My wife had a shoulder repair operation yesterday at St. Luke's, and pretty much the whole day was spent with getting her checked in, surgery, post-op. I probably should have brought my laptop, but I wasn't expecting the entire day to get consumed. I will say that I am always very impressed with the medical and support staff at St. Luke's (and every other hospital here in the Boise area). Friendly; courteous; concerned.
She is doing okay, but considering that they went in and removed bone spurs inside her shoulder, she is in a bit of pain. I stayed home yesterday and today to take care of her; I just can't imagine what single people do in these situations.
The evenings have been lost in the great telescope rebuild. I discovered that all the work I put into trimming the C-channel pieces down was a mistake; there was not enough clearance for attaching the steel straps without a lot more precision in cutting than I could easily do with a bandsaw, so I started over, and it was much faster. When drilling the attachment holes in the steel straps, the straps are thin enough that they briefly went red-hot as I drilled them! (More oil next time.)
The new versions were faster to make, in spite of breaking the 1/8" end mill that I was using to cut the slot. I finished with a 1/4" end mill, which looks less elegant for an .030" thick piece of steel strap, but it isn't like you can find a 1/8" end mill in Horseshoe Bend.
The upper picture shows the static end of the strap; the lower picture shows the screw that tightens it down. Unfortunately, the thumb screws I bought at Grainger just weren't long enough. A 1" long screw thread sounds good enough, but once the captive nuts were on it, that was not enough travel to be useful, so it now has a conventional hex head bolt. I may replace those when I can order a thumb screw with a longer thread. They work well -- although it takes a while to crank them down enough. Of course, that also makes it less likely that I will overcompress the tube with the straps, so I guess that's a positive.
The mirror cell has turned out to be a "I was too clever for my good" moment (as have several in the project). It turns out that having the mounting brackets separate from the bottom plate was a great idea -- except that the bolts holding the brackets to the bottom plate can't get past the mirror once the brackets are mounted inside the tube. So I guess I will do what I was trying to avoid -- tap the mounting brackets so that I can screw the threads in from the outside of the tube. This is a blind operation, but at least I can see the brackets from the rear. Some other mirror cells have you trying to find the threaded holes in a circular casting where there are no real clues as to location. The slots in the mounting brackets were for 1/4"-20 bolts, so it is easy enough to tap these for 5/16"-18 bolts -- which, fortunately, I have some in black oxide finish that I can use for this.
But that will be tomorrow night, or maybe the night after. I actually have ScopeRoller orders rolling in, and I need to get some of these filled.
Conservative. Idaho. Software engineer. Historian. Trying to prevent Idiocracy from becoming a documentary.
Email complaints/requests about copyright infringement to clayton @ claytoncramer.com. Reminder: the last copyright troll that bothered me went bankrupt.
Best wishes to your wife.
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