The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning

Ed Nisley's Blog: Shop notes, electronics, firmware, machinery, 3D printing, laser cuttery, and curiosities. Contents: 100% human thinking, 0% AI slop.

Author: Ed

  • Tour Easy Coolback Seat Restringing

    Tour Easy Coolback Seat Restringing

    The Kevlar cord on Mary’s bike survived the crash without breaking, but it was badly scuffed and holding on by only a few strands. Unlike in years gone by, Kevlar cord is now cheap & readily available, so I decided to restring the thing:

    Tour Easy - seat cord - restrung
    Tour Easy – seat cord – restrung

    The cord path isn’t at all obvious, even given the smudges on the seat struts:

    Tour Easy - seat mesh removed
    Tour Easy – seat mesh removed

    Pictures of the original cord as installed at the Easy Racers “factory” served as guidance:

    Tour Easy - seat cord - front view
    Tour Easy – seat cord – front view
    Tour Easy - seat cord - side view
    Tour Easy – seat cord – side view
    Tour Easy - seat cord - rear view
    Tour Easy – seat cord – rear view
    Tour Easy - seat cord - bottom detail
    Tour Easy – seat cord – bottom detail

    The knots joining the cord at the top, taken juuust before I pulled the right knot apart:

    Tour Easy - seat cord - knots
    Tour Easy – seat cord – knots

    Those are in addition to my Tour Easy a few feet away, but you can never have enough pictures.

    A 3.5 meter cord will be plenty long enough and marking the midpoint simplifies equalizing the two sides. The cord crosses the seat frame at the bottom from the lower guides, although I’m reasonably sure it wouldn’t matter if you ran separate lengths up the two sides with a knot in the lower guide.

    The new cord claims to be 1000 pound test (200 pound working), but the vital dimension is its 2.6 mm diameter to match the OEM cord. It does not claim to be UV stabilized, which may turn out to be a problem over the course of a few years.

    Tightening the cord proceeded as before and a test ride indicated the installation was all good.

  • 3-In-One Motor Oil: Mystery Inclusions

    3-In-One Motor Oil: Mystery Inclusions

    Our new-to-us house included a heavy-duty basement dehumidifier with a blower motor calling for a few drops of SAE 20 oil twice a year. Some searching turned up a specialized flavor of 3-In-One Oil for motors.

    It arrived with free inclusions:

    3-in-One Motor Oil - top inclusion
    3-in-One Motor Oil – top inclusion

    Backlighting makes them more obvious:

    3-in-One Motor Oil - top inclusion - backlit
    3-in-One Motor Oil – top inclusion – backlit

    There’s also a free-floating jellyfish slightly denser than the oil:

    3-in-One Motor Oil - bottom inclusion - backlit
    3-in-One Motor Oil – bottom inclusion – backlit

    As is now the typical case with Amazon purchases, the only choices are to return / exchange the item, as the seller cannot be contacted directly. I tried sending 3-In-One a question through their website, en passant discovering they’ve been Borged by The WD-40 Company, only to be rejected by the site’s Captcha without ever seeing the test images.

    AFAICT, it’s oil and the motor will just have to get used to it.

  • Mailbox Post Repair

    Mailbox Post Repair

    One doorbell ding came from a guy who sheepishly admitted he had just collided with our mailbox, which sits on the outside of a gentle curve and sticks out, IMO, a bit too far into the street.

    This not being my first time in this rodeo, I allowed as how if he’d replace whatever broke, I’d do the fixing and it’d be all good. As it turned out, the only broken part was the foamed-plastic post, which split neatly along its length around the crosspiece hole. After looking things over, I said I’d just epoxy it together and call it done.

    That afternoon, I mixed up a generous cup of the casting epoxy I’d been using for coasters and suchlike. It is now well past its best-used-by date and somewhat cloudy, but I figured it would suffice for the purpose; nobody will notice cloudy epoxy on a mailbox post.

    I have Too. Many. Clamps. and know how to use them:

    Mailbox post repair
    Mailbox post repair

    He departed, quite literally in tears, over my not raking him through the coals. I figured anybody who’d stop and admit to property damage needed encouragement, not chastisement, and replacing the headlight on his pickup would be more than enough punishment.

    That was easy.

  • Drop-leaf Table Repair

    Drop-leaf Table Repair

    An old antique drop-leaf table serves as a plant stand and time reference:

    Drop leaf table - in use
    Drop leaf table – in use

    While adjusting the clock for Daylight Saving Time, one of the folding leaves … folded, dumping the clock on the floor.

    It turns out the latches holding the leaves in place have been repaired / replaced many times since the table left the factory:

    Drop leaf table - random latches
    Drop leaf table – random latches

    I’m certain the latch in the upper right came from my father’s hands.

