For a paint finish, things haven't changed much over the years. Although a bright finish (varnish,shellac,oil) shows off the wood to advantage, some pieces call for the opaque finish of paint. Especially things made of ordinary lumberyard wood (pine) as opposed to expensive hardwood.
For openers, fill cracks, gaps in joints and finishing nail holes with wood filler. Smooth the wood filler with a putty knife. Give the filler some time to dry and then sand the whole thing. Walmart has Black & Decker 1/4 sheet orbital sanders for $30. The power tool takes a lot of the curse out of sanding. 120 grit paper is about right, coarse enough to cut the wood and fine enough that the scratches won't show thru the first coat.
First coat is thinned down shellac, to act as a sealer. The grain in wood is layers of harder and softer wood. The softwood soaks up more paint than the hardwood and causes the grain to show thru the paint layers. The sealer soaks into the soft and hard wood, and prevents to top color coat from soaking deeply into the wood. You take plain store bought shellac and cut it 50-50 with shellac thinner (denatured alcohol). The thinned shellac will soak deeply into the fresh wood.
Let the shellac dry hard, overnight at least. Although shellac dries tack free in less than an hour, you want to give it plenty of time to get good and hard so it won't clog the sandpaper when you sand it. The dries shellac coat will be rough to the touch. What's happened is tiny wood fibers that were soft and flexible have gotten hard and bristly thru the shellac drying and hardening then. Sand every thing with 220 grit sand paper until it feels glass smooth. If the sandpaper cuts down thru the shellac to the wood it doesn't matter much, the thinned shellac is still in the wood pores.
Wipe down the sanded piece with a rag dampened in mineral spirits to catch all the sanding dust and then put on the first coat of paint. I don't trust water based or latex paint. I look for a gloss oil based paint. Rust Oleum or Larcaloid has worked for me, but any oil based gloss enamel works. Avoid lacquer unless you have a paint sprayer. Lacquer dries so fast that the brushmarks don't have time to level. Lest the paint dry over night.
Sand the first coat of paint with 220 grit. Wipe the dust down with the same rag moistened in mineral spirits. Then apply t he second coat, let dry and you are done, if you want a glossy surface. For a more sophisticated matte finish, you sand the last coat with 220 grit and then give it a coat of paste wax. Butcher's wax is good. Avoid car wax, it contains silicone to which nothing will ever stick, making a recoat in later years peel off.
Sunday, April 6, 2008
Sunday Pundits
An earnest young thing on George Stephanoplis' show this morning argued that American withdrawal from Iraq would improve things. She proposed that lacking Americans to shoot at, the Iraqi shooters would hang up their guns and go home. Good old Cokie Roberts said "I don't think the American electorate accepts that view".
I think Cokie has it right there.
I think Cokie has it right there.
The Eco Fair
I drove over to the great north country Eco Fair, held at the Profile High School yesterday (Saturday). The parking lot was all parked up and cars were parked up and down Rt 18 for quite a distance. It being 11 o'clock, peak hour on a Saturday, I didn't bother to look from a closer in parking space, it was too early for anyone to have left. As I walked up the long line of parked cars I took note of what people were driving. Answer: Mostly Honda and Toyota. The few Detroit made vehicles were full size 3/4 ton pickups. No Detroit sedans at all.
Inside the school gym were vendors, ecological science displays from local school children, various pitchmen, and every one from The town of Franconia. I met Martha McCleod, Ken King, Paul and Karen Foss, plus John and Maggie Starr. Clearly there is interest in saving energy, which up here means saving $3.89 a gallon furnace oil.
Products on display. Several vendors offered a neat "build an insulated concrete wall" system. Sheets of 2 inch styrofoam insulation with plastic spacer gizmos. The spacers hold the styrofoam sheets about 6 inches apart and have pockets for the rebar. Concrete is poured inbetween the two styrofoam sheets, and when it hardens presto, a poured concrete cellar with 2 inches of sytrofoam insulation both inside and out. Since concrete by itself has zero insulating value, this is an improvement.
