Friday Night In The Garage

it's 2000 and my wife is attempting to get the little to go to sleep. His Mom and Dad start work at Oh-Dark-Thirty, so 2000~2030 is the family bed time.

And he's teething again, which means Captain Crankypants is manning the bridge tonight.

And the Old Man aint happy......no movie? Geesh. Next thing you know you'll be accusing somebody of stealing the strawberries......

So I'll be out in the garage rectifying a problem of my own making. When I sanded/primed/sanded/primed and then painted the rear edge of the spoiler assembly, I waited three days (80*~90* weather) for the paint to cure. Then I flipped it over on the saw horses, making sure to use an old towel so I wouldn't scratch the new paint, and proceeded to work on the bottom of the rear edge, which had some dingleberries in the paint because....Garage Paintjob! That took me a week or so to clear up by carefully wetsanding the crud out of the paint. Fortunately, I'd put a fair amount of paint on it, so I had plenty of paint to work with. After I was satisfied with that, I began installing the bottom half of the spoiler, which involves screwing in the thirty-four screws that hold the two pieces together.

As I was installing the screws, I had to move the spoiler around a bit so I could get good purchase on the screw head, and I noticed the towel was moving with the spoiler as I maneuvered it around. Hmmmmm...shouldn't do that. I lifted up the spoiler clear of the saw horse, and the towel came with it. Shit.......it really shouldn't do that.

Yup....even after three days of high 80* weather, the paint wasn't fully cured, and the weight of the spoiler pushed it down against the towel just enough to make the semi-solid paint flow around the towel fibers, and the towel was stuck to the new paint.

RATS! I HATE it when that happens.....

So, I peeled the towel off the paint as gently as I could, and surveyed the damage.

Yup.....the paint's pretty bad in a band about 2" wide and 14" long. SO....I grabbed my flexible sponge, a piece of 600 grit, and my bottle of Windex, and started sanding. I wasn't trying to get it all off last night, just wanted to see how easy it came off, and it'll be one of those sit-there-for-two-hours-listening-to-the-radio while I carefully sand it out with a round sanding block that fits the contours better than a flat sanding block.

And then I'll have to spray it again to blend it all in.

Neighborhood Independence Day Activities

The kids and grandson are over today for some 'pool time', along with DIL's sister and  our little one's cousin. Since we have to pay $350/yr to the pool people, whether we use the pool or not, we're making sure we use all the Family Passes we have!

While strolling back from the pool, we saw this sign.

Sounded pretty good, and since it's very close, we headed on over.

We watched kids on bikes.....

And Dads on bikes go by.......

Followed by Old Glory in all her splendor.

Long may it fly!

We met a bunch of neighbors, one of who was the original organizer of this yearly parade. She started doing it FORTY-FIVE years ago, when she and her husband bought the house new, and they still live there. There's still a bunch of original owners in this area. Out of the eight houses on our cul-de-sac, three are original owners, or the "Senior Elders" of our neighborhood, and from talking to other neighbors, that ratio is a bit low. On some of the streets here, 80% of the houses are owner occupied by the original owners. The rest of the houses here are split between newer owners and rentals.

And the little ones are having a great time.

It's 1800 here, and we can smell the BBQ's all across the neighborhood. Pizza has been delivered, and from the looks of NOAA weather radar, we should probably batten down the hatches.

UPDATE

NWS Severe Storm and Flash Flood Alert.

Happy Independence Day!

Like the title says, Happy Independence Day.

NOT Happy "4th of July". 

We celebrate the event, not the day it occurred on.....

Bits 'O This 'N That

Well it's 2200 here and the Little One and the Mrs have retired for the evening. He's gotten very good at going up and down the stairs, and when he goes up the stairs, he heads directly to "his" room, and the toys all come out and get scattered around on the floor.

The downstairs family room is still foreign to him. We spent time there in the winter with the fireplace going, but I doubt he remembers it.

He did NOT like getting put on the rattan footstool and being rotated! Pilot training will have to wait a few years, I guess.

With all the heat we've had the last few days, the basement has turned into a pleasant place to spend time. It's about 72* down there, and probably a bit damp. When I was a kid growing up, one of my jobs was to empty the water catch pan the dehumidifier in the basement had. I checked it every day, and if it was more than half-full, I'd empty it. Probably be a good idea to get one for down there.

