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?
Ordered 100 stainless steel M3 washers from a “US Seller”, received this:
Yeah, it looked a bit short to me, too.
The chopped and bent washers in the upper right corner suggest the seller got floor sweepings from his source, which is about what you’d expect for a bottom-dollar vendor.
The seller refunded half, which wasn’t particularly generous, but I wasn’t ready to go to the mat for two bucks.
NYS DOT Region 8 Dutchess South recently did enough over-the-rail clearcutting to make Rt 376 bicycle-able from Red Oaks Mill to Maloney Rd!
To the best of our memories and judging from the tree stumps along the rail, it’s been a decade since DOT last clearcut that section; the Japanese Knotweed has definitely taken over since then.
Here’s what the Knotweed looked like in June, just north of Maloney Rd, after a trimming in May:
Now, it’s not nearly so snug out there:
Here’s a slide show starting with Dutchess North’s routine grass mowing in Red Oaks Mill and ending with Dutchess South’s clearcut just north of Maloney Rd:
The Wappinger Creek bridge seems to be a no man’s land between the two Residencies, but we can generally take the lane:
We hope Dutchess South’s over-the-rail maintenance will become an annual event and prevent the brush from taking over again.
After about a month, a replacement for the fallen utility pole arrived:
This is much easier than digging a hole by hand:
Verily, given the right tools, any job becomes do-able:
It was fascinating for me and just another day at the office for everybody else:
They nailed the original pole tag to the new pole, complete with the original 1940 nail:
I expect this pole will outlive me, just as the original pole outlived the folks who built our house.
The most memorable comment came from the person doing the CHG&E damage assessment, who really really wanted this to not be their problem: “Anybody could steal a pole tag and nail it on that pole.” I asked what location their records showed for the pole tag, whereupon the conversation moved on.
Second-place award: no, we were not interested in trenching underground lines 300 feet along the property line, at our expense, to avoid an “unsightly” pole.
For unknown reasons, I was supposed to figure out which telecom utilities had wired the pole, notify them, and wait for them to tack their cables to the new pole. I called both Verizon and Altice / Optimum, got service tickets, and watched them close the tickets without further action. I tried re-opening the Verizon ticket and was told somebody would be there within 48 hours. An Optimum guy showed up, promised a quick return visit from a team with proper equipment, but nothing happened.
I suppose having no customer at the end of the cable removed any motivation to clear their hardware off our lawn, so, after two weeks, I deployed the bolt cutter, rolled up the cables, and scrapped ’em out.
Done!
So this happened when I grabbed an alligator clip lead:
My coax cable and clip lead collection includes everything from “I’ve had it forever” to “Recent cheap crap”, including much of Mad Phil’s collection. Some of the recent crap included Chinese clip leads with what can charitably be described as marginal connections:
The insulation may provide some compliance in the crimp, but the alligator clip itself consists of cheap steel which won’t hold a crimp, even if it was crimped firmly to start with.
As a rule, the crimps aren’t particularly good:
The most obvious effect is high end-to-end resistance:
Yes, yes, 122 Ω in an alligator clip lead is high.
The test setup isn’t particularly intricate:
The lackadaisical crimps also have unstable resistances:
So I figured I may as well repair the lot of ’em.
I stripped the lead back to expose fresh copper, soldered it to the clip, then re-crimped the clip around the insulation for some token strain relief:
I won’t win any soldering awards, but the resistance is way better than before:
If more than half an ohm seems a tad high for a foot of copper wire, you’re right. My slightly magnetized bench screwdriver shows it’s not copper wire:
I’d say it’s copper-plated steel, wouldn’t you?
Those of long memory will recall the non-standard ribbon cable I used as a 60 kHz loop antenna. In this case, the Chinese manufacturer figured nobody would notice or, likely, care. Given the crappy overall quality of the end product, it’s a fair assumption.
I was mildly tempted to replace the wire with good silicone-insulated copper, but came to my senses; those “high voltage” silicone test leads will be Good Enough for higher-current connections.
While I was at it, I pulled apart my entire collection just to see what was inside and fix the ailing ones. These clips date back to the dawn of time, with what started as excellent crimps:
Alas, after I-don’t-know-how-many decades, they’re not longer gas-tight, so I soaked a dollop of solder into each one:
Chekkitout: “Made In Japan”.
Someone, perhaps me wearing a younger man’s clothes or, less likely, Mad Phil in a hurry, solved a similar problem with bigger blobs and no strain relief:
So, now I have a slightly better collection of crappy alligator clip leads. The copper-plated steel wires will eventually fail, but it should become obvious when they do.
Test your clip leads today!
Returning from a long ride, we spotted an unusual sign at the Vassar Farm entrance (clicky for more dots):
Even more unusual was the sight of a matte black MRAP jouncing across the field:
I hadn’t noticed an uptick of the insurgency around here, but I suppose it could happen.
It looks like a Cougar HE 6×6 MRAP on loan from the DLA 1033 Program to the City of Poughkeepsie Police Department. The flat top suggests they dismounted the CROWS gun, which seems a definite step down in no-knock capability.
Some poking around showed the Poughkeepsie Police Department acquired a 107 mm Mortar Carrier some years ago:
The M106 is an impressive hunk of tracked armor, although it seems unsuited for urban warfare and would certainly scuff up the streets pretty badly. I don’t know if they scrapped the M106 in favor of the MRAP.
I’m hoping they don’t collaborate with the Dutchess County Sheriff’s Department to patrol the Rail Trail, even within the City limits.
Spotted along Robinson Lane:
A closer look at the same number of pixels:
The little one way over on the left is definitely having an adventure!
I’d read of goats climbing trees, but never turtles.
I recovered a tool from an intersection during the homeward leg of a bike ride:
The scabbard is a bit the worse for having been run over by traffic, but the knife is still in good shape.
The back of the blade has been well and truly mushroomed:
The blade edge doesn’t have nearly as much damage as you’d (well, I’d) expect from all the hammering on the back and sides:
The molded handle suggests it’s a commercial product, but it has no branding, no maker’s mark, no identification of any kind.
Google Image Search returns useless views of tail lights and rifles. Here, try it for yourself:
I have no idea what it’s used for.
Do you?
[Update: It’s a Bell System Cable-Sheath Splitting Knife, made by Klein Tools. More details in the comments … ]
The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning 