A Marble Vessel With A Broken Lid

At least, I take it to be marble. It's quite a nice little item -- about four inches in diameter by about four inches tall.

My wife tells me that the lid just spontaneously split in two; it wasn't dropped. Internal stress resolving itself, possibly.

Anyway, a fix was in order. The break was quite clean, so the two pieces of the lid fit back together nicely. A bead of gelled CA adhesive served to adhere the two pieces back together. At the lid's underside, I ran a bead of runny CA adhesive along the seam to further reinforce the repair. And that did it. Here's the vessel with its lid back together and in place.

The repair's appearance is not seamless; one will always be to see where the lid broke in two. I see no solution to that. At least, the vessel is fully serviceable again.

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Crappy Grinding Stones From Amazon

I got this set of twenty grinding stones from a Chinese Amazon vendor recently.

Diameters are approximately 16mm, 20mm, 24mm and 30mm. I thought they'd be just the thing to go with my new 1/4" die grinder for sharpening lawnmower blades. Was I ever wrong.

The shanks were described variously as 1/4" diameter and 6mm diameter. I queried that, and was assured that the shanks were 1/4" diameter. It turns out that they're 6mm diameter. So, right off the bat the things are worthless -- a 1/4" collet will not close down on a 6mm shank.

And to cap it off, the stones are badly mounted and don't run true. Here's a little video clip of one stone turning in a wood lathe at 500 rpm.

Imagine that wobble running at 20,000 rpm.

I complained to the vendor and got my money refunded. So I'm now the owner of a worthless set of grinding stones.

It's appalling some of the stuff that Amazon will sell.

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A Chimes Candy Tin

['Scraping the bottom of the barrel for subject matter here. The workshop has run into the doldrums.]

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Things have a way of just showing up out of nowhere. Here's a Chimes candy tin that did just that recently.

The tin is approximately 3 1/4" tall x 2 1/4" wide x 1" from front to back.

And here's a view of it with its lid slid open.

And three more views.

It seems that Chimes is still a going concern in Indonesia.

On the bottom of the tin, there's a "BEST BY" date of 2014/10/05.

The tin is an exquisite bit of fabrication. I'd love to see how these things are made with such perfection.

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A Shakespeare Autowinder II Bump Head Installation

I have an elderly Homelite TrimLite string trimmer that's in need of some new bump head parts. Trying to obtain those parts has proven to be an exercise in futility, so I went to Canadian Tire and got myself a new after-market complete bump head, a Shakespeare Autowinder II.

It's supposedly a universal fit item that will work on the Homelite. I have my doubts. We'll see.

I'm going to try to open the package ever so carefully, so if the thing doesn't work out I can reseal it and maybe return it.

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The Trimmer's Original Head

The trouble with the original head is that the bumper is almost worn out, and it's missing its spring. I found a spring that fits, but it's not forceful enough. A proper replacement spring seems to be unavailable. The bumper can be had (the small engines place has a couple in stock), but the price is nearly that of the Shakespeare replacement head.

It looks to me that the distance from the trimmer line to the guard is a fairly critical dimension. It currently measures 2 3/16". We'll see if that dimension more-or-less holds for the Shakespeare replacement.

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The Kit Unpacked

There's the hub, a plastic spacer washer and a bag with many hexagonal adapters and screws and a steel flat washer. Not shown is an instruction sheet in three languages.

The unit comes without trimmer line installed! I call that cheap and sleazy. (According to the instruction sheet, 0.080", 0.095" or 0.105" line can be used.)

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Nope

I looked into the installation instructions and all the adapters, and I'm calling hogwash. I have no faith whatsoever that this thing can be satisfactorily installed on my Homelite trimmer, and yield satisfactory performance. I'll repackage it as best I can and try to return it.

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Returned -- THURSDAY, JULY 25, 2019

My repackaging worked out ok, and Canadian Tire took it back with no hassle. I'll look into obtaining a spring from an American on-line parts dealer.

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Can't Win For Losing

Shipping from the States would be $22.99 US -- not on.

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To be continued.

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A Mastercraft Work Stand's Vise Screw Lash

I have an elderly Canadian Tire Mastercraft work stand that has a couple of vise screw peculiarities.

