Recent content by reeac

An alternative to heating is freezing using an aerosol intended for plumbers. Worked for me as a last resort when disassembling a bike a few years ago. Can’t remember the name of the stuff and I’m away from home at present so can’t check it. Goes down to =80 C if I remember correctly

Glad to hear of someone else who’s anal about oil changes. I got rather worried about the acetal polymer timing chain tensioners on my much loved Jag. XJ8 as there were stories about them cracking, leaking and consequent jumping of timing chains. Bought the superior new metal ones and got local...

When I reroofed my stables I stacked the new steel roofing on an old mainsail, tied it to the tractor using an old sheet and towed it all down my field to the stables. Nice blending of the nautical and the agricultural I thought.

I always feel that the raked bow, apart from looking more graceful, probably gives a “variable rate” kind of cushioning when ploughing into waves. …akin to the suspension on some vehicles.

A fundamental problem is that a dog’s paws. ….pads plus nails …are designed for natural surfaces such as grass and offer very little grip on smooth hard surfaces. Our son’s Labrador just couldn’t cope with the polished oak stairs when we were on holiday in a posh AirBNB ….he had to carry her...

I look forward to seeing more “ amp/ hours” rather than “ amp hours” in the future then.

The Wheatstone bridge is a remarkably simple but nonetheless elegant, device. It’s more that 150 years or so of hardware development have made left it behind. As a retired experimental physicist I find the discipline applicable in many different areas ….navigation, sail trim, home heating...

You can buy aerosol cans of a freezing mixture ,,, used by plumbers, I believe. I used one to dismantle a bicycle to remove the saddle pillar and the handlebar stem. Best, of course, if you have two different metals with different expansion coefficients but the effect of cooling is to disrupt...

When I made my own timber whisker pole I read somewhere that it should be 1.1J. That turned out to be exactly right. That was for a timber dayboat with a jib.

If it’s a smart charger then it will adjust its output voltage to suit the state of charge of the battery as indicated by the battery voltage. If the charger isn’t connected to a battery then it will have no reference voltage and will presumably get confused. Better to measure the battery...

I bought a Wanner grease gun just like that one in about 1965. Pretty expensive at the time but I still have it and use it on my tractor and MG A.

I think that mechanical strength of the wiring will be the determining factor in that application, not current carrying capacity. Best to stay with 2.5 mm 2.

I'm a great fan of Danboline. About 15 years ago I was wondering whether it's merits were at the expense of poor resistance to UV as there would be no need for that in a bilge paint. As an experiment I painted a rainwater down pipe in a South facing direction with white Danboline ...

We have a hand held Kestrel 2000 which we bought over 20 years ago. Remarkable bit of kit. ... still on its original battery, sensitive enough to record your walking speed and temperature reading agrees within 0.1 C with our house central heating thermostat.

I had that problem with a disappeared Velcro tab. Easily solved with needle nosed pliers.