The 3 Minute Drill

I just changed these on a mini van. The local small business garage had replaced them two years ago and wanted 128.00 to do it again. I brought the van homme and did it for 19.00.

And I will bet they llast over 2 years this time.. Garry

I'm not sure what you are trying to do. The leads powering the coil are both hot, and the coil doesn't care how they're connected. Unless you disconnect all the wiring you won't be able to distinguish one from the other if they have a load connected between them. I would try getting a schematic for the switch that shows each position and which terminals are closed or open in that position. Then, with the wires off the switch you will be able to tell if it's working.

None of them really last anymore. Pulling the caliper slide bolts out and greasing them, as well as making sure everything slides freely so you get even wear is about all you can do.

Not to mention that if -you- get under your own car, you will have enough interest to look at other things while you are there and might even find a developing problem.

Dick

No one knows that better than I do, having run cutter grinders for a living, albeit it long ago. You can count amongst the machines I've run, several varieties of drill pointers. The "point" is that it can be done by hand with respectable success, and that's something good to know for those that have no prospects of buying a decent drill pointer. I'm sure you took note that my statement was "got very good results", with no comment about competing with machinery, only a claim of very good results. That means it worked well enough to get me by, and it did. :-)

By the way, I can still split points on drills, and I don't use a work rest to do it. It's all done free hand with a hand dressed wheel. Like I said, it's a matter of experience. No, they're not as well ground as a machine will do. Never said they were.

Harold

Gasp! Maybe I should have qualified my statement! Nope, I don't do #60's and not #80's, either. I also don't do windows, either, except for on the computer.

It takes one hell of a drill pointer to do small drills. At Sperry we had a beautiful one made in Switzerland, very small, would almost fit in the palm of your hand (not really, but quite small). This machine cost right at $1,000 in the late 50's, so it was clearly not a piece of junk. Had an unusual way of establishing clearance, grinding both a primary and secondary angle on drills, a few of which I still have in my collection of number drills. Bottom line: Even with this expensive machine, it was difficult, at best, to get good points on the small ones. My policy on small drills (say above #50 or so) is to touch them up by hand, either with a fine grinding wheel, or a stone, and when they no longer cut well, discard them. By the way, the smallest twist drill I have is a #89. Try sharpening that one free hand.

Harold

I share your position. I change the oil and filter on both our Dodge diesels, in spite of the fact that I can honestly say I hate doing it, but I know it gets done, and done right. I also don't end up paying enough for a monthly payment for some dude's Mercedes. Things just "ain't" what they used to be.

Harold

Ah! Now I understand. Yeah, they do have the potential to quit cutting, and can go out of round easily. I simply use good old machinist tricks and dress the blade. It's no big deal when you know what to do, and I'm open to discussion. I have enough life left in the blade that came with our saw that I will be able to install quarry tile coving in the attached garage on our new house, and even in the basement, which I may not even do. It's only going to be used for storage, so I may just sand plaster the walls and call it good. I'm using a leave-in-place foam/concrete block, it's not conventional construction.

Not in this case---it's molded, sliced to length, and then fired, so the bull nose is a part of the tile when extruded. They look real good. I put the same thing, different color, in the castle, and I couldn't have been happier. They make cleaning up very easy, and the wall doesn't get looking beat up. That's what prompted us to put them in the shop we just built.

I'll say it's harder! The quarry tile is hard, but it does absorb water.

Understood, and I fully agree. I wasn't aware of such tile, though. Must cost a lot!

Makes me wonder how much you enjoy peace and tranquility on the home front? I think if my wife wanted something like that, I'd try to remember the power she may have over me in certain areas, if you get my drift! :-)

Seriously, if it does equate to a $3,000 job, perhaps it would be great sweat equity for the day when the home sold. You could be well paid for just such a feature, perhaps even encourage an otherwise difficult sale. Or kill one. :-(

Wood movement is the source of the minor crack in the shower seat in the shop shower. Yep, gotta keep it from moving about. I think I'll use concrete block capped with cement next time, to hell with the treated 2 x 4 base. How I envy you the ability to call in a Gunite job. I'm not sure there's even such a critter available here, we live a long ways from any decent sized city. One of the things you may have to give up in order to live out in the country, I guess. No big loss, not in the scheme of things.

Those foundation cracks in the killer expensive houses would have been limited or even eliminated by generous application of rebar. By the time the problems land on the home owner, the house will be way out of warranty and he's stuck with a bad job. That's one of the reasons I do my own work, in spite of the fact I'm so damned slow that my projects need to be remodeled before they're finished. Still, I prefer that to something that I will have to look at that is poorly done, and have no prospects of fixing them, such as a cracked foundation. ;-)

Harold

Ed Huntress scribed in :

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quite so Ed, and if you have a spare one please post it to ..... um, ok... I have a design for a simple grinder in my head, I'll let you all know how it goes when it goes... but to date I hand grind and they work, and I even get to choose angles etc... hands are cool (-:

swarf, steam and wind

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jim rozen scribed in :

hey, I resemble that! I really cannot remember not being 'able to do', but I do have a book rack on my toilet cistern that I made in grade 8 that serves to remind me that I wasn't as good them as I am now (-: grotty misfitting dovetails and all

ah, the 'desire' I feel the TV generation has littel to no desire to actually do anything. and ravers are worse, they apparently cannot have a conversation without loud music and drugs (-:

swarf, steam and wind

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jim rozen scribed in :

by the way, todays killer question from a MASTERS student "have you got a hand drill I can borrow to go into the bundu and drill holes in concrete with?"

answer: get one of the portable generators in the store serviced, hire a hammer drill, and use those....

swarf, steam and wind

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Neither one is 120 or 115 volts. In a 220 system, the voltage is between the two hot legs, and it will be 240 (actually, somewhere between 220 and

240 depending on the way the taps on the pole transformer were set). Ground is not involved, and voltage measurements referenced to ground are meaningless with respect to circuit function. Readings to neutral are also irrelevant for a 220 only appliance.

