My ballasting system comes from magazine articles and watching many YouTube videos on ballasting, especially those about vacuuming excess ballast,  that has been adapted to my situation.  I have a very small hand-held vacuum cleaner from Amazon.  It was designed for cleaning a computer keyboard and I make sure that the dust cup is clean before I use it.  It has a brush attachment about 1/2” wide. 

Track  Prep:

I make sure the track is painted and rail tops are clean before beginning to ballast.  For the  paint, I get small samples of regular acrylic latex house paint in colors that look right to me.  I have a couple of rail brown colors and a couple of tie colors that I use.  One of the rail browns is more fore guard rails which do not need clean rail tops.  I brush paint the rails, both sides then brush paint the ties.  I am not very neat at that.  Then I clean the running rail tops for electrical continuity.

Adding  Ballast:

If I want sharply defined ballast edges, I use blue painter’s tape outside the ends of the ties.  I dump ballast (paver sand) between and over the rails.  I don’t smooth it out. It is not neat or tidy.   Next, I vacuum between the rails.  The brush cleans the tie tops and levels the ballas, sucking out any excess.  Because paver sand is actual rock, it is too heavy for my tiny vacuum to suck it from between the ties.  I have never tested results with Woodland Scenics ballast or any other commercial ballast.  If the dust container on the vacuum fills up with ballast, it gets dumped back into the container it came from, hence the need for a clean dust cup.  Then, I vacuum outside each rail.

Finishing Up:

 I wet the ballast with ‘wet’ water.  I bond the ballast with diluted matte medium.  I can do 6 feet of single track in less time than it took me to type this post because I type slowly.

The giant rebar and steel ring base has now been set. I saw 2 or 3 rebar-only cages go down in the hole. The drill rig wasn't huge. Hat for scale. I ate the banana walking to the site. More pics in comments.

honestly losing my mind with how bad factory replacement parts have gotten lately

Tore down a busted hydraulic cylinder this morning because it completely failed under a totally normal load. looked at the fractured piston rod and you could literally see the porosity in the metal. It looks like it was cast out of compressed tin foil and gray spray paint

Its just infuriating that some corporate accountant at the manufacturer decided to save ten cents on material quality, knowing damn well it's going to grenade someone's machine out in the field

We ended up just scrapping the factory part entirely and sending the specs over here so they could just turn and mill a proper heavy duty one from scratch

Im just so tired of this race to the bottom with industrial hardware. Whatever happened to actually over-engineering things so they survive more than a few months of real work without tearing themselves apart

I've been talking with a few people at work about hydraulic breakers, and one thing that keeps coming up is that two units can look very similar on paper but end up aging very differently in the field. Out of curiosity, I started digging through manufacturer information including alibaba to compare how different models are put together, but it's still hard to tell what actually translates into a longer service life.

For those who've rebuilt or maintained a lot of these, what are the first things you look at when judging whether a breaker is likely to hold up? Are there certain design details, that you've learned to pay attention to over the years?

I remember a while ago I watched a youtube video where it was a compilation of AvE unboxing things in amazing ways, but I just can't find it anymore. If anyone has a link that would be nice.

Just thought I’d show my DIY Milwaukee Battery.

Through my testing, poking, and prodding, I’ve found that Milwaukee batteries are absolutely hot garbage.

I didn’t make mine any better, but I did make them serviceable.

For those wanting to know how price stacks up to the real deal. The 1P batteries are slightly cheaper, the 2P batteries are much cheaper.

All parts sourced without scraping a real battery. (Which means my Chinese BMS will be even shittier than the real deal (which is hard to beat in that aspect). 🥂 Here’s hoping to one day I find those terminals they use to connect the battery so I can do my own BMS. That will be Gen 3.

Internal frame 3D printed from PA-12, the case is made from 64D TPU, carbon fiber reinforced. (Which makes it a little stiffer and make the print look amazing due to the matte sheen).

This project was scrapped from a previous Milwaukee battery design project of mine wherein my parametric design model could be told a cell size/count/configuration and adjust the design accordingly. The idea was that I could make Milwaukee batteries of different sizes with different battery chemistries.

Ive been doing lots of rust/paint removal from old tools and equipment, mostly late at night. Often times this involves using a wire wheel or flap disk. It is terribly loud.

Does anyone manufacture quiet angle grinders? I was thinking if not, I could open up the plastic housing and apply that elastic thermosetting membrane used on industrial equipment for sound deadening.

tia

It took a month or two to make this figure because I can only work on it in my free time at work, which isn't much. I probably should have soldered the "hair" since it was so thin but that's a lesson learned! I plan on doing more once all the side projects are complete and I have some free time again.

I posted the video of this engine running a while back. It’s installed in the frame now and the control and HV box is done. This video is the first run in the frame. It’s producing 300vdc that will charge the LFP which I still need to put together. The zombieverter VCU boards arrived yesterday.

Pro Tip: garage doors do not stop jets exhaust very well.

Now with cup holder, by popular request! Genuine ATR-42 airplane, adjustable folding unit.

2017 GMC Terrain driver's seat is fully powered and functional. Controllers have their own dedicated plank, so never have to mess with the positioning. Just un-clamp, lift away, drop in the other one, and clamp it down. Pedals bolt in through the floor. Attachments on the side are swapable as well. I have one for the shifter, and one for a mouse and Stream Deck stack. The whole thing is on casters, and fits through doorways *very carefully* with the side attachment removed. It can be further disassembled into frame and seat modules and moved around by hand by one person.

Logitech G923 wheel with pedals and shifter for racing. Theres an eBay handbrake that works on PC, but not the living room Xbox. For flying, I have Turtle Beach VelocityOne Flight yoke and pedals, with a Stream Deck + and regular for complex functions and quick info.

