Fine Mechanic's Wire

From the "desperate men employ desperate measures" department, comes this little tip.

Strip off the cladding from a paper-clad, big garbage bag tie and you get a useful length of fine steel wire, like so.

(The plastic-clad ties yield much the same thing, but they're a devil of a thing to strip. The ties pictured strip quite easily; lacquer thinner takes care of the black adhesive muck that's left on the wire.)

That wire is about 0.018" in diameter (between 26AWG and 24 AWG).

In a pinch, it can do things like take the place of a tiny e-clip, or serve as a sub-miniature hose clamp on small-diameter tubing.

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Lexicon -- Vice/Vise

I was looking over my blog's statistics, and I clicked on "Search Keywords". I came across this -- "crimp ferrules with vice". [!?]

Please keep this straight, people:

'Vice' is what the cops go after you for indulging/trafficking in.

A 'vise' is the clamping/work-holding apparatus that's typically bolted to a workbench.

I think it's a not unimportant distinction. I'd rather that the authorities, in their relentless efforts to seek out and bring to justice evil-doers and miscreants, not stumble upon my blog's statistics, and find cause to suspect my blog of being a hotbed of sin and debauchery.

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By way of making myself perfectly clear here, permit me to append a couple of illustrations:

Here's VICE:














And here's a VISE:















Get it? Is English not a wonder?

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Addendum -- MONDAY, DECEMBER 1, 2014

It's been brought to my attention that 'vise' is the American spelling of the subject word here. That presents me with a small dilemma.

While I try not to be a knee-jerk anti-American sort, I do consider most American spellings to be graceless tinkering. However, in this case I'm inclined to go along with the Yanks -- it makes more sense to me to differentiate the spellings as I've outlined above. Let 'vise' stand for the work-holding apparatus, and 'vice' stand for the 'up-to-no-good' aspect of the homonym.

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A Coleman Stove Lid Latch Solution

Pictured below is the front of a two-burner Coleman propane camp stove.

To open the lid, you push on that red, rectangular button. Or, just carry the stove by its handle as you normally would, and the lid will randomly pop open on its own, spilling the grate and regulator, like this.

What a piece of engineering. Corporations may have personhood in the eyes of the law, but they have no shame.

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As luck would have it, I happen to have on hand just the thing to fix this for good -- these neat little clamp fasteners^[1] from Spaenaur. (The previous owner of my house left thirty of them behind when he moved out. Needless to say, I have no idea what he might have had in mind for so many.)

I'll install two of them at the upper corners, three inches down from the ends of the handle, and that should be the end of lid-popping surprises.

The two strikes will go on the lid with 1/8" 'Pop' rivets. The curvature of the lid is a bit of a complication, but not too much. A bit of careful bending in the vise with a light hammer got the strikes to where they conform well to the curvature. And here's a shot of one of the two strikes in place.

I won't try to tell you that that was a breeze to do; it wasn't. At least it turned out well.

Next up, of course, is to install the catches. For that, I'll want to have access to the interior of the stove's chassis pan, because I'll have to use a screw and nut at the upper mounting hole; there isn't clearance for the nose of a riveting tool there.

To get inside one of these stoves, you start by unscrewing the two burner heads. That reveals two external snap-rings that have to come off.



Then remove eight M3x6mm truss head screws (No. 2 Phillips recess) from around the perimeter of the stove's deck, and the deck is free to be lifted off. The deck's fit around the burner stems where the snap-rings were is very close and precise -- the deck tends to snag the snap-rings' grooves. Wiggle things A/R.

But before I take the screws out to unfasten the deck, I'll want to establish the mounting hole locations for the catches; that's where things get a bit delicate.

The vertical position of the catches relative to the strikes is fairly critical -- too high and they won't close securely; too low and they'll close too tightly if they can close at all.

I've done a trial fitting and marked the position of the bottom of the catches' mounting plates, like so.



Now if I get the catches positioned just a tiny bit lower, I should end up with a snug, properly tensioned closed position for the catches.

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And here's the done deal -- both of them installed and working correctly.

The one on the right came out perfectly. The one on the left came out with a bit of a loose closed position. I cheated and reshaped its wire bail a little so it would close more snugly; not a pleasant, easy or recommended thing to do, but it did work. If I ever make use of these catches again, I'll see if I can come up with a more 'formulaic' method for locating the catches' mounting holes.

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Anyway, there ya' go, Coleman. It can be done. A stove lid can be made to latch securely. Amazing, eh?

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MONDAY, AUGUST 8, 2011

Addendum -- Back to the Future, or Forward to the Past; Whatever

I came across an elderly Coleman propane camp stove recently. It's in very fine condition. It was made in the days when Coleman was still manufacturing in Canada, which was probably quite some time ago. Here's how Coleman used to latch their stove lids back then.

