July 7, 2026

Yesteryear
One year ago today: July 8, 2025, another unexplained weight gain.
Five years ago today: July 7, 2021, a look at FPGAs.
Nine years ago today: July 7, 2017, specific instructions.
Random years ago today: July 7, 2019, food.

           Once again, the latest injuries stoke my old ones and I awoke with shoulder troubles. Good, I get a morning to study the latest in unmanned aerial weapons. I mean the drones with remote pilots, I think it will still be a while before full robotics can do the job. The rules of war are changed and my guess is the aircraft will get smaller and cheaper until they can go after targeting individual soldiers. The Chinese have already built factories turning out clones so they are here to stay. Interestingly, the Chinese motive is to save pilot lives, yet they have no shortage of them. Now, good pilots, that is another matter.
           Most videos are misleading due to the physics of recording combat scenes. Yes, the objects are moving hundreds of miles per hour. But the closing speeds relative to each other are often less than 50 mph. It makes tail-gunners easy targets. It is almost noon before I feel up to any work, and that work will be boxes. Like many a self-evolved workspace, I have amassed piles of boxes in various stages. Here’s a picture of the chaos. The last frame is just a wall map, my kitchen décor. I had no ninth box to make up the square.

           I’m entering a small box phase, here are some of the more standardized designs. Bottom three stack up in great alignment, as they use the Golden Ratio jigs. But others of scrap lumber often just use the fewest cuts. On feature I like is these standards work well for most “custom” sizes. If I have a tool that needs a good box, simply find the next size up that fits and twenty minutes later, you have something to use. Mind you, I still have no jig for cutting the hinges. All that I’ve made to date have now worked right.

           You know how I love to poke holes in phony childhood hard-luck stories. The “poor” kid who turned around his daddy’s ranch, all 40,000 acres, and the guitarist who finally made it on his own--after living at home until he was 37. One story caught my eye, I noticed a toy builder in 1946 claimed to be self-made. Yet it says here when his uninsured building burned down, he was back in business in a week. Now that does not make sense at all. I looked.
           Sure enough, he started that business with $2,200 “of his own money”. That’s like $35,000+ today and he was 40 years old, hardly a kid. I can tell you no normal kid had access to that kind of money. And I don’t think he learned to build aircraft engines tinkering on the farm. (Turns out he worked in his father's bicycle shop.) Aha, I got the story, it is in the addendum.

Picture of the day.
Smokey Bear Cigars & Café, Blue Ridge, GA.
Remember to use BACK ARROW to return to blog.

           While I have you here and focused back on boxes, here is a better shot of the dowel kit, and it shows the need for a custom box. This is the shipping container and it is a great example of the potential to lose small parts. Sure, the foam is nice, but the bushings are not delicate and do not need all that padding. This container is twice the size it needs to be. On-line videos show a lot of people struggle with using this gadget. Am I about to find out why?

           The bushings are actually matching pairs. The slightly larger is used for the rough cut. Meanwhile, the two sizes that are the best compromise of small box are tagged as the “mini-fake” and the “short fake”, descriptive of the exterior dimensions. As stated the wood is the same species for each box, but the texture and quality range from rock solid hard-to-cut, to slightly balsa-feel.
           All of these have compromises, though I suppose not any more than on a regular shop floor. Minimal cuts, easy to handle, right-sized for the laser, and so on. I have lots of toys to keep me occupied for a while. The best days I have are those active with the boxes, so I’m not changing that routine for a while.

           I had Tampa radio for company, had me laughing. There’s a gal that follows the careers of the former USAID company directors, the bunch who were paying themselves $5,000 a week. Once fired, that crew has had to seek work in the real job market and they don’t do so well. Today’s pic was a $272k non-profit director applying for a $19 per hour job at a mall kiosk. She didn’t get the job.

           It was such a great day, instead of new boxes, I finished up some earlier boxes, these tend to be one-offs. Seems I’m out of pickets and I found a design for a smaller tool box. I’m finding them handier, the best designs seem projects for children. I rigged up a test for the dowel maker, but did not follow up. I opted to not get started unless I was sure I could complete the test. Outdoors was great, but so was my requirement for a siesta. The tool boxes want a 1-1/4” diameter dowel and that’s twice the size my kit can produce. Then again, we bought this kit to learn, did we not?

           Here are three of the six boxes from today. These all require hinges, a step I have not yet mastered. The attractive characteristic of these boxes is how incredibly strong they are for small sizes. Normally the smaller the box, the weaker. One thing you cannot buy easily either on-line or at Wal*Mart is a box from this thickness of lumber.

ADDENDUM
           He was Leroy Cox and he built toy aircraft engines. Every rich kid in our town had them, Ii flew one once. The town widow had a kid (Raymond Shapka) with a room full of toys and that was one of them, a Cox 049. They cost $3.49 and required the additional purchase of fuel, things that had to be locked up or kept secret in my environment. So I researched the engine. Turns out more interesting than old Leroy. The thing was a marvel.

           It was machined so fine it did not require a piston ring. I presumed the glow plug stayed on due to combustion, not. It is a catalytic heat from reaction with the methane methanol fuel and platinum wire. There is a secondary story of yet another “entrepreneur” who found 35,000 of the motors about to be junked and bought them for a song, that’s what you find on eBay nowadays. All you need to get started is a massive yet still unused warehouse in Williams Lake, Canada, to keep it all.

           What happened to the 049? A few things. First the fuel, which was mostly wood alcohol, was banned for sale to anyone under 14. Also banned was the noise it made and toys with moving parts beame smarter than today's kids. Another thing, most American towns no longer have open public fields that allow these toys. Why was I even looking? First, the continuing miniaturization of drones and second the concept of a miniature Shahed that cannot be jammed or pulsed.
           This picture, I believe, was the most popular 049 version called the Babie Bee(?), from the sound, I'd imagine. Adults can still buy them from a warehouse in California. The price today is $60 plus eBay & Handling.

Last Laugh