There have been a lot of little tweaks since starting to use it. For one, I built another shelf for the planks to sit a little lower, but I haven't found the need for that yet. I could take a 2x4 off the seat riser and maybe be able to use it, but it works

well enough as-is. I've added holes for cable management, and made new side attachments. The whole thing came out pretty good overall, but I think I could do it better the second time. I built the whole think with a Bauer skill saw and an

M12 drill.

The ole workhorse herself. Milwaukee inflator. Skookumer as frig.
Someone (under the heat of battle) cut the end off since we were desperate for PSIs during the blizzicane of 2026. We ordered the other flair on end but this back replacement showed up first. 🥴

About 4 feet in diameter. Maybe 8 feet long. Rebar is a good 2 inches thick. Large steel power poles in this area are being moved.

Hello everyone 👋

Sometimes I see people asking questions about CNC plasma cutters here.

I built this machine myself. Maybe I can help some people too.

If you want, I can share the whole process from the beginning. Honestly it was a really hard process for me. A lot of problems, stress, wasted parts, electrical issues, Mach3 problems, torch problems… sometimes I thought I would never finish this thing 😅

But in the end, seeing it finally cut was worth it.

If you have questions, I’ll try to answer them.

Greetings from Türkiye 🇹🇷

My YouTube channel

https://youtube.com/@andykillarythingsido

Thanks for looking! Ive just discovered this group today and wanted to contribute. I have a hard time stitting still so im always messing around and making some different things in my shop. I particularly enjoy making things fron recycled car parts.(Im a mechanic by trade) From art peices to weird contraptions im usually farting around with something.

From

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SQ5BPF notes — radio, electronics, security, silly hacks — The Great Seal Bug. Part 2: theory of operation

https://lipkowski.com/2022/10/05/the-great-seal-bug-part-2-theory-of-operation/

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It needs to be 'illuminated' with a radio beam of frequency approximately 330㎒ : when it is, it re-radiates (@ a harmonic of the illuminating frequency, it says somewhere) a signal modulated, in both amplitude & frequency, by the audio input from the condensor microphone. So it basically operates as a totally passive covert listening device: no power supply for it is required.

Below is a link to the declassified original FBI document about it.

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Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) — Security Information – Drawings & Photographs – Russian Resonant Cavity Microphone

by

John W Ford

https://www.cryptomuseum.com/covert/bugs/thing/files/GREAT_SEAL_BUG.pdf

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We have a small woodlot on our property and over the years the amount of deadfall has been slowly accumulating.

Last summer was incredibly dry. We were under a burn ban for most of the summer and fall, and that deadfall was starting to look more like “fuel load” with an attendant fire risk, but with the burn ban, no way to get rid of it.

The answer was a chipper/shredder, but I felt we needed something a little more substantial than the typical homeowner-class units.

So I picked up this OPC566E. 14HP. Electric start. Four wheels, so it can be moved around without needing a tractor. “Light commercial” build quality and ease of service.

It showed up Friday, I had it assembled that night, I put it to work Saturday and Sunday. It successfully converted two huge brush piles into roughly 2000 litres of mulch, including some chunks around 5” in diameter. It ate everything I threw at it and self-fed just fine.

No issues to speak of and a post-job inspection revealed no measurable blade wear.

I love it when something just works!

ᐜ ... or maybe with some vacuum-tubeage or metal oxide rectification ... or even with some semiconductorage ... the point being ᐞnot necessarilyᐞ .

See

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Nut and Volts Magazine — The Magnetic Amplifier

by

George Trinkaus

https://www.nutsvolts.com/magazine/article/the_magnetic_amplifier

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& the original US Navy document that that article is based on, with an introduction by the author of the article – the goodly George Trinkaus

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US Navy 1951

https://img1.wsimg.com/blobby/go/0bc400c7-307f-4686-ba7b-4f34c4aa6724/downloads/magnetic%20amplifiers.pdf?ver=1618513903589

!! may download without prompting – PDF document – 7½㎆ !!

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I picked up a worn but functional manual lathe at an estate sale eight months ago with moderate confidence and significantly overestimated ability. I had watched enough videos to feel prepared. I was not prepared.

The first three months were genuinely humbling. Threading operations that looked straightforward in videos required a feel for the machine that only repetition builds. My first few attempts at turning to a specific diameter were consistently off in ways that taught me more about tool geometry, cutting speed, and material behaviour than any video had communicated.

What the manual lathe taught me that no CNC experience ever had was the relationship between operator input and material response. Every cut gives you immediate feedback. You feel when the tool is happy and you feel immediately when something is wrong. That feedback loop is genuinely educational in a way that automated processes cannot replicate.

Cutting speed selection took me the longest to develop real intuition around. I understood the theory from reference charts but applying it to different materials on this specific machine with its particular wear characteristics required time that could not be shortcut through research alone.

….Tool sharpening became an obsession fairly quickly. A sharp tool on a manual lathe is a completely different experience from a dull one and the difference in surface finish is immediately visible in a way that motivated me to learn proper sharpening technique properly rather than just adequately.

I spent one evening researching tooling options across various platforms including alibaba, comparing insert grades and geometries across different suppliers. What I discovered was that the tooling specification knowledge I had been building through actual use made me a considerably more informed buyer than I would have been six months earlier when I first acquired the machine. I understood what I was actually comparing rather than just looking at prices.

I am nowhere near where I want to be with this machine. But I understand now why machinists who learned on manual lathes before moving to CNC consistently describe that foundation as irreplaceable.

What skill on a manual machine took you longest to develop genuine confidence in?