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.

Tag: Rants

And kvetching, too

  • Home Depot Glacier Bay Kitchen Faucet: Round 2

    Home Depot Glacier Bay Kitchen Faucet: Round 2

    The kitchen faucet worked its way loose again. Attempting to shut off the water revealed a pair of leaky valves under the sink, so I shut off the house water in the basement, cut the valve pipes below the solder drips, and installed a pair of push-connect shutoffs:

    Kitchen faucet shutoff valve - push connection
    Kitchen faucet shutoff valve – push connection

    I loves me some good push-connect fitting action, which is new news to me. Back in the Bad Old Days™, I’d be under the sink with a propane torch, trying to solder a pair of wet pipes and failing miserably.

    With that out of the way and the faucet dismantled for the first time (by my hands, anyway), the threads holding the base to the spout column may have been damaged during factory assembly:

    HD Glacier Bay kitchen faucet - damaged threads
    HD Glacier Bay kitchen faucet – damaged threads

    I thought the gunk was thread lock compound, but it’s shredded plastic from the base fitting threads. The corresponding female threads inside the spout column are undamaged, so I think somebody tried screwing it together with the threads misaligned, backed off, then muscled it together.

    It’s worth noting there are no keys or stops fixing the correct orientation of any of these parts. In particular, the trim ring bearing the small Front label (facing you in the picture) has no fixed orientation: whoever assembles the faucet in the factory must position it correctly on the fly as the base screws into the column and jams tight.

    So I cleaned up the damaged threads as best I could, flipped the threaded brass tube end-for-end to put the cleanest part into the base, and reassembled everything with careful attention to starting the threads correctly:

    HD Glacier Bay kitchen faucet - flipped brass tube
    HD Glacier Bay kitchen faucet – flipped brass tube

    Tightening the base fitting into the column is much easier with everything on the kitchen counter, although centering the label on the molded opening required several tries.

    Protip: a pair of grippy gloves and rubber sheets help a lot.

    I want to find out how secure the original design, properly tightened and aligned, will be, so I did not apply any threadlocker.

  • Wheelbarrow Drain Holes

    Wheelbarrow Drain Holes

    Attacking a plastic wheelbarrow with a ¾ inch hole saw prevents it from becoming a mosquito breeding station:

    Wheelbarrow drain holes
    Wheelbarrow drain holes

    We had been storing it tipped to one side, resulting in the wheel filling up with water, which can’t be a Good Thing.

    If it must carry a load of sand, I’ll just duct-tape the holes.

    One of Mary’s friend looked at, but did not order, this wheelbarrow on Amazon. Shortly thereafter, she received a wheelbarrow in two packages: the handles and a box with everything else strapped into the barrow. After a discussion with Amazon’s support / help staff, she was told to just keep it at no charge.

    Over the next few weeks, she received five more wheelbarrows, each prompting a discussion and keeping them at no charge. Eventually, somebody figured out how to stop the stream.

    So half a dozen gardeners now have free wheelbarrows, courtesy of a glitch in The Machine.

    Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?

  • Rail Trail Brush Clearing

    Rail Trail Brush Clearing

    Having an aversion to getting slapped in the face by Blackthorn branches overhanging the Dutchess Rail Trail, I generally give up waiting for anybody else to do the job:

    Brush clearing B - 2024-07-14
    Brush clearing B – 2024-07-14

    They’re not all Blackthorn (Prunus spinosa), but Ailanthus altissima grows like a weed around here and requires heavy cutback:

    Brush clearing C - 2024-07-14
    Brush clearing C – 2024-07-14

    It’s not just small branches:

    Brush clearing A - 2024-07-14
    Brush clearing A – 2024-07-14

    Apparently, there was no law against that …

    Brush clearing E - 2024-07-14
    Brush clearing E – 2024-07-14

    A recent storm dropped many trees across the trail and the maintenance folks deploy bigger saws than I can carry:

    Brush clearing D - 2024-07-14
    Brush clearing D – 2024-07-14

    Three months after we were told they had ordered replacement tiles, I’m beginning to think I must buy some on Amazon and do this job myself, too:

    Overocker ADA - continued disintegration - 2024-07-21
    Overocker ADA – continued disintegration – 2024-07-21

    Maybe it’ll get done when the weather cools …

  • There’s No UnDo Key For Paint

    There’s No UnDo Key For Paint

    Spotted in a parking lot:

    Misnumbered parking spaces
    Misnumbered parking spaces

    At least they caught it before the end of the row.

