MORNING
My gear design is revealing the flaws. I learned it must be the highest quality plywood at least a 15/32” and 7-ply. The gears should be finely sanded and given layer of varnish. I just may have lumber like that that when I get back to rebuilding my cPod camper. Work slows down once I have a winter neighbor for a number of reasons I won’t get into except to say the assembly area is too narrow to roll the wagon out very easily.
There’s a satisfaction to watching gears you made yourself mesh, as you know what to look for. I detect a certain artistic appeal in gear design, making it a career only for those who can tolerate under-appreciation. (But hey, I play bass, don’t I?) For me, the project was too advanced for my scroll saw abilities (even though it worked) and upon re-reading, the design I chose was meant to be cut on laser equipment. That’s a level I can’t touch. Yet.
It now also makes more sense why transmissions need a break-in period. I found this gear experiment so intriguing I stayed home to study it more. Maybe I'll see if I make something a bit more useful or amusing out of it. Like a compound gear or something. The chipping around the gear teeth is not wear, just the cheap plywood separating when sawn.
NOON
Har-dee-har, I just spent the morning giving you the gears. Little inside joke there, but I did carry on to cut some more. The second batch went fast, you can see the “ookpik” shape I’ve evolved to. This makes sure the gears mesh exactly at one point at least. However, you want the details. Okay, first of all, you quickly learn to make as many cuts as you can while the piece is large. The big pieces are far easier to handle and don’t suffer “saw bounce” as much. The clamp? Oh, that just gets in the way.
Cut at the slowest speed that works and consistently cut right on the line—on laser patterns, even if this “erases” your pattern as you proceed. The scroll saw blade has a slight bias. It makes cutting one direction (as in counterclockwise in my case) a little easier. You don’t have to bother, but it is one less condition to wrestle with.
It helps to find a round file of the right diameter to clean out each tooth cut. This is important and you can prove it to yourself by watching the gears mesh at low speed. When the gear tooth is maximum into the receiving cog, it pivots momentarily in place. You may want to apply a rubbing of old soap bar at these junctures. Listen up, these goodies are not in the book.
Invest in a set of quick-change drill bits. With the drill press, they are worth paying double the price for a good set. You’ll need a spring loaded center punch and always, I said always, if it is bigger than 1/16th, drill a pilot hole. Via the above, I was able to produce the second set of gears in only one cup of tea. I found the improvement to be dramatic. Everything is on the glue press for now, as soon as it dries, we’ll give it the test run.
That will be a few hours, so here is some trivia. The Polynesian word for “easy” is mai tai. See, that alone was worth your time today. And here’s an item. Since I eliminated FDA-approved Monsanto corn (and corn products or byproduct), from my diet, I have never gotten the hiccoughs. Coincidence? Perhaps. Not that I ever had a problem with hiccoughing, but I always wanted to use that word in a sentence. Women like a man with a very large vocabulary. Now, where was I?
AFTERNOON
Do you remember seeing the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, the Six Day War on TV. I do, barely, but only because I did see it on TV. Most of the Israelis did not. There were no television stations in the Middle East back then. They got their war news from Radio Cairo, which was about as famous for accuracy and lack of bias back then as it is today. I was in grade school and the current events teacher wheeled a TV and we watched the newsreels in black and white. The President came on to scare the pants off us with talk of nuclear war.
What? Well, of course we had color TV black then, Patsie, you numbskull. It’s the newsreels that were in black and white. Anyway, I was trying to find a copy of the speech the Israeli prime minister flubbed up. It appears that event has been successfully censored, like the Justin Beiber hockey game incident.
EVENING
Stick around for another tale from the trailer court. We called off rehearsal tonight due to rain, but in a later let-up, I zipped downtown to the Paradiso. Entering the lobby, I saw a female person fumbling with her purse, but as it transpired, she was checking out the meat. I bought my ticket and sat down. Moments later, she walks in and sits right next to me in an [otherwise] empty row.
What do they call those women who try to pick up buck studs 25 years younger than they are? Cougar! Cougar! True, we are dealing with a somewhat different age demographic here, but you can imagine my horror. I cut it short. I was not mean or anything, I told her if we bump into us at the theater again, we’ll go for coffee. But when guys like me look young, gals, you are old.
The movie was in German, about a love triangle between two sisters and a poet. Proving there were nerd scriptwriters back in 1790. I could only pick out a few words, “fear”, “blood”, “freedom”, and “but”. That’s how rusty I’ve become.
I’d been taking a break from the gear mechanism the final product for today you will see nearby. Note one gear is raised, called a compound gear. This contraption actually spins and you are supposed to ignore the axle clips, which so closely resemble the caps off my old syringes. Much later close to 11:00 PM, Agt. M came by for coffee.
At the donut place, we met some Peruvian people he knows from the tennis court. I let their kids play with this gear assembly over which I found out where the weak spots are that require reinforcement. Precisely, too, and in no time at all. Nobody spoke English, so I was the translator. They are here on a scholarship for their seven-year old grandson, who is already a professional tennis player. There is a championship on Key Biscayne in a week, they offered $25 free tickets. I passed.
But I did a lot better with the Spanish that I did with the German at the movie tonight.
Return Home
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
