This weekend, I discovered the joys of electric rust removal.
I used a glass baking dish, a battery charger, some plain tap water, washing soda, and an old bit of steel.
The results were really quite amazing.
The rust just disappeared in a flurry of bubbles.
A little bit of brushing and light sanding brought it up all nice and shiny.
A lot easier than rust converter.
$3.85 for 1kg of soda. I probably used 1/50th of it, roughly 7cents.
I ride my old custom motorbike to the office every day.
If I wear my long-distance driving glasses, then I can’t read the speedo or see in the rearviews very clearly. Conversely, if I wear reading glasses, I can see perfectly in the mirrors, but the general traffic is a little blurry. What I really need is bi-focal glasses.
Additionally, with winter coming up, I’ve had a couple of drizzly commutes lately where the rain gets into my eyes or the glasses get cold and fog up. So goggles would be an answer to that.
How to get everything I want? The solution is obvious – make a pair of goggles that have both long distance and reading distance lenses all built in. I don’t have to settle for narrow bands either – I can use full lenses from my previous old pairs of glasses. Not ideal prescriptions any more, but perfect for the commute.
Tonight I solidified the fact that MIG is worth doing.
I created a bunch of junk sculptural items, plus several welds of which I am rightly proud.
This was a basic welding course held by Sydney TAFE, Ultimo. I’d highly recommend it.
I last had my own welding gear decades ago, so it’s been a nice reintroduction for me. I used to have oxy-acetylene equipment, and this has all been electric – Stick, MIG, and TIG.
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 !
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 !
I launched a YouTube channel : Weekend Workshop
Of course (as per usual), I had thought about doing it for some years, then spent months researching and thinking, then one day (not as per usual) I just thought “do it”.
I must have simply run out of excuses – run out of energy thinking about what could go wrong, run out of hearing the same voice in my head saying that it would be a waste of time and energy.
So I did it.
I’m not by nature a publisher. I’m more of a consumer. But I realised that I do have some stories to share. And maybe some help to offer other people. I plan to start simple. To explore and learn the tools and techniques of the YouTube world. To put stuff online without worrying what the end goal is, or what the end result will be.
The idea is simple – to record what I do on the weekends.
A couple of years ago, my brother Jeff challenged me to buy a cheap old motorcycle and build something for the Distinguished Gentleman’s Ride. So I did it. And it turned out to be a lot of work (and a lot of fun) and involved finding a workshop space. And spending every weekend working there, to get the motorbike running and registered with 2 days to spare!
Of course I didn’t take video of the whole custom-motorcycle journey, but I did take lots of photos, and I’ll share them here at some stage.
But at the end of that project, I found myself at a loose end – I had plenty of free weekends, I had a workshop, and I had stories to tell.
Welcome to the Weekend Workshop.
I’d been riding the bike for a year with whatever pod filters were on the bike when I bought it. They fell apart, and I lost one while the bike was off the road.
So I bought some new ones on eBay (of course). When they arrived, they were too small. Cheap, but one size too small. And they had a 45 degree bend, so they would bump into the frame anyway. I tossed them in the back of a drawer.
When I got the bike running again, it started OK, but under any load the engine stalled.
My immediate reaction was that the carbies needed cleaning. I poked about with fine copper strands. And I attacked everything with petrol and brushes. I did unearth a whole bunch of gunk.
When that didn’t make any difference to the stalling, I took the carbies to a local bike shop where they “officially” cleaned them. No difference.
In a last-ditch flurry of inspiration, I wondered if the “too small” filters could be attached in some way.
I toured the plumbing section of the local Bunnings warehouse, and came home with a couple of these :
Not exactly this, but close. Little plumbing pieces that join different size pipes.
As it turns out, it reduced EXACTLY from the small pod air cleaners to the manifold.
And what’s more, as soon as I fitted them, the carbies started behaving – and I could ride the bike without stalling.
Sheer magic.
The pipe seems to calm the turbulent airflow (which is the downside of CV carbies like these Mikuni BS 30 SS) and the 45 degree bend allows the filters to clear the frame.
Despite claims to the contrary, the GSX250 does NOT need the original still-air filter box to calm the airflow – these plumbing fixtures do the job.
Davo's Weekend Workshop 