    Verily, it is written that Computer Science has only two hard problems:

    • Cache invalidation
    • Naming things
    • Off-by-one errors

    I hate it when that happens on my projects …

  • Tide HE Laundry Detergent: Shrinkflation

    Tide HE Laundry Detergent: Shrinkflation

    The most recent Tide HE Laundry Detergent bottles seemed smaller than the one we were about to empty and, indeed, they were:

    Tide HE shrinkflation - bottle labels
    Tide HE shrinkflation – bottle labels

    Call it 9% smaller, based on the volume in liters. I suspect the price was also 9% higher, but that would require more digging in the file cabinet than seems justified.

    Note that both bottles claim “64 loads”, each with an asterisk (well, a lozenge ◊ symbol) explained on the label:

    Tide HE shrinkflation - new load bars
    Tide HE shrinkflation – new load bars

    That’s the new chart. The old chart was more explanatory:

    Tide HE shrinkflation - old load bars
    Tide HE shrinkflation – old load bars

    Note the “just below Bar 1 on cap” weasel wording. The term “meniscus” enters the chat, although laundry detergent doesn’t have much in the way of surface tension.

    One might reasonably assume the bars on the new cap have gotten shorter, so that the volume of detergent used for each load would be smaller.

    One would be wrong:

    Tide HE shrinkflation - cap capacity marks
    Tide HE shrinkflation – cap capacity marks

    The blue cap on the right is one we’ve been using for the last few years, because I put black tape at the level of the first bar to match our “Medium” loads. I cannot imagine how much dirt would require filling the cap to Bar 5.

    The clear cap on the left is the new cap. I filled the blue tap to the top of Bar 5 with water and poured it into the clear cap, where it comes about 3/4 of the way to the top of the new Bar 5. Evidently, the amount of detergent required to get grubby clothes clean has increased by 33%.

    The old cap holds just shy of 4 fluid ounces to the top of Bar 5:

    Tide HE shrinkflation - old cap bar 5 capacity
    Tide HE shrinkflation – old cap bar 5 capacity

    The new cap holds 5.5 fluid ounces to the top of its Bar 5:

    Tide HE shrinkflation - new cap bar 5 capacity
    Tide HE shrinkflation – new cap bar 5 capacity

    If you have really crusty clothing, you’re now using 36% more detergent per load.

    The obvious arithmetic shows the old bottle holds 23 “Bar 5” loads and the new bottle holds 15.

    To the limit of my measuring ability, both caps hold 1.3 fluid ounces to the top their respective Bar 1 levels. I cannot vouch for the “just below” level, but I suspect more accurate measurements would show the new caps have slightly lower volume at that level, juuust enough to make the “64 loads” weasel wording come out right.

    As with all too many such claims, they lie.

  • LED Light Switch: FAIL 2

    LED Light Switch: FAIL 2

    Another switch for the temporary basement LED light strips failed the same way:

    T8 LED power switch - failure 2
    T8 LED power switch – failure 2

    As always with such things, I suspect the only reason it has a UL mark on the back is because somebody else hasn’t missed theirs yet.

    So I got a three-pack of inline switches with cute little indicator lights and set about replacing all of them:

    Inline T8 power switch - internal
    Inline T8 power switch – internal

    These switches carry absolutely no regulatory approval markings, although they do claim to carry 10 A at 250 V, which I take with another load of salt.

    At least here in the US-of-A, a 240 VAC outlet has two “hot” wires carrying 120 VAC 180° out of phase, which means both conductors must be switched. Despite the voltage rating, only the L path goes through the clicky switch, with the N path along a strap just below the switch toggle. Using it on a 240 VAC circuit will kill you stone cold dead should you assume whatever it controls is turned off.

    I secured the Line and Neutral conductors with crimp connectors, rather than just wrapping the 20 AWG wires around the screw terminals, because the case halves join without perimeter nesting: a bare millimeter of air in the gap between the halves separates the terminals from my fingers. A layer of good electrical tape on each side improved that situation, but not by much.

    The complete lack of strain relief clamping on the cords prompted me to route the wires around the screw bosses. After a function check, squirts of hot melt glue anchored the two cords somewhat better.

    Aaaaand I secured that loose strap on the right with an (identical to the others!) screw from the Tray o’ Random Screws. The other switches had both screws installed, so this one must have been a QC escape.

    They suffice for the purpose, but … caveat emptor!

  • Terms of Use: Do Not Read

    Terms of Use: Do Not Read

    Attempting to use the guest WiFi network requires agreeing to their Terms of Use:

    Guest WiFi signon - poor color choice
    Guest WiFi signon – poor color choice

    While it may be possible to read that, I pretty much gave up.

    While one should never ascribe to malice what can be explained by stupidity, it’s also true that any sufficiently advanced stupidity is indistinguishable from malice.