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Categories: all aviation bicycle gadgets misc motorcycle theater Thu, 26 Jun 2008I've been slowly turning out things, and widgets and frobnitzes on my lathe. This one, I thought, ended up looking particularly good:
That's an axle for my soon-to-be cargo trailer for my Xtracycle. It's made of 1144 "stressproof" steel, and, perhaps my proudest thing, the longer section of thread was entirely turned on the lathe. I didn't use a threading die on it at all, and it accepts the 12mm castle nuts I got perfectly. Threading on a lathe is a surprisingly difficult task, particularly when doing metric threads on what is nominally an inch machine. Particularly when you have to keep resetting the cutting tool because of broken tips and such. This is one of two -- this piece is only about 4" long, and there'll be one for each wheel. It'll bolt (via the longer thread) into a plate on the side of the trailer, the wheel slides on the longer smooth part, and the shorter threaded section takes another castle nut to keep the wheel on. This is to work with the free found-onna-road wheels my friend Josh gave me. Hooray for being handy! Posted at 22:02 permanent link category: /misc Due to my being a loyal
The big orange cat is Miloš, the Siberian cat she got last year. The one in the middle, nearly invisible against the dark countertop, is Nikola, possibly the most friendly cat I've ever met. The white/snowshoe cat on the right is Pasha. So I came in yesterday morning, and there were no cats crowding around the door, trying to escape and/or sniff for food, as is their normal wont. I was surprised, and after I'd closed the door I realized that the door to the office was closed, and they must have pushed it closed while playing. Indeed, inside were three cats suddenly streaming for the door. I only come by once a day, in part because of my schedule, and in part because I'm quite allergic to cats. These three cats had been locked up in this room for who-knows-how-long. It couldn't have been that long, though, because there was no olfactory hint of litterbox (there's no litterbox in the room, if you get my drift), and they didn't immediately bolt for either litterbox or water. So, I grabbed a relatively immoveable-looking object, a file box, and set it in front of the door. It wasn't very heavy, but they'd have to work at it to move that out of the way. Problem solved. I went a fixed up their water and food, and cleaned out the litterboxes. A little bit of attention and scratching-behind-ears later, and it was time to move on. Plus, you know, the sinus itching like it wanted to crawl out of my head. Today, I opened up the door, and went it, and what do you suppose I found? Yes indeed, that office door was closed again. Miloš and Nikola were wandering around, but Pasha was nowhere to be seen. There was a certain amount of pitiful mewling going on, and I opened the door to find Pasha inside, looking freaked out. The file box had been pushed back (it only weighed a few pounds, and a couple moderate hits from Miloš would easily dislodge it, I realized). So this time I took the spare microwave oven, which Kristin has a hard time lifting, and put that in front of the open door. If they move that, I'll be amazed. As I was writing this, I found a better picture of Nikola:
And one of Nikola and Pasha as I was playing with them a few days ago:
Consider this your cat fix for the day. Posted at 10:13 permanent link category: /misc Categories: all aviation gadgets misc motorcycle theater Written by Ian Johnston. Software is Blosxom. Questions? Please mail me at reaper at obairlann dot net. |
