Longtime reader Jim asked last week how to strip insulation from thin wires–really thin wires. That’s a great question. I used to use wire wrap wire to build my own computer circuits, and garden-variety wire strippers don’t do the job. Here are four options you can use when you’re repairing electronics with fine wire.
Blade
How to fix a garbage disposal
If your garbage disposal quit suddenly, don’t fret. We’ve all been there. There are three common ways to fix a garbage disposal and none of them require exotic tools.
Oil for under your mower deck
Someone asked me to recommend oil for under your mower deck. If you’re not familiar with this trick, it’s a good idea to oil the underside of your lawnmower deck to keep grass from sticking to it. This helps keep your blade from bogging down and your deck from rusting.
What oil do I like? The person brought up Marvel Mystery Oil. I do like Marvel Mystery Oil inside the mower. But I think it’s too expensive for the deck.
Wiring an old house for Ethernet
Wiring an old house for Ethernet can be challenging but offers real benefits. Wired Ethernet is faster and more reliable than wireless, so devices that have a wired connection can take advantage of it. Having wired connections also allows you to distribute wireless access points throughout your house for better, faster coverage.
So you even if you’re a heavy wireless user, there’s a lot to gain from having good wired connections. Believe it or not, you can do it with simple tools and very little tearing into your walls.
Repair a Marx reverse unit
When it comes to Marx repairs, the reverse unit is the end of the innocence. Motor repairs are rather easy; reverse unit repair can be as hard as you want it to be.
I’ll share some things I do that seem to make it go easier.
How to winterize a lawn mower
It’s very easy to winterize a lawn mower and I definitely recommend doing it–nothing gums up a mower like sitting in a garage for five months with a full gas tank. Taking fifteen minutes out of your day sometime in November can save you lots of heartache, and maybe 50 bucks, come spring.
Bash is worse than heartbleed! Oh noes!
A really bad remote code execution bug surfaced yesterday, in Bash–the GNU replacement for the Unix shell. If you have a webserver running, or possibly just SSH, it can be used to execute arbitrary code. It affects anything Unixy–Linux, BSD, Mac OS X, and likely many proprietary Unix flavors, since many of them have adopted the GNU toolchain.
This could be really bad. Some people are calling it potentially worse than Heartbleed. Maybe. I’m thinking it’s more along the lines of MS08-067. But there’s an important lesson we must learn from this. Read more
Scratchbuilding, Marx-style: Finishing the roof
This is a continuation of something I wrote well over a year ago detailing how I build Marx-style boxcars out of simple materials. Train season is starting up again soon, so it’s about time I finished this story.
Once the box that will become your Marx-style boxcar is dry, it’s time to tend to the roof.
This method won’t produce a contest-quality roof by any stretch, but it will produce something that will blend in well with Marx cars. The idea here is to produce something that most hobbyists can accomplish in an evening and that won’t overwhelm the other cars in the train. Read more
How to open a D-Link GDS-2205 5-port gigabit switch
I have a D-Link GDS-2205 switch that I picked up cheaply. It turned out it was cheap because it didn’t work. But I thought I’d try to open it and look for bulging capacitors, since that’s a common problem with low-end network equipment.
Opening these boxes is tricky, but not impossible.
Change a stubborn lawn mower blade safely and easily
I needed to change a stubborn lawn mower blade this weekend. The bolt on the old one was frozen hard. That proved to be a challenge, but not an insurmountable one. I learned the secret of changing a blade without hurting myself, and without an impact wrench, even when the stubborn bolt doesn’t want to turn.
To remove and replace a lawn mower blade safely and easily, you need a length of 2×4 board long enough to stand on, a small plastic pan, the biggest socket wrench you can find, and a socket that matches the stuck bolt on your mower. If you don’t have a socket wrench or torque wrench, you can use a regular crescent wrench, but you want the biggest one you can find. Longer wrenches give more leverage, and you need lots of leverage to free a stuck bolt. Read more