On Tuesday nights this semester I have been taking a precision machines class. In this class I have basically been learning to use a milling machine and a metal lathe. I signed up for this class for no other reason than to learn about using these tools. I had no project in mind, it just seemed like it might be fun. And it has been.

Tonight I completed a small C-clamp. The clamp was made from solid stock aluminum. I even learned to cut threads on round stock. This was a pretty cool project though not very practical.

I still have four more weeks in the class. Before next Tuesday I need to come up with another project otherwise I may end up milling some aluminum door stops.

Crack Pipe

Today I repaired the pipe that froze last weekend. I decided it would be easier to go ahead and do the job myself rather than try to schedule a time for a plumber to come by.

After a quick trip to HD for supplies (solder, flux, 1/2" copper pipe caps, pipe cutter), I came home and learned a new trade. All my plumbing work in the past has been limited to PVC. Now I can included sweating copper pipe on my resume. I am currently looking to take on an apprentice.

Precision Machines

I am taking an evening adult education class at the local vocational technology school. The class started this evening and meets for fifteen weeks.

The class I chose this semester is Precision Machines. In this class I will learn how to operate and effectively use a milling machine, metal lathe, metal shaper, and possibly a few more. These are skills I thought might be useful, interesting, or entertaining.

The first class met tonight. We covered the usual - safety first, followed by a brief tour of all the machinery as well as a description of what they can do.

One can never have to many mad skillz!

The Elves are dressed in leather ...

So my seester has run out of room on the old HD and wanted to replace it with a larger one. The current was a 60 gig-ger. We went to Best Buy on the 24th and obtained a new 250 gig-ger to replace it.

Her computer had been acting up so I decided a clean install on the new HD was the correct route rather than attempting to backup/restore the existing image.

After dropping in the new HD and booting the Win-XP-Home CD, the thing booted installed a few drivers and then BSOD'ed. Something about 'pci.sys' yada yada yada. Google was fine enough to tell me I needed to install XP SP2 (service pack 2 for the mere mortals) and all would be excellent.

Having no SP2 disk, I spent a few minutes reading up on slipstreaming SP2 and proceeded to make a new Win XP Home SP2 disk? This requires using an real XP disk, downloading the SP from MS, and downloading a few more utilities to extract a boot image from the XP disk, and create a bootable disk from the existing disk with the SP integrated into it. I got most of my useful info from a site called "theeldergeek" or somethink like that. Very useful that site was.

The truth of the matter is I tried a few things before I took the slip stream approach. None worked. Very frustrating at times. When I finally got around to making my own disk, the first disk would not boot (due to a parameter in Nero Rom which should have been a '4' being a '1'). My bad.

Messing around with computers can certainly be trying. There are several times during the whole process I was reminded of a song by Spinal Tap. Christmas with the devil, in this case the devil is Terry's computer.

Things are now rapidly progressing towards various stages of completion. Next comes the hunt for all the required drivers to get that laptop back in shape for the Happy New Year.

It got cold again!

I am still working on painting the cabinet doors. Twelve doors total. I decided to paint them before hanging them to keep the paint off the hardware. One coat of primer, two coats of paint was the plan. I have finished the primer and the first coat of paint. I plan on making more progress tomorrow.

I just breezed past here and noticed I have been delinquent. And then I was hit with a little deja vu. Last year about this same time the blog was idle for a few weeks. School was keeping me busy then as well. Only about ten more days until I can stop using that excuse for a few weeks.

What's Up in the Shop?

After getting the laundry done, I headed out to the shop the create some more dust. After a couple of hours I had managed to make some new cabinets. I built the case and face frame today. Still need to putty, paint, and hang the doors. That probably won't happen for a week or so.

One can never have too much storage space and cutting up some wood creates more free space.

Goals and Procrastination

My goal for today was to write two papers for school. Having gotten one out of the way I decided to take a short break before finishing the other paper.

I decided I would use my break to do a little home maintenance (one of the toilets was stopped up). Now your thinking someone must really be wanting to avoid writing the next paper to tackle a glorious job like unplugging a toilet.

A mere three hours later after completely taking the thing apart, putting it back together, a trip to home depot, and taking the thing apart and putting it back together again, it was working. The entire episode was also a comedy of errors. Fortunately for me, know one was around with a video camera.

Guess what stopped it up? I little plastic Dixie cup. I have not idea how it got in there and at this point I don't want to know.

Now it is time to work on that other paper. What a glorious day it has been.

GMC Progress

This afternoon I put the front wheels on the '72. There was actually more to it than that, but visually that is what you would notice. Also included was the installation of the brake rotors, inner and outer bearings, and other miscellaneous foo foo.

Wood Working SkillZ

Saturday's adventure was hardly as glorious. I re-sawed and planed a few pieces of scrape pine that were originally destined for the refuse bin.

The wood was actually 8 pieces of 2x4, each about 14 inches long. Really too short to be useful. (Unless one decided to make some small boxes to practice making dovetail joints.) I have certainly got a fair amount of use out of these boards. Their last use was as part of a large dolly I built to move the truck frame around on before it had its wheels back on. I recall at that point I was recycling the wood from another project though I don't recall exactly what it was at this point. Not that it matters, but I certainly felt good about using the pieces of that 2x4 three different times on three different projects.

After many past attempts, I did finally manage to get the band saw tuned up sufficiently to re-saw the wood without any wander of the blade. The solution was so simple, I can't believe I hadn't spotted it before. (One of the blade guides was misaligned.)

Saturday afternoon, I called up Brian (no not that Brian, the other Brian) to borrow his plasma cutter. As I told him then, "I have some plasma that needs to be cut". Some things seems funnier before you say them out loud.

My eventual plan is to replace part of the GMC's frame with part of another frame I have. Essentially my appears to have been attacked by a torch at some point in it past and I will be replace the foot or so with a section from the other frame that is in pristine condition.

The plan is:
1. Learn how to cut a straight line.
2. Determine where to make the cuts.
3. Mark the frames.
4. Make the cuts.
5. Weld in the piece from the other frame onto my frame.
6. Grind grind grind.
7. Amaze friends and family with my mad skillz.

Step 1 is complete.

Everyone needs to play with a plasma cutter at some point.