Rain, rain and a Halloween Party

Yesterday  it started to rain. The forecast warned "heavy at times." It sure was. Our basement is flooded. We are currently pumping it out. Our hot water heater went on strike. Fortunately matters were amicably resolved. But it was hairy while the strike lasted. October has not frozen very much, amazingly; but it has been very rainy. Most unusual. The rain is a sign that it will not be too cold. After all, if it was too cold, it'd be snowing.

To distract us from these watery matters, John had a Haloween gig. Costume was the order of the day. So Fluffy went to the gig as a Dalek. Dr Who fans will know what I mean.If you don't know consult the Internet!  John and Fluffy made the costume out of odds and ends -- styrofoam balls, tea lights a paint roller and a plumber's plunger. And paint. Not far, in fact, from what the BBC (Britons read "Beeb") did with the original Daleks. Nowadays they can use graphic arts. Or 3-D printing for all I know.

John, on the other hand, opted for the chicken suit. He always said that if all else fails, including music, he'll go out and wear a chicken suit.

And wear the chicken suit he did. I cannot resist it. Fowl play, indeed. You cannot imagine the bad puns that the chicken suit has inspired. The gig, I understand, went swimmingly and there was even someone there dressed as Dr. Who!

So the Dalek was right at home. And the chicken crossed the road. And everyone was happy until it rained and rained. And fortunately the rain has let up, and maybe we can get the basement pumped out. I'm glad I bought a pump.

Milling around

 Looking at my labels I am surprised I don't have a label for "milling." But I do have a label for "Proxxon mill". The only mill I have, in fact. A mill holds the work still, and a cutter revolves. In a lathe it is the other way around. Both are very useful in my miniature machine shop. I have been milling (and turning) for quite a few days now, in fact is quite an obsession. My first attempts at milling have been documented. But now I want to cut flutes on the clamp bolts on my digital indicator stand.Ideally, in machinespeak, these would be knurled on the lathe. But I don't have a knurling wheel set.

 
 Instead, I took a  hint from Tom Lipton's oxtool videos and cut flutes instead. Very nice. I decided to use 8 flutes. This required making the fixture shown above. A square piece of aluminum. I scribed one line at 45 deg. By simply flipping the fixture around I can cut four flutes. Then I carefully align any one of the flutes I just cut. And I then, by flipping, cut four more flutes. My steampunk dial indicator stand is really beautiful now. And I can adjust it with my fingers. Should have a pic of it, but omitted to get one.

However, today I decided to make a fly cutter for the mill. I had a piece of very nice steel, taken from a defunct printer. It made the clamp bolts. Now I want to make a fly cutter out of the rest of it. A fly cutter is used to level out rough surfaces. I did some internet research. There is always myfordboy to the rescue. Another good reference is Dean. From these two references, I extracted the fact that a fly cutter must be angled to the work. I picked 45 deg per myfordboy. OK, I have this piece of 13mm (more or less) round bar, and I have to drill a 45 deg hole in it. How do I do this? I spent the entire morning working this out. I am no professional machinist! I finally cobbled up the setup shown below.

  
I held the round in the vise.  It is pure serendipity that the Taig milling vise (Imperial) fits the Proxxon mill (metric).  I propped it the round bar on a step block kindly provided by Proxxon. Thanks Proxxon! I packed things up with stray aluminum scrap and it all worked, a miracle because the mill is metric and the rest of it is all Imperial. But Aluminum has a bit of squish in it, so the thing was well held.

Next problem is to drill the hole. Were you to simply bear down with the drill, it would skitter all over the place. This is not wood, it is metal. So I had previously made a 2mm or so end mill out of a broken drill. Ground it to shape. I ran this end mill so it made a little step in the round bar. The step gives the drill something to bite into. So I went through with a small drill and then a 3.2 mm drill (0.125") which is a collet size I have -- standard Dremel size shank. I had very carefully drawn out the thing to scale, a very good idea.

