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.
Who’d’a thunk it?
This just arrived (clicky for more dots):
I’m not sure how many folks will drop 1.1 large in response to that mailing, but surely it doesn’t take very many to break even. Whew!
If I’m parsing the New York Times signup page correctly, an annual daily subscription delivered here in the hinterlands will set you back a mere $691, direct from the Official Source.
We finally took the trip to Bannerman’s Island Arsenal:
Back in the day, the only way you could get there was by kayak and that just isn’t my style. Nowadays, the Bannerman Castle Trust runs weekend tour boats and that I can do.
The view from the dock:
All the pictures you’ll see of the buildings look the basically the same, because you cannot get off the tour route:
Of course, that fine might be irrelevant after they dig you out from under the rubble.
Struts hold the fragile walls in place, but it’s not long for this world:
You can tell that Frank Bannerman got exactly what he wanted in the way of architecture; the buildings bear an uncanny resemblance to his “make it look like this” sketches. In the normal course of a design-and-build project, somebody in the loop will suggest that, mmmm, Boss, you can’t actually build it that way. In this case, the normal course of events went along the lines of “Sir? Yes, Sir!”
Money changes everything.
Their summer house sits dead center in the island with a commanding view of the Hudson to the south. Again, you can tell it looked just exactly like he wanted:
The natural state of Pollepel Island was barren rock; they hauled in all the soil when Mrs. Bannerman wanted flower gardens around the house.
That crack in the northwest tower can’t possibly be a Good Thing:
Back in late 2005, the castle looked marginally better:
That was from a small boat in the middle of the Hudson.
In the unlikely event you’re in the area, take the trip: it’s worthwhile just to see what one man’s obsession looks like. Wear one more layer than you think necessary, put on your lug-soled boots, and realize that nobody’s going to visit the ruins of your summer house a century from now…
A praying mantis appeared along the top of the living room windows:
They’re ferocious hunters and we’re in favor of them… but having them on the outside of the window works better for all of us.
Those old Anderson windows seem to attract big critters…
The rules for disposing of latex paint around here require that it be “dried with sawdust”, whatever that means. Over the years we’ve accumulated quite a lot of latex paint, in addition to a rich stockpile that Came With The House™, and I simply don’t have that much sawdust.
Since they don’t seem to object to dried latex paint, I made a drying tub by stapling aluminum flashing around a stand that used to hold a water heater off the basement floor, lined it with heavy plastic, and started pouring latex paint into it:
After a year of intermittently dumping paint, that solid latex cookie must be two inches thick and I suppose it’s time to toss the first batch.
For what it’s worth, I discovered that storing paint cans upside down doesn’t guarantee that the paint remains fresh. This can had a solid latex cookie against the lid, with plenty of corrosion to go around:
The coagulated paint above the latex cookie was as horrible as you might expect.
Memo to Self: just throw it out, OK?
The soil temperature near the base of the bird box, under a few inches of chipped leaf mulch, shows the expected trend for the growing season, but there’s a weird bump in mid-October:
The NWS temperature summary confirms the anomaly, with the DEP column giving the departure from the historic average:
DY MAX MIN AVG DEP ================== 1 65 58 62 5 2 72 58 65 9 3 73 49 61 5 4 65 51 58 2 5 62 40 51 -4 6 70 38 54 -1 7 76 52 64 10 8 74 52 63 9 9 70 44 57 4 10 63 37 50 -3 11 56 44 50 -3 12 63 35 49 -3 13 63 37 50 -2 14 78 59 69 17 15 79 69 74 23 16 72 53 63 12 17 73 52 63 13 18 68 50 59 9 19 56 33 45 -5 20 61 30 46 -4 21 57 48 53 4 22 53 50 52 3 23 52 48 50 2 24 59 41 50 2 25 66 34 50 2 26 58 43 51 3 27 64 38 51 4 28 73 38 56 9 29 68 42 55 8
The precipitation record shows over an inch of rain in those four days, so that weather probably blew in from the south.
I hauled the Kenmore 158 sewing machine and controller to a Squidwrench meeting for some current measurements (and, admittedly, showing it off) while schmoozing. After hauling it home and setting it up on my bench again, it didn’t work: the motor didn’t run at all.
While doing the usual poking around under the cover, I spotted this horrifying sight:
The brown insulation tells you that’s a hot wire from the AC line and, in fact, it’s coming directly from the line fuse; it’s live whenever the plug is in.
It’s a stranded wire to allow flexing without breaking, but that same flexibility allows it to squeeze its way out of a tightly fastened screw terminal. In principle, one should crimp a pin on the wire, but the only pins in my heap don’t quite fit along the screw terminal block.
This sort of thing is why I’m being rather relentless about building a grounded, steel-lined box with all the pieces firmly mounted on plastic sheets and all the loose ends tucked in. If that wire had gone much further to the side or top, it would have blown the fuse when it tapped the steel frame. The non-isolated components on that board are facing you, with those connections as far from the terminal block as they can be.
Engineers tend to be difficult to live with, because we have certain fixed ways of doing things that are not amenable to debate. There’s probably a genetic trait involved, but we also realize that being sloppy can kill you rather quickly; the universe is not all about pink unicorns and rainbows.
In fact, the universe wants you dead.
Now, go play with those goblins and zombies tonight…
Memo to Self: Tighten those terminals every now and again. A wire will come loose shortly after you forget to do that, of course.
Just to show all those precisely machined enclosures and tidy hand-wired boards don’t count for much:
The schematic again:
It started with that idea and evolved slightly.
The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning 