Ed Nisley's Blog: Shop notes, electronics, firmware, machinery, 3D printing, laser cuttery, and curiosities. Contents: 100% human thinking, 0% AI slop.
This housing development was the second in Poughkeepsie to have underground utilities and, to put it mildly, a lot has rotted out over the last 70 years.
Over the weekend, one phase of the AC power flickered and eventually failed completely, with the other phase supplying a steady 120 VAC. Central Hudson (Gas & Electric) crews located long-lost buried boxes in places not matching their maps:
Power Outage – flooded box
Then they pumped / bailed enough water to repair / lengthen the wires:
Power Outage – corroded wiring
I’ve never before seen anybody work on live wires underwater.
They installed above-ground boxes to simplify The Next Time.
Some improvisation was required:
Power Outage – improvised cocoa stirring
Gotta say, cold Fireball Cocoa tastes different than hot Fireball Cocoa.
I replaced both screws with stainless steel 1-½ 10-32 socket head screws, with a reshaped head on the drive side, and we’ll see how long these last.
A few days later the continuing creak led to finding a broken gear clamp on the left side of the seat back:
Tour Easy – replacement seat frame clamp
Apart from the atypical lack of grime, you couldn’t tell that’s the replacement clamp, because the broken one looked exactly the same way. The clamp strap broke where it bent around the bottom edge of the seat pan bracket, probably due to the flexing caused by the broken seat stay screw.
The HQ Sixteen has much larger bobbins than Mary’s Kenmore and Juki sewing machines. It also came with a dedicated bobbin winder:
HQ Sixteen bobbin winder – overview
That thing has a distinct Industrial Revolution aspect compared to the BarbieCore bobbin winder I laid hands on a while ago.
Out of the photo on the right:
The thread cone and guide tower
The thread tension disks
Mary had been having trouble winding the bobbins, as the tension seemed entirely too low and the thread did not lay smoothly across the bobbin, so she asked me to take a look.
The motor shaft has an O-ring for friction drive against the large wheel driving the shaft with the bobbin on the other end. The small silver lever over on the left flips an over-center lock pressing the wheel against the O-ring and tripping the microswitch in the aluminum housing, thus turning the motor on. The bobbin fills until a small finger monitoring the thread level flips the lock back over center, the wheel disengages, the switch turns the motor off, and a spring drives the wheel against the rubber rod in the upper left.
Which worked well, but all the bobbins had a loose-to-sloppy fit on the shaft, to the extent that the shaft really couldn’t drive them against any thread tension.
Loosening the screw holding the drive wheel on the shaft lets it slip off and the shaft slides out to the front:
HQ Sixteen bobbin winder – split shaft
The sides of the split shaft should press firmly against the bobbin core, but that just wasn’t happening.
Measuring a dozen bobbins showed most had an ID of 6.04 mm, with a few around 6.01 mm; unsurprisingly, the latter had the best, albeit still loose, fit. Conversely, the split shaft had two isolated points 6.01 mm apart across a diameter, with the remainder around 5.95 mm. Those are not large differences, but it was obvious why the bobbins didn’t wind correctly.
I filed some graunch off the split edges, then gently pushed the Designated Prydriver into the end of the split to spread the sides juuuust a little bit, until all the bobbins pushed on firmly and fit snugly:
HQ Sixteen bobbin winder – split shaft test fit
It reassembled in reverse order and we’ll see how it behaves during the next marathon bobbin-filling session.
The battered Champion hose nozzle came into play last fall, leaked profusely when turned off, went to a Safe Place for the winter, and recently emerged:
Champion hose nozzle – disassembled
The conical surface (to the right of the tip) must make perfect contact with the edge of a perfect cylindrical hole in the outer shell to shut off the water, which was obviously no longer happening.
There is no reason why that hole should still be concentric with the outside of the shell, but centering the latter in the four-jaw chuck put the hole within about 0.2 mm of where it should be:
Champion hose nozzle – lathe centering
I defined that to be Close Enough™ and made the hole smooth & concentric with a teeny boring bar and sissy cuts. A drill would likely have worked well enough, too.
