Stories of family, creativity, and diverse distractions.

Author: Walt Page 5 of 12

Shop Tip: Mark the Top Side of the Case

When I got a new cordless drill, I splurged and bought an accessory kit for it. The kit had a set of drills, a couple sets of screwdriver bits, a quick change countersink/driver gizmo, and some other stuff. It was pretty nice, except for one thing that made it really annoying: the case.

A Cool Old Tool – The Unbrako Socket Screw Calculator

A good friend found an old toolbox on a property he purchased. He gifted me some of the contents, and one of the items was this neat old “Unbrako Socket Screw Calculator”. If you have really sharp eyes, you might have seen it sitting in the lid of my toolbox in this post. It’s a very simple device that provides a machinist with all the measurements they’d need regarding socket screws. Let’s take a closer look.

Another of My Favorite Tools: Layout Fluid

We’ve all heard “measure twice, cut once”, right? But if you don’t mark the measurement, you might as well not bother measuring at all.

To mark wood, you could use chalk, or a pencil. But those don’t work very well on metal. You need something more precise. You need a scriber, and layout fluid.

Belated Congratulations to Dave Wulatin!

McSweeney’s has now published two articles by Dave. That’s pretty exciting!

It’s Time For The Sweet Corn Festival!

This weekend is the West Point Sweet Corn Festival! Sadly, I won’t be able to get back for it, but the Sweet Corn Festival holds a lot of fond memories, not just for my family but for just about everyone in the area.

What Is Your Favorite Outdoor Place, and Why?

As some of you may know, I work at the local REI store, selling camping equipment. When you hire on at REI, they ask you to name your favorite outdoor place, and they have it engraved on your name tag, below your name. The other people in my hire group were naming off all the big-name, big-deal destinations. You had Yellowstone, The Grand Canyon, The Smokies, and so on.

When it came my turn, I didn’t have a good answer. I’d never been to the places the other folks mentioned, though I wanted to see them all.

Double Your Pleasure, Double your… um… steam?

As a maker, I see faults in the things I made that nobody else will ever notice. Awhile back I posted about a steam engine I built. I learned a lot, and I was really pleased that it ran well. But as always, I saw the faults, and I wanted to make another, better attempt.

A Difference of Nine Days

Springtime utterly transforms the forest. The colors shift from browns to greens, and the silence is shattered by the sounds of birds, insects, and frogs. The air is redolent with the scents of a hundred species of flower. It’s an amazing change, and it happens quite rapidly.

This spring I was fortunate enough to do two backpacking trips, nine days apart. I had taken some pictures on the first trip, and I though it would be fun to take a new set of the same shots on the second trip, just to compare.

A Big Project For A Small Lathe

My lathe is rated at a seven inch swing, meaning that it can accommodate a piece of metal 7″ in diameter. You could maybe mount something that big somehow, and it would be able to rotate. But you couldn’t get a cutting tool to reach the outside diameter of the piece. In truth, the lathe really can’t work over about 5″.

A friend of mine is a cigar afficionado, and smokes outside on his patio. He was lamenting that he needed a better ashtray. He wanted an ashtray with wide enough grooves to accommodate a fat cigar. It must stay on the table even in high winds. And it had to look “industrial”.

Why I Like Owning A Machine Shop, Reason # 52,372

One of the things I really like about owning a machine shop is that it lets me find creative solutions to difficult problems. And often along the way I find myself forced to find creative solutions to new problems that crop up while solving the first problem! Today’s project provided a little of both.

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