Stochastic Geometry

I shouldn’t let four-year-olds near finished cheese presses 🙁

So he was spinning the handle happily and it generated so much pressure with the crossbar cinched down that the nut in the center broke its epoxy bond and pulled right out of the crossbar. Doh. And the pusher plate is epoxied at one end and the handle at the other. Double doh. So I think about it at work and eventually discount the idea of drilling a hole and soldering in a pin because really, you’d want to weld that and I have no welder. Also, metal droplets at several hundred degrees centigrade hitting all those wood shavings beside all those finishing chemicals… er, no.

So instead I clamp a clamp in the vice (workholding for this was painful), and cut a slot in the nut with a hacksaw (a new fullsize one because that Draper dross was unusable) and widen it with a file:

This takes a while to do, but I have a cunning plan…

I had to get some brass for the cot anyway for drawer bearing surfaces, so I got a little extra and cut a small piece off it (the rest will get used in a few other things).… Read the rest

So first off, a small message to Draper. Don, you’re a very sad individual. And now a message to Draper, the tool company. This sucks:

Yeah, it’s a junior hacksaw, but the operative word here is saw and I think you could almost be sued for false advertising for calling this piece of worthless dross a working saw. It’s for the bin, and I’ve now got to go find a decent hacksaw to work on saw sharpening. Ugh.

Anyway. That pain in the toolbox aside, the cheese press is now done. It came out too tall yesterday so I trimmed it down a bit last night and then did the finishing. Four coats of shellac, cured overnight and then some briwax and buffing the next day. Then I assembled everything, epoxied on the pusher plate on the main screw and added some feet to the base and that was that.… Read the rest