A Pipe Smoker's Bowl Scraper

I've taken up pipe smoking recently as a way to break the cigarette habit. I still smoke a fair bit, but at least the convenience of cigarettes is no longer at hand. Anyway, this is not about my smoking habit; It's about a tool for a pipe smoker.

A pipe smoker needs a correctly shaped blade with which to scrape carbon accumulation from the bowl of his pipe. Such things can be had for a price, of course, as can anything, but I thought I'd fix myself up with a freebie by modifying a pocket knife blade. I have a bogus, made in China Swiss army knife that will serve nicely. The knife is a piece of junk, really, but it's adequate for what I have in mind.

The point at the end of that blade makes it unsuitable for scraping a pipe's bowl. The point just gouges the bottom of the bowl, while the shallow curve of the blade never gets at the radius of the bowl's bottom. Some grinding is in order.

There. That's a start. I'll try that out and see if needs to be improved on.

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Quick And Dirty Phone Line Testing

When your land line telephone service goes wonky on you -- no dial tone, noise, whatever -- you want to be certain that it's the telephone company's fault before you call them for service. The best, quickest way to make sure is to disconnect the phone company's wire pair from your dwelling, and connect a known-good telephone set directly to the company's phone line. If the problem persists with that arrangement, you know that it's the phone company's problem, and you can call them for service without fear of being dinged for a hefty service charge.

You'll need to get at the telephone line connection box on the outside of your house. Here's a view of mine; it's at the side of the house under the carport.

That's an ancient Northern Telecom rig. To open it, you force the cover's sides outward slightly at the bottom, then slide the cover off upward. And here's a view of the box's innards.

The phone line connections will be obvious. A 3/8" nutdriver is needed for the terminals shown in the above photo. Undo the connections to free the phone company's two wires from the house. Then all you need is a rig like this.

Just a regular phone jack box with the cover removed, and two alligator clip leads. Connect the free ends of the test leads to the phone company's wires, plug in your phone set and see what you get. If you get a normal dial tone instead of whatever symptom you were experiencing, then you know that the trouble is in your house's phone wiring, or in a piece of equipment that you have connected inside. If you get the same symptom that you had before, you know that the trouble is with the phone company, and you can confidently call them and tell them so.

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Tool Review -- Mastercraft No. 052-0055-6 Manual Digital Multimeter

For the price when on special ($29.99 from $59.99) it looks to be a good deal.

The meter is everything I need, and I wish it were 100% ok because I'd like to keep it. But I'll be taking it back for a refund on account of what I consider to be an unacceptable flaw -- the 2VAC and 20VAC ranges don't quite indicate zero with the test leads shorted together. The 2V range indicates 33mV when it should be reading zero, and the 20V range indicates 9mV when it should be reading zero. I may be guilty of being awfully picky there, but that flaw really puts me off; it leads me to question the overall integrity of the instrument.

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Battery Installation

If you do decide to get one of these meters, you may want to know how to install the 9V rectangular battery. The manual's instructions are as clear as mud.

The manual tells you, "To replace the battery, remove the holster from the meter." Holster? I don't see a 'holster'. To me, a 'holster' is a carrier with a belt loop on it. It turns out that what the manual calls a 'holster' is the blue, resilient sheath that encloses the sides and much of the back of the meter. Pry off that sheath and the battery compartment cover at the upper rear becomes obvious.

Unscrew the single No. 2 Phillips recess screw, slide the cover off and you have access to the battery compartment.

Two More Quibbles

• The rotary switch's volts settings are common to both AC and DC. A push/push button switch selects which it is. The switch's 'up' position is for DC; the 'down' position is for AC. There's not much physical difference between the two positions. That's poor design -- an unambiguous AC/DC selector switch, like a slide switch, is called for.
• Stiff test leads. The test leads are remarkably stiff. Decent test leads are silicone insulated and supple.

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So, a disappointment. As I said, I may be being too picky, but I don't think that flawlessness is too much to ask from a mature technology, especially at the regular price.

It looks like if I mean to get a proper multimeter, I'll have to part with serious money for a Fluke.

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A Low-Cost Alternative -- SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 2018

I ended up getting one of these from Amazon for about $20.00:

 https://www.amazon.ca/HoldPeak-Multimeter-Frequency-Temperature-Capacitance/dp/B00TIFPPTY

It seems that it's no longer available.

So far, it's been a good instrument. Time will tell how durable it is. Should it ever fail me, I'll be out of luck as far as any possibility of repair goes.

Anyway, it seems that there are reasonably priced alternatives to Fluke.

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A Workshop Drawers Rack From Cryovac Food Trays

Cryovac is the food packaging products division of Sealed Air. They make all kinds of stuff that supermarkets use for packaging meat and what-have-you, and one of their meat trays struck me as way too good to throw out.

The trays are about 6 3/4" wide x 8 7/8" long x 1 3/4" tall, and they're pretty sturdy. When I had nine of them saved up, it occurred to me that I could make a rack for them that would just tuck in nicely in a space under my workbench. I made the rack and it turned out ok. It's been serving me well ever since for keeping some miscellaneous, seldom used items stashed where I wouldn't lose track of them.