Next step was to turn down the shank to something that would fit a 3.2 mm collet. Straightforward turning. Now I have to make a setsrew hole in the thing to hold the cutter bit. Not to mention grind the cutter bit itself! That's another day's post.

Now I have to figure out how to get a setscrew in there to hold the cutter bit down. Later.

Fall Foliage, 2013

It is time for the obligatory scenic photos of Alaska photos. We have no maples, or oaks, or other woods in the lower 48 that turn all kinds of neat red or reddish colors, but we do have the birches and aspens. This gives Alaska a distincly yellow hue.Here is Little Lonely Lake about three weeks ago.

 I zoomed in on the leftmost part of the picture above. I was standing in the same spot. One more step, and I would have fallen into the lake!

This is the characteristic Alaska hue. The birches are just a bit yellower than the aspens, which have a slightly greener tinge, but I doubt that the pictures will allow  you to tell the difference.

As I write this, almost all the foliage is gone. Today it went to -2C, or about 28F for the metrically challenged. The Japanese maples (which are red all summer long) finally got the hint and are dropping leaves. They are optimists. Time to order fuel. A yearly ordeal with a big price tag. Next week "they" will come out and fix the chimney, so we can have fires again and warm up the house. It is a big savings on fuel oil to keep the heater on low low.

Forecast is rain and snow. I suppose that means mixed, but for us it probably means mostly rain mixed with some snow.

The arrival of Cecil

For a long time, my machining capabilities have been limited. I did not have a mill. I did have a lathe. In a lathe, the cutter stays put and the work rotates. So you turn stuff. Candlesticks, for instance. A mill is exactly the opposite. The cutter roates and the work stays put. You mill stuff on a mill. I have a milling attachment for the lathe, seen in previous posts; but the travel is extremely limited. I made do with it for a long time, but finally Fluffy found me a tremendous deal on a Proxxon mill. Now as mills go this is micro. But my little metalworking shop (a hallway) has no room for, say, a Bridgeport mill of any size, plus the floor would collapse under its weight! Even a Chinese cheapo mill is a bit too big, plus it is very expensive. The shipping costs more than the mill!

So as soon as the mill got there, John christened it Cecil B. de Mille.

This baby is very small. Fortunately it comes with a whole lot of gadgets, among them a collet (kind of like a chuck) which accepts Dremel accessories.  So I ambled over to Home Depot when I was in Anchorage, and procured some usable cutters. Above Cecil is milling out some slots for my homemade steady rest for the lathe. I am using a Dremel router bit, which cuts aluminum very easily.

OK, time for a harder test. I must make a stand for my lightweight dial indicator ("clock"), and the hard part of that is milling out the clamps.  First thing I found out is that my Taig milling vise actually fits Cecil. The difference is only a few tenths of mm. BTW, Cecil is metric. And he has zero-able dials! Heaven at last.  One turn of the dials is one millimeter. No more of this "one turn of the dial is 1/20 inch". Lemme see. Ah yes .05 inch. Why these RGU I cannot understand. Why make things so complicated? Why use fractions at all? (Rant off now.)

Anyway, above, I am using a Dremel saw attachment to slit the clamps. Note the Taig vise. I built a table for Cecil. and will sometime soon add a drawer to it. The clamps are brass. But Cecil rips right through it. I am soooo pleased with Cecil. Thanks, Fluffy, for locating this jewel.

Snow Spitter 2.0, update

Our snow spitter progresses. Pervious episodes have documented the building of this contraption. Most of this work is John's. I have held tools, passed screws, and found tools. Now we get on to the superstructure.

We have added cross-beams and diagonal braces to the basic structure.  More diagonal braces to come. Note the plastic bags at the bottom of each upright.  This is vapor barrier stuff. Next is John's idea. To suppost the ridgepole use plywood. We have a big stash of outdoor plywood, kindly left behind by the previous owner of the house. Or someone. Here we are cutting a big triangle out of plywood. The big triangle will be notched to take the ridge beam, and the triangle (actually two of them) will be screwed on to the cross-beams. Plywood is amazing stuff. It will take enormous loads, because the plies in the plywood go at different angles to the grain. Nothing like free plywood.