I finally decided on the workbench/operating desk layout for the Radio Room. After getting some quotes from people who build this stuff, I've decided at this point in life I don't need a custom $1500 workbench and custom $2500 desk to operate from, additional shelving optional. About $900 worth of stuff from IKEA will do both sides of the room, and give me more drawers and shelves to store stuff in. The sad/ironic part is I'll be replacing pretty much the same stuff I threw/gave away in Long Beach. Oh, well....this time I'm much more familiar with their product lines, and how to find things on their website. Everything has a part number and a price, right down to the individual bits of their knocked-down kits. You can find something close to what you want, get an idea of what makes up that ensemble, and then go A La Carte to build up something customized. I'll be buying two drawer units with tabletops, and then adding additional drawer units, tabletops, and legs to get an "L" shaped bench for the workbench, and a "U" shaped bench for the operating position. Adding a couple of riser units in a complimentary color to the operating desk will give it the functionality I want, and a semi-custom look.

And I made some rough measurements and sketches of where the cable penetration will go. I'll need about a 3" hole cored through the concrete foundation to get the pipe inside, and then I'm not sure if I'll continue the run of cables in the pipe, or break them out into a cable tray. Cable trays mounted to the walls or hung from the ceiling just look so.........Professional!

It'll come down to cost, of course. 3" electrical PVC conduit is probably MUCH cheaper than even small size cable tray. The pipe will be laid in with NO 90* elbows allowed. We'll use two 45* elbows with a foot or so of straight section between them. I've fought with waaay too many cable pulling jobs that had runs loaded with 90* turns, and NO junction boxes or "Pull Boxes" anywhere.

And while down in the basement measuring things, I went through and sorted 4 boxes of clothing. I wound up with two boxes of things that will never fit again, things that have lost their appeal to me, and some just plain weird T-shirts I have no idea how I came about owning. All going to Goodwill in the next day or two.

Chair Repair Finished

So, I had the chair apart to replace the "Rocker Bearing Assembly" after I figured out I wouldn't be able to repair the OEM assembly. It was riveted together, and some of the parts were munched up, and while it could have been rebuilt, it would have been a major undertaking.

So, Googling around found multiple choices for new assemblies. Prices ranged from $30, free shipping, for something from the WongBongBing Chair Bearing Company all the way up to a $700 all stainless steel unit made for deep sea fishing chairs.

I settled on this one for $55 shipped.

It had the correct dimensions side-to-side, but the fore-and-aft mounting holes were about 3/16" too close together.

45 minutes with a round file, and the holes were elongated enough to slip over the other two mounting studs.

Not the most "precision" job I've ever done, but hey...it's an old chair; it doesn't turn 7500RPM!

So after what our British cousins would call "fettling a while", the new assembly fit nicely over the four OEM mounting studs, and was properly secured with new flat and split-lock washers.

The clamp and 'load spreader' board are holding the middle piece of bamboo trim down while the glue sets. This is where I left off the other night.

My wife was helping me, and I got too involved explaining what I was doing to take pictures of how I put the base back on to the new rocker bearing, so I'll get all wordy on you....

The thin plate with long, slotted holes in the top picture bolts to the round base of the chair using 1/4-20x4" carriage bolts. Between the thin plate (which is the other mounting flange for the bearing) and the small round base is a "reinforcing plate" made of 1/2" high-density particle board. The long carriage bolts pass through this, through the plywood of the base, and are secured with 1/4-20 nuts, and "too small" flat washers that dug into the wood.

The problem is that after you install the bolts and slide on the reinforcing plate, you need to hold the top of the carriage bolts in place while you line up the bolts with the four holes in the base, and slide the base on to the looong, wobbly carriage bolts.

Only you can't get your hand in there....there's no clearance. So I taped the bolts in place with a couple of layers of blue painter's tape, hoping the adhesive would be strong enough to hold the bolts.

It almost worked. The first time I was able to get all four studs aligned and started into the base, and actually got two of the nuts on. The other two studs were flush with the base, but I just couldn't get even one thread through.

Hmmmmm........just how tight are the holes in the base? Sure enough, when I took the base out to the garage, a 1/4" drill bit dug in like a screw thread, and pulled the drill though. After making several passes from both sides, the drill bit went easily through the holes, and back in the house we went.

After a bit more "fettling" (hey...I like that word!), the base slipped on to the bolts, the washers were placed, and the nuts tightened down.

It rotates and rocks very smoothly now, and we saved this old guy from the landfill.

Chair Repair

Is almost finished. The new bearing assembly came today. and while it lined up side-to-side with the mounting hardware still in the chair, it was about 1/8" off fore-and-aft.

