Tag Archives: tools

Fall fell, or did it?

What crazy weather we have been having the last month or so. The daily high temps could have been anywhere from 60 to 100! Now it seems the weather is shifting into the more normal fal pattern, and we sure could use it. I believe we are at the bottom of the medium drought cycle and on the recovery side of the long cycle, but who really knows these days. The weather models have been “adjusted” so many times lately I don’t think anyone really has a handle on the changing patterns.

20150920_141131Besides all the weather stuff… I had posted about all of the seasonal movies in our que, promptly after making that post and settling in for some movie time, the TV let some of the magic out. It appears that it was just the internal power transformer but I have been playing hobb trying to get parts, so we ended up getting a new set so I can spend some more time on the repair. Best laid plans I suppose. I will post a follow up on the movie list later as well as a follow up on the TV progress.

BTW: When selecting a new TV, or any consumer electronics for that matter, make sure you buy a real name brand, Sony, Magnavox, Samsung, etc., someone who has a large product line and has been around for a while. Someone with a reputation to be concerned with and a supply chain that requires conformity. If you want to give an off-brand or small-house product a go, make sure you can get service documentation (schematics, diagrams, parts lists, troubleshooting tips) before you buy, and hang on to it. You or your repair person may need it.

Apex Digital is a crap manufacturer and documentation on their products is basically unavailable. Parts are also unavailable unless salvaged off of used boards, and even then are a crap-shoot. Within the same model I have found numerous incompatible parts changes, and no one can get component parts. Very few sources can even get board level replacements.

20151001_105529Moving along, I have been busy with woodworking projects for work. I have been wanting to build an built-in rent-drop for years. We started out with a basket on the wall inside the mail slot then progressed to putting a bookcase/cabinet in front of the slot with a hole cut out of the back and a basket on a shelf. After almost 20 years I finally got to destroy the bookcase/cabinets I hated build this built-in fixture. So far we are very happy with the results.

Along with the day-job stuff we have been working a some other projects that necessitated buying a few tools. Gee darn, I hate buying tools. The first two are a dapping block and a disc punch cutter. These have been on my list of jewelry tools for many years, I just never could justify them. With our current project list there are several items that need these tools. Some are jewelry related and some are for hardware and findings. Another tool I have been coveting for a very long time is a rolling mill. This one was a bit pricy but I found a deal for about a third of the usual cost. We both decided that was the Universe saying it’s time to add this tool to the round up.

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20150922_165018While I was at it I managed to make another tool I have been waiting on for no apparent reason, a jeweler’s fork, or as it is more commonly known, a bench pin. I’m not sure why I waited so long to make one, but here it is.

After getting the tools in place I worked on a few test projects and was reasonably happy with the results. Two copper rings, one with an aircraft rivet, a copper button, and a practice go at a cross-peened leaf which is a component to something as of yet undecided.

I like working copper, particularly recovered/recycled copper. There is so much you can do with it. The leaf and solid ring were made from old copper pipe, the riveted one was made from some salvage electrical wire, and the button was made from some fourth-hand scrap copper sheet.
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While in the groove I also “recovered” some tool steel from some old screwdrivers and annealed them so I can turn them into some jewelry tools before re-hardening and tempering them. Another simple tool build was a pack of sanding sticks.

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The last thing on the list is my continued studies for my Commercial Radio Tech license. I passed on of the three a couple of weeks ago and plan on taking the big one next week. I will follow up with the third, which is for an endorsement, later on in the month.

That’s it for now, until next time,
~FlyBoyJon

too much going on…

Wow, it has been way too long since I last posted. My sincere apologies to you. School has been keeping me very busy. I started out with five classes and ended up dropping one, as it turns out that was a really good move.

The hitch in my giddy-up? My choices in scheduling. The original plan was to spread things out over the week, one or two classes a day four days a week, this turned out to be a bad idea. I was hoping to leave plenty of time for work, ya… right. With everything spread out, I am always scrambling for something and there is always something due.

Next term I will be trying a new schedule format, all of my classes on one or two days back to back. I would make for one or two crazy days a week, but less transit time and more focus time. Thats the idea anyway.,

While I am on the subject of school, some interesting developments have been brewing. First off, I have been elected as President of the SJCC Philosophy Club. I have gotten a few quizzical looks from people when they find out my major is Aeronautical/Aerospace Engineering and I am hanging around with the philosophy and theology majors. It is rather amusing actually.

Along with my Philosophy Club activities I have been given some interesting opportunities. One in particular will get at least my foot in the door at San Jose State University a full year and a half earlier than expected. There is a really interesting program in the new Global Studies department that is participating with the Soliya project and I have been invited to be one of the students involved. This would mean registering as a SJSU student, which by the was is awesome.

