We’re still under various restrictions due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but they are slowly easing up a bit. Unfortunately, our local region has been identified as a hot spot for the disease so we are staying under stricter restrictions that…
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Replacing a defective light switch
A few years ago I installed improved lighting in my basement workshop. Recently I’d been noticing that the light switch sometimes made a “pop” or slight sparking noises when I switched it on or off. This seemed to be getting…
Wayzgoose 2021 Anthology
Although the COVID-19 pandemic has reduced this year’s Grimsby Wayzgoose to a virtual event, an Anthology is still being produced. We made a 1-sheet/4-page submission for this on some paper handmade from recycled discards from a local artist. The pulp…
Giving up on Strip Casting (for now)
After several unsuccessful attempts at casting strip material on my Monotype Composition Caster, I’m giving up for a while. The problems I’ve been fighting with include: Unfused strip material, which easily breaks up into pieces Blowback through the nozzle seat…
Lanston Monotype Pump Cleaning
I recently tried to get strip casting working on my Monotype Composition Caster but gave up after several failures. One suspect was the pump; the strip-casting moulds use a different pump than composition and display casting, and I had never…
Are ‘sign’ and ‘sine’ homophones?
At the dinner table last night the conversation wandered into homophones, and at one point ‘sine’ and ‘sign’ were offered as an example, to which I objected. I felt that they are (very subtly) different, but my family and, as…
Making a phone adapter for a tripod
There are a couple of videos I’d like to record. My current camera is 14 years old; it still works fine, but its video quality is poor by modern standards, so until I decide to buy a new camera I…
An Extended Drill Press Table
The table on my drill press is more or less a 12″/30cm square which is fine for drilling smaller objects but once the workpiece is large enough that its center of gravity is more than 6″/15cm from the hole you…
First try at strip casting
I have my Monotype composition caster converted to produce strip material—leading and rule—and this is my first try at running this setup. You can see the inauspicious results in my accompanying YouTube video. I am using a pump body which…
A novel motorcycle air filter (not!)
We’ve had a week of beautiful warm (for November) weather here and I took advantage of this to take my motorcycle (a 1987 Kawasaki EX500) out on several rides. Unfortunately on the last ride the bike decided that it wouldn’t…
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