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

Kenmore 158 Sewing Machine: Hardware Deglaring

The matte mailing labels on the Kenmore 158’s hand hole cover plate did such a good job reducing the glare from the additional LEDs as to make the shiny hardware around the needle seem overly bright. I suggested gentle sandblasting might improve the situation without changing any surfaces in contact with the fabric.

I was given a spare presser foot to demonstrate my case:

Kenmore 158 Presser Foot – original – front

The overhead light in the shop produces glare from the nice, shiny steel surfaces similar to what Mary sees from the sewing machine.

A few minutes applying 220 grit blast media with Tiny Sandblaster™ definitely changed its appearance:

Kenmore 158 Presser Foot – sandblasted – front

In person, the finish is neutral gray overall, with those odd brown areas appearing only in photographs, perhaps due to the various lights in the shop. The slight texture variations seem to correspond to minor differences in the plating (?) over the steel surface. It definitely cuts down the glare:

Kenmore 158 Presser Foot – sandblasted vs original

The needle clamp and screw across the top of that picture travel up and down, so we decided to deglare them along with the “good” foot:

Kenmore 158 – foot with needle clamp – original

Another Tiny Sandblaster™ session knocked back their shine:

Kenmore 158 – foot with needle clamp – sandblasted

Those parts came out slightly less matte, perhaps due to reduced pressure in the propellant can. Seeing as how I’ve had the sandblaster for a couple of decades, I figured it’s time to use the propellant but, as expected, the in-can valve doesn’t re-seal properly, so I’ll be using compressed air the next time around.

After rinsing and blowing and rinsing and blowing the grit out of the threads, everything went back together as expected:

Kenmore 158 – sandblasted hardware installed

I’m not doing either of the plates until we have more experience with the matte hardware, but it looks pretty good to me.

2020-01-06
Car vs. Pole: That Ain’t Gonna Buff Right Out

Spotted at the corner gas station, where they collect wrecks before harvesting their organs:

Car vs Pole

As far as we can tell, the car clipped the pole off at the base, whereupon it smashed down across the roof, leaving the trunk unscathed. The lack of blood on the airbag suggests the driver lived to tell the tale, although we’ll never know the rest of the story.

A collection of random stuff tossed on the back seat included a license plate bent into a surprisingly gentle curve.

Obligatory: And Sudden Death reference.

2020-01-04
Bird Feeder Icing

After a day of snow + sleet + ice, followed by overnight cooling, the bird feeder looked like this:

2019-12-19 – Ice on bird feeder – Day 0

The ice generally doesn’t bond across the top, so the sheets slide off separately to the front and back. This time, they stayed together and began sliding off to the side.

The next two days were unusually cold and the glacier stopped sliding:

2019-12-21 – Ice on bird feeder – Day 2

The temperature warmed enough during the day to let the glacier resume sliding, whereupon it fell and shattered on the patio.

No birds or squirrels were injured during this incident.

2019-12-29
Beware the Unit of Measure

While looking for something else, I stumbled across this Amazon offer (clicky for more dots):

Hammermill Truckload Paper

Yeah, a trailer load a’ paper. Word.

Long ago, in a universe far away, my buddy Mark One mis-read a unit of measure and ended up with a trailer load a’ Tektronix Thermal Paper. It carried a silver-based emulsion requiring constant refrigeration, so he stashed about a pallet of paper canisters under every raised floor on the IBM Poughkeepsie campus. Even though the raised floor acreage has dropped dramatically, some of it may be there to this very day.

2019-12-28
Cheese Slicer: JB Weld Epoxy FTW

The JB Weld epoxy I slathered on our trusty hand-held cheese slicer a year ago continues to withstand daily washing and occasional trips through the dishwasher:

Cheese Slicer JB Weld 1 year – top

The bottom is in fine shape, too:

Cheese Slicer JB Weld 1 year – bottom

Compare it with XTC-3D epoxy, which admittedly isn’t rated for continuous water exposure, after a year:

Cheese Slicer – epoxy coating split

JB Weld FTW!

2019-12-16
Mini-Lathe, Maxi-OD

This came about while tinkering up a shade for a repurposed LED downlight:

PVC fitting – boring setup

It’s a 4 inch DWV pipe coupling I bored out to fit the LED housing, which was ever so slightly larger than the pipe OD.

Cutting it off required as much workspace as the poor little lathe had:

PVC fitting – cutoff setup

Ignore the toolpost handle across the top. What’s important: the cutoff blade poking out of the QCTP, above the orange carriage stop lock lever, extending just far enough to cut through the coupling’s wall before the compound hits the coupling. The compound slide is all the way out against the cross-slide DRO, rotated at the only angle putting the tool where it needs to be and clearing the end of the coupling.

It ended reasonably well:

PVC fitting – LED floor lamp

But, in retrospect, was hideously bad practice. Next time, I’ll make a fixture to hold the fitting on a faceplate.

2019-12-13
American Standard Elite Kitchen Faucet: Spout Bearing Improvement

Removing the failed hot limit stop ring from the kitchen faucet reminded me of a fix I’d done a few months ago. The faucet spout eats the O-rings sealing it to the column rising out of the sink, as evidence by the far-too-many replacements I’ve installed over the years.

The O-ring replacement kit includes a pair of nylon (?) split rings which should provide bearing surfaces for the spout, but the upper ring sits in a groove putting its OD almost flush with the column:

Faucet column

This may be tolerance creep or just a design screwup, but the spout squashes the O-ring much more than (IMO) it should and wears it out entirely too soon.

This time around, I cut a strip of 0.4 mm thick polypropylene (from the Big Box o’ Clamshell Packages) long enough to wrap around the column and narrow enough to fit inside the groove, with the split ring holding it in place. The strip expands the ring’s OD to just barely fit inside the spout, so the spout now bears mostly on the ring, not the O-ring.

Despite measuring the groove OD and the spout ID, I had to cut-and-try several strips to find the proper thickness. Your mileage will certainly differ.

The spout now turns smoothly and freely, without leakage. We’ll see whether the new O-rings last longer than before.

2019-12-08