2015 POTD Thread Archive

I just avoid it, let it "melt" on it's own. Thankfully i have never had a large critter cark it anywhere that it can be really noticed.
 
I remember back when I was hunting a lot we used to coon hunt for their skins and sometimes the dogs would chase them into a pond drainage tube. After shooting them we would take a piece of barbed wire, double it over and push it into the tube and twist it to snag it then pull it out. I bet you could do the same thing to the Armadillo.

Hmm, reminds me of a song:

Rabbit In The Log

There's a rabbit in the log and I ain't got my dog
How will I get him I know
I'll get me a briar and I'll twist it in his hair
That's the way I'll get him I know
I know (I know) I know (I know)
That's the way I'll get him I know
I'll get me a briar and I'll twist it in his hair
That's the way I'll get him I know

 
I just avoid it, let it "melt" on it's own. Thankfully i have never had a large critter cark it anywhere that it can be really noticed.
FYI guys it's well off topic .:grin:.......

When I purchased our ideal house which was an 1864 ex railway gated crossing keepers house some 20 years ago the " Strange guy with long hair , lisp , mincing walk & a wet handshake " ,who sold it to us asked me if I would ,"Please Please" dig up his buried pet dogs and take them to his new isolated property .
I asked him how long they'd been , "ex dogs " and he said at least five years ,with " Jingo " being the eldest and being buried over 11 years ago .

No probs I thought, I've had to go corpse digging /looking for bits once or twice and found them without too much grief.

He gave me the rough locations in the 1 & 1/2 acre plot that was now well over grown with nettles , thorny brambles , briar roses & a couple of hundred cheap job lot trees he planted 17 yerars previously , but never given much thought to as to how big they grow etc.

The first couple of months were spent felling trees and getting the brambles & briars out .
Then in the heat of late Summer I decided to go dog looking with the rotor tiller as now was the time to cultivate & sort things out for a massive quality grass lawned area. .
I found most of them the same day , unfortunately each mutt had been wrapped in a silk shroud then wrapped in a genuine lace shawl and put in a new suitcase the only little problem with all this is that he wrapped each body in yards & yards of food wrap plastic film effectively making them into mummies but with out the advantage of the air helping bacteria & worms to decay things .
Each body had turned into a khaki green slime with the hairs still showing and bits of pink bones sliding around inside that rotor tiller had opened up the very first sodding one I found . I hooped my toe nails up several times .. It got so bad I had to go and have a swig of neat gin to clean my mouth out & bolster me up before I could fully excavate it & dump the suitcase on the trailer down the yard.

Over the next few days I found the remainder of them all packed & parceled up in the same manner , with the same result of me doing up chuckies , save for the last one which whilst the suitcase had been caught on the tines of the tiller it hadn't opened up the internal package.
I chucked the last one on the trailer and a wicked thought occurred to me ..I had to go through the local town to get to the guys place.

YUP ! I sliced open all the suitcases with a new blade in my box cutter ,opened the contents to the air, having a few more regurgitation's whilst doing it . Then after vomiting a few more times whilst connecting the trailer to the car , gave Michael a phone call to say I was bringing his boys & girls home , I drove off to his place ....... through town .
In town I had to stop at several traffic lights and as we all know most small market towns on a Saturday are fair crawling with shoppers & it's often faster to walk that travel in a car .. I saw three people that threw up & suspect that there was more .
On getting to Michael's place he came skipping out full of joy with tears in his eyes as soon as he got a whiff of the mess in my trailer he threw up all over his car putting plenty in through it's open window. he ran away then a few minutes later pleaded with me to, " Dig a hole and bury them , over there , I'll pay you £50 ".
" Make it a hundred & your on " ,I said . " Yes Yes I'll give you a hundred " he replied.

