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Feb 17, 2019 17:12:03 GMT
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From the colour in the pictures it's similar in grain to Sapele Hadn't even considered that. I had read that Sapele was quite heavy and solid - similar to oak. This stuff feels lighter and softer. Anyway the thresholds are all done and fitted now. Or at least they will be later this evening when the last bit of oil has dried. In a previous house we had a rat problem when we moved in. Not for long. Got a normal style rat trap. Wrapped the little platforms oogeymaflip thing with string. Coated that with peanut butter. Job done....Never had a trap set off without a rodent attached to it...They seem to love peanut butter. Or possibly it's smell masks Human smell... Wouldnt be wasting cheese or Chocolate on the little feckers,that would be sacrilege 😂😂 Ah, yes. My ratty... He's alive and well. He's moved house. I think he's living under the lower part of the decking now but at least he's away from the house. I've tried peanut butter. He doesn't seem attracted to it. Not enough to stick his head in the trap anyway. He seems to recognise the traps as dangerous and avoids them or even makes them safe. I can't remember if I said but a chap at work says he's seen mice kick the trap until it goes off and then eat the bait. Bright aren't they! James |
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Mar 24, 2019 21:02:56 GMT
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You may have noticed that over the past few weeks I appear to have done nothing to the car and failed to provide reasons / excuses. This is because I've been on holiday. I just didn't say anything because I wasn't going to tell the internet that we weren't at home and then find some scrote had pinched the MR2. Or, indeed, pinched my daily driver. Although that's annoying me something chronic at the moment so I might not have been too upset. I might tell you more about the holiday another day. But -41C... Hells teeth! That's a shade chilly even in my book. Anyhoo, when not I freezing my nuts off I've been machining more wood. Endless wood. Just how many trees are there in the world and why do they all have to go through my machines? Well, until yesterday when my thicknesser threw a wobbly. In thicknesser mode two rollers pull the wood through. There is a drive belt on the end of the cutter shaft that drives the two rollers. The problem is that there is no tensioner on the belt so it tends to slip. Normally I clean the mech and flip the belt over and it all works again. Sadly, yesterday, I did all this and it still wasn't feeding properly. You wind up pushing the wood into the machine to take the load off the slipping belt, but, ultimately you are just fighting the rollers and getting back ache. Time to fix it... Here you can see the belt that slips. I'm pointing to it with my finger.  And also, in the same photo, I'm demonstrating the position where a tensioner needs to go. And, if you look closely, what it needs to do. Three points in one photo. It's almost as if I planned it. It'd be inconvenient to have to use my finger as a tensioner in the longer term. I needed a roller - which I didn't have. So I jumped in my classic Japanese sports car and romped off to B&Q to buy a small caster. Back in the garage I dug out a bit of scrap box section, a bit of M6 studding and a spring and...  Like a bought one.  I honestly don't know why the nice chap in China didn't do this when he built it, but hey, it's done now. So, you are desperate to know if it's feeding properly now aren't you? So am I. Didn't have time to try it so we'll have to wait until next weekend. Ooh, the suspense! I can hardly bear it. James |
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Not teaching you to suck eggs James, but are you sure the tensioner is on the normally slack side of the belt? 😊
Is the top shaft with the nut on it turning anti-clockwise?
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Last Edit: Mar 25, 2019 6:36:56 GMT by Deleted
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Not teaching you to suck eggs James, but are you sure the tensioner is on the normally slack side of the belt? 😊 Is the top shaft with the nut on it turning anti-clockwise? Mate, of all the people alowed to teach egg sucking you’re the professor! Advice gratefully recieved! Yes it spins anti-clockwise so that is the slack side. James |
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Last Edit: Mar 25, 2019 9:07:37 GMT by Sweetpea
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This is a tense moment as we await the results. The tension is killing me. I suppose i better now belt up and go and do something instead of being slack.