So out came my round, #2, bastard cut file and I elongated the holes. After about 45 minutes of filing and fitting, the holes lined up perfectly, and I attached the rocker bearing to the bottom of the chair, using flat and lock washers this time.

One of the bamboo pieces at the base of the chair had come loose, so I cleaned the mating surfaces, and glued it back on with some Weldwood TiteBond glue, and clamped it down for several hours Weldwood says you can remove the clamps after 30 minutes, but about 15 minutes after I pulled the clamps, the trim piece started to rise up a bit, so I clamped it back down and I'll wait until tomorrow to finish the project and post the pix.

And since it's supposed to be 103* here tomorrow, I think it'll be a good day to get all the items on my Home Depot list.

HD has AC, and we don't!

Field Day 2018

And I'm not doing anything this year.

I was going to set up my satellite station and run "1E CO" from the backyard, but my son, who was going to come out here for a week, got rear-ended a couple of weeks ago. His rental wouldn't insure him for a trip to Colorado, so he spent the time finding a new vehicle to replace the Nissan Frontier pick-up he had that the insurance company totaled. He got clobbered by a fairly new Honda Civic doing about 45MPH while he was stopped for traffic on the 405 freeway. The Civic was destroyed (they had to cut the guy out), and his truck suffered a bent rear axle, pretzeled driveshaft, and the rear bumper was torn off the frame, bending the frame "beyond economical repair" and ripping a couple of big chunks out of it. He's OK, other than being exceptionally upset that the guy who hit his three week old truck was uninsured, and has probably disappeared by now.

So, he replaced it with a 2010 Ram 1500 with a 5.7L Hemi, the class IV trailer towing package, and 38,000 miles on it. Sounds like a nice truck, and I suppose I'll get to see it if/when he decides to come out this way.

NCARC, the local radio club I'm a member of, will be running their Field Day operations out by the City of Nunn water tower, so I'll probably head out there Saturday afternoon to see what they're doing.

Finding My Bearings.....

Rotary "Swivel Rocker" bearings, to be precise, something quite similar to a Lazy Susan bearing, but with springs, like this:

Instead of the bottom bearing plate bolting directly to the structure, it's suspended by springs to a third plate which bolts to the structure.

The one being replaced doesn't look nearly as good:

It was raining steel bearing balls when the guy she bought it from brought it into the den (hey, twenty dollars delivered!), so I grabbed one and measured it to be .375". OK, close to the size that's used in my Yaesu antenna rotators, and it looks like a standard inch-size, so off to the web, where I got 100 .375" stainless steel balls for six bucks, free shipping.

Now having used these before in various projects, I've always put enough balls in the races to fill them to 85%~90% capacity, leaving enough space for a generous dollop or two of grease. And silly me, I assumed a mass-merchandised-built-to-low-cost piece of  furniture would use components that were more to a spec I'm used to.

Nope, it used 8 balls caged in a little nylon ring, and a minimal amount of grease or oil.

I also learned that this is a "Three Spring" assembly, so it has a different feel than if it had two springs and a solid stop. Previous to learning this, I'd wondered where this piece of a broken spring had come from. You can clearly see where the coil broke on the upper end. I've seen valve springs do this, and it usually attributed to either exceeding the design limits of the spring, or faulty metallurgy. Once I found the spring, and saw the pictures of new units, the failure mechanism became clear. The spring failed, causing the bearing assembly to be subjected to bending moments far greater than it was designed for. The races spread apart, a ball popped out of the nylon cage, got jammed in there, and then jumped out of between the races, and it snowballed from there until the guy put the chair on some local list my wife gets.

Anyway, it's not economically viable to repair this. The "axle" through the center is peened over on one end like a large rivet, and that stops me right there. I'd have to thread the shaft and use a nut, and that aint gonna happen. The first new one I found was $97, plus undisclosed shipping, but some more searching found the same thing for $47, plus $7 shipping. Now that I know what they're called, I can search deeper.


Worth $75 total to fix this thing up?

She thinks so, and I don't mind doing it, as long as I can get the parts. I think they're neat chairs, and this one also came with a matching footstool. They're fairly comfy if the padding is good, and the little ones will love that it swivels and rocks. I might have to do something about a potential Pinch Point where the two sections go together and little fingers could go there, too.

Nope, still not my Eames Lounge Chair and Ottoman, but you have to start small, and besides, we saved this from the landfill.

Happy Father's Day!

