed a gib and a length of capped flexible tubing between the jaw and a precisely ground bar that he was going to screw onto the fixture in a way that it would be nearly perfectly aligned to an opposite surface with an emprically determined preload. He then pressurized the tubing to force the parts together before clamping down the precision flat piece (using in the tubing X its projected area onto the gib to obtain the uniform clamping force.). One could use something like that for precision bonding setups, I suppose, in cabinetry if it were difficult to make a precise fixture.

The screw-adjusted office chair just might also have a slotted screw with a partial nut that allows one to make a fast vertical sliding adjustment for chair seat height, and then a fine adjustment height before locking. This kind of screw can be the best for rapidly adjusted bench wood vices, for you can quickly change from thin to very thick or from narrow to very wide clamping needs without turning the handle more than one turn. If you have the opportunity, then use that kind. My very best vises have that quick adjustment feature. Also note that one can make vises with rabbited jaws that accept inserts to fit special requirements.

I don't see a great number of Phillips head screws on hardware around here, except for some wood screws and on some electrical components (for which the Phillips head screw was invented, I believe). I'm a great believer in using hex head machine screws (such as cap screws, for example), which are available in inch and metric threads, coarse, fine, extra fine, and some obsolete sizes. I avoid only the relatively weak 6-32 threads in things I design or build (That size has a small root diameter to outside diameter ratio, and is usually used in electrical fixtures where strength is not an issue.) I guess I should add that although I have some size 14 machine screws left over from repairing antique hardware, I'd never design that size into anything new.

I have never used a vee thread split nut clamping device, but I can attest to the fact that Acme thread and truncated Acme thread split nut clamping devices, vises included, can be great labor savers. Remember not to have the split nut on vee threads held by too weak a radial constraint or it might actually jack open the radial restraint. This is a case for using a cam as ThomasK19 suggests, instead of a weak snap ring that locates onto a grooved exterior of the nut.

While I find keywizard's article informative, I take issue with the stated tolerances, and suspect that nobody is producing home locks with tolerances closer than 0.0001 inch (a ten thousandth of an inch), rather than the 0.000001 inch tolerance given ( a millionth of an inch.) As a person who made parts fit in tolerances measured both in ten-thousandths of an inch and in millionths of an inch, I can attest to the differences in cost of manufacturing. I do recall, however, that, starting about 1937, hydraulic lifters for Cadillac V8 engines were manufactured that used gauges that read to the nearest 0.00005 inch, or 50 millionths of an inch. You can buy balls and pins that are matched or round to single digit millionths of an inch, but I suspect they never end up used in these locks, ev…

While I find keywizard's article informative, I take issue with the stated tolerances, and suspect that nobody is producing home locks with tolerances closer than 0.0001 inch (a ten thousandth of an inch), rather than the 0.000001 inch tolerance given ( a millionth of an inch.) As a person who made parts fit in tolerances measured both in ten-thousandths of an inch and in millionths of an inch, I can attest to the differences in cost of manufacturing. I do recall, however, that, starting about 1937, hydraulic lifters for Cadillac V8 engines were manufactured that used gauges that read to the nearest 0.00005 inch, or 50 millionths of an inch. You can buy balls and pins that are matched or round to single digit millionths of an inch, but I suspect they never end up used in these locks, even the more expensive of them.Another comment on some of the cheap locks:Older Master locks that used symmetric keys at one time only used the extreme end to actuate the lock, and the other toothed sections were merely present as gates to prevent the key from turning. Therefore, the mischievous boy who wanted to lock gates open merely filed off all except the last extreme portion of the key to allow it to be turned in those locks. There were several sizes, so one key of each size was required. Some other locks could be blown open with merely a small amount of flash powder poured into the key hole. The blown-open lock was apparently not damage, but merely opened, for they could be locked back on the gate merely by closing again.Some combination locks require a good sensitive feel and just the right tension to discover the numbers when rotating the knob. I've opened several this way when I had forgotten the combo of the long unused lock.

