Update

Raring To Go

I got the new CNC plasma pretty well ready to go. I'm going to pick up a couple of wire holder downers or whatever they're called to fasten the wires coming from the control box onto the wall to neaten that up a little but otherwise it's ready. There's a water table coming as part of a rebate deal, so as soon as that shows up it should be all systems go. As long as I'm ready, that is. The instruction manual for the software is 195 pages long - lots to digest there. It has a tutorial and when I opened it up a dialogue box popped up and told me there were a couple of errors in the tutorial. I'll call them next week and see what the story is on that. Even without the table I can do an offline run to develop my programming skills. 

Crank Ring Repair

Bar End Plugs

Put a little time in as Bicycle Repairman as the old Monty Python skit went. One of the students brought me his bike with the big chain ring bent pretty severely. I took it off the bike and was able to massage it back to pert near straight. It still has a little run-out but it shouldn't be noticeable when riding. I'm working on my touring bike a little as well. The bar end plugs in the photo are sporting a logo from an outfit that used to make furniture and cabinets. I'm supposed to be related to them somewhere way back when. I blanked out several pairs a couple of years ago, figured out the coordinates of everything and my pal Kevin wrote the CNC program and machined the logo in for me. I put them in the handlebars and put my new elk hide bar wrap on last night. I couldn't find any brown bar tape to match the color of the bike frame when I was looking for it and instead of putting on new tape at least once every season, this stuff looks a whole bunch cooler and should last a few years. I'll post a photo of the finished job when I get the bars back on the bike.

I knocked out a couple of projects in the Woodshop this week as well. I got the new plywood on the scaffold planks and a couple of other piddly things done while the boys were working on the little boxes they're making. It seems to be going much better than the footstool project. I took a much different approach this time. I put drawings and the sequence of operations on the board and had sample pieces made up. They can't look at a drawing and figure out what they're supposed to make even on simple parts. Now that the year is about three quarters over, I've finally got a handle on how to get through to them - drawings, written instructions, demonstrations, sample parts and repeat all oral instructions at least six times. They're still making mistakes but not near as many. We're going to be starting the wood lathe pretty soon. That should make for some interesting/scary times.

I'm going to put a little more work in on the garage door openers this weekend. I had one of the boys make a couple of brackets I needed to hang the opener from the ceiling yesterday. Depending on the weather and what else comes up, I should have the second opener close to being finished this weekend. I've got a few other things I'd rather be working on like the boat and my 900 but I really need to stay with the barn project until I've got the electric done.

Hope all of you are coming through this crazy weather unscathed. A couple more little towns here in Indiana wiped off the map the last few days. Having a barn blow down was tough but nothing like having your whole town blown away. My heart goes out to them.