Gary

Unless one is verifying the correct 180 degree phase displacement between the two hot legs.

:^)

Jim

================================================== please reply to: JRR(zero) at yktvmv (dot) vnet (dot) ibm (dot) com ==================================================

I'll just make a longer lead for the meter and clip one on one leg so I can check out the other half of the machine looking for 240V and then switch for the other half. Sorry , I forgot how to do it.

That can't be , if that were so then every safety switch would have 4 wires. There are 2 hots and each one is 120 V with a different timed sine wave.

I was thinking to much in the wrong direction cause I couldn't remember how to do it. I was thinking if I could change 120 & 120 to

115 &120 then I could test from gound and be able to tell if its back feeding. Never mind. Still its a pain cause it will show zero volts when I probe the same leg.

I'll try to rebuild the multi-funtional switch that doesn't look user friendly and un plug the three wires for the heater and try again.

Dressing diamond blades for tile open for discussion... I've only had limited sucess with finding a hard brick or granite or a good rock and cut it agressively to wear down the matrix of the diamond edge with the water off. Other than that , I would only guess to heat it while rotating it maybe half the speed. I say they are sugar coated and not worth at least to me to try and fix and switch them back and forth all the time. I'm curious , what works for you?

Sweat equity or kill a deal... Your alot of help ! Sounds like talking to my engineer friend , we agree so much that at times its not worth talking to each other.

There was no way in hell I was going to spend a few hundred on a new blade when my project was limited in scope and was not making me money, so I used my angle grinder and sacrificed a portion of a wheel to grind away the diamond wheel as it rotated. I'm not going to tell you it happens rapidly, it doesn't, and it does tend to dress the hell out of the angle grinder wheel, but it ends up truing the diamond wheel, and does it without totally destroying the angle grinder wheel. I'd say that's a pretty good tradeoff. You run the diamond at full speed, or if you can slow it down to a respectable speed, that's all the better. It only has to turn fast enough to continually expose a different portion of the blade, and permit it to round up uniformly. Of course, you do this dry, or your angle grinder is going to get a bath. They don't like that. Turn your grinder upside down so it bears on the table in front of the diamond wheel and use the edge of the angle grinder to grind against the rotating diamond wheel. Simple, and effective. Be certain to stop before you remove all the diamond. The moment I had my diamond rounded up I quit. It cut like a champ once again. Shoot for a square face on the diamond so it doesn't try to wander to the side in use.

Just trying to not make real stupid statements that could be misconstrued as fact. Got the tub done yet? :-)

Harold

That techique had never crossed my mind. I laughed when reading it. I've got around 7 of them that are junk to me , but I can't toss them , I'll have to try that someday. Not like I'm going to ruin them or anything.

NO , but I did find my first moving blanket for the tub while dumpster diving in a new neighborhhood.

Yep, nothing to lose, and perhaps a lot to gain. The only reason it wouldn't work is if you have used up the diamond layer, at which time what you really have is a steel disk, not a diamond wheel! :-)

The one thing to watch for is the center of the wheel. If it's made the same way as the really "nice" Chinese blade that I have, the center of the wheel is, of course, steel, and was the root cause of the trouble I had experienced. As the matrix and diamond wore away on the edges, it was exposed, but not necessarily uniformly. In order to get the wheel to cut again, it had to be removed, so it was not the first thing the tile touched when I made my cuts. Grinding that part away will go smoothly, but when you start on the diamond layer it will be a lot tougher to grind away, for the diamond more or less starts dressing the wheel on the angle grinder. Here is a great time for the diamond wheel to be run slowly if possible. The slower, the better, in fact. Let us hear how it goes when you try it.

Cool!

Harold

And lo, it came about, that on 17 Nov 2003 15:28:26 -0800 in rec.crafts.metalworking , jim rozen was inspired to utter:

I just got quoted in the local bi-weekly fishwrap in an article on people with 4 year degrees going "back" to school for technical (hands on) training, so I know from being "inept" with tools. Heck, I can be inept with tools I didn't even know existed two years ago. :) And for the last two and a half days, I have been contending with a Takisawa CNC vertical mill which is possessed. Won't run the program and fail at the same place twice. But today Francisco (all hail the might Francisco!) tells me my problem is something I didn't know because it hadn't been emphasized. One simple G-code, and it works.

Now to fix the small detail that the curves are off by a couple thou, and the processor hangs up.

Oh Yeah.

When I was in the 7th grade, finally got to shop class. Came home and told my dad "They've got _straight_ nails!" I didn't know you could get nails that didn't need straightening... amazing, what ever will they think of next?

pyotr

who started out back when all our tools were hand tools, and made from rocks, too!