The Diaries Of An Un-Furloughed Grendel

[BroadAmbition]

JA I dont have any measurements yet.

Best guess - He's about 5ft7"   44" 50" 44" with a size 9 shoe   

Griff

[JanetAnne]

3 minutes ago, BroadAmbition said:

JA I dont have any measurements yet.

Best guess - He's about 5ft7"   44" 50" 44" with a size 9 shoe   

Griff

[grendel]

Day 20, Tuesday

Well its here, the last day of furlough, so do I take a day off and relax around the house doing nothing, or will I get easily bored with that and do something?

we shall see.

[grendel]

ok so i couldnt sit around and do nothing, so i have been adding the rubbing strakes to the sides on the model

[grendel]

Well lets continue this thread with thins done on non working days, 

Saturday, 

shopping day, with a bit extra, my mother in law has sent a list of shopping as well as my own, so this mornings shop took longer (it was more expensive too as i spent a small fortune on tools in lidls, a couple of digital solder stations (i need multiple soldering irons and i had managed to kill one, so i got two, i also picked up a cordless planer plus batteries and charger.

Anyway shopping done, it was then time to deliver the shopping to my mother in law, after that a care package of bread flour and porridge oats was delivered to my parents, enough to keep them going for at least another month, i've just got home, so its been a busy morning so far, and the car has had a long enough run to fully charge the battery properly.

next to unpackage my new tools and try them out.

[grendel]

new tools unpacked and tried out, the cordless planer is a nice piece of kit, and i can see it being a useful for working on a wooden boat, its only a small narrow one, but does what it says on the box.

today will be started with a nice yoga session.

[grendel]

sunday, a quiet day, this mornin 1 hour of yoga, followed by household chores, then a relaxed afternoon watching a dvd, then i decided to get an old spotlight i have cleaned up and working, last time i tried using it it was unreliable and kept cutting out, so i reckon apart from a lick of paint it just needs some new wiring, when disassembled the bulb holder is in fine condition, so no worries there, i do have spare bulbs, as i guess you cant get these 600W bulbs any more.

[grendel]

well it seems i fib, i have just checked my two spare bulbs and the packaging says they are the economy 300W versions (i bet you cant get them any more either).

[FairTmiddlin]

25 minutes ago, grendel said:

well it seems i fib, i have just checked my two spare bulbs and the packaging says they are the economy 300W versions (i bet you cant get them any more either).

Ebay not quite economy but available search

300W Clear E27 230V Lightbulb Lightbulb

[grendel]

Nigel, those are fine but would rattle in the bulb holder, the ones i have (and checking against the edison screw thread chart) are i believe E40's which are apparently available still for hydroponics systems (ooh err missus, that harks back to a different topic) but the bulbs are still about £13 each, lucky i have spares.

[grendel]

so a quick spray of anti rust paint, and rewiring complete the beast of a spotlight was reassembled and tested, just the glass to be cleaned now and refitted

[SteveO]

Amazon, and I'm quite sure others, do a 50W LED bulb - 350W equivalent, It is E27 but comes with an adaptor to convert it to an E40.   £25 a pop, but good to know in case you get stuck.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Light-Bulbs-E40-Lighting/s?rh=n%3A227259031%2Cp_n_feature_three_browse-bin%3A250333031

 

 

[grendel]

over the weekend i took stock of all of my battery operated tools, apart from 2 drills plus a spare battery all batteries took a charge and worked the tools, i have way too many drills, 7 cordless and several corded, plus the two with dead batteries. (i also have another 3 or 4 with no batteries)

Anyway to cut a long story short, i dissasembled one of the battery packs, its a ni cad battery so i wasnt holding out much hope, and sure enough on checking one cell was reversed and the rest not much better, i have some lithium cells, these are a lot better than ni cad, and 4 cells will work out to 14.8 volts, about 0.4 volts higher than the original.

Connections were soldered to the batteries and capacities determined by discharging and recharging them (its always a good idea to have a set with similar capacity) and today I have been 3d printing some holders for the batteries, they will then be soldered together into packs to get these drills back up and running as cheap drills that i dont worry about losing or lending to anyone.

[grendel]

I wont get into the intricate details of the internal wiring for lithium batteries, suffice to say i had to add leads up to the connectors, i had 3d printed a plug to ram the connector part home as that is normally held in place by the old batteries, then there was the balance lead for each cell in the battery, this means my charger knows when to stop charging each individual cell. on a lot of commercial lithium batteries this circuit is built into the battery, lithium batteries dont like being overcharged (they tend to catch fire) which is why the circuit to prevent this is often built into the battery, in this case as i had assembled it from scratch, i needed the wiring to enable this safety feature as they were charged.

Anyway the finished item has been tested and both drills run well, as they are basically just motors the extra 0.4 volts makes no matter as the motors are probably rated to 18 volts anyway, just got to do at least one more to power the second drill, thats one more dead drill revived.

