Post:Harmonious FrankenMill

From Fusselman.org

It's been a busy few days, which sort of sounds like an excuse for my 8 days since the last (terrible) update. I'm still enjoying the Netbook, though I'm finding the keyboard to be terrible... In addition to having the shift key in the wrong place, the key pitch is just all goofy. Keys don't strike right, and I'm not really sure what the deal is... It's almost as if the edges aren't beveled enough or that they depress too far.

Anyhow, down to business. We rearranged the living room in such a way as to divide it into a "theatre" room and a "library". I later found out that this was a plot by Becky to make space for a chair that she doesn't own yet. Needless to say, the arrangement is such that the A/V equipment is in a cabinet behind the sofa. This is great for about everything, except infrared remote controls. After lots of stressing and an order of cables from MonoPrice, I determined that the only way to make this user friendly enough for Becky to operate was with a Logitech Harmony remote, which can essentially "script" to get everything set just so at the touch of a button. I ended up buying the Harmony 890 from Amazon for a cool $99 refurbished (approximately a 75% savings off of SRP). In addition to the Harmoniousness, it has support for a remote infrared repeater, which I have stashed inside the cabinet, and hooked up to all my various devices. Unfortunately, it has no way to control the power to the Wii... Oh well, it does everything else, include make toast (accessory not included).

On the garage front, I successfully extended my drill press yet again. After having recently added a depth stop, I determined that I wanted to put an x-y table/vise on it, for precision drilling, as well as some light milling work (at my uncle's advice). I bought the smallest cross-slide vise I could find (at HarborFreight, a 4"er) and after painstakingly mounting it to the table discovered that it was too tall to clear even a relatively short drillbit in the chuck. I ended up extending the column with a slightly modified piece of steel gas pipe from the hardware store ($6/foot for steel pipe?!?!) and adjusting its diameter with a file and sandpaper, precise to be sure. I now have over 6 inches from the top of the vice jaws to the face of the chuck and life is good. Similarly, I can raise the table such that the chuck rests on the vise's ways (you'd never actually do this, right?)... All in all, it turned out pretty good.