The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning
Ed Nisley's Blog: shop notes, electronics, firmware, machinery, 3D printing, and curiosities
Growing and sometimes fixing
Mary persuaded the squash vine to run along the top of the garden fence, where it would get good sun, stay out from underfoot, and produce what we call aerosquash:
That bright green spot is a misplaced tree frog:
Well, maybe it’s the same frog we’ve seen elsewhere; it’s hard to tell with tree frogs.
Not everything green is froglike, though:
That one got dealt with … harshly.
An old brass hose nozzle emerged from my garden hydraulics toolbox when a much newer plastic nozzle failed. Unfortunately, this one leaked a bit too much to serve as a replacement, so I grabbed it in the vise while pondering how to disassemble it:
It turns out the knurled ring is threaded into the nozzle and, even at this late date, responds well to gentle persuasion with a Vise-Grip:
The washer is a lost cause, but I managed to find an O-ring that fit perfectly in the space available. Clearing some crud around the nozzle hole and buffing up the matching conical section improved its sealing ability, so I’ll call it a win.
The word ITALY stamped opposite CHAMPION suggests this thing might be as old as I am; it’s been a while since either brass or Italy was competitive in the world of cheap manufactured goods.
Mary decided the second round of sticky traps had collected enough Onion Maggot Flies (and other detritus) to warrant replacement, so this season will have three sets of cards.
The two sides of each card after about a month in the garden:
There are many flies that look (to me) like Onion Maggot Flies, in contrast with the first round of cards which had far fewer flies after about six weeks in the bed.
Some could be Cabbage Maggot Flies, but my fly ID hand is weak.
One of the frames screwed to a fence post suffered a non-fatal mishap, so I made and deployed a seventh trap. We’re pretty sure the garden has enough flies to go around.
It seems two months of sunlight will fade laser charred MDF down to its original state:
That’s through a thick layer of indoor urethane sealant slathered over MDF without any surface prep. Obviously, not removing the char had no effect on the outcome. On the upside, the urethane did a great job of protecting the MDF from rainfall.
So. Back to the shop.
Lacking wider masking tape, two strips of tape laid along a cut-to-suit slab of fresh MDF will serve as a paint mask:
Belatedly I Learned: cut the tape close to the edge, then fold it under so the autofocus pen can’t possibly snag it en passant.
Shoot the entire surface with a couple of black enamel rattlecan coats:
Yes, the engraved areas look reddish, most likely due to another complete lack of surface prep. Perhaps brushing / vacuuming / washing would remove some of the char, but let’s see how it behaves with no further attention.
Peel the tape, weed the letters / antlers, slather on a coat of urethane, and it looks downright bold:
Of course, if those two tape strips don’t exactly abut, the paint produces a nasty line:
Should you overlap the strips a wee bit to ensure cleanliness, the engraved surface will then have a noticeable (in person, anyhow) discontinuity due to the laser losing energy in two tape layers, which wouldn’t matter in this application. We defined the few paint lines as Good Enough™ for the purpose; a strip of absurdly wide masking tape is now on hand in anticipation of future need.
Burnishing the tape might have prevented paint bleed around the engraved areas:
But, given that I was painting raw / unfinished MDF with an unsmooth surface, burnishing probably wouldn’t produce a significantly better outcome.
By popular request, the new signs sit a few grids lower on the gates:
Perhaps these will outlast the garden season …
Early in the irrigation season, Mary turned on a DripWorks Micro-Flow Valve, only to have the knob + stem pop out and release a stream of water in the wrong place. Mary jammed it back in place until I could chop out the offending valve and install a known-clear replacement.
The knob broke off the stem when I tried to pry it out of the valve body:
The lip around the inside of the cap snaps over the top of the body, which is why I wrecked the stem, but the chip broke off the cap while Mary was turning it just before the stem popped out. Her fingers are barely strong enough to turn the valve, which means something had gone wrong before she started turning.
A look straight into the valve body:
The stem has swarf left over from drilling out the mold flash last year:
All in all, the Dripworks drip irrigation system works well, but their overall attention to QC leaves something to be desired.
We deployed six sticky traps in the onion patch immediately after planting in late April and replaced the cards in mid-June. The first set of cards collected a considerable number of what resemble, to my untrained eye, onion maggot flies and the onion plants remain healthy:
Each image shows both sides of a single card.
The cards sit a foot above the shredded leaf mulch and I managed to drop at least one of the cards while extracting it from the cage, but they all have plenty of onion maggot flies in addition to the random debris.
The cards inside their cages have not accumulated larger insects like honeybees / moths / butterflies, although the tiniest specks are definitely mini-critters along the beetle / gnat / aphid / mosquito axis.
Unlike last year, the second set of cards will remain in place until harvest to maintain continuous pressure on the fly population.
If you’re really interested, the dozen original camera images have more detail.
When the driveway runs yellow in the rain, it’s pine pollen season:
Our robot vacuum snuffles up quite a collection of dust:
Peeling a layer of the usual fuzz off the filter reveals the pollen:
This, too, shall pass and my eyes will rejoice.
The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning 