The Do-it-Yourself Thread: A Home for Handymen and Artisans - General

[QUOTE=Zero-Point;46769929]It all depends on who's in charge, really. My workplace uses Muriatic acid and other types of acids, but I don't see any goggles/gloves that they hand out for their use. (thankfully my department doesn't use any of that stuff)[/QUOTE] I guess it would depend on the concentration, but I would be really surprised if you guys were using anything other than super SUPER low concentration HCL without any PPE at all. I mean if it is even slightly concentrated, your OSHA inspector would probably have an aneurysm if people weren't using any PPE :v:

[QUOTE=Timebomb575;46769974]I guess it would depend on the concentration, but I would be really surprised if you guys were using anything other than super SUPER low concentration HCL without any PPE at all. I mean if it is even slightly concentrated, your OSHA inspector would probably have an aneurysm if people weren't using any PPE :v:[/QUOTE] OSHA and the EPA would literally bleed themselves dry through their eye-sockets if they saw what this place was doing.

[QUOTE=Zero-Point;46770003]OSHA and the EPA would literally bleed themselves dry through their eye-sockets if they saw what this place was doing.[/QUOTE] You [U]DEFINITELY SHOULD NOT[/U] suffer a work related injury, call in OSHA/the EPA, get a bazillion dollars from the follow-up lawsuit and settlement, and then give me half of it. [I]definitely dont do that[/I]

Today was the day I learned that AC power has polarity. Managed to fry an old strobe light by hooking up neutral to hot and hot to neutral. I had always thought that you could hook everything up either way. Hopefully I didn't mess it up too badly; it's out of an old power plant and looks really cool.

[QUOTE=Timebomb575;46769775]Ohhh I see what you mean. Yeah Ive definitely seen some appalling industry setups before. When I was saying that an amateur setup couldn't be as safe as an industrial one, I was assuming a [I]fully compliant[/I] industrial setup, which usually ends up costing a metric buttload of cash :v: Surprising to hear that from a Brit though. H&S guys over here in the states generally regard British health and safety regulations/enforcement to be superior to ours.[/QUOTE] I think generally speaking we aren't bad at it - but there will always be places that don't follow along and people still regularly die over here in easily preventable workplace accidents (most are usually forklift or taking a big fall/being crushed on a building site though)

[QUOTE=HiddenMyst;46769166][t]https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/62766551/Projects/PC220073.jpg[/t][/QUOTE] Sure is a nice rack you got there.

[QUOTE=papkee;46770199]Today was the day I learned that AC power has polarity. Managed to fry an old strobe light by hooking up neutral to hot and hot to neutral. I had always thought that you could hook everything up either way. Hopefully I didn't mess it up too badly; it's out of an old power plant and looks really cool.[/QUOTE] You probably just blew the bulb. If you can replace it, you're fine.

[QUOTE=woolio1;46771594]You probably just blew the bulb. If you can replace it, you're fine.[/QUOTE] I dunno, when I plugged it in wrong it made a loud bang and flashed, then a few seconds later another big bang and that was when I pulled the plug. Right now I'm trying to open it up and it's caked in rust and grease and is not going to budge. [t]http://i.imgur.com/s8Je3pC.jpg[/t]

You might have shorted it and it might have vaporized a contact. You'll see when you get into it.

[QUOTE=papkee;46770199]Today was the day I learned that AC power has polarity. Managed to fry an old strobe light by hooking up neutral to hot and hot to neutral. I had always thought that you could hook everything up either way. Hopefully I didn't mess it up too badly; it's out of an old power plant and looks really cool.[/QUOTE] AC doesn't have polarity, well technically it does but it reverses polarity every half cycle. The only difference between live and neutral is that neutral is bonded to earth which guarantees (assuming your wiring is correct) that the neutral is safe to touch. As to why your light blew my guess would be there is a capacitor or resistor between the neutral and earth which blew when you got it around the wrong way, normally this would trip an earth leakage breaker assuming you have one.

[QUOTE=Chryseus;46772130]AC doesn't have polarity, well technically it does but it reverses polarity every half cycle. The only difference between live and neutral is that neutral is bonded to earth which guarantees (assuming your wiring is correct) that the neutral is safe to touch. As to why your light blew my guess would be there is a capacitor or resistor between the neutral and earth which blew when you got it around the wrong way, normally this would trip an earth leakage breaker assuming you have one.[/QUOTE] Trust this guy, he has a sine wave for an avatar. He defo knows his stuff.

Well the challenge is still trying to open it. On a similar note, I have no clue how the working one was still working. I opened it up and it was full, [B]full[/B], of water. Like the entire lens was full of water that came splashing out when I took it off. This was the one that was working perfectly fine, too. I guess IP45 covers the inside of the light as well.

[QUOTE=Timebomb575;46770053]You [U]DEFINITELY SHOULD NOT[/U] suffer a work related injury, call in OSHA/the EPA, get a bazillion dollars from the follow-up lawsuit and settlement, and then give me half of it. [I]definitely dont do that[/I][/QUOTE] There's a moral dilemma though. If they get hit with such a hefty fine, the company will go bankrupt, and we'll all be out of work. No one else around here is really hiring, either. One of my co-workers has 8 kids he has to take care of (2 of them being his nephews that he took custody of from his dope-head sister in law, the youngest was born addicted to Oxycontin, poor thing). Don't worry though, I will fully exercise my rights to say "Yeeeah fuck that" when it gets down to it. Also, as promised, here's some pics. My small collection of contacts (only dislodged about 10-15 contacts for this batch): [t]http://i.imgur.com/gOE5Xua.jpg[/t] Diluted solution (taken after the initial precipitation so there's not much on the copper by this point): [t]http://i.imgur.com/NTsjVM9.jpg[/t] Mostly done! Just needs to dry (that's water it's in from rinsing, could've filtered it but I figured I might as well just let it all air-dry because the coffee filters I bought were the pre-folded cone shit with creases that would make it hard to get all the flakes out): [t]http://i.imgur.com/qkuPEs6.jpg[/t] *edit* Dried! [t]http://i.imgur.com/2ixEAoc.jpg[/t]

[QUOTE=JoeyZ;46768037]So one of my ex's friends recently cut down a tree that's been a nuisance in his yard for a while, and my ex said she'd pay him $100 to have it quartered into firewood for her. I came over one day and saw what she was burning, called her crazy and snagged a few pieces. [IMG]http://s21.postimg.org/6ioqifotz/2014_12_21_00_59_18.jpg[/IMG] [IMG]http://s21.postimg.org/esa97pe9j/2014_12_21_01_00_05.jpg[/IMG] [IMG]http://s21.postimg.org/3vi4af69j/2014_12_21_01_00_15.jpg[/IMG] It's a shame it was all cut the way it was :suicide: I'm used to guitars, but what other kinds of shit do you guys think this could be good for? They're not really big enough to do anything major[/QUOTE] How about a cigar box?

[QUOTE=JoeyZ;46768037]So one of my ex's friends recently cut down a tree that's been a nuisance in his yard for a while, and my ex said she'd pay him $100 to have it quartered into firewood for her. I came over one day and saw what she was burning, called her crazy and snagged a few pieces. It's a shame it was all cut the way it was :suicide: I'm used to guitars, but what other kinds of shit do you guys think this could be good for? They're not really big enough to do anything major[/QUOTE] I wonder if that could be tiger maple, if so it might be valuable.

Spent the afternoon trying to repair a casio piano , only to find out it would power on but make sound. You could hear static through the speakers, and then when you'd flip the power switch off it'd stay on. Looking it up online yielded nothing, it's like Casio pianos just don't even break or something, really strange. Also, got myself a Fluke 117 DMM, but I'm not sure if I should take it back and try and get something better suited for electronics, everyone keeps calling this an electritians meter and saying it is basically worthless for electronics repair. The Fluke 177 is a step up but still the same issue, and I don't feel like dropping $250 for a used Fluke 88 or something, but I don't want to be wasting my money here. Not sure what to do. [IMG]http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a345/ajackss/flukes_zpsfe16f52d.jpg[/IMG]

[QUOTE=Ajacks;46782027]Spent the afternoon trying to repair a casio piano , only to find out it would power on but make sound. You could hear static through the speakers, and then when you'd flip the power switch off it'd stay on. Looking it up online yielded nothing, it's like Casio pianos just don't even break or something, really strange. Also, got myself a Fluke 117 DMM, but I'm not sure if I should take it back and try and get something better suited for electronics, everyone keeps calling this an electritians meter and saying it is basically worthless for electronics repair. The Fluke 177 is a step up but still the same issue, and I don't feel like dropping $250 for a used Fluke 88 or something, but I don't want to be wasting my money here. Not sure what to do. [IMG]http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a345/ajackss/flukes_zpsfe16f52d.jpg[/IMG][/QUOTE] Wouldn't go for a Fluke 88 either, more suited to the automotive market with features like RPM and other crap. The fluke 17b is the cheapest electronics meter Fluke makes. The fluke 117 you got is pretty good meter except it lacks microamp and milliamp ranges, otherwise it's fine. If you still want to change it and don't mind going second hand you might want to look at the Fluke 187 / 189 or perhaps even Fluke 87 III / V.

