Steady Progress

A very quiet Christmas for the two of us.  No celebratory meal.   No doubt we will be early to bed on New Year’s Eve. 

I think my woodworking skill is slowly improving.  I’ve made a further two kitchen knife blocks.

They aren’t perfect.  But I am learning.

I ran more of the Australian Native Timbers through the Bench Saw and Thicknesser before gluing them together into one long plank.  I want to cut the plank on an angle, but it won’t fit through the table saw as the saw bench is too small.   My other options were the skill saw or the mitre saw.   I thought the latter would give me more control. 

In an effort to reduce ‘tear out’ on the underside of the plank I made a new blade insert for the mitre saw.  By lowering the blade down onto it I cut a slot the exact width of the blade

The mitre saw was set to a 25deg angle which was the maximum I could achieve with the width of the plank.

I clamped a timber stop to the saw fence in an effort to ensure each cut piece was exactly the same size.

Unfortunately tear out still occurred on the underside.

I’ve realised the saw blade is blunt. 

After cutting 12 pieces I flipped them in opposite direction.  The idea is to give the illusion the surface of the piece rises and falls.

However the tear out has resulted in rough vertical edges on the joins.  I’m going to glue the edges together and then run the piece through the bench saw down the length of each original join before regluing them  Hopefully that will result in no tear out and a flush joint. 

Oh…. It’s going to be a kitchen cutting board.

40+ and My Error

Today the mercury has exceeded 40C.   When we woke at 6:30 Jan immediately closed all the window covers and turned on two air conditioners .  The house is cool, but it’s a scorcher outside.

I checked the output from the solar array on the roof.  We are producing more solar than we consume.

 

Dark green is solar production and light green consumption

I made a couple of brief trips outside to work on projects.   Every day I managed to calculate the capacity of one cell from the salvaged e-scooter battery.   Using the battery conditioner I fully charge the cell.  Then it’s fully discharged to calculate its capacity.  I write this on the cell before fully charging it again.  The process is repeated with a new cell every day.

Waiting for processing

 

Processed

A new 18650 lithium cell should have a capacity of 2400mA.   Thus far mine range between 2247 and 1067mA. 

Earlier this year my brother gave us a sucker from his passionfruit vine.   I built a trellis and planted the vine.  It’s gone berserk and is producing fruit.   Jan is so impressed she bought a second vine.  A different variety.  The free vine is supposed to produce a yellow fruit  whilst her new vine is named Black Nugget.  No prize for correctly guessing it’s colour.  Of course that meant I needed to make a second trellis.

 

Black Nugget

Whilst buying the vine Jan decided to buy a Loquat tree.  We decide the only suitable location was the front lawn.  I didn’t want to damaged the buried water reticulation pipes and carefully examined the lawn before deciding on a suitable spot.   Yes…my first spade blow cut a pipe!

The last outdoor project was to work on a camera mounting system for the bike.

After looking at the 360 video recordings from my Europe cycling holiday several things are apparent.   I didn’t take enough footage.   There are probably two reasons for this.  First, I was too focussed on riding and physically seeing everything (ie; I forgot to record).  Second, it was too much effort to stop and move the camera around on the bike along with turning it on and off.  I need to learn how to secure the camera in multiple positions before my next cycling trip.  Remote control of the camera would be a major advantage.

Another issue is the quality of the recordings.  Whilst I managed to polish out the scratch on the camera lens this must have resulted in it being slightly distorted.  At certain angles in bright sunlight there is a halo in the recorded image.

On a more positive note I’m slowly learning how to edit 360 video recordings. 

We are three days from Christmas 2024.  It will be another quiet day for us.  I suggested to Jan we go for a drive and find a quiet shady spot where we can eat marmalade sandwiches for lunch.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you.  Stay safe over the festive holiday season!

More on the Darned Swimming Pool

After some long range communication I believe I have convinced the people who manufactured the swimming pool control system that the fault is in their control box.

I write ‘long range communication’ because they no longer have a presence in Western Australia.  Their nearest office is almost 4000km away in Melbourne.

The problem is the pool wasn’t making any chlorine.  It’s a salt pool and the salt in the water is split into sodium and chlorine by electrolysis as it passes through the chlorinator element.   They sent me a replacement chlorinator element ($451) to solve the problem.  However this created the opposite.  The pool was being over chlorinated.  So high in fact that it would be unsafe to swim in the pool.

I started to get tired of the long range communications and decided to dismantle the original chlorinator element.  It’s slightly more than a year old and therefore out of warranty.

On pulling it apart I found the following

Definitely stuffed!!!!

Now it shouldn’t be this bad.  The chlorinator element is supposed to last 3-4 years before needing replacement.  My guess was something had prematurely aged the element and it was now doing the same to the new element they had recently sent me.

I’ve been able to convince the pool company there is a fault inside the control box.  Probably a printed circuit board (PCB).   The control box isn’t controlling the production of chlorine and the element is running continuously.  They have agreed to send me a replacement PCB ($200). 

All the additional costs could have been avoided if they still had a presence in the State.  A site inspection and some testing equipment would have identified the root cause more rapidly.