    Although it’s an antique, it’s not a priceless antique, so I had no compunction about drilling out the wood screw holes, installing metric threaded inserts, and converting all the screws to M4 button heads:

    Drop leaf table - wood insert
    Drop leaf table – wood insert

    That’s a brad-point bit intended to produce clean-sided flat-bottom holes (modulo a triangular pit from the tip) exactly right for screwing an insert all the way down. The table top just barely fit on the drill press, so I could set the depth stop to make the answer come out right every time.

    A dot of low-strength threadlocker keeps the screws from turning, although the table has pretty much reached a steady state these days.

    That was easy …

  • Novus Polish vs. Fairing Fragment

    Novus Polish vs. Fairing Fragment

    A fairing fragment provided an excuse to practice plastic polishing:

    Fairing polish - start
    Fairing polish – start

    That’s from a EZR-SZ Zzipper fairing ridden about 2000 miles a year since 2001, so it’s spent far too much time in the sun and definitely not gotten all the finicky care it deserves. It’s tinted 60 mil polycarbonate, vacuum-molded into the bubble shape required to fit on a Tour Easy recumbent.

    Fairing Flashlight Mount - Mary approaching
    Fairing Flashlight Mount – Mary approaching

    On the other paw, Karl Abbe (the guy behind Zzipper) says the typical fairing survives maybe half a decade, so it doesn’t owe us anything.

    I applied all three bottles of Novus Plastic Polish in descending numeric order, using snippets of Official Polish Mates (which could be a Krakow escort service) with a vigorous circular motion, ending up with a reasonable result:

    Fairing polish - transmission
    Fairing polish – transmission

    I cut the smaller chunk from the fairing for comparison. It’s been washed to dislodge loose crud, but is otherwise as-ridden.

    The fairing has deeper scratches than Novus can buff out, but removing the surface scuffs and haze definitely improves the clarity:

    Fairing polish - clarity
    Fairing polish – clarity

    The view from father away:

    Fairing polish - clarity
    Fairing polish – clarity

    Eks describes this sort of thing as a “Used Car Finish” = high polish over deep scratches:

    Fairing polish - surface finish
    Fairing polish – surface finish

    All in all, a nice result from very little effort.

    The canonical Novus Polish application is removing the haze from plastic headlight covers, but our decade-old Forester is a garage queen and the headlights remain in fine shape.

  • Sump Pump Tether Switch Harvest

    Sump Pump Tether Switch Harvest

    The basement curtain drain sump pits contained two ancient sump pumps badly in need of replacement, so I got to find out what made their tethered switch floats rattle like that.

    Having recently stood up the Main Workbench with its big vise, I could saw without compunction:

    Sump pump tether switch - sawing
    Sump pump tether switch – sawing

    Which revealed an ordinary snap-action switch:

    Sump pump tether switch - opened
    Sump pump tether switch – opened

    Further sawing exposed the rattler:

    Sump pump tether switch - parts
    Sump pump tether switch – parts

    Those 1 inch steel balls now nestle in the Big Box o’ Bearings and I’m sure the snap-action switches will come in handy for something.

  • AI Artistry

    AI Artistry

    My techie news feed spat out a reference to an AI text-to-image generator, so I figured I’d try it out.

    The caption is the prompt producing the image, with the style in parentheses …

    steam engine black and white engraving full page detailed
    steam engine black and white engraving full page detailed (art)

    Much wheel! Such hinge! Crazy piston! Also, where do the red cowcatcher and amber headlight come from in a “black and white engraving”?

    diesel engine black and white detailed
    diesel engine black and white detailed (photorealistic)

    Well, it is an “engine”.

    diesel engine black and white detailed
    diesel engine black and white detailed (anime)

    Now, that is a manly engine, but with red widgets.

    steam boiler black and white engraving full page detailed
    steam boiler
    black and white engraving full page detailed (anime)

    It has the appearance of an old catalog page, until you look closely.

    OK, let’s try for some wildlife …

    pileated woodpecker line drawing, black and white, on tree
    pileated woodpecker line drawing, black and white, on tree (art)

    So. Many. Legs.

    stained glass window bird motif
    stained glass window bird motif (photorealistic)

    Not bad. Not bad at all.

    coloring book chickadee on twig
    coloring book chickadee on twig (art)

    Chickadees seem like relentlessly cheerful little birds, but that oddly spherical critter is definitely having a hard time.

    phoebe sketch, black and white, detailed, full frame
    phoebe sketch, black and white, detailed, full frame (art)

    Oops.

    phoebe bird sketch, black and white, detailed, full frame
    phoebe bird sketch, black and white, detailed, full frame (art)

    That must be a mil-spec phoebe, because it definitely doesn’t resemble any phoebe I’ve ever seen.

    Bottom line: Although the pictures are much better drawn than I can do, the (in)accuracy of the content prevents it from solving any problems I have.