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I still love to get the mail.....doesn't matter if it's nothing but bills and campaign flyers. There's something magical about receiving anything in that box each day. So I understand, Wolf.
I was going to rush home and mow the estate prior to the rains coming this weekend, but TWO things prevented this:
1. It started POURING rain and thunderstorming about 20 minutes after I arrived home, and---
2. I adopted a kitten yesterday afternoon on the way home.
Some of you may remember that my Dad passed away in June. 3 days later, my 17 year old cat also died. Not a good week for me. I finally got up the courage to visit the local shelter and "window shop" when Storm ran right up to me. I took him to a "sitting room" and he was a typical playful kitten. But then, he jumped up on my lap, winked at me and went to sleep. I guess he felt safe with me. The thunder storm after arriving home just seemed to be more confirmation that this was a good pick.
This old faucet was scavenged by one of the gutter scumbags my estranged witch was cheating with while I was away on active duty
(and no - I do not forgive or forget that, ever)
The problem with fixing it was I had no idea who made the silly thing, and the valves were not conventional rubber gasket type.
But when I looked underneath at the install I found even MORE sins...
The hot supply on the left is bent and crimped/kinked. Notice the water leak stains all over the fittings, and most amazing of all the BLOCKS OF WOOD it was shimmed in place with because it was never intended for a stainless steel sink to begin with...
Now below - what you are seeing are the braided lines and adapters for a VDOMUS restaurant quality up to date faucet. The solid mount is reliable and I expect will last decades. Instead of installing pop-in stainless plugs where the old valves were I went with a trim plate with a thick gasket under it
The old black plastic sprayer is going to hit the round bin as soon as I get a drop-in softsoap dispenser that I will probably keep filled with dishwashing liquid.
The next 2 pics show how very much it cleans up the clutter factor on the sink top.
Take note that there is a valve at the end of the faucet, a valve at the BASE of the faucet, and yet a third valve at the spray head.
The mixing valve is at the faucet base
This setup is beautiful, professional, and much easier to keep clean than the clunker that it replaced - the only way it could be improved is if the sink did not have the extra faucet handle holes in it to start with, so that it would have only the faucet mast and a soap dispenser to clean around.
And best of all? It lights up when the sprayer is used! That right there is just plain old FUN
First welds with the Hobart wire feed - I decided to get in some practice using the scrap trellis material I have around
It's 1/8" wire, and the welding wire is Hobart supplied flux core 0.030 wire.
I'm working on getting both the feed control and settings down, it has great penetration but these are still seriously sloppy beginners "Splatter welds" which is what I expected.
The trellis material is rusty anyway, so it's a bit tricky. I went back to the manual that came with the machine so tomorrows effort will probably have a lot less to grind off afterward...
The manual recommended heat setting 4 - I had it on two and three for these pics. The rust doesn't help at all....
This second shot (SPLOTCH?) I ground off a lot of the extra deposit. You can see that it does get into the metal well, in fact I burned through the stuff even on a low setting in one place & had to reconnect the trellis wire by depositing more metal
I figure doing art to get used to it should result in much better technique when I move on the the serious stuff.
This rig is rated at metal up to 3/16's inch thick and is stainless capable if TRI-MIX gas is used. I don't have a gas bottle yet, so that will come later.
* I had originally planned to be doing this kind of fabrication nine years ago, but well... Most of you know what happened to that dream. I NEVER forget a dream though!
The biggest advantage of this welder is that it runs on plain old house current, with a standard round-ground plug. For body work, it's overkill. On it's low setting I should be able to do fine work on metals as thin as 0.6 mm, or 24 guage - which is less than 1/64"
I have a project right now that will call for at least that level of ability:
What is shown above is before I had a larger sheet of metal to work with. I have revised the plan - but you can tell where it's going.
08-06-2014, 06:47 PM
