Switch to metric, the diameter will seem larger.
Back when I worked at the Supreme Court of NSW, we used to kill time playing cricket in the basement archives.
The ball was usually:
- A pair of bulldog clips for the core.
- A layer of rubber bands.
- A layer of gaffer tape.
- Another layer of rubber bands.
- Another layer of gaffer tape.
They worked pretty well; almost the same mass as the real thing, but less destructive when it hit things.
2 posts were split to a new topic: Coronahumour
A lot of people are throwing out old junk and leaving items on the curb for pickup in my neighborhood lately, probably because everyone is cleaning out their houses and we can’t have yard sales right now. We just made this pottery wheel from an old table, a bicycle wheel filled with concrete, the steering column from a Razor scooter, a pizza pan, and a rejected steering wheel from a theme park ride featuring an animatronic Harrison Ford.
Wait, what?
I know. That was oddly specific.
Either “Indiana Jones Adventure” at Disneyland or that time when Ford was admitted to the Hall of Presidents at Disney World based on an Imagineer’s mistaken impression that Air Force One was a documentary.
I made two new bases for my dingy davits today. The old one in the back is almost 35 years old! His partner was ripped to shreds in Yorktown last fall. They are deeply amazed as you can see from their expressions.

dingy davits
I know those are real words with perfectly respectable meanings but I can’t help read them as either part of Vogon poetry:
I’ll rend thee in the dingy davits with my blurglecruncheon, see if I don’t"
or vernacular Glaswegian:
See you, Jimmy! I’ll tak a runnin’ whangit at yer dingy davits if ya keep lookin’ at me like tha’.
All due apologies to Vogons and Glaswegians for my mangling stereotypes of their respective cultural gifts to the multiverse.

Air Force One
That was my first association.
To paraphrase a contemporary movie review - it’s a good, entertaining action movie, but you realize how ludicrous the premise/plot is if you picture it happening on Helmut Kohl’s Airbus.
SFW curse words!
Quarantine beer #2. A hefeweizen, should be ready in time for memorial day.
Thermal jacket wrapping the mash kettle
Hefeweizen on the foreground, belgian quadruple (quarantine beer #1) in the background
Not really making or crafting, but plug one of those ‘martian habitat’ LED table lamps into a powerbank and you’ve got yourself a nice reading lamp in a spot without an electrical outlet.
On the subject of new plants, I’ve been trying again to grow some trees for bonsai purposes. Here’s the first one that sprouted. I believe it’s a Scots Pine. [IMG_20200506_080300602] がんばって松ちゃん!
Beginning to unpack and organise my new workshop:
I’m having an oven delivered in a week or so, and I’ll need to get an electrician out to install that. I’m going to get them to wire up the shed while they’re at it; at present, it has no lights or power.
I’m repairing electric jigsaw with broken casing (polyvinyl alcohol works well as separating agent):
The jigsaw has worked well for many years, so self lubricating sintered metal bearings need to be refilled too:
The bearings are porous and are filled with oil during manufacturing. During operation they slowly lose oil until they can’t work properly. Here they are refilled in laboratory vacuum dryer, at 85 deg. C and 0.015 bar absolute pressure (the bearings bubbled like that for nearly 1 hour). That would be so illegal in Texas
Expanding our tiny armory to make teeny crossbows as well as swords and axes.
The kids have been collecting the little strips of spring steel off the street that the street sweepers leave behind, with the hopes of someday forge welding them into a mighty sword. I’m not sure if that would work but those spring steel strips do work well for little bows.