A Nice Surprise: US-Made Thumbscrews

 I needed stainless steel 8-32 x 1" thumbscrews. Amazon had them, and American-made.

#8-32 x 1 Thumb Screw Stainless Steel - Black Knurled Round Plastic Knob - Standard/Coarse Thread Thumbscrew - Length: 1.000" - Proudly Built in USA - Package of (4)

Not Made in PRC

 I am used to buying fasteners made in Taiwan; it makes me happy.  If only they made telescope mounts.  I needed some 10-24 knurled thumbscrews.  Why?  The antique Edmund's Scientific mirror cell on the scope my father and I made had a feature that I have seen nowhere else.

First of all, mirror cells have adjustment screws for collimating the mirror's optical axis to the diagonal and eyepiece focuser.  There are usually three such adjustment screws; some fancy mounts have nine, although I do not see why.  The Edmund's mirror cell also has three locking screws. Once collimated, if you don't movbe the scope around very much, it should stay collimated once those locking screws from the frame that attaches to the tube have been turned against the frame that holds the mirror.  Those screws were Philips head and ugly from too many years near salt water.  I wanted some thumbscrews, easier to tighten and loosen.

I found some 10-24x1 1/2" thumbscrews and not made in PRC or Taiwan.

Shocking! US Made Telescope Accessory

If this item makes no sense:  telescopes usually have a bracket into which the finderscope bracket fits.  One of the standards is Vixen.

Sometimes you want two devices there: a 0x red dot sight for getting in the vicinity (perhaps Vega or the delta or gamma Lyrae stars), then a finder with magnification to either narrow where or use more light to center it (e.g., M13 globular cluster in Hercules).

Anyway there are dual mounting brackets that slide into that Vixen shoe and have two mounting shoes above.  These are mostly Chinese.  But to my pleasure and surprise this one is U.S. made and 3D printed.

One thing I like about AgenaAstro is that many of the goods they sell are not PRC.

Nice to See

I generally assume anything sold on Amazon is Chinese unless I see otherwise.   I was looking for a long endmill and along with Kodiak and Star brands made in the USA, I was pleased to see Speed Tiger made in Taiwan. 

Made in USA

I have been looking for some H-alpha filters not made in China.  What is an H-alpha filter?  It is a narrow band (typically 3 to 5 nm wide) filter used to catch only the brightest parts of nebulae on astrophotographs.   It is the light emitted when a hydrogen electron drops from shell level 3 to level 1 (or more precisely from energy level 3 to level 1).  This makes nebulae such as M42 stand out brighter than they otherwise would.

The Astrodon filters are USA made.

USA Made Audio Cables

 My 33" monster monitor has built-in speakers but needs a 3.5mm male-to-male cable from PC audio jack to monitor.  Amazon has gobs of them, mostly (probably all) Chinese-made.  I would be happy with any non-Chinese cable but what I found was Cables for Less:

Constructed of the Highest-Quality AMERICAN-MADE materials, and HAND-ASSEMBLED right here in the USA!

They had none in stock in either 3' or 6' lengths, but they are making one for me and I should have it next week for $19 delivered.   Even Amazon would need until Saturday to get me Chinese.  I wish Amazon consistently identified country of origin for all products.

I just received a shipped notice!

What I Make

These are before screwing in the casters.

Shipped My First 3D Printed Product This Morning

I shipped my first 3D Printed Product This morning. Most of ScopeRoller products are aluminum sleeves that lock to the exterior of the tripod leg. A few, however, replace the internal leg end. For the Vixen HAL-110 and HAL-130 tripod, the part is rectangular and is held into the tripod leg, and is held there by 4 M4-1.0 screws. Making this part I have historically done by milling it out of acetal. This is time consuming. Now I print this part, and all I have to do is tap five holes, screw in the caster, and it is ready.

A couple views of the part:

ScopeRoller Is Again Shiping Orders

I have finished packing ScopeRoller's first order since the stroke.  Now I just need to get all the customers that placed orders while I was in the hospital to replace those orders!

We Needed A Long Hose....

The telescope garage is beginning to get a dangerous growth of grasses around it, so it is time to do a weed barrier and rock, to reduce fire hazard.  The particular weed killer we use, KillzAll, works best when sprayed with a hose -- but we did not have a long enough hose.  I decided that it made more sense to buy a 100 foot hose to add to our current hose, rather than rent some sort of sprayer.

When we reached Horseshoe Hardware, there was a100 foot hose for $30 -- but it was labeled "light duty" for gardening.  When something is labeled "light duty" I assume that means, "won't survive the season."  When was the last time you saw anything sold as "light duty?"

