The New New

Posted on July 7, 2014 by Phil Kadath

These are the C-shaped tables I was speaking of. I spent many hours this week getting these ready for building. I’m afraid that I am going to have to guess that I will have 15-18 hours into each of them before they are done.

20140706_163132a

(all pics are clickable, of course)

The one on the left has a border made of bicycle chain. Four layers of it. That took quite a bit of time and I don’t think I’ll be doing it again, which means I will now have to spend an hour each on opening up a pair of transfer cases to get enough chain to build one table.

20140706_163153a

On the upside, provided that I can figure out a better way to clean them than with a power washer and then a wire wheel on my dremel tool, I will then have more feet for more tables as well.

20140706_163215a

I’ve got the stuff cleaned up for a third table, so when I’m done wire wheeling these transfer case halves and then clear coating them to keep the brushed aluminum look shiny, I should be able to turn out a third one in two weeks.

20140706_163223a

While I hesitate to try Etsy, I don’t know of any other site that I could showcase these for sale. Does anybody out there know of a similar type site?

Posted in Kewel! | 5 Comments

Sunday Funnies

Posted on July 6, 2014 by Phil Kadath

Here we go!

Two different takes on the same topic

n88ohgOmcz1rzv6rko1

n8620hFlgz1sv0giso1

The ObamaBoom economy

n88of0b3ZA1rzv6rko1

And, what I’d do if I were required to go to the VA for treatment

n7f5l0LeNi1reiuc6o1

Posted in Kewel! | Leave a comment

Appendage Check

Posted on July 4, 2014 by Phil Kadath

Got all your fingers and toes? Good.

Because you’ll be able to power up your laptop and other electronics with this tent.

OrangeSolarConceptTent-1024x640

click to enlarge

For the person who can’t unplug, even when you they don’t get a connection.

Or for the prepper who knows how to turn the lights off (yes, it has lighting and yes, they can be turned off).

Posted in Kewel! | 1 Comment

Happy Independence Day

Posted on July 3, 2014 by Phil Kadath

How government says it

n84c6m6MGF1qz4s6ho1

Do your best, anyway.

Posted in The Government is Not Your Friend | 1 Comment

What I’m working on

Posted on July 2, 2014 by Phil Kadath

I’ve got the week off from school, but I took my one allowed nap last Thursday after school and have been a busy boy this week.

First up, birthday present for a RPG player

20140621_105634a

Someone brought in sets of 12 pentagons cut from 10 gauge steel and offered them up to us students. Some refused, thinking it an impossible folly. Some saw a dodecahedron and did it for the challenge. I saw a 12-sided die and immediately knew someone who’d want one.

I, in return, challenged the guy who brought these in to get me 20 equilateral triangles so I could build an icosahedron (aka: a 20-sided die).

What I really wanted to build was a vessel for the RPG player’s dice collection, but I’m still floundering on a hidden/flush mounted latching system for the door. I’m still trying to figure out how to incorporate a latch from one of those CD players with a lid that pops up when you press on it or something similar. Maybe in the not too distant future.

Also, I built one of these again.

new table 1

The top is 16″ long on each side and it is 26″ tall. The base is from the clutch of a VW Jetta.

I have two more nearly fully laid out that I’m hoping to weld up today. I’m figuring that I put 12 hours into each one, what with all the cleaning of the various pieces (especially the chains). After welding up the tops today, I’m going to scope out how many pieces I have left over that are already clean and may do a third one over the weekend. These ones will be different in that they are C-shaped.

If that description is lacking, I will hopefully be able to show you Sunday or Monday after I get a helper over giving me a second set of eyes to make sure the legs and feet are squared up.

Posted in Kewel! | 6 Comments

What I worked on

Posted on July 2, 2014 by Phil Kadath

It’s been a couple weeks, but I’m finally getting off my backside to finish up posting about repairing Joe’s steel targets. I was fiddling about on my phone, saw the pics and facepalmed. So here we go.

From the previous post, I was repairing a load of craters put into the targets by steel core ammo. To do this without harming the impact/abrasive resistance of the AR500 steel, you need to pre-heat the metal to at least 500 degrees Fahrenheit so that the crystalline structure of the old metal will accept the new metal and get the new metal to act like the old metal. You then have to control the cooling of the metal so that the two stay together.

As you can probably guess, there is lots of fire involved and you’ll need some good gloves and a pile of thick blankets you don’t mind getting absolutely filthy. This will leave you with little time for photographs, which probably for the better, because there is fire everywhere and your phone is made of plastic.

Hit the button for the rest

Continue reading →

Posted in Kewel!, Phil Goes to College | 1 Comment

My Father Was a Spy

Posted on July 2, 2014 by Alaska

So, my father passed away May 25th; his memorial service was yesterday.