The screws' actions are counter-intuitive -- it's clockwise to loosen; counterclockwise to tighten. There's not a thing that I can do about that; it's the nature of the beast. The manufacturer no doubt didn't want to incur the additional cost of left-handed screw threads. Left-handed screw threads would impart intuitive vising action to the work stand's jaws; i.e. clockwise to tighten, counterclockwise to loosen.

There is a peculiarity that I can do something about, though, and that's the outrageous amount of lash^[1] in the vise screws. Note the gap between the crank and the frame in the following photo.

That gap lends about a couple of turns of play to the crank's action. The crank on the other side is the same. It's annoying. If I can install a couple of flat washers to take up that space, I should have a work stand that's much more pleasant to use.

Knocking out a roll pin freed the crank from its screw. A pair of 3/8" SAE flat washers fit nicely for play eliminators.

And here we are with the crank reinstalled.

I lubricated all the thrust bearing points and the screw with roller chain lubricant, and now I've got vise screw action with no binding, and minimal lash. Much better.

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Note:

[1] See this 'lexicon' post for an explanation of my use of the term 'lash'.

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A Stanley No. 1299 Utility Knife

This old cast iron utility knife is quite nice, but its paint job is way past it.

I'll strip off what's left of the paint, and give it new primer and paint. But before I go any further, here's a YouTube video of an American gentleman's restoration of a similar knife. The man's work is awesome -- way beyond anything I'd even attempt.

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Inside The Handle -- MONDAY, JULY 15, 2019

A single 10-24 x 3/4" plain slot flat head screw holds the two halves of the handle together.

There's space for spare blade storage.

For my money, this utility knife type has been pretty well obsoleted by the Olfa 18mm snap-off blade style of knife, but the old style of knives and blades are still available. I imagine that an attractive feature of the old knives is precisely that the blades can't snap off on you.

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Paint Stripped Off And Primer Applied

There's a coat of grey primer. Still to come are two coats of red enamel.

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Red Enamel Done

And here's two coats of Canadian Tire's Armor Coat fire red rust paint.

I'll leave that to sit and harden for a week, then put it back together with a new blade. I'll have a nicely refurbished knife that I'll probably never use.

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Done -- SATURDAY, JULY 20, 2019

It has a new blade in it. It can go back to hanging on its nail on a tool board.

We'll see if I find use for it now that it's all prettied up.

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A Toro Electric Mower, 120 Volt Corded

A roadside find. Width of cut is 18".

ID plate data:

• AMPS 12
• TYPE E120
• MODEL 20646
• SERIAL # 8930708 03

The cord connection plug looks very bad.

One prong has delaminated, and the plastic at its base is all bubbled up. I suspect that this mower has had a catastrophic failure of some sort. Let's get the top cover off for a look see.

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Top Cover Off, And A Startup -- WEDNESDAY, JULY 10, 2019

Four obvious No. 12 x 1 1/2" pan head threading screws with No. 2 Phillips recess fasten the cover in place. And here we are with the top cover off.

The blade is belt driven by a high speed universal motor. Drive specs from the service manual are:

'Motor 20,500 rpm with step down belt drive ratio 5.8-1. Blade speed at 20,500 rpm is 3,534 rpm.'

So blade speed on this electric machine is similar to blade speed on a gasoline engine mower.

I managed to plug an extension cord onto the distressed connection plug, and the machine starts and runs. So maybe the catastrophic failure that I was imagining was entirely an extension cord receptacle failure. A poor receptacle contact would account for the extreme heating in evidence at one of the mower's connector's prongs.

There's a lever in evidence that I suspect may be part of a blade brake mechanism. The lever doesn't appear to move or do anything when the deadman bail is operated. That bears investigation.

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Blade Brake Revealed

With the belt slipped off the big pulley, an impact wrench makes short work of getting the 15/16" A/F (across flats) pulley nut off. (Support the blade from underneath, else the spindle will drop when the nut is removed.) Under the pulley is the brake drum. And all is revealed.

The motionless lever I was seeing is a spring anchor bracket. The blade brake mechanism is fine -- it's fully operational. So I appear to have a useable mower here; I just have to rectify that overheated plug prong problem.

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Connection Plug Bypassed -- THURSDAY, JULY 11. 2019

And there we are -- the mower is fit for use and saleable.

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