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[1] Spaenaur's part number for a catch and strike together is 096-651. The manufacturer is Nielsen Hardware.

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A Speed Key for a Lathe Chuck

I hate tedium, so when I found it tedious to make large changes to a lathe chuck's jaw positions with the regular key, I came up with this.

And it really shines when you need to change jaws altogether -- it's quick.

I got that 8mm square rod stock from a scrapped dot matrix printer's tractor drive. 'Installed a file handle, pinned it and done.

I still have to use the regular key for final tightening and initial loosening, but this speed key saves a lot of cranking.

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Coupling Nuts

Pictured below are the four sizes^[1] of common plated steel coupling nuts that my local Home Depot routinely stocks. (I think they may have at least one larger size as well, but I'm not certain of that.)

These things are useful. They're normally intended for joining lengths of threaded rod end-to-end, but I'm always finding other uses, and would never be without several of these on hand in the shop. Many more sizes can be had, along with metric and stainless steel versions, but you'd likely have to go to an industrial supply house like Spaenaur for them.

Here's one example of an unorthodox application. (Scroll way down.) I quite like that one.

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I have noticed a little quirk about them that can complicate things a bit at times, though. I'll try to explain it clearly here.

Looking at a coupling nut, one would be inclined to assume that the axis of the nut's threaded bore will be perfectly coaxial with the axis of the nut's hexagonal body. I've found that it ain't necessarily so, especially with the small size pictured (1/4"-20).

Where that can cause you some trouble is when you need to bore through the thread for some purpose with a nut chucked in the lathe. The nut's threaded bore may not present perfectly coaxially to the drill chucked in the tailstock, and some undesirable results may attend.

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I had occasion recently to put two 1/4"-20 coupling nuts to use as joining sleeves for two different sizes of steel rod; 9/32" diameter and 8mm diameter. I first bored completely through the two nuts with a 9/32" drill. Then I bored half way through each nut with an 8mm drill.

The 9/32" portion of the bores was fine. The 8mm portions turned out to be oversize. The way I had gone about it was fallacious. It had assumed the nuts' two axes to be perfectly coaxial, and they weren't.

What I should have done was this:

1) Chuck a nut and bore through it 9/32". LEAVE IT IN THE CHUCK.

2) Bore half way though 8mm, then take it out of the chuck.

3) Repeat for the second nut/sleeve.

By not unchucking each nut between the two different drill sizes, I would have greatly improved the likelihood of a good outcome. Unchucking and rechucking each nut between drill sizes had the effect of reorienting each nut's bore axis slightly differently for the 8mm drill, from what it had been for the 9/32" drill. That led to an oversize result from the 8mm drill. That's a great example of the sort of subtle consideration that can arise in even the simplest of machine shop work. Next time I'll know better.

Anyway, here's the whole story surrounding the aforementioned joining sleeves. They turned out ok, but the oversize 8mm bores did complicate things a little bit.

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[1] For whatever it's worth, following are the specs for the four sizes of coupling nuts shown in the photograph:

• 1/4"-20; 7/16" A/F; 7/8" long.

• 5/16"-18; 1/2" A/F; 1 3/4" long.

• 3/8"-16; 9/16" A/F; 1 3/4" long.

• 1/2"-13; 3/4" A/F; 1 3/4" long.

Note: The length dimensions are nominal. These are not gauge-precision items.

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An Outdoor Thermometer Bracket

Pictured below is an old thermometer that has no mounting bracket. I'd like to install the thermometer outside my workshop's window, so I'll have to fabricate a bracket. That 1/2" wide strip of 0.060" thick aluminum pictured with the thermometer should do nicely.

Metal bending is an art and a science that I'm by no means a master of, or properly equipped for. In the interest of guaranteeing a good outcome, I'll start by making a hardwood rectangle of the correct length to serve as a rudimentary form around which to make the two bends I'll need.

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And here it is set up for bending.


This way, I'll have the surface of the workbench to act as a reference to help me keep the bends straight and true.

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And here it is with the bends made.

I used another block of wood as a 'punch', and coaxed each bend around little by little. That's as far as a bend will go around a ninety-degree corner. I'll still have to tweak the bends a bit after the work is off the form.

Next up will be to trim the bent ends to length, and spot and drill the holes for the thermometer's mounting studs.

(My way of going about this may seem a bit odd to you, but there's a reason for it. I'm much more comfortable with this approach than I would be making the bends after having established bracket arm length and hole locations. The possibility of an error creeping into bends referenced to pre-existing bracket arm end points is greater than I care to risk. While this approach is a bit clumsy in some ways, it's much more likely to turn out well.)