To all the Dad's out there, enjoy your day.

We just got back from a gathering of the tribe at a lake near here next to a fish hatchery. Pleasant little place to hang out and enjoy watching all three little ones play, have some food, and catch up with all the family comings and goings.

The Cache La Poudre River runs through here, and lots of people were fishing on both the river, and the lake. Didn't see anybody haul any fish in, but from the activity involving the anglers, it looked like the fish were biting pretty well.

Rained a bit, but then that's life here on the Western edge of The Great Plains.

Front Landscaping - Gettin' There! -

So our young handyman guy and his Dad (cool old dude!) came by today with the rest of the shredded cedar "mulch", and finished off the bare spots, and made sure the area had about 3" of mulch everywhere.

Looks much nicer than when we moved in. Sorry for the poor lighting, but I think you get the idea.

The little walkway makes street access easier. Yes, I know it's not a good idea to make it too easy for the goblins to get in, but we have some, uhh....., "Security Measures" in place besides Pebbles The Wonder Dog, who I would NOT want to deal with at 0300 unless my scent was in her memory bank "Top Ten Good Guys" category.

Maybe make that the "Top Five"??

Looks a bit barren, but the plants we picked are fast growing, and only get "so big", according to the House Botanist, my sweet little wife. The nursery we like had these in something like four sizes of pots, so she went by $$ for the final choice, and I think these are the "$10 size" plants. In the above picture you'll see a little "bush" to the left, and that's the size plant she wanted.

That's the "$40 size", and was a birthday/Mother's Day gift from her son. We were blown away when he took it out of his car and gave it to us! Forty bucks is a lot to The Kids, and we certainly didn't expect it.

Anyway....these little guys seemed to have survived the transition from pot to front yard, and seem to be happy.

And we still have to decide what to do on the North side of the house, besides turning the fence panel into a sturdy gate. And I'm going to emphasize "sturdy", because those 60+ MPH winds we had twice this last Spring really caught me by surprise. My neighbor had several fence panels come loose from the posts and blow down. In one case, it pulled loose from one post, and snapped the other one off at ground level, That post was rotted out, along with two on our shared fence, so I helped him dig the old ones out and set the new ones in. It's also why the antenna/tower project is on hold. I really need to seriously talk to some people with local experience with towers and Big HF Yagi antennas here. I should probably noodle up a separate post on the Tower Project. I know some of you guys have experience with towers in places with Real Weather, compared to the benign "weather" I've lived with for the past 35 years.

In the meantime I've clobbered both front and back with a double-dose of "Season Long" broadleaf weed killer. It has good old 2,4-D in it, which I distinctly remember in the "Ortho" cans in Dad's garage when I was growing up. Dad hated dandelions with a passion! Besides the "Weed-and-Feed" treatments he gave the lawn, he had a green plastic tube called a "Killer Kane" that you'd put some big tablets in, and fill up with water, The tablets fizzed and dissolved, and you put the cap on. The business end of it had a spring-loaded nozzle, and when you pushed the Killer Kane down on the dandelion, it got a shot of whatever herbicide tablets you were using.

I always thought the Killer Kane was Kool!

For now we've got the back yard in maintenance mode, just keeping it watered, fed, weeded, and mowed. And as soon as our "Original Lawn Guy" refunds the money he's holding from the canceled contract(s), we'll be getting in touch with Chainsaw Mama to work her magic on the cottonwood trunk. After looking at it for almost eight months, we think we "see" various critters in it, and we'll be interested to get her take on it.

Front Landscaping, Continued

We still have a lot of work to do, but it's progressing nicely.

Here are the pavers leading down to the sidewalk. All the bark on the right side has been scraped out, and we temporarily moved two of the pavers from the side by the downspout to the 'pathway' because the store was two short. I don't think we're going to dig out the area by the downspout; we'll get two more pavers to replace the two we borrowed, and fill in the rest with the shredded cedar we've already put in.

The new stepping stones make it much easier to go from the street to the house, and the grass won't get trashed by the foot traffic. And the new edging should help keep things tidy.

It looks a lot better than it did, and should look nice when we're done.

Still more to do. The place we got the shredded cedar from only had about half of what we ordered, so we have big spots that are still bare.

The wife is deciding what other plants to buy. We're trying to find things that either bloom all summer, or have staggered blooming times so we'll always have some color.

And once we get the North side of the front yard finished (is this stuff ever really finished?) we'll attack the South side. Plans call for the edging and shredded cedar over here, too.