Archive for category Home Ec
Layout Pen For Black Objects
Posted by Ed in Home Ec, Machine Shop, Recumbent Bicycling on 2017-07-18
This worked surprisingly well to lay out black foam gaskets for new fairing mounting plates:
Black foam layout with ceramic fabric pen
Mary uses the Fons & Porter Mechanical Pencil to mark quilting patterns on fabric. It has, they say, a “strong ceramic 0.9MM white lead” with “water-soluble dyes” capable of both laying down a durable mark and washing out without leaving a trace. I don’t care about the latter, of course, but it did brush off reasonably well.
The next step involved running an X-Acto knife around the perimeter of the plate and punching the holes.
You can get colored ceramic leads (for small values of color) for use on other backgrounds.
Amazon EK3211 Scale: Re-Footing
Posted by Ed in Home Ec, Machine Shop on 2017-07-09
Our long-suffering kitchen scale lost a pair of feet, most likely because those two feet do most of the skidding as we slide it onto a shelf below a cabinet. The scale has (well, had) six silicone rubber feet:
Amazon EK3211 Scale – OEM foot
The vagaries of color photography turned a neutral-gray silicone disk into that weird blue.
A pair of ¼ inch disks punched from non-skid textured rubber tape fit perfectly into the recesses:
Amazon EK3211 Scale – tread foot
Now, we’ll see how tread adhesive withstands the same abuse.
Drying Rack Re-Repair
Posted by Ed in Home Ec, Machine Shop on 2017-07-08
Despite having sworn a mighty oath to the contrary, I found myself doing this again:
Clothes Rack – end clamp
A strut on the other end of the dowel split across its face:
Clothes Rack – split clamp
The white stuff is wood-filled epoxy, normally used to repair rotted wood, left over from another project. I’ll claim this tests its mechanical strength against peeling forces.
Easily determined by inspection: a sensible person would toss the rack, but …
Mailing Tube End Caps: Screw-in Version
Posted by Ed in Home Ec, Machine Shop, Software on 2017-06-26
The mailing tube arrived with contents intact, although the USPS inlet scanning didn’t work and the tube pretty much teleported across several states without leaving any tracking data behind. The recipient suggested several modifications to the caps:
Review of user experience of tube end:
The ribs on the endcap are very good at holding the cap on, so much so that I had to use a prying implement to remove it, which cracked the flange.
Would consider less depth on the cap, and possibly another layer on the flange.
Some continuous process improvement (a.k.a OpenSCAD hackage) produced a swoopy threaded cap with thumb-and-finger grips:
Mailing Tube Screw Cap – top – Slic3r
The finger grips are what’s left after stepping a sphere out of the cap while rotating it around the middle:
Mailing Tube Cap – finger grip construction
That worked out surprisingly well, with the deep end providing enough of a vertical-ish surface to push against.
The two hex holes fit a pin wrench, because the grips twist only one way: outward. The wrench eliminates the need for a flange, as you can now adjust the cap insertion before slathering packing tape over the ends. Man, I loves me some good late binding action!
A three-start thread seemed like overkill, but was quick & easy. The “thread form” consists of square rods sunk into the cap perimeter, with one edge sticking out:
Mailing Tube Cap – thread detail
They’re 1.05 times longer than the cap perimeter facets to make their ends overlap, although they’re not tapered like the ones in the broom handle dingus, because it didn’t (seem to) make any difference to the model’s manifoldhood.
Not needing any endcaps right now, I built one for show-n-tell:
Threaded mailing tube end cap – installed
The OpenSCAD source code as a GitHub Gist:
Handbag Strap Rivet Repair
Posted by Ed in Home Ec, Machine Shop on 2017-06-25
One of the leather strap anchors on Mary’s giant haul-everything-to-a-concert(*) handbag pulled its rivet through the canvas fabric:
Handbag – pulled-through rivet
We knotted the strap around the zippered opening and completed the mission.
Of course, it wouldn’t have pulled through if they’d splurged on washers, but noooo too expensive:
Handbag – intact rivet – inside
Some rummaging produced a pan-head M3 screw of suitable length:
Handbag – repaired – outside
A slightly battered acorn nut was a special treat for the inside, with another washer to keep me happy:
Handbag – repaired – inside
That was easy!
(*) At Tanglewood, where they don’t strip-search you on the way in, tow-behind coolers seemed de rigueur, and a good time was had by all.
Why Electricity Won
Spotted this impressive array at an apartment building:
Gas meter array
That’s just for one wing; the other end of the building has a similar installation. Each apartment has an electric stove and gas heat / AC.
The plumbing!
Yellowbook Do-Not-Deliver Delivery Option
Last summer I followed the procedure that should turn off (one of) the ersatz “Yellow Pages” directories littering our driveway.
This just arrived:
YellowBook Do-Not-Deliver Delivery
Seeing as how they have the wrong town in my address, there’s still another excuse available.
My guess: they’re paid by tonnage of books delivered and have a powerful incentive to continue delivering all of them, no matter what gets in the way.
You absolutely cannot make this stuff up.
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