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February, 2006
PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE
This edition of the newsletter is
a bit late. Now that I hold two offices in the club (Pres and Editor) and
my money making job has picked up, it makes things a bit more difficult.
It is also hard for me to run the meeting and take the minutes. The
office of Editor is still open. I will be happy to train, support and
backup anyone who wants to try it. You need a computer with Microsoft Word
and the Paint program that comes with Windows. Its kind of satisfying to
get the text and the pictures to fit with a professional look. There is a
handful of deep, dark secrets about Microsoft Word that I exploit. A few
defaults need to be overridden to keep pictures from squirting all the
page with the slightest change, but once you know how to handle that, you
are no longer driven to tears. The table that forms or masthead took many
hours to organize and fit a and tweak, but now we just edit it a bit for
each new edition. Instead of dealing with columns (another frustration) I
now put all the text in boxes that I can plop down anywhere and they stay.
If you have a PC, I can show any of you how to do the newsletter as
well (or better) than I do. Any takers?
MINUTES
There were 21 ½ people attending,
John O and Emil C. presiding. John Mentioned dues and several people paid
up. We went right to Show & Tells after that.
 Joe
Pietsch picked up a chuck at a flea market that looked like it had a
#2 Morse taper adaptor. But it had a ball bearing in it. Its still a
good buy, though.
 Rick
Chownyk has done it again. Now there is a
Rick-o-matic Jr. AND a Rick-o-matic Sr. The picture shows a knee mill (a
large one) with a Proto-Trak CNC conversion of the type Rick learned on.
He is itching to put it in production, but it is still on the trailer he
used to get it from
Chicago
because of its imposing size. The ProtoTrak is
probably the easiest to use conversational CNC control, yet it is
amazing capable. I learned on a two-axis machine which meant I had to
work the quill, but it was still a great help. Rick’s protoTrak
controls all 3 axes, so he can walk away. The adventure continues…
 Emil
Cafarelli has joined others in making a
device to avoid having to put his tailstock back to dead center. Unlike
Ron Schmidt’s, Emil made his from sctratch. (The picture shows
Ron’s, I forgot to snap Emil’s version.}
 James
Howard built what appears to the naive
mind to be a homemade belt sander, but it differs from that in 4
important areas: 1. The belt is driven much slower than normal. 2. The
light is not just for seeing what you are doing, but evaluating the edge
of a blade. (Light hitting a dull edge shines back at you. A sharp edge
directs light away from you.) 3. The belt moves from bottom to top. Its
better for sharpening and it’s a great safety feature – you can’t
jam a object between the belt and the support. 4. This is the neatest
one – the belts track perfectly because the top pulley pivots sideways
directly under the centreline of the belt. Belts track so well that you
run them half way off the pulleys and they stay there. Very cleverly
done, Sir.
 Thess
are from James’ toolbox. All were sharpened or reconditioned with his
belt device. You can see James likes making his own handles, too.
 James
finds bed frames for the angle iron pieces because they have properties
he likes. He ended up with a lot of the brackets that the castors go
into. He found a use for them. When mounted upside down, they are the
perfect size and shape to insert a lamp like the white one in this
picture. Having several places to mount the lamp is quite convenient.
Joe Pietsch
had yet another book to review for us, this time about the building of the
Brooklyn
Bridge
. So what does that have to do with metal? Well the
cables holding all the concrete and stone together are 1,000s of metal
wires. The company making the steel wires was cheating by delivering a
substandard product and pulling some sneaky stuff to cover it up. The
builder did not live to see the completion. So the book is not just about
the bridge, but its about people.
Title: “The
Great
Bridge
”
Author: David McCullough
ISBN# 0-671-21-213-3. |