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.

Category: Home Ec

Things around the home & hearth

  • Workbench Drawers vs. Desk Keyboard Tray

    Workbench Drawers vs. Desk Keyboard Tray

    The workbench originally in Mary’s Sewing Room became my new desk, which meant installing my pull-out keyboard / trackball tray in place of its drawers:

    Desk keyboard tray - top view
    Desk keyboard tray – top view

    Which required re-gluing the old wood strips of the side slides to their backing plates, as they’d worked loose over the decades:

    Desk keyboard tray - regluing edge sliders
    Desk keyboard tray – regluing edge sliders

    I drilled & screwed three more threaded wood inserts into the bottom of the bench top to hold brackets (cut from those longsuffering maple library shelves) for the side slides:

    Desk keyboard tray - bottom view
    Desk keyboard tray – bottom view

    The gray angle brackets came from a long-gone (and sorely missed) radial arm saw, hacksawed to fit on either side of the central beam supporting the workbench top, and held with machine screws in those inserts. Yes, the rear bracket has only a single screw, but it doesn’t support much of a load and it’s not going anywhere.

    With that in place, the drawers kicked around the basement for a few weeks and eventually ended up under a workbench that Came With The House™ and was likely built by the original owners half a century ago:

    Desk keyboard tray - workbench drawers installed
    Desk keyboard tray – workbench drawers installed

    The top is made of 2×6 boards, now topped with laminate planks (left over from when I re-floored the previous kitchen), so the 2×6 board in the middle holds the whole top together and is not removable. I conjured strips at the ends to support the drawer assembly:

    Desk keyboard tray - workbench drawers end block
    Desk keyboard tray – workbench drawers end block

    The strips came from the crate around the laser cutter, so they’re made of the cheapest Chinese plywood and entirely suitable for the purpose. The drawers hang from 1/4-20 bolts screwed into tee nuts recessed in the top surface of the strips, with the strips held by deck screws in those benchtop 2×6 planks.

    Yeah, both of those are bodges, but they ought to work just fine.

  • Folding Step Stool Handle Repair

    Folding Step Stool Handle Repair

    It turns out that if you drop a heavy sheet of laminated cardboard in exactly the right spot, you can shear the pot metal handle right off a two-step folding step stool:

    Folding step stool - exposed handle
    Folding step stool – exposed handle

    I mean, it’s just a perfect target:

    Folding step stool - handle detail
    Folding step stool – handle detail

    It was a clean break leaving gritty surfaces ideal for JB Weld epoxy and a clamp:

    Folding step stool - epoxy clamping
    Folding step stool – epoxy clamping

    In truth, using epoxy in tension isn’t a good idea, but this is light duty and the repair ought to be good for a while.

    Now, as to why I was standing on a two-step ladder fiddling with a heavy sheet of laminated cardboard, that story must wait for a while …

  • Tub Re-Caulking

    Tub Re-Caulking

    Every tub & shower looks like this after a decade or so:

    Old tub caulk
    Old tub caulk

    Go look carefully at your bathroom if you don’t believe me.

    Tubs have a raised lip around their perimeter, but our downstairs bathroom had a caulk crack that routed water running down the wall under the tile, over the lip, and onto the subfloor beside the tub. This had been going on unnoticed for years, but we apparently take showers differently enough to put a puddle of water on the basement floor.

    Some exploratory surgery revealed a patch of rotted subfloor (which is why we know it was an ongoing problem), but no structural damage. A few hours of tedious razor knife and hook work extracted the old caulk, after which squirting new caulk took almost no time at all:

    New tub caulk
    New tub caulk

    I screwed a small fan across the subfloor opening to pull air across the wet area:

    Subfloor fan drying
    Subfloor fan drying

    A few days dried things out nicely, so I can proceed with a project involving the adjacent shower stall, about which more later.

    They don’t install drain pipes like that any more! Judging from the many scorch marks on the joists, the plumber had considerable difficulty keeping enough heat on the fittings for good solder joints.

  • 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 …

  • 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.

  • LED Light Switch: FAIL

    LED Light Switch: FAIL

    As a temporary expedient while awaiting more outlets in the basement, I screwed several hundred watts of LED strip lighting to the floor joists so I could see where I was going:

    First pass at basement lighting
    First pass at basement lighting

    The switch seemed to run warm, which I attributed to being snuggled up against one of the LED strips, eventually became intermittent, and finally failed with the lights out.

    Prying apart the snapped-together case destroyed it, but that didn’t really matter when I saw the innards:

    T8 LED power switch
    T8 LED power switch

    The “intermittent” action came from the melted post on the switch actuator at the top of the photo. The “warm” came from the barely crimped black wire on the right side of the switch, which *might* have had half a dozen strands caught in the flattened crimp triangles.

    I replaced it with an identical switch from the assortment that came with the lamps. That one seems to run cooler, although I doubt the crimps are really up to any reasonable quality standards.

    In addition to adding basement outlets & lighting circuits, the rest of the house has some electrical wiring peculiarities; the kitchen microwave really shouldn’t share a circuit with the dining room lights.