The Home Machinist!

From today's e-mail: "Take an additional 10% off* PLUS Free Shipping on your Enco order of $99 or more! Simply enter both promo codes: 2DAY and 2DAYFS prior to checkout. ... Discount cannot be applied to machinery. Offer ends 12/31/14 at 11pm ET." Terms and conditions: "*Enter promo c...

Here in Soprano-land, we call them "Rats with Antlers".

Back in the days when I taught hunter safety, we used to tell people that, if they HAD to carry a deer, they should tie one of their red bandannas across its antlers, and STILL make as much noise as possible -- sing, holler, bang a stick on the trees, anything to let the eejits know they were coming.

That didn't bother me so much when I was in my 20s and 30s. Now in my 70s, it DOES bother me. Which is why I'm likely to do most of my future hunting from a friend's tree-stand, right alongside his driveway. (And right across the road from a cornfield.) They make a neat plastic sort of roll-up sled ...

Very interesting, and it will save me from a few mistakes, if/when I ever get around to re-lining that .22 "parlour rifle". Main problem I see coming is that the thing originally was chambered for .22 Flobert - the case is only about 1/4" long - so the extractor actually supports the ...

Re damping material -- do they still sell that fibrous, greenish-black clay-like stuff that (I think) was called "engineer's putty" ? (We called it "dum-dum".) That worked pretty well for damping vibrations.

From this morning's e-mail:

take 20% off all orders of $149 (machinery excluded) or more placed from now though Friday, 12/26/14. You can even use your discount on top of our sale prices

Log on to Enco today and enter promo code: GIFT14

Offer ends 12/26/14 at 11pm ET.

I'm not sure what ELSE is in WD40 but I recall one time when my car (an ancient Volvo) was sputtering and missing due to wet ignition wires. I sprayed them with WD, and the sparks where the wires were shorting promptly set the stuff on fire. :oops: Fortunately there wasn't a lot of WD on there, and ...

Funny thing, I used to work with a guy who wasn't at all bothered by the smell of kerosene, but absolutely couldn't stand the so-called "deodorized" kero. No idea why, to this day. I'm with Harold on WD40 residue. I lubed the slider on a record turntable with the stuff, and after maybe 3 m...

Looks like a good idea -- but unless those angles were bolted to the vise faces, wouldn't you need some sort of spacer at the bottom of the angles, to keep them from cantilevering when you put load on the dowel pins ?

Re contact heaters... look into the tubular heaters that are used in gun vaults... one brand is "Goldenrod", although there are others. They're low-wattage, never get too hot to handle (close, though), and they come in various wattages -- I think the smallest is 15, but I could well be wro...

Good news !! (At least for anyone who needs a 10mm - 3/8" parting blade.) One of the guys on another forum I participate in found this: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/SPARE-PARTING-BLADES-1-16-x-3-8-x-4-HSS-Lathe-Cut-Off-ML7-boxford-Tools-/141248897414?pt=UK_Home_Garden_PowerTools_SM&hash=item20...