Today John got the triangles up and the ridge beam placed. I neglected to take photos of this operation. But the ridge beam is up and running. Well, sitting, really. We very much do not want it to run. We want it to be still. The real purpose of the snow splitter, as I must have said before, is to keep the snow that slides off the roof from blocking out access to the house; save hours of shoveling hard compacted snow. This is impact loading. All the stuff you leaned in the strength of materials courses does not apply. It has to take a very sudden overload for about the one minute it takes the snow to slide off the roof. After that, the static load is trivial.

Anyway it is very pleasing. This is a much better structure than we put up last year, so we live and learn. I will add some more photos as this project progresses.

The birches have started to turn yellow. It is fall. More on that later. As usual our projects  progress JIT (Just In Time). Today it was 3C and that's warm. It got to 0.5C last Sunday. Close to freezing. 34F for metrically-impaired audiences. So it snowed in Fairbanks today. We have a very limited time to complete this project.

You will remember our snow splitter. It collapsed under the onslaught of a thaw plus a lot of snow on the roof. If you don't remember, the relevant tag is "splitter."
So we are rebuilding the splitter. This time we used batter boards.

 A batter board is a simple framework upon which strings are set up. You adjust the strings so as to have equal diagonals. It is much easier to adjust strings than to adjust big heavy posts. You try to keep the string square, but the ultimate test is the diagonals. This is used both by constructors of big heavy structures and by cabinetmakers. If your diagonals are equal, the strucure is square, and that gets you out of a great many difficulties, because in construction you cannot rely on carpenter's squares, and the same is true for cabinetmakers. You should level the strings. I used a line level for the purpose. Then I sawed a notch in the batter board so that I wouldn't lose the reference.  Now you have corners for your framework. You dig holes at those corners.

Then (much later, like today) we set up the posts. Below, Fluffy holds up a post prior to leveling. John has rigged supports so we can plumb the posts.

 Once you have the batter boards (and the strings) it is relatively easy to set up the posts. Note that we have encased the posts in plastic bags. A bit of insurance against moisture seeping in.  We thank Fluffy's father for the advice. The posts are supported by temporary braces. Thanks, John.

And the rest is pouring concrete. So we did. A bag of concrete, high-early-strength (HES) stuff does the trick. One bag per upright post, but just in case we will add some more concrete. Lowe's is your friend. In the picture above Fluffy and John are recycling our concrete bags to provide a tent for our concrete, in case it rains tonight. It probably will. This is Alaska. Fall is rainy.  It has rained continually for the last week. This one day, it did not rain, and  we got a lot done. The posts are plumb . We will pour some more concrete as insurance, but this is a major step forward.

Moose, MAWS, and folkore

As I said in my last post, folklore has it that a bunch of (any flavor) CDs repel moose. Not wanting to lose any more of my garden, I went out and strung up some CDs on string all around the garden.I called it MAWS (Moose Alert and Warn-off System) in the best acronym-insanity fashion.

I only had so many spare CDs. I do not use these contraptions very often. I must say, if the wind is blowing they certainly sparkle.  I put up all I had. Would it repel moose? Often there is some truth in folklore. But not this time. When I went out next morning, all my cabbage had been cleared out. I was devastated. Mooseburger looks better all the time. So, folklore. CDs may repel moose when the wind is blowing. Not enough experimental data to confirm. But it is certainly dubious at best. Next year, a real fence, with big heavy logs, to keep out the moose. There are some consolations, however.

 From the garden, summer squash. Below, zucchini and Japanese cucumber from the greenhouse. The Japanese cucumber is a winner. Will plant again next time. And we have parsley, Cilantro, and even some very small green beans in the garden. One chard is left. It was a happenstance, there must have been one seed stuck in the Earthways seeder when I planted it. Considering  how late it the squash was planted, I consider squash  a major miracle.

Meanwhile in the greenhouse I actually have some fair-size peppers. I am impressed. The moose will at least not venture there.