What have you been doing today?

Today, I try to make cast iron piston for glass cylinder. Wrong piston of another project, just redo the outside diameter
The inner diameter of the cylinder is not good, there is very little compression, it is only for testing ..

I agree. People should read the music back stories.

Today I have 14 quarts of bread & buttle pickles. 14 more quarts to do. I planted 80 cucumber plants to speed this project along. 61 lbs of potatoes were dug up 4 weeks go. 380 onions pulled up 2 weeks ago, 82 garlic pulled up 3 weeks ago. Cantaloupes should be ripe very soon. 3 more ripe tomatoes today. We are not canning tomatoes this year we have 14 quarts left from last year. I picked 1/2 gallon of blackberries.

Spent the day cleaning and adjusting the mill.

william_b_noble said:

yeah, agree, "weird day" - came out in the morning, someone had broken the door lock on my old Suburban with a hammer, then pried and hammered at the ignition for a while before giving up, called police, they came by and took report, fixed door tumbler, collected the pieces of plastic to reglue, verified ignition switch and lock are OK, then worked on some legal documents (I hate that stuff), and then disassembled and cleaned this (the green one), tomorrow to decide on a final color and repaint -- raise your hands, do I have the only one of these? (raise both hands and cheer if you have one too, one hand, no cheer if you know what it is) - tiny hint , you can read the company name and location on the first image, and yes, it is useful for model making. For tomorrow, work on daughter's 944, paint and reassemble thing in picture

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I have one of these Perkins spring winders also. I've yet to try to use it as I do most of my spring winding on the lathe. I don't have a very large complement of accessories for it and it seems like it will be fussy to set up as you are winding the spring in mid-air, not around a mandrel.

I have a 18" lathe driven by a three-phase motor, in turn powered by a VFD. The spindle speed can be as slow as 2 rpm which is perfect for winding short springs with closed end-coils.

Rocket Man said:

Today I have 14 quarts of bread & buttle pickles. 14 more quarts to do. I planted 80 cucumber plants to speed this project along. 61 lbs of potatoes were dug up 4 weeks go. 380 onions pulled up 2 weeks ago, 82 garlic pulled up 3 weeks ago. Cantaloupes should be ripe very soon. 3 more ripe tomatoes today. We are not canning tomatoes this year we have 14 quarts left from last year. I picked 1/2 gallon of blackberries.

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yOU need to plant more garlic next year.

Hi All,
Just trying to stay dry, had 260mm of rain in the last 3 days, that's over 10" for all you imperial people.
Keep well all,
Cheers
Andrew

Ghosty said:

Hi All,
Just trying to stay dry, had 260mm of rain in the last 3 days, that's over 10" for all you imperial people.
Keep well all,
Cheers
Andrew

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And I thought it was all "Sunshine, barbeques and beer" down-under?
K2

Ghosty said:

Hi All,
Just trying to stay dry, had 260mm of rain in the last 3 days, that's over 10" for all you imperial people.
Keep well all,
Cheers
Andrew

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Only had 151mm in my part of Sydney, but looks like being a wet night again. So sad for all the people under water AGAIN this year around Sydney.

Steamchick said:

And I thought it was all "Sunshine, barbeques and beer" down-under?
K2

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It's just been a wet year, so far this year.

Jeffro said:

Only had 151mm in my part of Sydney, but looks like being a wet night again. So sad for all the people under water AGAIN this year around Sydney.

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Yep, and it's the same down the coast. It is sad that this is the 4 time this year they have had floods, but they all know that they live in flood plans.

Cheers
Andrew

Is that part of the reason for Australia having so many World class swimmers?
In the UK I have seen radio controlled models of paddling ducks. Maybe someone in Oz has modelled a paddling platypus? Lots of cranks and levers to make that work?

"What I did today?" = add daft comments here...!