But there was a 100 foot hose that claimed "Industrial Strength for Commercial Use" and 3/4" diameter interior.  It had mental springs where it attaches to the faucet to prevent kinking there.  It was also advertised as "500 psi burst strength."  Obviously, we only have 65 psi water pressure, but my hope was that being 6 ply, it would resist expanding under pressure, allowing more pressure to get through the hose to the far end.  It was also $75.

"Right tool for the job" is my motto, so I bought it.  And it is indeed a very well-made garden tool.  Even better: Gilmour makes it in America.

Those Tiffen Camera Filters That I Bought...

Last month I bought some Tiffen UV filters to protect the lens on my Pentax K10D; I was pleased to see when I opened the package: "Made in USA."  It is possible to make stuff, good stuff, in the U.S.

A Clever Design For Toilet Seats

Just when you think that there is nothing new under the Sun, you get a surprise.  We have been in this house seven years now, and a couple of the toilet seats were beginning to show some wear.  We went to Home Depot to buy couple of replacements and I found a very interesting and clever improvement on a traditional design, made by Bemis here in the United States.

Traditionally, toilet seats are attached to the toilet bowl by two fairly long screws that go through the back of the toilet seat, through the porcelain, and then into a couple of nylon or plastic nuts. You would not want to unscrew these very often, because it is sort of annoying to do, but it also means that there are areas near the toilet seat hinges that are hard to really get clean.

Instead, the screws go into a couple of quick release assemblies that can be moved from the top. Here is one of those quick releases in the locked position:

To remove the entire toilet seat, you just rotate the two quick releases to this position:

That you can lift the entire toilet seat off and do a very thorough cleaning across the entire top of the bowl.

Something Well Made Is Never Too Expensive

Long ago, when we lived in Sonoma County, a woman with whom we had gone to church in San Jose gave us an electric rest warmer. For those not familiar with it, an electric rest warmer is rather like an electric blanket, except that it goes on to the mattress, so that the electric heat is rising up from the bed. I suspect that it is more efficient than electric blanket.

It has dual controls so that you can set the left and right sides of the bed to different temperatures. One of the controls started to give me trouble a few days ago so that the off/on switch would sometimes not stay on. If you pressed it firmly it would temporarily go to on, but not stay on. Sometimes if you pressed it hard it would stay on, but not always.

I decided to figure out what the problem was, so I unplugged it, and then disassembled the control unit. I then noticed the manufacturing date on the control unit: August 15, 1990. This control unit and the rest warmer are more than 22 years old. This is the first problem that it has ever given us. The manufacturer is listed as Chatham Manufacturing Company, Elkin, North Carolina. It also says, "Made in USA."

Once I disassembled it, I discovered that a copper contact had flattened out and only needed to be bent a little bit to solve the problem. It is now working perfectly. Will I get another 22 years of service out of this rest warmer? I do not know, but I'm always so thrilled to see a product that is so durable and reliable. That it is made in the USA just adds to the pleasure.

Wahl Color Pro

Sometime back in the 1980s, probably for financial reasons, my wife started to cut my hair.  Only for rather remarkable events, such as a job interview, or going to testify before legislative panels, did I go to a professional for hair cuts.  Her first efforts were quite good, and now the results are so nice that I just never go to a professional anymore--where the results are often very hit and miss.

Over the years, we have gone through quite a number of haircutting tools, most of which were Chinese made.  The attachments that control the length of the cut are made of a very brittle plastic that usually breaks within a year, and can't be replaced, while the motor part is still working fine.  Even worse, because all the parts are black, you have to spend a bit of time trying to read the numbers embossed in the side to figure out which is the 5/8", 3/4" or 1/2" length.

My wife went out to buy a replacement, and found this unit: the Wahl Color Pro:


Several aspects of it are very nice:

1. Made in USA, and it would appear from USA stamped in all the plastic pieces as well as the clipper itself, this means everything.

2. The attachments are color coded, and the clipper has a color legend on the side, which speeds up the process of finding the right attachment.

3. The attachments seem to be made of a somewhat more flexible plastic.  We have not had a year's experience with it yet, of course, but I have more confidence that these will survive without cracking.

4. A very detailed instruction book which will enable many people to produce a close to professional result without taking several years to learn by error!  Still, you have to use some intelligence.  The instructions would have had my wife use the 1/2" attachment at the base of my head, and the 3/4" attachment on top.  The 5/8" attachment actually blended better with my hair.