Upgrading my gas burner – part 2

This week I took the basic parts that I made last week, and got them to fit the stove top.

Then a few bits of MIG welding, followed by some more grinding and filing to make everything look like I knew what I was doing.

The inevitable rust conversion, and spray painting with some high temperature engine enamel.

In the end, I am very happy with the result.
No more uneven cooking surface, no more toppling frypans or little saucepans.

IMG_1733

The HeavyWeight version

Office Battlebot #2 

Since the previous version didn’t stack up, I move on to version 2.

This time I went for solid concrete. An improvement in structural strength, but a definite minus for the weight. There’s no way this version would move using the helicopter motors.

Office Challenge

My coworkers thought it would be fun to build and compete with some indoor battlebots.

What you see in the next few videos are the failures and successes in equal measure.

Like Goldilocks said – some are too delicate, some are too heavy, and some are just too pretty. Come along for the ride !

Upgrading my kitchen gas burner

I have spent the last year or two being aggravated on a daily basis by the stupid design of my stove top burner.
It has only 4 support spots, whereas a professional commercial gas burner has 8.

So obviously, I need to fix this.

Today I took the first step – to come up with a solution, buy the steel bits required, and fashion a few rudimentary bits ready for fabrication.
I’ll fuse them all together next Monday at my TAFE welding course.

Then “goodbye to the toppling frypans”, and no longer having to rescue raw eggs from the floor… or for that matter, boiling butter from the little saucepan that refuses to sit on the 4 fashionable but badly designed supports.

Maintaining a Tenon Saw

My tenon saw started to leave dirty marks on timber.

Time to clean things up.

It still cuts just fine, so the teeth don’t need sharpening.
All I did was remove the rust and sand it a bit.
But now it’s not an eyesore, and I can cut cleanly with confidence again.

I guess technically this is a Veneer Saw, since it has the extra teeth on the top leading edge (so you can start a cut in the middle of the sheet).
But I’ve always called it my tenon saw.

The concrete helicopter

Office Battlebot #1 

This weekend, I created a prototype battle-bot, and dismantled a RC helicopter for the motors and parts. As it turns out, building a battle-bot out of cement mortar/render just isn’t exactly functional from the defence perspective.

Office Challenge

My coworkers thought it would be fun to build and compete with some indoor battle-bots. What you see in the next few videos are the failures and successes in equal measure. Like Goldilocks said – some are too delicate, some are too heavy, and some are just too pretty. Come along for the ride !

Restoring Vintage Vernier Calipers

This week, I restored a set of vintage vernier calipers, made in Spain around 50 years ago.

These ones read metric and inches, and can measure outer and inner sizes as well as depth.

I’ve had these for decades, and they accumulated a lot of rust and gunk.

The movement had become stiff and uneven.

So I cleaned them, derusted them, filed and polished them back to new condition.