Gently filing the nastiness off the cone showed it wouldn’t suffice, so center it while noting the irregular diameter all around:
Champion hose nozzle – lathe centering cone
A skim cut revealed the need for more attention:
Champion hose nozzle – scarred cone
Another tenth of a millimeter improved its disposition:
Champion hose nozzle – improved cone
Gentle touchup with a fine file reserved for special occasions may have been a further improvement:
Champion hose nozzle – finish filed
Add a dollop of silicone grease to encourage the shell to turn much more easily on the O-ring, reassemble in reverse order, and top it off with a new hose washer.
A quick test on a reasonably warm day showed the cone met the cylinder poorly enough to consign this nozzle to the brass recycling box.
Looks kinda pallid to me, too, although hardcore BarbieCore is also most definitely not our thing.
Anyhow, the motor didn’t even twitch when pressing the button, so after I verified the two AA alkaline cells were Just Fine, I laid it on the Electronics Bench and popped the top to see what was the matter:
Sidewinder bobbin winder – interior wiring
For the record, the red and black wires at the battery compartment are exactly reversed from what you might expect based on, say, the colors of your multimeter probes. I know better, but it comes as a surprise every time.
The pushbutton switch pulls in the relay (red block in the middle), which latches on until the bobbin fills and the accumulated thread lifts the finger riding on the bobbin to rotate the white cam (under the motor), thus opening the switch (black block), releasing the relay, and shutting off the motor.
Which, of course, worked perfectly after I stuck the alkalines back in place on the bench and poked the button to watch the proceedings.
It’s all back together again and continues to run, so I’ll declare victory until the next time she fills a bobbin and, predictably, it doesn’t start.
Mary gave her Juki TL-2010Q sewing machine a deep cleaning & oiling, deputizing me to remove & replace the covers.
For the record, standing the machine on its left end is the least-awful way to get the bottom cover off and on:
Juki TL2010Q – bottom cover on end
You must remove all six of those husky screws; the black feet remain firmly stuck in their recesses. It’s not particularly stable in that orientation, so keep a firm hand on the top to prevent an expensive fall.
I laid it down for the rest of the session:
Juki TL2010Q – interior cleaning
She was unenthusiastic about wearing my headband light. Maybe next time.
It reassembled in reverse order and, after a brief tussle with the bobbin winder finger in the upper covers, runs smoothly.
Our Young Engineer recently rebuilt the cover of a “vintage” drawing kit, with fabric pockets for protractors & scales and real leather hinges, thereby raising a long-procrastinated project to the top of my to-do list:
TEC Drawing Set – top old
I know my father used it when he took drafting after high school in 1929. His penmanship and drawing ability were up to par well before that.
The inside sports a TEC logo:
TEC Drawing Set – open old
Some searching revealed it’s a No. 718 Drafting Set from the Technical Supply Company of Scranton and appeared in their 1913 catalog:
TEC Brand Catalog p68
The printing on the inside of the flap differs, but the logo has TEC in the middle.
My father did not attend college and, in the teeth of The Great Depression, $26.50 was certainly too spendy for his family:
CPI Calculator – 1929 to 2025
When the catalog was printed in 1913, No. 718 cost the equivalent of $862.82. Nowadays, similar sets once again cost about twenty bucks on eBay, which tells you something about economics.
In retrospect, I should have used two leather snaps, but three would be excessive.
I folded the Kraft-Tex flat across a steel scale to make the first folds around the base, then finger-crimped folds at the top of the base with subsequent crisping around the scale:
TEC Drawing Set – open new
The underside of the original case seemed stable:
TEC Drawing Set – case bottom
This may be sacrilege, but I saw no point in peeling the bottom just to cover it up,so I stuck the Kraft-Tex in place with a rectangle of adhesive sheet.
It doesn’t look the same, but it still gives me a warm feeling.
It still has the tiny wrench needed to adjust all its screws:
TEC Drawing Set – wrench
It’s on 0.1 inch graph paper and is 40 mil = 1 mm thick, should you want to make your own. The blades taper down to essentially a knife edge, which is why it’s made from hard blue steel.
I remember being fascinated by that little pig when I was a pup.
Putting some scraps to good use, I stuck a cushion in the anvil for the next time I punch down a leather snap:
The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning 