I've since saved up another eleven of the same trays, so I thought I'd make up another rack. I have some wall space available in my workshop's 'annex' where the thing can hang. For this rack, I thought I'd try to do a proper design job, and present a scheme for a standardized rack that can be made to accommodate any reasonable number of the subject size and style of tray. I'll include a sketch with this post so anyone who might want to can reproduce a unit.

Material

I'm not trying to make heirloom furniture here, so I'll be using pretty rough stuff for the carcass. A nominal 1" x 10" x 8' pine shelving plank for the Home Depot will serve. Those are 3/4" thick by 9 1/4" wide actual, and they're riddled with knots and sundry other defects, but I manage to use them for utility objects in the workshop to quite good effect. Here's one example, and here's another.

For a back, I'll use RevolutionPly 5.2mm plywood.

Joinery

I've recently acquired some Kreg pocket screw tooling, and I've been quite favourably impressed by it, so I'll use it for this item's carcass assembly. Here's a view of a trial assembly of the carcass prior to cutting the drawer slide grooves.

Eight pocket screws are holding that together quite well. Here's a view of the bottom's pocket screw joinery.

No one's going to accuse of doing fine woodworking here, but that's ok; I'm strictly aiming for a utilitarian object that will do a job for me.

The Kreg pocket screw method of construction works well. It's a good idea to clamp up the work however you can for starting the screws, so your alignment doesn't shift or drift on you as the screw first bites. I was a little lax with that here, as the photograph reveals.

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And here's a trial assembly with the drawer slide grooves cut, and all the trays in place.

It's turning out ok. The grooves are 1/4" wide by 3/8" deep. I'm a little bit snug on my overall width dimension, though; the trays aren't quite as free-sliding as I'd like them to be. I made the top and bottom 6" wide, and I should have gone to 6 1/8" for the sake of a free-sliding drawer fit. I'll shim the top's and bottom's ends with edge veneer to get them to approach 6 1/8" in width. That should give me a freer action to the tray slides.

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Ok. That's done, and I've made the final assembly of the carcass sides and ends with some Gorilla Glue thrown in at the joins. On with attaching the back.

The Back

As I mentioned earlier, the back is to be 5.2mm thick RevolutionPly plywood. Here it is installed oversize so it can be router-trimmed to be perfectly flush with the sides and bottom.

I attached the back with Gorilla Glue and 1" finishing nails, and then set the nail heads slightly.

The top is at the left side of the photo. That overhang will be a tab that I can use for wall-hanging the rack.

Trimming The Back

My Jobmate folding work bench turned out to be just the thing for supporting the rack while I flush-trimmed the back's edges.

At the extended top of the back, I rigged this arrangement to let me maintain the side trimming all the way to the very end of the top.

That worked well. And here's the back fully flush-trimmed.

Kreg's Pocket Hole Plugs

A bit of a digression here; I didn't really need to plug the pocket holes, but I thought I'd do so just to get some more Kreg experience, since I'm relatively new to Kreg's pocket hole gear. I used paint grade plugs. Here's a view of the plugs just installed in the top.

I had to shorten the plugs a fair bit to get them to fit anywhere near to flush. It seemed to me that the plugs protrude way too much if they're installed just as they are out of the package. From what I've seen of the plugs so far, I'd have to say that they're a bit 'iffy'.

Anyway, after a final sanding, here's the finished project ready to be hung on a wall.

Not a bad outcome, all things considered. The 'drawer' action is smooth and cooperative. That rack gives me a nice bit of orderly storage space for workshop odds and ends that I may want to have readily at hand.

Bill Of Materials

• Qty 1: 1" x 10" nominal x 8' pine shelving plank. Select for best flatness and straightness.
• Qty 1: Plywood back panel 8" wide x length to suit length of carcass. Add 2" to length for a hanging tab if you mean to wall hang the unit.
• Qty 8: Kreg No. 8 x 1 1/4" screw.
• Qty 8: Kreg pocket hole plug.
• Qty A/R: 1" finishing nails.
• Qty A/R: Gorilla Glue.

Sketch

Following is a rudimentary sketch with enough information on it to guide construction of a rack carcass of any practical length.

Right click on the sketch and 'Open Link in New Tab'. You'll be able to magnify the sketch so it's readable.

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Faucet Aerators -- or -- Keep Your Receipts

I think I got this 2.0 GPM faucet aerator from Canadian Tire not all that long ago.

It's a piece of junk. The sleeve's action that switches it from spray to stream is very stiff and balky. If I hadn't lost the receipt, I'd try to take it back to the store.

Today, I got a replacement for it from the Home Depot -- a Moen M3512, 1.5 GPM unit.

This one has a nice, smooth-and-easy switching action. I hope it stays that way for a good long while. The price of the things is outrageous; $7.59 CDN + HST (harmonized sales tax) for a bit of plastic that's no doubt mass produced for next to nothing.

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Both units are embossed with "A112.18.1". It seems that A112.18.1 is an ASME (American Society of Mechanical Engineers) standard for plumbing supply fittings. So, we can conclude that compliance with a standard is no guarantee against defects.

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