brainwagon

Yesterday I did some work in the shop, finishing up a couple of small projects and prototyping a small display shelf for Carmen. The result was a fair amount of sawdust everywhere, so today I spent some time today vacuuming and tidying, putting away tools and generally just enjoying being in the shop. It just […]

I’ve got a week off before crunch time really begins at work, so I’m home enjoying the company of the missus and just relaxing. And, for some reason, I’m thinking about model trains. Mind you, I’ve always been pretty interested in model trains (and model making in general) although it never really rose to be […]

Brace yourself for old guy reminiscing about the past. Back in 1980, I was a sixteen year old kid with a goal: to buy my own computer. I spent a year mowing lawns and doing chores, mostly for my grandmother, and slowly began to tease together money. By the end of the year, I had […]

Everyone I know in the twitterverse/blogosphere seems to be getting a cute little $50 piece of kit called the NanoVNA, which is a small vector network analyzer. In ham radio lingo, this means that it’s an antenna analyzer. IMSAI guy was the guy who first got me interested in getting one, and he did an […]

I’ve been working on a bizarre little project which involves the very first computer that I ever owned: my trusty old Atari 400. I bought it when I was just 16 years old, and it is probably the artifact of my deep past which is responsible for my career and a heck of a lot […]

I’ve been watching too many YouTube views lately about tool restoration, and as part of my ongoing efforts to equip my home workshop with more tools it means I’ve been hitting more garage sales and picking up a lot more tools which are coated in ferric oxide, and then doing various things to them to […]

I’ve been on a bit of a woodworking binge lately, no doubt fueled by all the creative and talented woodworkers who have made a place on my YouTube subscription list. I’ve also been slowly acquiring used tools of various sorts, working on a variety of shop projects, and even taking a class. The “class” is […]

Just some pictures of the wrench after it came out of the bath. I just scrubbed the loose black oxides off with a Scotch Bright pad, and then coated it with some Boeshield T-9 protectant spray to keep it from re-rusting. I don’t think I’m going to do more with this.

Last weekend, I got this rather dirty and rusty wrench at a garage sale in my neighborhood. It’s an odd wrench, stamped with So. Pac. Co., which rather raises the likelihood that it was a wrench used on steam locomotives, and my guess would be that it’s probably closer to a century old than newer […]

Okay, that turned out to be easier than I suspected. I haven’t gotten around to derusting the mystery wrench, but I did do a little bit of simple cleaning, and when I did that, I discovered a couple of markings that were quite helpful. As in, it gave the entire game away. The manufacturer is […]

I took Friday off to make it a four day weekend. Part of the reason was so that I could prep some wood for my woodworking class. I got twenty Douglas Fir 2x4s from Lowes, and cut them to 64″ in length. My idea for my woodworking class was to use their jointer to trim […]

So, part of my incentive on working on my WSPR beacon was one of my coworkers decided to try to do some operating from the local Emeryville Marina, and I thought it might be nice to use the opportunity to try to pack up my WSPR setup and see if I could get some spots […]

As part of my attempt to get into woodworking and develop some actual skills, I have been keeping an eye out for what would best be described as “junky piles of rust” at garage and estate sales. I have been updating my twitter feed with pictures and short comments, but I thought it might be […]

I’ve been mostly working in my workshop on various projects related to woodworking, but last week one of my coworkers reminded me that Field Day, the yearly day where radio amateurs take their equipment into parks away from the comfort and ready electrical supply and operate under conditions which are meant to simulate (at least […]

Yesterday I wrote up my (successful and positive) results at using the commercial product Evaporust to remove rust from some of my smaller rusty auger bits that I got in a garage sale. Last night I got home late after a trivia competition, but decided to toss together a test for using electrolysis using bits […]