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Can it sand wet? I tried a detail sander on plastic. I guess it's an orbital sander. It looks like a little clothes ironer and has a vac. The plastic clogged the sandpaper, which I had to remove to wash clean. Using it wet would have clogged the vac.

In riding, I concluded that I didn't have to take more off, but the angles in my field of vision were annoying. I realized I had something better than sandpaper: a plane with a sharp blade. Soft plastic is terrible to carve with a knife, but with a plane, control was so good that I turned it...

I checked a 1600 W hair dryer. At 117 V it pulled 11 A and used 1300 W. If it could be fed a full 125 VAC, it would pull about 12 A. The power factor was 1.0.

I zip tied mine to the original visor, which is designed to pop off. Years ago I bought polypropylene cutting boards, 1mm thick. They're like place mats. Polypropylene flexes well, resists fatigue, can be cut with a box cutter or scissors, and can be shaped with a heat gun. I made an extension...

That estimated 80 miles a year could cause imbalance. Cells get out of balance with each other through self discharge. Recharging seems to have some capacity for equalizing cells, but just a few charge cycles in a year may not be enough. I bought an e-bike in 2020 so I'd have transportation...

The shaft driven bicycle is an 1880 innovation. It made rear-wheel drive possible because chains weren't yet good enough for bicycles. Shaft drives faded not long after 1900 because chains were more efficient than the gears used then.

If I was going to be riding when the sun was low, I'd wear my cowboy hat. Safety demanded it. The visor on my helmet was too short and too high to see well into the sun, no matter how I tipped my head forward. Now I've supplemented the visor on my helmet. The green addition extends 6 cm from the...

I advanced it in small increments. As he moves toward the building, the weight on it increases and the weight on the street decreases. The ladder starts to slide fairly slowly. Suddenly, the voyeurs jerk the camera up so we can't see the fall. In the last thing we see, he's crouching on the...

Your AGM battery may be OK. I bought one for my riding mower 8 years ago. My electronic tester said it had a lot more cold cranking amps than advertised. It calculated this by measuring internal resistance. As if it hasn't aged in 8 years, it still shows that low internal resistance. However...

I think it was staged. Even if somehow he didn't know the ladder would slide with almost no weight on the feet, it was in his way, he had no place to hang his bucket, and he'd have no hand hold if he stood. He was crouching with his feet 6 feet off the ground, so it wasn't much of a fall. They...

More than a decade ago I was using my first one to monitor the charging of a truck battery. Fair weather was forecast, but the hood was open only 3 inches in case a thunderstorm popped up. One did. Somehow, enough rain blew under the hood that the Kill-A-Watt would no longer show the accumulated...

AFCI. The US NEC has required it since 1999. Traditionally, a circuit breaker or fuse would tolerate a surge, such as starting a motor. Deadly fires were starting from arcing that wasn't sustained enough to rouse a circuit breaker. My refrigerator compressor starts out using something like 140...

If a dryer needed a 20 amp circuit, it would have to have a plug like the one below. If it has a regular plug (parallel blades), it'll run on a 15 amp circuit. (If 20 A is recommended for bathrooms, it's to let you use something drawing up to 5 A while your hair dryer is drawing 15 A.) I...

"Hey, farmer, doesn't this hill ever end?" "This ain't no hill. The back wheel has come off your bicycle."

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Sitting or kneeling on a steep, abrasive roof without a pad is hard on pants. About 15 years ago I bought a pair of Open Trails jeans on impulse. That's a discount store brand. I assumed they were of poor quality, but wearing them out would save real pants. I've worn them on countless hours of...

In school, I’d scratch up the money to buy Dickies. They were durable, wrinkle-free, loose enough to be comfortable in winter and summer, and stain-resistant. They were the kind the legendary Maytag Repairman would wear. In the 1950s, new jeans had an odor I found heavenly. Whatever the...

$5 for a 1ma movement. A zener to set where it will read 0. A resistor to determine full scale. Maybe the only problem if it got wet would be the paper scale you draw. So treat the paper with airplane dope, or fix it with a connector and temporary handlebar clips so you can pocket it in the...

IIRC, the guy who recommended LPS-1 had used it in the Air Force. I checked with the manufacturer: 5 years in aerosol, 10 years in bulk. I've had mine nearly 3 years on a shelf in a cupboard. In the past, the propellant in an aerosol can has sometimes apparently seeped out. Maybe some cans seal...