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Ah, my apologies - if my writing appeared to imply that I thought you were trying to overplay the dangers, that was not my intent. I just find that most people who have been given a little information on the dangers of something, frequently tend to badly overestimate, or badly underestimate the...

While I will third HennieL's warning about the breathing hazards of LN, I will offer a somewhat different opinion regarding the flash-freezing dangers. This is mostly offered as a public-service-announcement in the vein of "you can do this (use LN safely in the shop), you won't kill yourself"...

For thread context, I was the asker in Brian's thread on his heat-treat oven installation. I am hoping to salvage as much (any!) usable value out of a batch of HSS tooling that went through my shop fire. Yes, HSS can stand a lot of heat without losing hardness. Yes, I had a hot shop fire. In...

Regarding your thermocouple installation: Of course you know heat rises - there's only so much you can do about thermocouple position in a small chamber like that, but you might be surprised at how much difference there can be between the top and the bottom of the chamber. Don't be surprised...

Not to be too contrary, but I don't think I've seen such a thing on a kiln. All of the kilns I've worked with (admittedly, only 6 or so) have either little (usually cast iron) doors pivoted from a simple screw above the peephole, or, they use kiln plugs: < Skutt Peephole Plugs | BLICK Art...

Absolutely - I had started my post to ask last night, but didn't get around to clicking "post" until I got to the office this morning, and then discovered that in the mean time, you'd already granted my half-written wish :-) No desire to hijack Brian's thread!

--edit-- (I notice, HennieL has responded to my plea even as I typed!) --end edit-- Ooh, ohh - someone who will admit to successfully heat-treating HSS, rather than intoning the gospel homile "it's complicated, and can't be done"! Pray tell - could you give some ballpark starting advice or...

My apologies, please read "rectangular-wedge-type joinery" in what I wrote, as "rectangular joinery retained by wedges"... The joint I was attempting to describe is the wedged blind tenon, such as the blind fox-wedged tenon. Unlike many wedged joints, this use of the wedge in joinery does not...

I think the difference isn't so much that the fundamental technology used for fastening has changed, but rather that the fundamental technology used for producing fasteners/fastenings has changed. When all you had was a hammer and anvil, it was easier to beat things generally flat and...

I will echo the recommendation for the ubiquitous 4x6, badged by whomever seems to be the flavor of the week. That thing has one of the most ridiculously outsized utilities for its price, and for its generally only-barely-adequate construction, of any tool I own. I say this in the context of...

A couple comments with a caveat: Some of this is stuff that I do professionally. I get the impression that a few others here have more than a passing level of experience as well. One of your biggest challenges is that you're listening to too many of us. One of the beauties of Unixes is that...

Far from it - mostly dead, is slightly alive, which proposes a state of their education that I believe might be termed inconceivable.

You used this word "sometimes" -- I don't think it means, what it would appear you used it to mean in this sentence...

In reality, there is very little different in the Linuxes of today, from the Unixes of the early 1980s. There are some underlying re-workings of how certain processes work, but these are essentially invisible to the user. The "getting easier to use" has little, if anything to do with the...

There have been a number of manufacturers of variations on this idea, but at least in the US, the overwhelming majority of these are Aladdin lamps. Current owner of the Aladdin product line Great lamps. Roughly 60 Watts of warm-white lighting, almost zero smoke/smell. We light the living...

You have no idea how tickled I was, when I figured out the purpose of those features while casting about trying to figure out where it was safe to set down a hot iron...

Yup, and that's what the loop/hook, in combination with the little "raccoon ears" on top of the business end of some other varieties, is for as well. By the way, I believe your Sievert may have had an (optional) little portable pump to pre-pressurize the tank slightly as well. That filler cap...

If you were on our side of the pond, I'd drop a tin of carbide in post for you. I've still got 5 pounds or so from my caving days in a tin in the garage (ironically for today's discussion, it, and the Oxy/Acetylene tanks were in a different out-building when /our/ shop burned).

Just a technical note as an aside - it's not the hydrogen content of Acetylene that's the problem - it has fewer hydrogens, as well as fewer hydrogens per carbon, than any other (common? I can't think of any that would beat it) hydrocarbon. For acetylene it's that nasty Carbon triple bond...

Mostly a lurker here to absorb the occasional trick I've not heard of before, but as someone with a few years of silver soldering and brazing under my belt, a few points I don't believe I've seen made, at least not as emphatically as I would make them to a new practitioner: First - the two most...