I had to repair mine a few months back. Though it the washer's case it was a drive mechanism bit as mine is beltless. One of the damn bolts which supports the motor sheared off, though; that was fun. Other than that, I had the exact same experiences re: ease of repairsave for the thundersheet... Though I may have wound up with a few extra screws for the dryer.

I'm glad to see that we're the kind of people who will pull our insubordinate appliances apart and repair them rather than throw them on the shit heap

In other news I got a new soldering iron yesterday to replace my old shitty Maplin iron. It's a Yihua 936 which is clone of the Hakko 936 and I must say I'm impressed. It heats up very quickly and maintains temperature even when soldering to a densely populated turret. From what I've heard this is pretty much the same iron used in a lot of Chinese assembly lines and it is compatible with Hakko tips. I think all in all it cost £20 delivered from hobbyking so if you need a new iron for cheaps then this looks to be a pretty solid choice.

Hmm, that sounds like a good time. I will have to replace me olde weller at some point. When i get there i will ask you how that one is holding up. The weller doesn't really give me too much guff in use, though technically this is the second one i have had. I got a good six years of heavy use out of the first though. The "new" one has started to get a little crusty on tip changes though, like the threads might be starting to go. The knockoff Hakko sounds like a good deal.

This is the beasty: http://www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/stor ... _Plug.html

If you leave the page open for a few minutes a discount is applied

Today I have mainly been learning about sheet metal design for CNC purposes.

I finally got around to building my own copy of the Tor Fuzz. It only took three years.



I was too lazy/impatient to do real graphics on it.

It is funny, not exactly how i remembered it. Close, but not 100%.

Does yours still work, Tor?

On that note, Geoff, did your TS rehouse stop working? I vaguely remember something about that at a time when i was super distractedbusy at work. Is that one working these days?

I always wonder whether these things just explode some time after they leave here. Stomp switches especially are so sketchy these days.

yes mine is still doing it's job. I used it at home the other day, with only doing the GnR thing it isn't called for right now so when I am destroying stuff at home is when I use it.

Ah, good. As long as it isn't busted i am pleased.

From time to time i have to do repairs on random shit that i built for myself years ago, and i just wonder if things i mailed away also need attention. It is a little different because i kind of build stuff for myself out of garbage and leftovers just because i want to hear how a circuit sounds, rather than building out of decent parts for someone else to play out with or whatever, but just the same, i wonder.

Geoff, if you are out there and the TS is busted, lemme know. If it is, i would like to make it go again for ye.

Graphics or not that looks tiiiits. You have a knack for making them pedlols look tits.

For instance, that TS rehouse. But alas, yes, it has stopped working. But the dual opamp you gave me with it has found use!



Let's do that. I'll cover any costs.

If you want to send it back to me i will send it back to you, fixed-like. I figure it can't be too too fucked.

Though it was a bit of a cram to get the original board in there if i recall. Shouldn't be a fuss with that though, it was together pretty well.

I am still betting on either a bad switch or a cracked solder somewhere.

Hmm, what i have been doing lately.

Mostly, is buying sharps...

Selection of straights, then some dangerous hooks, then some nice ones:

A couple cheepo drawknives for bark-stripping monkeywork, a selection of cheaper and nicer hatchets foar carving wif, plus a tiny fucking adze:


Then what i have been doing, is making spoons...


So many spoons.

Chris you're kind of fucking nuts, in the best way. I don't know anyone in person who would a) collect sharps; just sharps and b) use them to handmake wooden spoons. Never change.

This. As fine a hatchet man as could be desired.

Also, I would purchase and use a chris_d spoon. What are you intending to do with all those spoons, anyhoo?

At this point, i am studying them, learning theirs ways and forms.

Eating spoons are interesting, because we kind of inherently know how they should be shaped. It is a familiar and functional human tool. When you carve it wrong it is obvious and it is awkward to use.

Every piece of wood is different, grainwise and in multiple other ways, so the process of getting that useful form out of a piece is kind of a 3d puzzle and kind of an engineering test.

For what i have done so far, i have just been working from whatever wood i can find around here. Not all wood is spoon-suitable. Ideally the wood needs to be fresh cut, green, and something close-pored like apple, pear, cherry, birch, rhododendron, walnut, beech, etc. All of mine are either crab apple, rhododendron, birch, or maple.

