Testing FatMax TLM 100 laser measure

On Sat, 2 Feb 2008 14:31:45 -0500, with neither quill nor qualm, "Ed Huntress" quickly quoth:

Just out of curiosity, what would prompt a person to give an _editor_ a construction measurement tool, Ed? Been moonlightin', have ya?

That's excellent. You'll find that hard to do within any given assortment of steel tapes. One thing I learned early on in my woodworking hobby (now career) was to always use the same tape on any given project, especially things like built-ins and cabinetry. A 1/8" variation between tapes is quite common.

I haven't yet played with laser measuring units, only laser levels.

The editor in question has several hobbies, of which the primary one is keeping his 84-year-old house from falling apart. The house is winning, but the editor has a plan. He'll let the termites do most of the demolition work. Said editor also has re-roofed his house and detached garage and rebuilt the walls of the garage, replacing all studs and sill plates. Everything in the garage now is heavily poisoned to keep the termites from fighting with the carpenter ants and making too much noise.

The editor also has, you know, in addition to a SB 10L lathe, a drill press, two tablesaws, a bandsaw, a jointer, and large floor-mount disk sanders powered by ancient motors (and has owned a knee mill and surface grinder in years past), and has built a couple of small boats and a steam engine, not to mention two racecars in decades long gone. He also has two lawnmowers, a wife, and a dog. Practically everything in and out of the house has new homemade bushings, where it has bushings, except for the wife and dog. Much of my plumbing contains replacement parts that haven't been available for 50 years, but which I machined from old bronze prop shafts.

On Sat, 2 Feb 2008 16:24:20 -0500, with neither quill nor qualm, "Ed Huntress" quickly quoth:

Condolences to said editor. My old house had lebenty seben armies of termites when I abandoned it. Luckily, the old shack was in LoCal so I had enough to buy a nice, larger, 35 year newer home in SoOr. The termites haven't found me here...yet.

Did you use Borosil or the really poisonous stuff (most of which has been outlawed by now)?

Ah, so you're not a one trick pony. Velly good, sport. Carry on.

I tested mine the same way out to the full 30' on my Powerlock and it was dead on at every random point I tested it at.

If you look in the back you'll note the indications that it uses Leica Swiss technology, and is made in Austria. Basically it's the little brother to the big 600' range lasers, in a more compact package, limited to 100' and a whole lot cheaper. Great little unit. Harbor Freight seems to be carrying it for $89.

I got rid of my varmint rifle a while back or I could have some fun doing it.

The garage is heavily doped with Cuprinol. It's a nice shade of green on the inside, roughly four feet up the studs. I did that 20 years ago, really because of rot in the sills, but it's also been termite-free since then.

Yup, I can waste time making and fixing things that make no economic sense just as well as anyone. d8-)

-- Ed Huntress

On Sat, 2 Feb 2008 18:46:58 -0500, with neither quill nor qualm, "Ed Huntress" quickly quoth:

I'd never have been able to afford a new truck if I'd had to buy ammo for all the wood munchers in that Vista house. Crikey, I'd have outspent the DOD, even at .22 prices.

Bwahahahahahaha! Fidiots should have called me. I'd have all their pages up and running in a day or three. The UK site works, though.

I've been using some really stinky stuff for cuts into PT wood lately. Jasco Termin8 green and brown, now with two -different- stenches! I'd prefer to self-spray something like Nisus' Bora-Care (oops, not borosil) but the stuff is more strictly licensed than guns are here in Oregon, despite the safety over much more poisonous termiticides. Damned regulations. "They" want $3,500 to do the underside of my 1,700 s/f shop with attached house, and it'd take them under 3 hours.

That's always favorable.

As I said, carry on. Then again, paying someone to refurb your old house gets expensive in a hurry.

I bought one for my son for XMAS, he installs phone and computer cabling. He loves the laser, he wanted a Hilti, but after I priced it, he got the Stanley. He says he can measure out to 200 feet in dark spaces above false ceilings and even in lit areas it will measure over 150 ft. gary Deltona, FL

Holy cow, I didn't realize it would read at all over 100 ft. Not that it's something I would need, but I thought the thing had a built-in limit of 100 ft.

It certainly is a time- and grief-saver. When the weather is decent I'm outside with mine, finally getting the vertical dimensions on my house so I can finish drawing it in CAD.

-- Ed Huntress

I forgot to ask you: what laser level do you like? I'm still using string levels and a Hoppy transit, but the laser levels look interesting.

-- Ed Huntress

Ah, yes. Old house plumbing. I remember it well. A big part of why I sold my

1856 brick house 12 years ago. The nightmares have diminished over time.

-Carl (don't even ask about the 1949 Fairbanks- Morse oil furnace. I am the world's leading authority on that alleged heating appliance)

This is why you have to know when an item is past the repairable stage - time to give up, rip the whole mess out, and start over.

For furnaces, you patch it one last time to get to spring, then rip the bastard out after the weather warms up a little.

-->--

I think we'll move after my son is out of college. I've about had it. My furnace is an early -'50s Burnham Pacemaker that I had converted from oil to gas 28 years ago, after my oil delivery company tried to put 350 gallons of oil into my 220 gallon tank, which was 1/4 full at the time, and the balance wound up on my basement floor.