Why is this awesome? Well for one, I have been wanting to join Alpha Eta Roe, an aviation professional fraternal organization and it would make life much easier if I was a student at a chartered school, SJSU. Another reason is that I am planning on transferring to SJSU once I finish my General AA at San Jose City College to pursue my BS and MS in engineering. It just sort of tidies things up a bit.

Another education thing going on is that I am hoping to wrap up that ongoing drama filled AS in Aviation Operations at Mountain State University that I started in 2006. If I can just squeeze one class in per term there while taking one class per term at SJSU and three or four classes at SJCC I can get that one done too. Thats a lot of schooling going on.

This is why it has been a little while since my last post. On an aviation note, I did pick up some new plains at my newly-opened Harbor Freight Tools. It made my tool-geek heart skip a beat when I saw that they were finally opening a store closer than 30 miles away. This one is less than a mile! WOOT!

😉

Things are leveling off in my schedule as I get back into the academic swing, so I expect to be back in the shop this weekend. With even a small bit of luck I will have something to post about on Monday, so stay tuned for next weeks exciting episode.

Until then, blue skies and tailwinds.
~FlyBoyJon

Disposable Society

In many areas of my life I use tools. All kinds of tools. In a conversation about tools and their repair, someone mentioned that tools purchased from Harbor Freight and similar retail outlets are disposable in general. It made me stop and think a little.

A few years back, I worked for couple of companies repairing tools, so for me the idea of just chucking tools without even looking to see what the problem is seems strange. There is some truth to the disposable statement though. The number of people in our society who are Fixers is a lot lower than it was in decades past. Go back in time 2 generations, 70 years or so, and you will find that the average American was a Fixer of one sort or another.

Now I want you to take your Political Correctness Glasses off for a second and absorb the scene that follows.

Dad gets home and finds dinner on the table and mom’s clothes iron on the counter.

Dad: “Iron not working?”
Mom: “Stopped working while I was ironing your shirts.”

Looking a little concerned

Dad: “Have a shirt for tomorrow?”
Mom: “Yep. Only got half way through though.”
Dad: “I’ll take care if it after dinner.”

Aside from the gender-roll type-casting here, lets look at the point I am getting at. It was common for someone in the household to fix, or at least try to fix, stuff when it stopped working. The important key phrase in that statement is stopped working, not broke, stopped working. It was a time when American Made was more common than not and the spirit of American Ingenuity was strong in a large segment of the population.

Our economy has changed. Over the years society has demanded cheaper products. The way industry met those needs was to buy parts, materials and finished goods from overseas. Not to beat that horse, but we started killing our own economy when we traded in our producer status to become a consumer society.

Products became so cheap that it is often more financially feasible to chuck the broken product rather than repair it when it stopped working. The distinction between the two is important and relevant, it demonstrates a change in our collective attitude and thought process as we became a consumer society.

What seems to have happened is that our group consciousness lost the desire to fix. More truthfully it seems that the need to fix has changed from a physical practice to an intellectual one. We are always trying to fix the species, fix the environment, fix other societies, we now fix things in the socio-political sense rather than fix our own stuff when it stops working.

If the average American who replaced one power tool of some kind once a year decided to repair a tool just once, before giving it to someone else who was willing to repair it at least once before replacing it, landfills across the nation would have some 20 million fewer tools in them in just 3 years. For those of you counting, at an average of 3 pounds per tool, that’s about 30,000 tons of mostly non-biodegradable waste. That is a big impact just from repairing before replacing.

Many of us are tired of the consumer society and the disposable mentality that goes with it. It’s not just about materials recycling, its about extending practical usage in the first place. A segment of the population that is making a lot of headway in the area of the re-use and re-purposing of things and materials is the DIY movement. All those Makers out there rekindling the spirit of American Ingenuity. It’s that DIY spirit that can return our society to a more balanced one, somewhere half way in between consumer and producer. There is also a continuing interest in crafting, from jewelry and fiber arts to a resurgence of blacksmithing, just to name a few. All of these movements are demonstrations that sustainability and self-sufficiency are worth reaching for, and people are thinking about it.

Now, off the soap-box and back to the reason I went down this road in the first place. My comment to the person that got me thinking about all of this was simple. If you look at the paperwork that came with the tool you will find that it usually includes an exploded view drawing of the tool and a parts list. A lot of tools, including inexpensive ones, are repairable if you are willing to do the repair. It is true that they are not generally cost effective to take to a repair center, but spending $7 and an hour of your time to repair a $70 tool that stopped working can be, this goes for other things too, not just tools. It is all up to you.

I choose to repair whenever possible. I am also choosing to take a little time to make sure that products I buy are repairable as well. Repairing tools and appliances is not for everyone, but some people like me actually enjoy digging into a tool and the satisfaction of having brought it back to life. If you don’t like doing that kind of stuff, maybe you know someone who does.

Being a Fixer is just one lane along the 12 lane highway of sustainability and self sufficiency. I chose to use this lane whenever I can, how about you?