Unless you're doing regular work on mains a fluke is a bit overkill. Something like the Uni-T UT71 is an excellent general purpose meter.

[QUOTE=Ajacks;46782027]Spent the afternoon trying to repair a casio piano , only to find out it would power on but make sound. You could hear static through the speakers, and then when you'd flip the power switch off it'd stay on. Looking it up online yielded nothing, it's like Casio pianos just don't even break or something, really strange.[/QUOTE] Have you tried tracing back to the speaker drivers? Potentially injecting a signal into the drivers to make sure they aren't the problem? I repair some of the drum machines for a few friends of mine's band, and what I typically found was that the MIDI generator was rarely the problem and typically boiled down to the support chips/drivers. (I'd also check the voltage regulators).

[IMG]http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a345/ajackss/ssas_zpsae1c2ecd.png[/IMG] Almost ready towrap. Decided to make the headshell out of cherry, the thin metal wasn't painting very well. Only thing missing is the aluminum tonearm holding latch that is still drying. Been an interesting project, and I'm sure my girlfriend will love it.

She'll love it, and so would anyone else with even a hint of taste. Especially since you made the damn thing :v:

Returning my 117 tomorrow and buying a Fluke 87V. Spend the extra money now and I won't think about it in the future. I could get by with much less currently, but you never curse a good tool.

[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yO_xXIQIOWM[/media] I made this synth as a proof of concept to test a single oscillator design. It wasn't ever intended to work the way I have it configured here, the system would normally pulse through the selected notes in quick succession but this particular board was too small and relies too heavily on the larger microcontroller.

[QUOTE=xamllew;46779979]I wonder if that could be tiger maple, if so it might be valuable.[/QUOTE] I believe it could be flame or curly maple. It looks cool. I was always under the impression that tiger maple was a manufactured wood - made by lighting a rope on fire and wrapping it around maple. The pictures make it hard to tell but it may just be straight grained nothingness. There's ribbon grain if you look closely, and the outside may just be from oxidization on the bad cuts. Plane it off and hopefully the stripes are still there, but they could disappear. I recently started a blog for a project that is not in my shop but am not keeping up with it as much as I'm actually working on it. I have lots of pictures, and Blogger doesn't seem to get much attention. I need a format in which to display the entire process and hopefully garnish more interest in getting people to pay for our restorations, and get more than one or two clients/ projects a year. Anyone have an idea? Right now the current gig is a U-26 Continental Utility made by Chris- Craft in 1957. It sports a nice party deck in center-ship and has seating for 8. It will have two V-8 engines - one in a box on either side. It'll be real nice when it's done, but I am presonally not a fan of the Utilities as they do not have much stability. How it came to us: [URL=http://s43.photobucket.com/user/serj22/media/u-26/IMG_20140814_131837_zps33fa31fe.jpg.html][IMG]http://i43.photobucket.com/albums/e356/serj22/u-26/IMG_20140814_131837_zps33fa31fe.jpg[/IMG][/URL] Looked ok from 20 feet away, but under the varnish all the seams ripped apart, the previous restorer filled it full of screw holes trying to fix something, 5200 gobbed in all the seams to stop leaks, and it still sank. Full rebuild on this one, and I just got course 5 of planks done, started rebuilding the deck, and pretty soon, we flip it over and go to town on the bottom. Should be a mess of canvas and mold and dry-rot I'm assuming. In the process of stripping varnish here: [URL=http://s43.photobucket.com/user/serj22/media/u-26/IMG_20140825_152946_zps4f058242.jpg.html][IMG]http://i43.photobucket.com/albums/e356/serj22/u-26/IMG_20140825_152946_zps4f058242.jpg[/IMG][/URL] The previous restorer also put in some African mahogany instead of Plillipine (boat is originally philipine) and those planks held varnish weird (the white ones on top right) and were the wrong color to begin with so the whole boat was stained dark brown. It's supposed to be more of an orange/ brown color. [URL=http://s43.photobucket.com/user/serj22/media/u-26/IMG_20141024_110410_zpsb9360f39.jpg.html][IMG]http://i43.photobucket.com/albums/e356/serj22/u-26/IMG_20141024_110410_zpsb9360f39.jpg[/IMG][/URL] First two courses replaced with new individually stabilized Phillipine Mahogany planks. We pride ourselves in making virtually invisible seams, which is hard to do with curved planks, but we have a process. It takes about half a day to get a plank this size to meet up this perfect. So yeah, if anyone has an idea of where I can put this whole process that'd be awesome. I'd write it up here in a thread, but then I'd have to write it again somewhere else. I'd rather just link you guys to it so you can read it whenever.

