I highly approve of the amount of 'fuck's used in this post.

Hmm, there were a few of them, eh?

Evidently i feel pretty strongly about apples.

Many fucks were given.

It's curious, regarding vulgarities: one can take a piss or take the piss, but no one ever gives a piss. One can give a damn, a shit or a fuck; one can even give a rat's ass. But never a piss.

You can however throw a piss which in my local tongue means to become unreasonably agitated and make a spectacle of oneself.

Anyway booze...

First up the spice - I went with cinnamon, ginger, honey and blackcurrant as the main stay of the enhancers. I stuck a few cloves in too:


These apples (mix of bramley and crab) were peeled and chopped into small pieces. They were then boiled in apple juice for 10 minutes to kill any nasties that might be in them. They're largely there to add tannin back to the flavour as apple juice is usually low in tannin as folk don't want a bitter juice for breakfast for some reason. Tannin really is a critical flavour in proper English cider. Without it the end result is quite insipid.


The spice mull is prepared. This is all the stuff from the first picture boiled up in 1L of water to relase the flavours and to melt the honey and conserve. It also breaks down the preservaties in the conserve that would otherwise interfere with the fermantation. Also included are 5 teabags to add more tanning overtones to get a richer flavour to the cider.


All of this is bunged in the fermenting vessel along with 15 L of 100% pure apple juice. Cheap stuff is fine but be sure to check it isn't riddled with preservatives.


The boiled apples from earlier are then given a quick whizz with a hand blender to help them mix their flavours into the turbo cider. About a kilogram of additional sugar was added to get to the desired start gravity. I decided to be brave and hit 1.070. At the sample temperature of 25°C this should yield about 9.5% ABV if I ferment to dryness. I've used wine yeast which can run to a final gravity of less than 1.000 in which case it'll be even stronger. If it hits 0.980 it will be just over of 12% ABV!

And now we wait


I've used super wine yeast which has nutrient and clearing agents in it so the initial fermentation should take 7-10 days. I'll then rack it over to my over vessel and leave it for another couple of days before priming and bottling it up.

For anyone curious about trying it you can do it in a ghetto carboy to make a gallon of booze quite easily. For the carboy you can use a 5 L/1 gallon PET water bottle which you should be able to find cheaply. You can then either drill a 12 mm in the lid to fit a grommet and airlock or use a finger cut off a rubber glove which can be held in place with an elastic band. Its only purpose is to stop crap getting in.

I'd say that this is the new quote of the day.

DONE

P.S. Looks like a good time, Zozo. Though, I suppose the real funtimes will be going down once you get to drink the shiz.

DONE[/quote]
Oh, i guess i should announce there is a quote of the day on the main page in the header

Soon

Now

it fucking lives

Slow day waiting for emails so I've knocked together a decal for a sonic titan cone I'm building. Migraine sold separately .

In preparation for my new amp's arrival, i finally got off my ass and stapled this thing together yesterday:



In the interest of expedience and also to circumvent my reticence to drill holes in the neck i decided to just surface mount the trem and to re-use the Charvette's original setup of a nut with a wonky bespoke lock right after it, respectively. The lock is not quite as stable as a proper locking nut, but it is way fucking better than nothing up there at all. Once you get used to how to work around it, it is not bad at all. Might go to a proper locking nut in the future, but it is not a pressing concern for me at the moment.

Took a while to get the floyd to play nice(never owned a proper floyd style, set up was kind of a pain in the dick) but it is pretty much there now. I placed the bridge studs oh just ever so slightly too far forward(i.e towards the nut, probably about 1/8 of an inch off) so it wouldn't intonate 100% perfectly, but it is not unplayably so.

So far the cheapo floyd is okay, relatively stable, not far off from what i remember of others i have played. Definitely had to do some alterations around the bar mount area to tighten it up, but once i figured out what the problem with the thing was, it fixed up pretty nicely and is now nice and snug.

Can definitely see where a nicer floyd would pay off though.

I will rock it like this for now though. In the future i will take it back apart to route for a bridge humbucker and paint it. And possibly/likely also at that point fill/redrill the poasts for a nicer floyd(either a proper Original, or even the Special or Schaller versions. Dunno yet.)

Pickup is a Dimarzio Norton F-spaced that i boulght like 15 years ago from a bargain bin at guitar center. It was $30 then but man, it is one of the coolest pickups for this sort of guitar that i have met. I find it clearer than the classic dimarzio and SD Distortions, but it still has some sqealability pinch harmonic teef to it. 100% great pickup.

That is a fine looking future riffstick. Is the block in the middle just harder wood?

Nah it is similar hardness. It was just my quick and dirty solution from a lot earlier in this thread to some really questionable hack mods i did when i was in highschool. Just blanked it out and started from scratch.

This, is actually my very first guitar. It has languished for many years, but now i am bringing it back.

aHA! My Floyd inexperience is showing. I was looking at the bridge just now and realized that there is actually a whole second set of tapped holes for the saddle lockdown screws, behind the ones i was using. They are very conveniently, about 1/8" further back, which means, that now i am using them and the guitar is 100% correctly intonated!

It is good of you to bring back this thread of home made and zombie guitars.

Yesterday I took apart my washing machine as the drain pump is fucked.

I have had to do both my drier and my washing machine for various surgeries, a few years back now. Pump on the washer, broken belt on the drier. Both fixes wound up being easypeasy, my machines were clearly designed with future maintenance/repair in mind, the parts were available and the work was quick.

That said, I SOOOOO fucking hate putting the stupid massive sheetmetal cover thing back on after the fix. Comes off easily enough, but putting it back on was a massive pain in the dick for both machines. I actually think maybe the washer never went back on quite all the way right. The shell vibrates a bit like a thundersheet randomly from time to time on some spin cycles. Washer works 100% fine though, so am not going to take it back off for no reason.

I am now trying to find the right part number to replace it with. It looks like my washer is a refurb that has been hacked together out of what they had in the shop that day