Then the high efficiency light folks were out in force. The local power company (PSNH) was selling them at the door for $1 a piece. At that price they make sense. An ordinary 100 watt (0.1KW) light bulb lasts 1000 hours which means it burns 100 kilowatt hours over its life. At 10 cents a kilowatt hour, the ordinary bulb uses $10 worth of electricity. The compact fluorescent bulbs use only one quarter of that, so you recover the $1 price of the bulb in the first 150 hours of lighting. Then there was a kitchen appliance maker promising tremendous savings from their products. Unfortunately they did not bring samples to the show, so it was hard to get excited about them.
Then we had vendors of solar hot water heat and windmills. Not present, vendors of "solar cell on the roof" do it your self electric systems.
Inside the school gym were vendors, ecological science displays from local school children, various pitchmen, and every one from The town of Franconia. I met Martha McCleod, Ken King, Paul and Karen Foss, plus John and Maggie Starr. Clearly there is interest in saving energy, which up here means saving $3.89 a gallon furnace oil.
Products on display. Several vendors offered a neat "build an insulated concrete wall" system. Sheets of 2 inch styrofoam insulation with plastic spacer gizmos. The spacers hold the styrofoam sheets about 6 inches apart and have pockets for the rebar. Concrete is poured inbetween the two styrofoam sheets, and when it hardens presto, a poured concrete cellar with 2 inches of sytrofoam insulation both inside and out. Since concrete by itself has zero insulating value, this is an improvement.
Then the high efficiency light folks were out in force. The local power company (PSNH) was selling them at the door for $1 a piece. At that price they make sense. An ordinary 100 watt (0.1KW) light bulb lasts 1000 hours which means it burns 100 kilowatt hours over its life. At 10 cents a kilowatt hour, the ordinary bulb uses $10 worth of electricity. The compact fluorescent bulbs use only one quarter of that, so you recover the $1 price of the bulb in the first 150 hours of lighting. Then there was a kitchen appliance maker promising tremendous savings from their products. Unfortunately they did not bring samples to the show, so it was hard to get excited about them.
Then we had vendors of solar hot water heat and windmills. Not present, vendors of "solar cell on the roof" do it your self electric systems.
Friday, April 4, 2008
Fox & Friends, Life on Mars is a joke
Fox & Friends Megyn Kelly and Bill Hemmer tried to do a life on Mars story this morning. They opened with an enigmatic photo of something fibrous and crawly. The voice over was confused, and failed the who,where,when, what & why test. They failed to mention who took the photo, what is the photo of, where the photo came from, when it was released. Then they flipped up a Mars orbiter picture of some terrain on Mars, but failed to connect the two pictures. At this point Megyn Kelley, the cute blonde who works a 14 hour day said she didn't understand the story, and would have no hope of understanding it. Hemmer then opined that until he saw a flying saucer he wouldn't understand anything.
In this one botched story the two of them managed to convince me that neither of them knew, understood, or cared about, interplanetary exploration. They also managed to show that they had never taken even high school science. They are cute and handsome, but empty headed and ignorant.
I guess they got their jobs thru charm and good looks rather than intelligence.
In this one botched story the two of them managed to convince me that neither of them knew, understood, or cared about, interplanetary exploration. They also managed to show that they had never taken even high school science. They are cute and handsome, but empty headed and ignorant.
I guess they got their jobs thru charm and good looks rather than intelligence.
Thursday, April 3, 2008
FAA accused of lax aircraft inspections
CSPAN covered the FAA hearings live. The House transportation committee held hearings about FAA inspections and the Southwest Airlines $10 million dollar fine. Something has gone wrong with FAA. The committee heard from a bunch of working level FAA inspectors, the guys who are supposed to walk the flight line and hangers looking at airplanes, and make sure they are air worthy. The working stiffs all accused FAA senior management of suppressing inspections, supressing reports of bad aircraft maintenance, and giving airlines the OK to fly passengers in planes that were out of compliance (planes that had not been inspected or reworked in accordance with air worthiness directives).
This is fairly bad. "The air, even more than the sea, is terribly unforgiving of the smallest mistake". I spent six years doing aircraft maintenance for USAF. On the flight line we all knew that if the plane broke in flight, the aircrew could die. That was a tremendous incentive to do things right lest you bear the guilt of causing a fatal aircraft accident. This attitude goes all around the aviation business. I'm sure Southwest's maintenance guys have it.
But then there are operational pressures. "We need that airplane to fly a mission today. If we can't fly it we will have to cancel a scheduled flight and leave our passengers stranded in the airport".