Wooden boats looks so nice but are a pain to keep in good shape, much more difficult than fiberglass. But they look [I]so nice.[/I]

[QUOTE=papkee;46801501]Wooden boats looks so nice but are a pain to keep in good shape, much more difficult than fiberglass. But they look [I]so nice.[/I][/QUOTE] They are not meant to be in saltwater in this fashion, so lakes are it, and they are not meant to stay in the lake forever. Maybe just a couple weeks, but people leave them in longer. This particular one was tied to a buoy and the marina called them because the boat was gone, but the buoy was still there. It sank tied to it. The varnish lasts 2 years in the sunlight, and we leave about 20 coats on it, but still lasts just 2 years. We reproduce ours to not expand or contract on each individual plank (trade secret) and they're all glued to the framing and battons. The original boats were not glued, much like a classic ship.

So guys, I may have dropped a tape dispenser on my phone (an LG g3) and cracked the digitizer. The LCD is fine. I will be replacing it. Now what i'm wondering is if there is an LCD driver for it to use it as a mini display. I mean, it has a ridiculous resolution it would be great for a rasberry pi or handheld system if it can be done.

You could probably try to figure out what driver your phone is using.

Hey Serj I'd say your best bet for a build log that would get to the people who could be patrons would be like [url]www.chris-craft.org[/url] or some place like that. I'd also possibly do periodical YouTube slideshow videos. I watch those on restoration projects. Or the wooden boat forum, I've got a subscriptions to WoodenBoat, Small Craft advisory and Good Old boat, but never been to much into the internet side. I have watched a ton of videos on YouTube though about restoration projects on wooden boats and such so If I were you I'd possibly think about maybe filming some of the process if you think it could help get business in the future.

[QUOTE=Ajacks;46806770]Hey Serj I'd say your best bet for a build log that would get to the people who could be patrons would be like [url]www.chris-craft.org[/url] or some place like that. I'd also possibly do periodical YouTube slideshow videos. I watch those on restoration projects. Or the wooden boat forum, I've got a subscriptions to WoodenBoat, Small Craft advisory and Good Old boat, but never been to much into the internet side. I have watched a ton of videos on YouTube though about restoration projects on wooden boats and such so If I were you I'd possibly think about maybe filming some of the process if you think it could help get business in the future.[/QUOTE] We're listed in WoodenBoat. The phone number is wrong though. Curtis Boat Restorations, or Curtis Marine, depending on when the magazine was published. The problem with advertising the project on chris-craft is that we do projects other than Chris-crafts, and the people on there are doing similar things to us, but in their garage, and the last thing they want to see is that the thing they're doing at home, that looks sorta ok, costs near $100,000 if done right, for a boat that is worth $40,000 when it's done. We do period correct everything, and my dad judges the concourse d' Elegance at Tahoe, so he knows the drill with all these and what is right/wrong. The other issue, is in other states like Washington, you can throw a rock and hit a boat builder. Here in the bay area there aren't many others, so we are trying to broaden how much we are "heard about" and people already heard of us in the things you mentioned. As far as a sale goes, someone usually has to hear about you from three different people, to buy something from you. We sell wrecks usually, that we restore, but not usually do we get someone like the above where they already had the boat. We are looking more to doing that because the customer has an idea of what they want to happen to their worn out boat - rather than us telling them " this pile of boat ribs will look awesome when its done." So I'm looking for a general - high traffic - place to put the info or a way to attract stuff. I started on Blogger, but there's not many people searching google randomly for this stuff.