More seriously, is there no legislation anywhere advising people when they buy building land that they are on a flood plain? I am sure they would think again if they were aware, and end up paying the insurance premium as a result? In the UK, every house and insurance I have bought has come with a "subsidence" clause because of all the mine workings beneath! (It is true: England is "built on coal"!). Just like the UK health insurances that exclude ANY health claim resulting from an incident involving a motorcycle, but covers Cancer related problems, even though they are 10 times more likely than the motorcycle claims! You can only insure where someone thinks they can make a profit from another's problems. Insurers are just like bookies... They take their 20% while there are very few 'winners' and many 'losers' paying the dosh.
My 115 year old house is built on the side of a hill, where the land is sliding down-hill (who would have thought that!) and the house has 50-year-old cracks as the foundations have moved. And it is over mine workings.... So I took the gamble that it would last another 50 years before it falls down... I.E. outlast me! May be inconvenient if it falls down, if while I am asleep in bed, but one has to know the risks of living and insure what they can afford, and hope the rest doesn't happen. So "Sorry to hear of the floods and people dramas", but should some of that be expected? - And options pre-planned? I recall it was written in a parable in the bible advising you take care where you build your home. So not a new problem.
And Noah built a boat.... (but he had divine warning of flooding).
K2

ccolby said:

I have one of these Perkins spring winders also. I've yet to try to use it as I do most of my spring winding on the lathe. I don't have a very large complement of accessories for it and it seems like it will be fussy to set up as you are winding the spring in mid-air, not around a mandrel.

I have a 18" lathe driven by a three-phase motor, in turn powered by a VFD. The spindle speed can be as slow as 2 rpm which is perfect for winding short springs with closed end-coils.

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actually, that Perkins unit does what all commercial spring winders do - with a mandrel you have to calculate spring back, and you don't know what you got til you're done, with the coil winders, you can measure a turn as it comes out and know that all the rest will be identical.

Hi William, I did figure out it was a spring winder - never having met one before, but I have seen various bending machines in industry. (I'll take a tick from Teacher for that!).
And knowing nothing of spring winding, I presume that with controlled variation of the setting of coil diameter you can make complex "varying rate" springs? Or tapered springs? (Maybe I presume too much?).
I "imagine" that using a mandrel means you get multiple parts the same, so if one is right then the rest will be... But that also applies to any setting of the Perkins winders? So what could be the advantages of a Mandrel? (I have never wound a spring, just distorted many good ones!).
K2

there's a ton of videos and also more technical books than I can read with formulae for making springs of all types - mandrels seem to be used only for very heavy wire (like 1 cm diameter or larger) where the wire is heated red hot, formed on the mandrel and then quenched and heat treated, bead blasted, plated and painted. for the coily springs we see in daily life, they are done in free air

Thanks William, A process that I have not experienced before. (I simply buy springs, or a length of spring and chop it to the length I need).
Maybe a "tutorial video" would be of interest so some others in this forum? I would find it interesting.
K2

Ghosty, I was saddened to hear news reports of the weather disasters being experienced in the people in the Sydney area. Really tough when the "hundred year weather events" actually happen as predicted... despite human endeavours. Maybe we should remember "the planet" is bigger and more powerful than Mankind!
K2

(tongue firmly in cheek)

No - --that can't be true - - - - global warming you know!

(that's though back in 1100 Lief the Lucky found grapes in Labrador Canada and there haven't been any there much since and still aren't - - - - but then of course - - - what do I know - - - - I'm just supposed to be a sheeple!!!!!)

OK. I was repeating what the Press decided was happening... "Rainfall at the level of the worst records in 100 years. - Twice, in 1 year". Well, maybe if they had more than 120 years of records...(??). All down to reporting the "most dramatic" interpretation of statistics, so they can make a story that sells?
K2

Some 5mm OD aluminum tube, I ordered via eBay weeks ago, finally arrived so I was back in my tiny shop today making a cooling spray ring for my Freon turbine project. Liquid Freon is pumped into the spray ring and the mist is directed at the exhaust "steam" as it exits the final turbine stage, helping to quickly cool and condense the gaseous Freon. I used the flux cored aluminum braze I mentioned in the topic on which braze to use; the residual flux is the whitish-grey color on the tube and aluminum block.

Steamchick said:

OK. I was repeating what the Press decided was happening... "Rainfall at the level of the worst records in 100 years. - Twice, in 1 year". Well, maybe if they had more than 120 years of records...(??). All down to reporting the "most dramatic" interpretation of statistics, so they can make a story that sells?
K2

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Story that sells, yes you can make statistics appear to say what ever your goal is at "story" level interpretations. For example how can ALL the bigger manufacturers have the top selling truck ? Well one could count every truck sold for the last 50 years ( rusting behind a barn doesn't matter) another could count every truck sold last week when a large fleet owner placed their order. Both above could be true without even bending the facts but maybe NOT telling you ALL of the pertinent data. Seems like a story that sells is might be more important than the"whole story" nowadays.
J