I’d known that he developed an innovative side-looking sonar at Scripps for submarine detection, and been involved in maintenance of the transatlantic cable taps, but that was all after his USAF and USN military service, when he was in graduate school or the private sector doing oceanographic work.

But I’d also known that he’d served in Germany doing Top-Secret signals intercepts right out of high school. He wouldn’t talk about it much (it was only declassified in the late ’90s) and it was only yesterday that I learned the details of his unit: he served in the US Air Force Security Service (USAFSS). Yeah, you’ll want to click that link. Johnny Cash had his exact same job, and served in the exact same facility, just a few years prior to my Dad.

We were estranged for many years for lots of reasons, but even I choked up a bit when the color guard dropped to a knee and said his piece while handing the flag to his widow.

Thanks for your service, Dad.

Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 6 Comments

This is what direct action looks like

Posted on July 2, 2014 by Phil Kadath

When the anarchists took their direction from the Democratic Party and blocked shipments of war material to US ports, the left applauded their “direct action” protest.

Probably not so much this

Protesters in Murrieta block detainees’ buses in tense standoff

A crowd of 200 to 300 people in downtown Murrieta surrounded three buses carrying immigrant detainees Tuesday afternoon, causing the buses to turn around before they reached a Border Patrol station in the Riverside County city.

Waving Americans flags and protest signs, the crowd refused to give way when the buses arrived with some 140 detainees from Texas, which has seen a flood of Central American immigrants cross the border in recent weeks without legal permission.

A small number of Murrieta police officers stood between the protesters and the buses but could not keep the crowd from blocking the buses’ path.

The face-off came one day after Mayor Alan Long urged residents to protest the federal government’s decision to move the recent immigrants who had arrived in the country illegally — and have overwhelmed Texas border facilities — to the Border Patrol station here.

The government is just playing catch and release with this new wave of illegal immigrants. Some folks don’t want the trouble that is caused by flooding a community with illegal immigrants. If the federal government wants to play this game, they should fly them to Chicago, NYC, D.C. and Detriot and stop attempting to pass these new arrivals off on people who didn’t vote for The Healer in Chief.

Posted in Order of the imperial upraised middle finger. | 4 Comments

I hope they are shaking in their loafers

Posted on July 2, 2014 by Phil Kadath

They should be. These guys mean business.

In Major Announcement, FIRE Says It Will Sue Every College With a Speech Code Until Speech Codes Die Forever

The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education announced a major litigation effort Tuesday against universities that maintain clearly illegal speech codes.

With help from the law firm of Davis Wright Tremaine, FIRE is suing several universities that manifestly and unconstitutionally deprive their students of First Amendment rights.

“Universities’ stubborn refusal to relinquish their speech codes must not be tolerated,” said FIRE President Greg Lukianoff during a press conference.

For now, suits have been filed against Ohio University, Iowa State University, Chicago State University, and Citrus College in California. These universities have all trampled students’ free speech rights, according to FIRE.

Lukianoff explained that FIRE would not hesitate to expand the suits until all universities abandon their speech codes, which were ruled unconstitutional decades ago but have endured at more than 50 percent of colleges, according to the foundation’s research.

What part of “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” do they not understand?

I think I want to give FIRE’s new benefactor a hug.

Posted in The Left is Never Right | Leave a comment

The future is here

Posted on July 2, 2014 by Phil Kadath

And I like it. So much so that I probably won’t sleep much tonight now that I’ve found it and keep thinking of multiple applications to use it for.

No crankshaft, no problem: Toyota’s free piston engine is brilliant

Let’s get one thing straight: The variable-valve-timing, direct-injection, turbo-wonderful powerplant in your new car is not cutting-edge. Despite the complexity of the modern engine, the fundamentals haven’t changed since Grover Cleveland was in office. Pistons turn a crankshaft that eventually spins your car’s wheels.

Yawn.

Electrically driven cars are the future. But until we have cheap, 1000-mile batteries, we still need range-extending fossil-fuel engines. Those devices don’t need to turn wheels, just generate juice. The simple solution is to strap a generator to a piston engine, as BMW did with the two-cylinder range extender in its i3 EV. But if the engine never turns a wheel, there’s no need for it to rotate anything. Why not cut out the middleman and use the piston’s reciprocating motion to generate electricity? That obviates camshafts and most other rotating parts, too.

Question 1: How soon can I have one of these in an engine-driven welding machine?

Question 2: Will it fit in a suitcase?

Question 3: If not a suitcase, then will it fit on a TIG cart?

I’m not asking how much because I don’t care. Just build it. Then shut up and take my money.

Posted in Kewel!, Life in the Atomic Age | 3 Comments