What did you do today?

[Tim Clarke]

Sourdough bread has been in lot more demand than any shop activities so..


Bonus is that the projects dont take any space after couple of days..

Now that my summer projects are done, and Salmon fishing is over, I'll get back to baking. Since I started baking my own bread, I don't like the stuff from the store. Yours looks just right, made with care, and done to perfection!

[Cenedd]

Looks like you didn't quite get that properly centred on the dividing head.

[MattiJ]

Looks like you didn't quite get that properly centred on the dividing head.

You have no idea how gummy and sticky the raw non-tempered material was to work with
Adheres to cutting edge and cutting fluids or dry lubricants help only for one or two passes.

[Jim Stewart]

Fired up the compressor to put some air in the pickup's tires and figured I might as well drain the tank (it'd been a while). It's an 80 gallon vertical tank with the drain valve inconveniently in the very bottom, but I've fixed that by installing an ell and some brass pipe with a ball valve on the end.

So now I just open the valve with my foot. Yep, there was water there all right. Blasted out onto the floor, spraying everywhere. My jeans are soaked!

Lesson learned: next time bleed the tank at 20 psi or so, not when it's charged up to 175.

-js

[Dave C]

Fired up the compressor to put some air in the pickup's tires and figured I might as well drain the tank (it'd been a while). It's an 80 gallon vertical tank with the drain valve inconveniently in the very bottom, but I've fixed that by installing an ell and some brass pipe with a ball valve on the end.
So now I just open the valve with my foot. Yep, there was water there all right. Blasted out onto the floor, spraying everywhere. My jeans are soaked!
Lesson learned: next time bleed the tank at 20 psi or so, not when it's charged up to 175.

-js

Yup, btdt and got the crap scared out of me when the plug blew out of the top of the 2 liter soda bottle/condensate reservoir.

[brian Rupnow]

Worked all day designing an old school sawmill edger.

[J Tiers]

Oh for a mere 10%. Called Value Added Tax in the UK at 20%. When you've already paid 40% income tax on the money you don't get much for each £100 you earn.

That High tax here is due to special taxing districts. Those are due to TIF financing, which Costco does (like everyone else). Our new Costco that will be built here in town will have an extra 1% just for that, plus the state, city, transportation district, County, etc, etc. Adds up to about 10% instead of the usual 7% most places around here that are not special taxing districts.

For those outside the US, TIF = Tax Increment Financing..... a way to pay part of the project out of the extra sales taxes (the tax "increment") that the project brings in. Since the average Costco does 164 million bucks per year, the taxes can be significant. About 75% to 80% of the sales are sales taxed, not tax free, the rest are business buying, anything a business buys and resells is taxed at the time of sale to end user. Businesses pay sales tax only on what they buy for their own use. I imagine the VAT works in a similar way.

[danlb]

Today I accidentally read a Jtiers post. Oh well. Once every 5 or 6 months is bearable.

While Tax increment financing is a real thing, it has nothing to do with Costco and our 10% tax. We just live in a big state that has lots of things to spend money on. To get into the reasons for the high taxes would require a discussion of the politics involved.

Today I rediscovered the value of stropping blades. I have a nice 15 degree 3 stage knife sharpener that does a very nice job on the Japanese kitchen knives. Even so, they don't get razor sharp. They cut exceedingly well, but don't have that edge that you can feel with every whorl of your fingertip's fingerprint.

Enter the straight razor. I got this little travel razor from my step dad as he was cleaning out "junk" preparatory to moving. It's sharp, but not shaving sharp. I put a more uniform edge on the blade with a Work Sharp WSKTS-W Knife & Tool Sharpener, and it was nice and sharp, but not quite there. So I got an old belt and proceeded to strop it like I used to long, long ago when the only knives I could afford would keep an edge just long enough to slice a sandwich. The result was much better than I expected. The polished edge was noticeably sharper and it was able to shave the hair off my arm.



I've since stropped my Leatherman Micra blade back to its original scalpel sharpness. Same with my Ken Onion "Leek", though I don't expect that to last long.

[Bob Engelhardt]

I gilded a turd, as Don Foreman coined it. I found a pretty-rusted honest-to-God Coes Monkey wrench at the dump. The rust was easily & quickly removed in muriatic acid, but the wooded grips were busted. I used a piece of cherry that's been hanging around 60 years or so. The fit-up leaves something to be desired, but it is after all, a turd.

[thaiguzzi]

Looks like you didn't quite get that properly centred on the dividing head.

Now THAT was funny.
LOL.

[mattthemuppet]

I gilded a turd, as Don Foreman coined it. I found a pretty-rusted honest-to-God Coes Monkey wrench at the dump. The rust was easily & quickly removed in muriatic acid, but the wooded grips were busted. I used a piece of cherry that's been hanging around 60 years or so. The fit-up leaves something to be desired, but it is after all, a turd.

Nice! I did exactly the same, minus the lovely wooden grips. Don't use it much, but it was a pleasant exercise.

[DennisCA]

Leveled my lathe again after I had moved it a while ago. This is probably as good as it will get since the lathe is not bolted down and I was chasing my own tail there for a while.

[Cenedd]

Ah, a shiny new board. Well that explains the downtime. Was worried for a bit; kinda like you guys....you get my odd sense of humour

[reggie_obe]

Trying to get my new to me Hypneumat 2 spindle gang drill out of my pickup truck bed. Too heavy to muscle out, too high for my Hoyer lift to pick it and no gantry crane. Painfully slow and dirty disassembly, all the socket cap screw are packed with chips, lots of easily damaged "stuff" to remove before pulling the column of the base, then I can lift the table out.

[PStechPaul]

This should be a bit clearer:



I bought a Hitachi mitre saw for $50 on FB Marketplace:



I took apart my Toro electric string trimmer which had burned up:


And I spent a couple hours of hard labor excavating more of the area for the 8x12 shed I will be building. I found a guy with a Bobcat but I think it would be hard to get it into this area, and I think I can complete the excavation and leveling myself. I've lost about 5 or 6 pounds since starting this phase of digging, and my back and knees seem to be holding up, so it's good exercise



Looks like there is a limit of five attachments, but maybe using a URL might work (nope):