Snow Day

It has been quite the lax week. With the holiday Monday and 2 snow days with class canceled I have been bumming around the house, up to no good. I used my new found time to finish mounting Ben's DRO to his Ball Screw. It was more difficult than it appears, the first attempt at mounting brackets failed due to design and measurement errors. You're actually looking at Version 3 of those particular pieces of Aluminium.

McNaught-Hartley

(It's the white dot in the upper left hand corner.)

Science, science everywhere. Yesterday we had rat dissection in Anat& Phys lab. It was much less disturbing than I thought it was going to be. They must have changed the type of fluid used to preserve them because the smell was much less offensive than I remembered.
This evening I dragged CK out of work early to travel to the top of the west hills. We got a great vantage point from Council Crest park to view the comet. I'd say there were about 300 other people braving the cold like troopers. CK didn't say one word about the cold until the comet disappeared behind the horizon, then she made a bee-line towards the truck and turned the heater on full blast. Comet viewing taught me I need some better optics. My field glasses are woefully insufficient in their magnification and resolution and I don't have a telephoto lense for the Canon. Wifey's gonna have to get another job.
Edit: Maybe not. I've got a machine shop. Large mirrors aren't too expensive. I could design a mid sized reflecting telescope to be optimized for astrophotography at my camera's sensor size. Esmerelda, get cutting!

Water Pump, Circa 1955

I'll never understand Cast Steel as an acceptable material for applications involving water immersion.

CK's clamp continues to take shape.

I'll have completed pics when I get a 3/8" center cutting end mill with 2 inches of flute length.

Making Shavings

That's CK's drum clamp taking shape.

Graphite Packing

I've got aluminium to cut, but Shars hasn't gotten my cutting tools I ordered early last week to me yet. I need a to find a large machining supply close to the Portland, but I don't think we have a Shars or J&L type supply house. We do have a couple of local guys, but they are much smaller. From now on I'll get any supplies I can from Hall Tool since they are close and not too pricey. The only reason I ordered from Shars was the extremely discounted rotary table price. For end mills and other low price items it doesn't seem the savings are worth the wait.
The neighbor brought over a water pump I assume was originally from a tractor that was leaking where the shaft penetrates the pump body/housing. I can fix that, I told him. I proceeded to attempt to remove the entire shaft to get to the packing material around the shaft, only to realize that was wholly unnecessary. Instead it was as simple as removing the old packing material with a machinist's scribe and replacing it with new graphite packing and tightening down the gland/packing nut. Unfortunately I had already seperated the two halves of the body, and the replacement gasket for this union failed the first time. Hopefully the RTV he used the second time worked for him as a leak free alternative to cork.
The new quarter has started, and I am taking Writing 3 (writing reaserch papers), Anat&Phy 1 and Chem 1. The first day of the writing class the Professor discussed heavily language and Rhetoric (as a classical art, not as perjorative term). As a nod to our classical teachers I've decided to discontinue use of all profanity. As CK and the rhetoricians point out it is useless as a tool of persuasion, and Ma rightly thinks it's unbecoming. We'll see how it goes. First person to turn in front of me while I'm crossing the street may get an ear full anyway.

Edit: Part of my delivery came. The cutting tools, tailpiece and chuck vise, but no rotary table. Now I ask, what good is a tailpiece and rotary chuck vise without a rotary table?