List of peculiar fabrication tricks

[Jac@stafford.net]

If you have something made of wood and glued together, such as an early view camera back, just pop it into a microwave on high for 30 seconds and it will easily pull apart at the glued area. (Works with animal glue. Don't know about Gorilla glue which sucks in so many ways anyway.)

Remove screws and ground glass first, of course!

[Jerry Bodine]

If you have a building that you want to protect from corrosion, you can do what my long-time employer did when they had a new building constructed: leave the exposed steel girders and support structure UNfinished. The corrosion (rust) would progress only so deep into the metal, then stop, and that rust layer would act as a protection from the weather. That layer, of course, was considered a sacrificial layer by the designers who had to insure that the remaining good metal was structurally adequate. But this process, coupled with the very dark windows, did produce one ugly building. Certainly testing had to be done to determine how deep the sacrificial layer would be.

[Vaughn]

I like to rub the threads of an eye screw on a bar of soap before screwing it into a drilled hole in a photo frame (for attaching the hanging wire). This allows me to hand-tighten the eye screw -- I have snapped a few screws using a tool to turn them.

I almost wrote "...before screwing it into a pre-drilled hole...". but I could not figure out what a pre-drilled hole would look like.

[Kirk Gittings]

The workers in the pipe manufacturing plant where my dad was superintendent used to send rookies to fetch a left-handed monkey wrench, just for amusement.

I worked sawmills (also did logging) as a grunt after graduating college. I liked working with my hands, wanted to live in the woods/mountains and wasn't ready for "real" life yet. So in my first week they sent me to look for a "lumber stretcher"

[barnacle]

Heh. In the broadcasting industry, we'd give the newbies one end of a piece of cable and ask them to hang on to it so we could measure a run. Round the first corner, tie it to a doorknob...

Neil

[Pfsor]

I think the person who did the drawing doesn't know much about mechanical stuff. It looks to me like the 3/8-16 threads are left-handed!

I think that it's the other way round - you don't know much about mechanical stuff. There are coupling nuts with left handed threads!

[Pfsor]

Sometimes a surprise dawns on this old brain. Maybe we can build on these tiny, but useful tips. This one worked for me yesterday.

Yeah, we have plenty of 1/4" male to 3/8" male adapters, but to convert a tripod mount from male 1/4" to female 3/8" ? Or 3/8" male to 1/4" female?

A coupling nut can do it. Visit your Ace Hardware fasteners section. Look for the drawer of nut extensions, AKA coupling nuts. In one bin is an extended nut with 1/4"x24 female on one end, 3/8"x16 female on the other.

Attachment 155682

It's not a good idea when you realize that the coupling nut reduces the stability of whatever you screw in it.

[Jac@stafford.net]

It's not a good idea when you realize that the coupling nut reduces the stability of whatever you screw in it.

Of course prudence is important. Test! In my application it was certainly stable.
Test, try, decide or not.

A tip: chuck the coupling nut in a drill press and finesse the very ends to be flat. It takes only a couple touches to make it so.

[Jac@stafford.net]

I think that it's the other way round - you don't know much about mechanical stuff. There are coupling nuts with left handed threads!

Would find us a source? I had no such luck.
.

[Jac@stafford.net]

I almost wrote "...before screwing it into a pre-drilled hole...". but I could not figure out what a pre-drilled hole would look like.

Vaughn, I'm surprised. Humboldt County is famous for it's hole cottage industry. My brother sent me a whole hole set. Bummer they weren't numbered and lettered. Anyway, they are impossible to keep in a pocket.