Ok I can't think of any more puns to slip in - oooh wait there's another one! Who wood of thought it.
Really i'm stopping now. Touch wood.
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Ah, yes. I apologise unreservedly for my lack of an update. It's partly because I'm now pretty fed up of poking bits of wood into noisy machines so the idea of writing about it has lost some excitement.
I did indeed head back to the garage for further machining work last weekend. So did my tensioner mod fix the slipping belt and get the plainer to feed properly.
Why yes it did. And no it didn't.
The belt doesn't slip now so that's the good news. But then the feed rollers started slipping instead.
Two rollers, one serrated metal and one rubber drag the wood through over a cast iron bed. Oak is a hard wood so the rollers can struggle to grip it and if the bed is 'sticky' then something slips somewhere.
I'd already cleaned the bed plate but it needed a proper job. So I gave is a hard scrub with WD40 (which is an excellent solvent and takes any sap off) and then finished it with some bees wax to make it nice and slippy again. Now it works properly!
There is a long debate about what to treat bed plates with as it inevitably gets picked up by the wood. Since I was going to sand and oil the oak a bit of bees wax wouldn't hurt it.
Good news is that the current pile of wood work is now done. All the doors up stairs have architrave. All the skirting is back on. James is a happy bunny with the results. There are a few bits of paint to things to touch up and, er, then the missus has another pile of decorating to do.
But sod that. I'm going to play with the car. I have plans... Won't be this weekend though.
James
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A friend of mine was a cabinet maker. All his machines used to get a quick rub with a candle to get the wood to slide over the cast iron. Maybe that helps you? 😊
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A friend of mine was a cabinet maker. All his machines used to get a quick rub with a candle to get the wood to slide over the cast iron. Maybe that helps you? 😊 Yeah, it’s a good plan but I’ve moved on from candles. I tried rubbing the cast iron with the closest modern equivalent - my LED torch - but it didn’t work... Can’t think why. |
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Dripping candle wax and how to make things slippery when you have wood. I do wonder about the conversations on here!
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Dripping candle wax and how to make things slippery when you have wood. I do wonder about the conversations on here! Waaay too many JAV!  |
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I had similar thoughts but was trying to keep it clean. I'm still trying to forget the bosozoku thing in my other thread.
So. I was terribly pleased with myself that I'd spotted that it turns backwards and that I'd put the idler on the correct side of the belt. But I couldn't work out why they'd done it.
Spinning it anticlockwise means a reverse spinning motor. Why do that? I mean it's not that hard to get reverse rotation motors but why not use a normal motor and you'd just have to feed the wood in the other side.
It made no sense.
For about a week. Then the penny dropped.
I was looking at the back side of the machine. Look at it from the other side and it's going clockwise with a perfectly normal clockwise motor.
Stupid boy!
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It takes a proper man to admit his mistakes. Me? I'm perfect! |
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I work with gearboxes in my job and the number of people in the office you see on the phone and doing circular movements in thin air with their fingers. Which way things turn and from which end you look at something always seems to play with peoples minds.