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And here's the finished item ready to install.

That turned out well -- perfectly symmetrical. It's a good example of how one can take measures to ensure a good outcome by thinking through an entire job beforehand, and finding ways to eliminate potential sources of error.

SATURDAY, JULY 9, 2011

Addendum -- Waste Not Want Not

I hadn't planned it this way, but once I'd cut the bracket's arms to length, I was left with two small pieces of material; just enough for me to make two little sub-brackets for the mounting location I had in mind. Here's the thermometer installed.

Serendipity is welcome here anytime.

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Lengthening a Sign Holder's Stakes

From the, "What were they thinking?" department comes this item. Pictured below is the staked base of a sign holder, along with some bits I'll be putting to use to improve it.

Those stakes are only six inches long from the crossbar on down. That doesn't strike me as long enough to securely hold up much of anything, especially a cantilevered load as will be the case with this sign holder.

The stakes are a bit of an odd diameter -- 9/32". The best nearest thing I have for lengthening material is that length of 8mm diameter rod salvaged from a laser printer. The two 1/4"-20 coupling nuts will serve as joining sleeves. (It would be nice if there were an easy way to do this 'seamlessly', without introducing the bulges that the joining sleeves will create, but that's really not on.) While I'm at it, I'll put pointy ends on the lengthened stakes; stakes are supposed to have pointy ends on them, surely.

I'll start with making two pointy-ended extensions from that length of 8mm rod.

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And here they are. Those will give stakes that are seven inches longer. That should be more like it.

(The camera angle really distorts things. Those rods are exactly the same length.)

Next up is the two joining sleeves. I'll bore through the coupling nuts 9/32" all the way, then 8mm half way and they should do the job nicely.

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Here's everything ready for initial assembly.



While I was at the coupling nuts, I chamfered their ends somewhat. I evened up and squared off and chamfered the ends of the original stakes.

What I have in mind now is to glue this up with CA adhesive. Once that has cured sufficiently, I'll drill through at four places for interference-fit steel pins and I'll have this thing together for good.

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Slight Problem

My 8mm bores turned out a bit oversize, so there was too much clearance for CA adhesive to work effectively. (Although I'm on record as having said that CA adhesive can be made to 'build' and be of some use as a filler, and that's true, for successful adhesion the parts to be adhered together must be very close-fitting.) I had to use five-minute epoxy to glue the 8mm diameter rods in their bores. I suspect the bores turned out oversize because of a little quirk in common mass-produced coupling nuts, and the way I went about the job. See this post for more on that.

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Interference Fit Pins

I happen to have a supply of 5/8" long hard steel dowel pins that should do nicely for this, but may be a bit problematic to install.

The pins are 0.092" in diameter, (That's just shy of 3/32".) The nearest smaller drill size that I have is No. 43 (0.089" diameter). That's a difference of 0.003", and that's a lot for parts this small to start with. (A difference of 0.001" would be what's wanted.) So, I'll be pushing my luck here, but let's see how it goes.

And here it is pinned. A qualified success -- not a complete botch, but certainly not something I'm proud of.

Note the mushrooming and folding over. A proper job would not exhibit any of that. Also, a couple of pins didn't quite make it all the way through so, as I said, I'm not at all proud of this outcome. Anyway, it'll have to do. I'll trim off the excess lengths and it will serve for what's needed.

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That went fine, and CA adhesive performed admirably as a filler for the spots where the pins didn't go far enough through and left little recesses. Here's a close-up shot of two filled and sanded spots.

The adhesive has outstanding characteristics for use as a filler for tiny flaws. Just apply it where needed as needed. Surface tension effects allow it 'build' somewhat even in its wet, runny state. Leave it alone for awhile and it'll harden. Repeat if need be. (It's humid around here today and that has helped it to cure quickly just sitting on a surface.) Once hardened, it sands and 'feathers' beautifully. I doubt there'll be even a trace of those flaws to 'telegraph' through paint.

So, the sign holder now has 13" long stakes that should anchor the thing reliably.

There are two other pieces to this sign holder, and all three pieces need a new paint job. I'll update this post as I make progress, and photograph the finished complete item.

[And the next time I do an interference fit, I'll think it through more carefully and get it right.]

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SATURDAY, JULY 23, 2011

Addendum -- Paint Job Done and an Installation Tool Made

The CA adhesive worked perfectly as a filler to conceal the flaws in my joining sleeves; there's no evidence of the pins' installation whatsoever.

And I've made an installation tool for it from a piece of hardwood.



Now I can hammer on it without directly hammering on it.

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