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

Bypass Lopper

Some surreptitious brush clearing called for a tool larger than our wonderful Fiskars PowerGear pruner, so I unearthed a long-disused bypass lopper in the garage (it may have Come With The House). Alas, the pivot bolt lost its jam nut long ago:

Bypass loppers – OEM 10 mm bolt

That’s an M10x1.5 bolt, for which I lack a corresponding nut.

But 3/8-16 is approximately M10x1.5, for small values of thread engagement, and I do have an assortment of inch-sized stainless steel fasteners:

Bypass loppers – 0.375 inch bolt

The nylon lock nut jams the bolt against the left blade, with the split washer applying pressure to the tapered blade. Slobbering oil in the sliding joints restored it to perfect working order.

The weird round dingus on the far side of the pivot, up against the handles, is a bumper cushioning the fully closed position. It’s a nice touch and might work better if its rubber pad hadn’t aged out over the decades spent in the garage waiting for this very day.

It’s my kind of yard work: “What do you need killed next?”

2018-07-07
Monthly Science: Calibrated Bottle

Mary used to mix up her oil-and-vinegar dressing using a measuring cup, then she drew markings on the bottle, then I added tidy labels:

Calibrated Oil-and-Vinegar bottle

The labels align with her process: she adds ½ C oil first, then ¼ C vinegar, then various other ingredients. The liquids swirl around, sort themselves out, and it’s all good.

Surprisingly, the labels survived uncounted dishwasher adventures.

2018-07-01
Summer Downshift

We have several high-intensity / long-attention-span home projects scheduled this summer, all of which will keep me away from the Basement Laboratory.

We’re OK, all is right with our world, but painting rooms and yard maintenance always take way more time than they should, while having close to zero intellectual content.

Like, for example, the result of a strenuous morning devoted to removing a severely overgrown holly bush:

Mother of All Holly Bush Stumps

I’ll post odd & ends a few times a week until maybe mid-August, whereupon I should get back to more usual pursuits.

Enjoy your downtime …

2018-06-12
Subaru Forester Relamping

Prompted by RCP’s battery misadventure, I replaced a handful of the Forester’s incandescent bulbs:

Subaru Forester 2015 – replaced bulbs

Despite what look like “squeeze here” markings, you must push the license plate bulb holders toward the center of the car:

Subaru Forester 2015 – license plate bulb holders

They were both stuck firmly to the trim plate, so I braced a screwdriver against the outboard edge of the trim panel, after which it becomes obvious how pressing inward compresses the (plastic) spring clip so you can pull the outward side of the holder away from the hatch.

Casual searching turned up a bunch of exceedingly helpful advice for anyone DIY-ing through a Forester.

The bulbs with conical ends, known as “festoon” lamps, (unsurprisingly) come in several lengths. The Forester bulbs are about 25 mm long, (unsurprisingly) much shorter than the 31 mm LEDs that seem to be the smallest available replacements, but (surprisingly) the socket tabs have barely enough compliance for the extra half dozen millimeters:

Subaru Forester 2015 – dome with 31 mm festoon LED bulb

The LEDs are much much much brighter than the incandescents, although I’d prefer warm white to cool white. The cargo compartment lamp in the back is still way too dim; I don’t understand how Subaru decided on a plastic cover tinted dark smoke gray.

All in all, a worthwhile upgrade!

I wonder how long they’ll last? I have one spare of each type …

2018-06-11
Mint Extract: The Beginning

Mary harvested a great bunch of spearmint from a place where it wouldn’t be missed and, after rinsing, plucking, and chopping, we now have a liter of Mint Extract in the making:

Mint Extract – start – 2018-05-29

The big jars got 3 oz of coarse-chopped leaves apiece, the smaller jar 1 oz, and the (removed) stems added up to 3.5 oz, so call it 1/3 waste. Not that this is an exact science, but I’d say 3/4 pound of just-picked mint, packed slightly tighter than those jars, would produce a liter of extract.

Because we started with fresh-picked leaves, a liter of 190 proof = 95% ethanol Everclear (*) will extract the oil better than the 80 proof = 40% ethanol vodka I used for dried vanilla beans.

A day later, the leaves definitely look dehydrated:

Mint Extract – browning leaves – 2018-05-30

Those bottles are lying on their sides with the camera above, looking through the air bubble to the leaves. Unlike commercial mint extract, this stuff is green!

It’ll be finished after a month of daily agitation, but surely it’s an exponential process: a few hundred μl already pep up a mug o’ cocoa just fine.

In very round numbers, I get 10 drops / 0.1 ml, so 1 drop = 10 μl.

Bonus: the cutting board smells wonderful.

(*) It may be Olde White Guy Privilege, but clerks don’t even blink when I stagger up to the counter clutching a bottle of high-octane hooch; they don’t even card my age!

2018-06-07
Mower Blade Standardization, Lack Thereof

The blade from our current Craftsman mower is on the right:

Sears Craftsman mower blades

The other two came from our previous Craftsman mowers.

Stipulated: Sears sources their mowers from various suppliers, but it’d be great if everybody could agree on a single blade mount and be done with it.

Obligatory XKCD.

For the record, a 5/8 inch socket works fine. One could surely use a 16 mm socket in a pinch.

Wear leather gloves to prevent a nasty gash from the stamped-steel muffler shroud as you pull the sparkle plug cap to avoid an absolutely impossible engine startup while you’re wrenching under the deck.

Replace the air cleaner while you’re at it.

2018-05-27
Kenmore 158: First Needle LED Failure

The first white LED fixture built to illuminate one of Mary’s Kenmore 158 sewing machines has been in regular use for the last four years:

Kenmore 158 Sewing Machine – mixed LED lighting

We never found a good time to rip-and-replace the “prototype” with brighter SMD LEDs and one of the LEDs finally gave up.

They’re 10 mm white LEDs with five chips wired in parallel, which is obvious when you look into the remaining LED running at 1 mA:

10 mm white LED – chips

The center chip is just dimmer than the others, which means their QC doesn’t tightly control the forward voltage spec.

The wire bonds on the anode terminal of the failed LED look a bit sketchy:

10 mm white LED – wire bonds

Fortunately, I hadn’t removed the 120 VAC wiring for the original bulb and I have two OEM bulbs from other machines, so I just removed my LED gimcrackery, installed a good old incandescent bulb, and she’s back to sewing with a pleasantly warm machine.

The fixture holding the LEDs broke apart as I extracted it, but it’ll never be used again:

10 mm white LED – fixture

The LEDs are rated at 3.5 V and 200 mA (!), but were reasonably bright in series from a 6 V unregulated supply. Perhaps a power glitch killed the poor thing? We’ll never know.

LEDs are reputed to have lifetimes in the multiple tens of thousands of hours, but I’ve seen plenty of failed automotive LEDs and fancy new LED streetlights out there, not to mention many dead and dying traffic signals. Seeing as how they’re in (presumably) well-engineered fixtures with good power supplies and are at most only a few years old, there shouldn’t be any failures yet.

2018-05-23