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Dripping candle wax and how to make things slippery when you have wood. I do wonder about the conversations on here! So do I.....No mention of using a lit candle, you dirty bar steward....😂😂 |
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Jun 14, 2019 21:00:26 GMT
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I've been diverted from MR2 work because Mrs Sweetpea booked a decorator to paint and paper the bedroom. That means emptying the bedroom, including the stupidly heavy cast iron radiator and doing a few other little jobs. First of all there was a metallic rattly noise from under the floor when you walked around. That turned out to be the radiator pipes touching where they ducked under a noggin. Fixed by slipping a piece of pipe lagging over one of them.  Then the decorator had a problem. We'd supplied paint for the ceiling but, evidently, not enough. He got the ceiling done ok but the top of the wall, above the picture rail, and the coving were patchy. So he beetled off to B&Q to get some more only to find they had dropped the colour a week or two ago. Not a pot in sight. Hmmm. Then the missus had a thought. We used the last dregs to paint a card so they could colour match it. But we bumped into a very helpful lady at the paint desk which gave us another plan. B&Q had produced a list matching the old colour to the nearest new colour. And when we looked at the equivalent colour to ours it was stunningly close.  The ceiling is the old colour and the wall and coving is the new one. I can't see the difference. In fact the pink in the ceiling is light reflecting off the wall paper. The biggest problem was the curtain rail. For some reason when we first decorated the room years ago we had a curtain rail made by a local artisan. It was a solid bar that was bent to the shape of the window bay. Problem was it never really worked. The brackets held the rail too close to the wall so the curtains dragged on the wall. You couldn't space them off too far because the pole was one piece so it just wouldn't fit. The brackets didn't hold the pole solidly so it tended to shift and wind up squint. And lastly it didn't curl round the wall far enough on the last bends. Here it is on the floor...  Above the tape measure you can see the two final curves that needed sharpening. So I started by making 3 new brackets.  New one below, old one above. The new ones pick up the same holes in the wall and move the pole up and out a bit. They also clamp the rail solidly which should stop it moving.  So now the rail is about 3 or 4 inches too long. So it got cut in half and shortened. And, while it was in bits I sharpened the bends on the end.  I knew those weights would come in come in handy for something. They failed on me. Tweaked and cut & shut.  And... And... It actually fits in the bay now and the curtains operate as they should.  Just needs paint tomorrow. James |
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jamesd1972
Club Retro Rides Member
Posts: 2,921 
Club RR Member Number: 40
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Noice, definitely not showing my wife this thread in case she gets any more ideas.
Anyway we’re not posh enough to get a decorator in, you must have got a bonus or something. In this house I’m mostly the decorator as apparently ‘if she does it it’s not good enough’.
James (the younger)
(Ps it isn’t & it drives me nuts)
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Jun 15, 2019 15:38:22 GMT
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dumbbell as a mandrel  |
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Jun 29, 2019 23:11:24 GMT
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It was about time I tidied up the side of the garage. I keep the side of the garage conveniently between the front of the garage and the back. It seems to fit nicely there. It’s just about the ideal size as it happens.   It borders a few trees that are actually part of my neighbours drive. As you can see it’s not really been looked after. In fact I’ve not touched it. Ever. So I got in and cleared the ivy and cut the trees back so they were off the roof. Window needs a paint.   As does the guttering. I’ve taken most of that down and it’ll go of for sand blasting and priming.   Having cleaned the ivy off and taken the guttering down I attacked it with the jet wash. I was expecting to knock the dirt off the paint, slap some new paint on and then tea and medals. Er. No. The jet wash is great at cleaning things but if it's not well stuck it's coming off. It looks like it was originally painted an off white colour. The next coat didn’t stick properly. Now I have 80 years of paint that are on a base layer that’s lifted. So a load of it has come off.   This means that I’m going to have to attack the edges with a stone disk on the grinder to blend it back in. It also melts the edge of the paint a little and reattaches it to the wall. But it takes ages, is noisy, unpleasant and dusty. Anyway what paint is still on the wall seems fairly well attached. And the stuff that isn’t on the wall is now in a bucket.   I knew I’d have bother on the front corner.   That’s had a good coat of watered down PVA to stabilise it and it’ll need a skim tomorrow. Still need to take the down pipe off the wall. And the window?   Going to need new putty in there. The baby blue colour you can see is the original colour of the house so that putty is from 1931. Probably not too surprising that it needs a repair. |
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The baby blue colour you can see is the original colour of the house so that putty is from 1931. Probably not too surprising that it needs a repair. option2: they are your spiritual ancestors and carefully peeled the paint off then nestled it into new putty circa 1958. |
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jamesd1972
Club Retro Rides Member
Posts: 2,921
Club RR Member Number: 40
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You can almost taste the lead from here !
James (the younger)
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