That aircraft is in good shape except an air worthiness directive hasn't been complied with yet.
The air worthiness directive says something like "After 5000 landings, inspect wiring in a hard to get to place for chafing. " Hard to get to might mean drilling out rivets and pulling off sheet metal, might take a day to pull the plane apart, inspect the wiring and then put it back together again. The plane has exactly 5000 landings.
A reasonable man might decide that nobody is going to get hurt if the plane makes a few more landings before the inspection.
On the other hand, if short cuts are permitted here, then soon enough they will be permitted there, and somewhere else, and pretty soon anything goes. The job of the FAA inspector is to say "No short cuts, ever".
According to testimony I watched on CSPAN, senior FAA management was permitting short cuts, over the objections of the line inspectors.
Time for a new FAA administrator and laying off the top two or three layers of FAA management.
This is fairly bad. "The air, even more than the sea, is terribly unforgiving of the smallest mistake". I spent six years doing aircraft maintenance for USAF. On the flight line we all knew that if the plane broke in flight, the aircrew could die. That was a tremendous incentive to do things right lest you bear the guilt of causing a fatal aircraft accident. This attitude goes all around the aviation business. I'm sure Southwest's maintenance guys have it.
But then there are operational pressures. "We need that airplane to fly a mission today. If we can't fly it we will have to cancel a scheduled flight and leave our passengers stranded in the airport".
That aircraft is in good shape except an air worthiness directive hasn't been complied with yet.
The air worthiness directive says something like "After 5000 landings, inspect wiring in a hard to get to place for chafing. " Hard to get to might mean drilling out rivets and pulling off sheet metal, might take a day to pull the plane apart, inspect the wiring and then put it back together again. The plane has exactly 5000 landings.
A reasonable man might decide that nobody is going to get hurt if the plane makes a few more landings before the inspection.
On the other hand, if short cuts are permitted here, then soon enough they will be permitted there, and somewhere else, and pretty soon anything goes. The job of the FAA inspector is to say "No short cuts, ever".
According to testimony I watched on CSPAN, senior FAA management was permitting short cuts, over the objections of the line inspectors.
Time for a new FAA administrator and laying off the top two or three layers of FAA management.
Income Tax Break for Intelligence Agents (aka spies)?
I just finished the yearly chore of doing income tax. I'd rather clean out a stopped up toilet. Be that as it may, I read the instructions, and I found a new-this-year tax break (tax loophole?) just for "intelligence agents", presumably civil servants working for CIA or NSA.
Why do they get a special tax break? A reward for the excellent intelligence they have furnished over the years? Because of the extraordinary dangers they face driving into the office every day?
Or did the intelligence community blackmail congressmen by threatening to reveal dirty laundry in public?
Why do they get a special tax break? A reward for the excellent intelligence they have furnished over the years? Because of the extraordinary dangers they face driving into the office every day?
Or did the intelligence community blackmail congressmen by threatening to reveal dirty laundry in public?
Tuesday, April 1, 2008
Fairpoint to pay 13.5% interest. From my phone bill.
Union Leader article says Fairpoint deal is going thru even though Wall St is demanding 13.5% interest on the $500 million loan Fairpoint is taking out to pay Verizon for the northern New England telephone system.
Wow. That's gonna hurt us bad. If the loan is only $500 mil, then Fairpoint will pay $67 million in pure interest per year. Guess where they are going to get that money? Where else but out of my telephone bill? What ever happened to usury laws?
It may be worse. The Union Leader article said the whole deal is $2.3 billion, of which Fairpoint only borrows $0.5 billion. Where the other $1.8 billion was coming from was not disclosed. I doubt that Fairpoint has that much cash on hand, so they are borrowing it from somewhere. Where and for how much is not disclosed either.
Wow. That's gonna hurt us bad. If the loan is only $500 mil, then Fairpoint will pay $67 million in pure interest per year. Guess where they are going to get that money? Where else but out of my telephone bill? What ever happened to usury laws?
It may be worse. The Union Leader article said the whole deal is $2.3 billion, of which Fairpoint only borrows $0.5 billion. Where the other $1.8 billion was coming from was not disclosed. I doubt that Fairpoint has that much cash on hand, so they are borrowing it from somewhere. Where and for how much is not disclosed either.
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