That was the easiest £100 I've ever earnt , I had a few more attempts at vomiting but hadn't anything left inside to throw out . On the way back home I stopped off at the ,local chippies & enjoyed a feast of golden hand cut chips (thick french fries ) and a nice piece of golden fried cod in a beer batter along with mushy peas.
batter. :grin:
 
This was a couple of weeks ago but actually downloading the photos from my phone was a 'today' project.

An avid mountain biking friend wanted to put a car roof bike rack onto his bakkie (pick-up), but
1) the manufacturer didn't make an attachment bracket to suit and
2) the span required was just a fraction longer that the cross bars were
3) it was a company vehicle so we didn't want to do any permanent modification to it.

End result we thought this would be a good first project to try out aluminium casting so he carved up four suitable brackets out of polystyrene, we cast them up (very poorly), milled a hell of a lot off to get them back to something reasonable and fitted them up (not in a day but over a few weekends).

IMG_1337.jpg

IMG_1336.jpg

They may not be pretty but they function perfectly. The cross bars are an aluminium excursion with a T slot in the bottom so we have a nut plate in there and a countersunk socket head cap screw coming up from underneath to secure them.
 
FYI guys it's well off topic .:grin:.......

When I purchased our ideal house which was an 1864 ex railway gated crossing keepers house some 20 years ago the " Strange guy with long hair , lisp , mincing walk & a wet handshake " ,who sold it to us asked me if I would ,"Please Please" dig up his buried pet dogs and take them to his new isolated property .
I asked him how long they'd been , "ex dogs " and he said at least five years ,with " Jingo " being the eldest and being buried over 11 years ago .

No probs I thought, I've had to go corpse digging /looking for bits once or twice and found them without too much grief.

He gave me the rough locations in the 1 & 1/2 acre plot that was now well over grown with nettles , thorny brambles , briar roses & a couple of hundred cheap job lot trees he planted 17 yerars previously , but never given much thought to as to how big they grow etc.

The first couple of months were spent felling trees and getting the brambles & briars out .
Then in the heat of late Summer I decided to go dog looking with the rotor tiller as now was the time to cultivate & sort things out for a massive quality grass lawned area. .
I found most of them the same day , unfortunately each mutt had been wrapped in a silk shroud then wrapped in a genuine lace shawl and put in a new suitcase the only little problem with all this is that he wrapped each body in yards & yards of food wrap plastic film effectively making them into mummies but with out the advantage of the air helping bacteria & worms to decay things .
Each body had turned into a khaki green slime with the hairs still showing and bits of pink bones sliding around inside that rotor tiller had opened up the very first sodding one I found . I hooped my toe nails up several times .. It got so bad I had to go and have a swig of neat gin to clean my mouth out & bolster me up before I could fully excavate it & dump the suitcase on the trailer down the yard.

Over the next few days I found the remainder of them all packed & parceled up in the same manner , with the same result of me doing up chuckies , save for the last one which whilst the suitcase had been caught on the tines of the tiller it hadn't opened up the internal package.
I chucked the last one on the trailer and a wicked thought occurred to me ..I had to go through the local town to get to the guys place.

YUP ! I sliced open all the suitcases with a new blade in my box cutter ,opened the contents to the air, having a few more regurgitation's whilst doing it . Then after vomiting a few more times whilst connecting the trailer to the car , gave Michael a phone call to say I was bringing his boys & girls home , I drove off to his place ....... through town .
In town I had to stop at several traffic lights and as we all know most small market towns on a Saturday are fair crawling with shoppers & it's often faster to walk that travel in a car .. I saw three people that threw up & suspect that there was more .
On getting to Michael's place he came skipping out full of joy with tears in his eyes as soon as he got a whiff of the mess in my trailer he threw up all over his car putting plenty in through it's open window. he ran away then a few minutes later pleaded with me to, " Dig a hole and bury them , over there , I'll pay you £50 ".
" Make it a hundred & your on " ,I said . " Yes Yes I'll give you a hundred " he replied.