But because i don't have tons of suitable wood here, a lot of these are made with not-quite-perfect bits. In some cases, this means cool-shaped, in some cases, it means likely to crack with use.

Now that i have sort of figured out the main requirements and forms that i like the most, all i need is a large supply of usable wood to make more, better ones. I have some more rhododendron around here and also some small maples that i could cut/use, but then i run into a supply issue. I need to go on some gathering field trips and collect some more materials.

End game, i will probably want to sell most of the good ones, because in reality, i don't need hundreds of spoons, and they are reproducing at an alarming rate. Later on, i have plans to build myself a manual/footpowered lathe and try some bowls/plates, which is the second related green-woodworking bit of the human food tool angle. Bowls need lots of larger wood though. I don't know where i will source it yet. The lathe might also give me my excuse to build/learn some forge/smith stuff, due to its use of obscure/unique turning tools, which many turners produce for themselves... that is the longer view though.

Right now, i need more spoon wood.

Sorry to take the convo way-back but how do you get that glowing jewel look for the LED on the Tor fuzz?

Fucking absurd, Chris.

Yo, that is a 10mm green waterclear LED i got from Tayda. I made it act like a diffuse LED by roughing up the thing with sandpaper and ultrafine steel wool before i installed it. I don't recall 100%, but i also think i have a pretty big resistor on it to darken it a little(without doing these two things, the fucker just projects a bright green circle like a spotlight on the ceiling when the pedal is on). The sandpaper/steel wool process is not mechanically precise, and i think that might be what is lending it some of that jewel-like faceted nature.

I really like those 10mm LEDs. If you have the space in the case for the hole, they look way cooler IMO than regular 3mm or 5mm ones.

you know that new project of mine... that certainly should get the T & A fuzz on the board. I have been going through a few OD's/Distortions, right now I have a MXR Dist+ (RI) on it. but the RI is truly a RI, no led no ac adapter... fucks with my head no led...

So. I kind of fucked up the tendons in my right hand, and it kind of really sucks. I am going to try to just stop doing what hurt the things(carving) for a bit and hope that they just decide to go back to normal without needing to visit a doctor about it (not totally likely, but here's hoping).

Well, i got about three days in, but work has been really fucking slow and i am pretty broke so it is not like i can go anywhere/do anything right now. So i am losing my mind a little, needing something to do.

Anyhow, started thinking thoughts and watching youtube videos and one thing led to another and it suddenly struck me that i bought this thing like six years ago:



Originally i was going to drill a pile of holes in it and build a really goofy highgain multichannel head out of it.

Well. That never happened, and now that i have the JCA50, it won't really need to happen ever.

So i changed my mind.

Lately i have really been interested in filling a big gap in my instrument collection: a really basic, boring, normal, fender style, amp.

And so it will come to pass, that this chassis will wind up being used for exactly the porpoise that it was originally designed for.

I am going to build a totally normal, standard Princeton Reverb innit.

Luckily, because i am broke, this means that i will be doing the build kind of backwards from how i normally do it, meaning, cabinet first.



I say luckily, because hopefully, though not entirely likely, this will result in the cabinet being slightly less ghetto than the normal, impatient last minute stuff i usually wind up with.



But well, we are already off to somewhat of an inauspicious start, because it has been a REALLLLY long time since i have made a cabinet, and i kind of forgot how to do it.



Shit is way too loose, but i am not really a very "scrap the whole thing and start from scratch, correctly now" type of person. So instead, i will shore up the garbage joints with dowels.

Unfortunately, those dowels in that picture, won't really do the trick, as i want a bit more depth to them for stability of the cabinet.

But i don't have any other dowels that are that thin(they need to be a pretty small diameter for where they are going) around here and can't really afford to just go out and buy some at the moment.

But i have a lot of something *like* dowels around here...






















And so, it came to pass that i did this and now have my "dowels"...



At the moment i am waiting for my drill to charge.

Then comes many holes, great big gluemess, and some funny-looking-dowels nasty box joints made.

This is coming out just exactly my favorite flavor of fuckedup-looking so far.