[ChrisB]

On 04/05/2020 at 14:10, grendel said:

After the training was cancelled i was at a bit of a loose end as i had planned my day around 6 hours training, anyway i decided to tidy up some of my clothes, an hour and a half later, a pile of old shirts and trousers with embarrassing holes went in the bin, and i now know where all my tee shirts are.

Not relevant at present because charity shops are closed but most will always take clothes with holes etc as long as they are clean.

Just put them in a separate bag and tell them they are for ragging. They get given a lot of gear that they can't sell, so it goes in their skip but they get paid by the recyclers for rag.

[grendel]

second battery completed, a much neater job and works just as well as the first.

[grendel]

and the third battery too now

[grendel]

Well the office is reopening next week, and my boss phoned today to see if i wanted to come back in, i havent committed yet, but i may head in one or two days a week, after all the current advice is still that if you can work from home you should, but there are things i really do need from the office. but this means i have to get working again on the model, its just deciding what the next step is really.

[SwanR]

We had a discussion amongst some of the managers today about the likelihood of my office reopening. There is nothing on the cards at the moment. I work for a large corporate and the message from the CEO at present is to stay at home. But I do also know that I'm not likely to be amongst the people they want back in first. I reckon I've got another 3 to 4 months of home working probably. I'm very glad that I took the opportunity to reduce my hours to 4 days a week recently, it's nice to have one extra day when I don't have to try to work.

[grendel]

Well today went totally differently to how i was expecting, a request from my daughter to help fix her bed as some of the slats had cracked and it was sagging, lead me to heading to B&Q after i finished working at 3pm. if there is one thing i can say about canterbury, people here are very polite and good at queuing at the correct spacing, and inside it was as good, I made my way to the sheet timber section and purchased two sheets of 3/4" hardwood plywood (ouch my wallet felt like it had been robbed) once i got it home and with the back garden still full of rubbish bags awaiting an opportunity to book a once in 4 week slot, it had to come in via the front , so I got my cordless circular saw and planer and cut the pieces to length, one for her bed, and one for mine to replace the piece of 1/2" ply thats been there a while and isnt really big enough, then i chamfered the edges with my cordless plane, after which it was fit to come indoors, the offcuts to head for my workshop, and the sheets to head upstairs (once she has sorted out to be able to get there to fit it.

I did my bed no problem and have now gained a 4 foot by 3 foot piece of half inch ply back, and have now tamed the springs on the bed frame section so we are half way there, the big problem was that she measured the width of her bed at five feet and a half, but neglected to say if that was a half inch or half foot, no matter the wood got cut down to 5 1/2 foot, if needs it can have 5 1/2" cut off.

all this reinforcement works has been necessary due to her habit of walking across her bed, (not a sound move for someone overweight on a wood slat bed) and for the fact i have been using the edge of my bed as a chair while working from home.

so despite personal accounts i have seen from around the country, about how bad things are in b&Q, i didnt find it a problem, in fact a member of staff correctly socially distancing himself helped me move the 8x4 sheets of ply onto my trolly by taking the other end, 8 foot away from me.

[BroadAmbition]

Go on then. 

I can get 8 x 4 foot sheets of ply / plasterboard x many inside Trevor no problem. How did you manage that in a volvo estate?

Griff

[Timbo]

I have to admit to being the obnoxious customer in my local B&Q yesterday. The queue to get inside was orderly, well managed and swift. Once inside I had a half hour wait to pick up some doweling while some bloke coughed on and groped every length of ramin in the store. Ahead of me was a pregnant lady (I assumed she was pregnant but didn't want to ask...I've been wrong before) who told me she had been waiting for fifteen minutes before I arrived. When his phone rang after my half hour wait and he then proceeded to take the call and chatter inanely to an idiot while blocking access to the products, telling the person on the phone he was not in B&Q to buy anything but 'just having a look',  I got a little verbally creative. He finished his phone call and quickly moved away hiding his phone and saving me having to locate and buy some grease and a mallet.

[grendel]

6 hours ago, BroadAmbition said:

Go on then. 

I can get 8 x 4 foot sheets of ply / plasterboard x many inside Trevor no problem. How did you manage that in a volvo estate?

Griff

easy, they came home on the roof, they span the roof bars perfectly, and then just get strapped down carefully.

I can fit the 4 fooy span inside, but that brings the end of the 8 foot above the drivers seat headrest, which stops me getting in and being able to look forward, if i cut a 2 foot square out of one end they would fit perfectly around me.

[grendel]

I dd once manage a complete fence on the roof, 4x4 posts and 16 foot 6x3/4 boards plus 16 foot 4x2's pressure treated timber, enough for 20 foot of fence, i use a couple of 4x2's to span the roof rack, these actually live in the back of the car, just in case.

[grendel]

My next projects arrived today, 100 lithium cells to make battery packs from.