That's the last time anyone else worked on my house, except for one paint job. Nobody else could keep most of it going. They'd have to rip things out and replace stuff wholesale.

The blower on my furnace, for example, is powered by a little motor that the maker tells me had a reasonable service life of five to eight years. It's now 28 years later. The floating Oilite bearings on it have to be hand-oiled every two months; the contact points on the centrifugal throwout switch for the starting capacitor have to be filed and re-gapped every two years. I had to remove and polish the armature shaft in the lathe when it seized up, the first time the Oilites ran out of oil. Starting the system up every year requires delicate balancing acts with water bleeds (it's an open hydronic system) to avoid overpressure until it's been running for three days or so. I have to rap the water pressure regulator with a wooden dowel to get it working every season.

If I had to write an instruction manual for someone else to keep it going, it would be ten pages long. BTW, the reason I haven't replaced that blower motor is that they don't make it, nor a replacement for it, anymore.

And don't get me started on the plumbing. I've had to turn faucet washer seats from bronze shaft because they don't make them in this size anymore. And I turned two faucet stems, a tapered gate valve, and a few other parts. You really *need* a lathe to keep this house running.

-- Ed Huntress

On Sat, 2 Feb 2008 22:08:22 -0500, with neither quill nor qualm, "Ed Huntress" quickly quoth:

I found a nice little guy, a StraitLine Intersect, on eBay for $15 delivered. It works well for both walls and floors. Here ya go: $12.50

Good for about 1/8" accuracy on most jobs.

The rotary lasers and laser transits are too pricy for me as yet. Maybe next year. I'll continue to use water or string levels for decks and such. Wow, this AccuLine system ($400 the last time I looked) is now 1/2 that and going for less on eBay. Hmm...

Work is starting to pick up again, despite the rain, so I'm going to be picking up that mini-mill -before- I sell my old F-150.

Oh, I found sticks of UniStrut at Blowes for $15 (low holey profile) and $20 (tall, unholey stuff.) That beats Grover's $47 price. Now to wait for a sunny day to install it so I can start hanging things inside my pickemup bed. I have an errant ladder which needs taming, despite the locked chain. ;) If anyone wants some, look in the electrical section next to the conduit.

-- I think this is the crux of the global warming media hype (not some of the science). Gobal warming research and it's ugly step-sister, the media, are a business. They will only feed frenzy that adds to their business. Hence, the lack of talk about your cold and snowy western weather, lack of hurricanes in '06, etc. The only things that will be brought up are those that will "help" their cause and industry. Do something for something we KNOW about, like the kid down the street that needs a home, etc. Don't try to help for something that we are trying (ridiculously) to predict will be a problem

100-200years from now!! Thanks,

A Liberal, Environmentally Friendly, Global Warming, Anti-Hype Lad James, 11Jan07 on Weather Channel's "One Degree" hype site

"Ed Huntress" wrote in message news:47a541f8$0$25066$ snipped-for-privacy@cv.net...

My big adventure with the 1949 FM occurred when late one Saturday I noticed the house was getting cold. I went downstairs and tried the usual remedies, including hitting the reset switch a couple of times. The burner would start and then stop. After reviewing the wiring diagram, I opened the cover on the stack switch (for those of you who don't know what a stack switch is, it is a mechanical thermostat the sits in the exhaust flue. The stack switch has a bimetal spring that unwinds when heated by the flue gases and closes a switch to allow the burner to keep running. If the spring does not trip the switch within 10 seconds, the burner is shut down. It is a safety device in case of a flameout) and figured out the 'ignition' relay wasn't pulling in all the way. I figured this out by pushing on the relays (the other one is the 'motor' relay) with an insulated screwdriver. Ah-Ha! I pushed in the ignition relay (got a nice buzz from the HV box) and with a second screwdriver, pushed in the motor relay annnnd all the oil that had been spraying into the firebox lit off with a bang that shook the house and loosened up about 60 tons of soot, half of which blew out of the automatic damper I was standing right in front of. I looked like a coal miner. The rest of the soot went out of the chimney (too bad it was dark out) and coated our snow-covered lawn and much of the neighborhood with a fine black powder. The next day I got up on the roof (to see if the chimney had been damaged) Looking down at the yard, my house sat in the middle of a black circle.

I replaced the stack switch and burner with a Beckett.

-Carl

That would have been enough to convert me to hiring people to do it. d8-)

-- Ed Huntress

The prices on those basic laser levels certainly are reasonable. I'll take a look at that one. It looks like it ought to be OK for handyman jobs. Thanks.

-- Ed Huntress

It's ok for far more than handyman job. 100' is sufficient range for most all residential construction purposes, you might need 600' range if you're building a mall or office building.

No way, never ever hire someone to do it for you.... every time Ive done that they foul it up worse then before and then they hand you a huge bill... I do all my own work, period. I read the code books, consult with friends in the business and then, do a better job then any of them have time to!!!!

What is your favorite ice to catch, or do you catch and release? ;-)