That was the easiest £100 I've ever earnt , I had a few more attempts at vomiting but hadn't anything left inside to throw out . On the way back home I stopped off at the ,local chippies & enjoyed a feast of golden hand cut chips (thick french fries ) and a nice piece of golden fried cod in a beer batter along with mushy peas.
batter. :grin:

Why what a charming & delightful anecdote !
 
End result we thought this would be a good first project to try out aluminium casting so he carved up four suitable brackets out of polystyrene, we cast them up (very poorly), milled a hell of a lot off to get them back to something reasonable and fitted them up (not in a day but over a few weekends).

Nice job on the hold downs, what aluminum did you use? scrap?
 
Nice job of smelting, Pete. What'd you melt it in?

I build a Propane forge/foundry awhile ago (http://www.hobby-machinist.com/threads/furnace-project.35359/) to have a go at casting but this was the first practical thing I actually cast. Crucible was a 3 inch stainless steel pipe section with a base welded on it (by one of the proper welders at work - not me).

We are installing some large aluminium bus ducts (large electrical conductors - 10,000 Amp stuff) at work and they came in sections with some nice aluminium angle bracing which gets cut out as the sections are joint - melted down nicely. Think I will actually have to see if I can but some more of it at whatever they are getting from the scrap dealer for it.

It was a learning experience. The castings all broke out in places so required a lot of milling to tide up. Was a pretty crude set up, just plastered the polystyrene and buried them in some bentonite clay granules (from the desiccant bags that came with some electrical equipment at work). Next time I think a would take more time to get extra layers on plaster and embed them in a fine sand to give more support during casting.

Current project is some brackets to mount scale for a DRO and I'm using the left overs from each pore which I had cast into ingots as the stock.

IMG_1384s.jpg
 
Good day, bad day. For a week I've been playing with mounting a GM window motor on the X drive of my PM25. (no photos, it didn't happen).

I installed a ball bearing on the left end of the table, mounted a piece of 1/2 aluminum outside of that with an 8mm bearing mounted in that, the drive shaft turned in this bearing, and put a 3/16 diameter grove in the left end crank wheel. On this piece of 1/2, I mounted a frame to support the drive motor. Its rock solid.

In my ignorance I built in an 1 to 3.8 reduction, and drove it with a 3/16 diameter sewing machine belt. It turns on, the motor reverses and for a little while the table moved. .5 inches in 30 seconds. Then the belt started slipping and the table won't go any more. I've learned two things in this process.
1) a sewing machine belt isn't the proper transmission device
2) that's way too slow to machine metal.

I'm now investigating a 'toothed belt' drive, although a bicycle chain would work better than the belt. I wonder if I could get a 8 mm bore sprocket.
 
Good day, bad day. For a week I've been playing with mounting a GM window motor on the X drive of my PM25. (no photos, it didn't happen).

I installed a ball bearing on the left end of the table, mounted a piece of 1/2 aluminum outside of that with an 8mm bearing mounted in that, the drive shaft turned in this bearing, and put a 3/16 diameter grove in the left end crank wheel. On this piece of 1/2, I mounted a frame to support the drive motor. Its rock solid.

In my ignorance I built in an 1 to 3.8 reduction, and drove it with a 3/16 diameter sewing machine belt. It turns on, the motor reverses and for a little while the table moved. .5 inches in 30 seconds. Then the belt started slipping and the table won't go any more. I've learned two things in this process.
1) a sewing machine belt isn't the proper transmission device
2) that's way too slow to machine metal.

I'm now investigating a 'toothed belt' drive, although a bicycle chain would work better than the belt. I wonder if I could get a 8 mm bore sprocket.

You might find a better choice for chain & sprockets by googling Herbach & Rademan. They are a unique surplus source. Better still search Surplus center. They have 25, 35, 40, 41 etc chain & sprockets in a wide selection @ very good prices. They also have motors & other good stuff.
 
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