I did this for a high precision machinery job about 26 years ago. I no longer can recall where I might have placed pictures of the hardware, although I do recall that I photographed them (drier setup and cooler/temperature stabilizer) with film. What hardware there is out there today would be different, I suspect. The refrigeration compressors were about 200W, I think, had a significant current surge at start, and had a pressure gauge on the refrigerant line. I can't recall much more specifics on them, other than they were on small vibration isolators, but I added fluid pulse dampers to the pump lines and mechanical damping to the connecting hardware to avoid transmitting detectable vibration to the equipment, and the fan on the compressor with the cooling double-wall tubing connected …

I did this for a high precision machinery job about 26 years ago. I no longer can recall where I might have placed pictures of the hardware, although I do recall that I photographed them (drier setup and cooler/temperature stabilizer) with film. What hardware there is out there today would be different, I suspect. The refrigeration compressors were about 200W, I think, had a significant current surge at start, and had a pressure gauge on the refrigerant line. I can't recall much more specifics on them, other than they were on small vibration isolators, but I added fluid pulse dampers to the pump lines and mechanical damping to the connecting hardware to avoid transmitting detectable vibration to the equipment, and the fan on the compressor with the cooling double-wall tubing connected was always blowing across both the compressor and the first level of heat exchanging hardware. A little bit less compact than the assembly in the instructable associated with this thread, although it had no pressure or vacuum tank directly connected in close proximity to the compressor in the case of both the driers and the temperature control units. Incidentally, one can reroute the line than normally comes straight out of those inexpensive 125 psig - 175 psig home compressors and would usually go into the tank, where water and oil vapor often accumulates by re-routing through a heat exchanger like those used as automotive oil cooling radiators, then to a vapor separating bowl with filter...we used a vane trap, followed by a water vapor trap, followed by an oil vapor absorption trap, all with auto drains. The last trap had an oil saturation indicator to keep any vapor not trapped by saturated media from going downstream. Of course, that required monitoring. Later units had a differential pressure switch on a loop before/after the trap to detect saturation of filter media to signal shutting down when filter was saturated. All components off the shelves of filter suppliers.

I did something a bit different with a refrigerator compressor; the cooling path was used with air only flowing through it at high pressure after running that same air through a simple stainless heat exchanger radiator, such as used in automotive oil cooling. A condensate trap was placed between this device and the refrigerator cooling double wall tube, such that it ran through the outer tube, and thence to air compressor receiving tank. The air with reduced oil vapor content through the cooling loop on the refrigerator compressor, with a thermostat set 4 degrees above freezing. This delivered fairly dry air to the receiving tank, to be more specific about that detail.This gave me very dry air with negligible oil vapor so that air bearing parts would never have condensation between the …

I did something a bit different with a refrigerator compressor; the cooling path was used with air only flowing through it at high pressure after running that same air through a simple stainless heat exchanger radiator, such as used in automotive oil cooling. A condensate trap was placed between this device and the refrigerator cooling double wall tube, such that it ran through the outer tube, and thence to air compressor receiving tank. The air with reduced oil vapor content through the cooling loop on the refrigerator compressor, with a thermostat set 4 degrees above freezing. This delivered fairly dry air to the receiving tank, to be more specific about that detail.This gave me very dry air with negligible oil vapor so that air bearing parts would never have condensation between the surfaces of relative motion. I used another one with the same thermostat setting to cool water, and ran an antifreeze solution through the cooling loop outer tube for better heat conduction that pure water, and added protection against freezing. The water antifreeze solution was pumped by a cheap but efficient pump from WW Granger, and was on a bang on/bang off thermostat control with a two degrees sensitivity, and cooled a sump through a tubing coil immersed in the sump. This is better than a more sensitive setting on a proportional flow valve because there is actually a heat gain with pressure drop through such a valve. I used a second pumped stage from this sump to another sump with the same kind of bang on, bang off valve and a one millidegree F sensitivity diode circuit to control the second sump to plus/minus 2 millidegrees with a variable heat load on the second sump in a 30 degrees variable ambient shirtsleeve environment. This enabled us to control some proprietary hardware that generated heat to a temperature that could be set anywhere from about 24 degrees C to 30 degrees C, but likely could have been set in a much wider range with the same stability, and not use mixing valves with feed-forward servo software, etc. We had considerable thermal mass working for us; perhaps in a circuit with similar heat loads and a negligible thermal mass we would have had a much tougher task.